Devil From The Heavens
Chapter 18: In The End
Konan stoked the campfire as she thought about continuing her journey already. It'd been a day since she'd abandoned Ame. Her grip tightened on the stick in her hand at the thought. Her village, her people, were under the thumb of that damned Uchiha. He'd probably torn the eyes from Nagato's corpse already. She wiped her cheek and her hand came away wet.
No, maintain composure. She couldn't break now. Nagato trusted her to stop Madara. She'd...deal with everything else afterwards.
She needed the Hidden Villages to fight against Madara and they wouldn't be keen to help. Frankly, most would kill her on the spot for her affiliation. Keyword being most. The Hidden Leaf's reputation as 'good guys' was little more than PR and propaganda but they were less cruel than the others. More willing to stay a blade than the other villages. They were her best, and closest, bet. Maybe. Nothing was sure.
She looked back where her village was or would be had it not disappeared beyond the horizon hours ago. What of Broly? What would happen to the Saiyan? He'd be redundant to Madara now. Would he just be tossed aside like her and Nagato? Would the Uchiha throw the man into some deep abyss and leave him to waste away or would he slit the Saiyan's throat?
"No, don't focus on that." She told herself. The Leaf Village was the goal. Everything else was second to that.
She'd save them all in time. For Nagato. For peace.
His meditative expression was serene as it should be. Everything on the surface pointed to a balanced individual but he knew better. There hadn't been anymore incidents since the Rasenshuriken but he suspected the fox had something to do with that.
Lying low until everyone's guard was dropped was exactly something it'd do. He shook his head. No need to fall down that rabbit hole again.
It wasn't perfect; not yet anyways. There was a wart here and there and his eyes were more human than frog. Jiraiya should have been looking at Naruto with pride. Minato's son had a better grasp on Sage Mode than he ever did but his paranoia could not be silenced. He'd thought on restricting the seal further but the idea didn't sit well with him.
If any of Tsunade's luck rubbed off on him, that'd end terribly.
He had to trust that Naruto would pull through. That on the other side of all this would be a man he'd be proud to see as Hokage.
"Alright, kids, its dinner time. We're done for the day."
He spoke with Fukusaku and Shima briefly as they prepared for dinner. Fukusaku expressed wonder with the duo's progress and even remarked that they'd surpass the Sannin in time. Jiraiya did let a small smile grace his face at that remark as he let himself imagine those two as their best selves. A thought that crashed against reality when Shima mentioned apprehension with Naruto.
"Hinata is the finest sage I've seen since Minato and Naruto is close behind but..." The Toad Sage hesitated for a moment. "I feel a growing darkness within the boy-"
"Real observant there, Shima. Did ya conclude that before or after that attack o' his?"
"Quiet you! I was talking!"
"And I was respondin'!"
Jiaraiya held his hands up in a placating gesture with a nervous chuckle. "Settle down, you two. I want to hear what Shima has to say."
Fukusaku grumbled as Shima smugly turned Jiraiya's way. "As I was saying, the attack could be explained away as a momentary lapse in control, the boy is a Jinchuriki after all, but this can't. There's a great grief within the boy, a pain that has been bottled up and kept away. Tell me, Jiraiya, has anyone spoken with him?"
The Sannin sighed. It was a bitter thing. "We've tried. Sakura, his teammate, talked with him right after they returned from Gaara's failed retrieval but he's pushed everyone away since then. Tsunade was going to force him into counseling after this." He paused. "Really, Hinata is the only one who's been close to him recently though I don't know how healthy their communication is. She's got a lot of faith in the kid though."
"Ah yes, even now she speaks highly of him though there's an understandable reluctance now."
"You've spoken with her?"
"Bah," Fukusaku threw a hand up. "The girl went ta us. You forget Jiraiya, she's lost two close friends o' hers too."
Jiraiya scratched at his head. "I never told you two about that?" The two toads looked at one another in bemusement before the Sannin shook his head. "Right, dumb thing to say, she told you. Is she...?"
"She's as fine as you can be after that. Unlike Naruto, she sought help through us and opened up. We helped her work her way through the grief of her teammates' deaths."
"And you?"
He put a hand to his face and rubbed his cheek. With what Shima had revealed to him, he felt disgusted looking back. "It feels like I've only yelled at him since we got here."
"He sees you as a father figure, Jiraiya."
Another sigh. "I know but with what's happened, do you really think I'm capable of helping him there?"
"Do you have a choice?"
He pressed his lips into a slight frown. He did but when one of the two choices given to him was to let the Nine-Tails have its way with his godson...well, it wasn't really a choice then, was it?
"I was never cut out for this kind of stuff."
"Yeah, we noticed."
A toad hopped up to them and silently pulled out a scrap of paper towards Jiraiya. He took it with a mutter thanks and read the message.
'Perfect timing, Tsunade.' Thought the man as he read the message. It was just two lines written in a rush.
Return to Konoha. Don't tell Naruto.
That was a scary set of words given their context. Were the Akatsuki making a move? Was the village in danger? He asked the toad which said that Konoha was fine when he left but Tsunade was 'jittery from nerves or fear'.
He had to go back but he looked over to Naruto who hadn't moved. A soft red cloak now rested on him as he meditated. It made him sick to look at it but he had to put his feelings towards the fox aside. This was about the kid and nothing else. He bid Shima and Fukusaku a quick farewell and made his way past the Hyuga girl who just appeared for dinner.
"What is-?" She began before the two elder toads beckoned her towards them.
"You'll know in time." Shima explained cryptically as Hinata sat down. A quick flash of her Byakugan revealed Jiraiya in front of Naruto and she understood. Her thoughts flashed back to the incident. Jiraiya hadn't been keen on the blond since then or so it seemed. The last thing Naruto needed was confrontation.
'I hope he knows what he is doing.'
"Hey brat."
"Pervy Sage." He responded without opening an eye.
Normally, Jiraiya'd respond with some fake outrage at the disrespect but he merely sat down a couple feet in front of his godson. As the words passed through him, he wondered how poorly the kid would react to that knowledge. How he ignored him for most of his life because he couldn't deal with his problems like a mature adult. He wanted to tell him but that would only end poorly for everybody involved.
Instead, the Toad Sage pulled out a scroll from his top and unfurled it. He had been planning on saving this for the end of training but this was a better use for it. He didn't miss how one of Naruto's eyes opened out of curiosity. With a puff, two sealed bowls of hot ramen popped into existence.
Naruto's eyes popped open and the cloak dissipated instantly. "Is that-?!"
Jiraiya allowed himself a small smile. The kid would move heaven and earth for this stuff. "Ichiraku? Absolutely."
"When did you..?"
"Does it matter?"
The kid dug eagerly into the meal. He ate as well though at a much calmer pace. The food was good but he didn't understand the kid's love for it. Maybe he never would. Naruto finished quicker than he wanted (there was no avoiding that outcome) and he leaned back though propped up with a hand and the other on his belly. His eyes were closed and there was a contentness there that Jiraiya hadn't seen for a while.
'Rip that bandaid off, Jiraiya.'
"Look kid, I'm-..." A single eye opened and Naruto seemed apprehensive. He sighed. "I haven't been treating you the best since we started here. I'm sorry."
Naruto sat up more confused than anything. "But there's nothing-"
"Kid, you've lost people and I haven't so much as raised a finger for you in that regard." Jiraiya ran a hand through his hair. Something to distract himself a moment. "I've lost a lot of friends. Its unavoidable in our line of work."
The kid was quiet now and refused to meet his eyes.
"I bottled it up pretty much every time. Never learned how to talk with anyone about. Developed some bad coping methods."
"Became a perv?"
He smirked at the dig. "Nah, I was born that way." The moment passed. "The Fourth Hokage was like a son to me so when I heard he died to the fox, it just..." His throat seized and his eyes roamed over Naruto. The boy was the spitting image of his father. "I couldn't even stay in the village anymore."
There was conflict in the boy. The Toad Sage didn't want to hazard what about.
Naruto leaned forward to push himself up. "I'm going to bed."
Jiraiya grabbed his wrist before he could stand up and pulled him back into an embrace.
"I-I'm sorry. I just-" A tear escaped his eye and fell onto Naruto's shoulder. "I-"
Naruto returned the embrace. He felt some wetness on his own shoulder.
"I'm sorry too, Pervy Sage."
Broly idly wondered how much more familiar he was with the ceiling he stared at than anyone he's known. It was a matter of time before Madara showed up again and gave him his power one last time. Kami, he could feel that last command hold tight around his mind.
"Looks like this is it, old man." He said aloud. He didn't care if the masked man could hear him; he wanted to hear his own voice.
He blinked and Broly stared up at an artificial night sky of Hagoromo's creation. How he just wanted to reach up and pull all those stars to him. Burn himself to cinders.
"You're not dead yet, Broly."
The Saiyan scoffed. "Didn't you hear Madara? Soon as I'm done with the Leaf, it's lungs full of water for me." He sat up. "Unless you have something up your sleeve, I don't see how I'm getting out of this."
The Sage stared for a beat. The man looked like he aged a decade since the last time they talked.
"You're oddly accepting of all this."
He knew that Hagoromo knew about his curiosity but the Sage blatantly ignored it. Odd, considering he seemed to like answering to his mind rather than his words.
Broly sighed. The hate and anger that should have lit him up left in that breath. "I don't think 'accepting' is a good word for it."
He was empty. Madara had beaten him. Squeezed him until he finally broke. It was cruel. That was the only word that he felt appropriate to how Madara treated him. He idly thought of the dead that Hagoromo showed him so long ago. There were plenty of worlds where he took days to finish them off. Was this how they felt at the end?
The Sage put a hand on his shoulder. When he got close enough to do so, he couldn't say. He didn't pull away. What was the point?
"It would be insulting for me to claim to understand or to know how it is to be in your position, Broly, but I do know what it is to be hopeless." The image of a young man, his older son, flashed through their minds. "To have the power to change a world's fate yet to see that you yourself are bound by it all the same."
"How did you deal with it then?"
"I didn't, I suppose. Not really anyways." The Sage sat on the air like he liked to do. "Eventually, in my despair, I realized there was nothing I could do except live. To let myself wither away would accomplish nothing. Worse still, it meant my other son would be left in the cold without his father's support. I moved forward because I had no other choice."
The Sage sighed.
"I don't know what my real counterpart did after he created me but I'd like to think he confronted his son every chance he got until the very end. It wouldn't do to do otherwise."
Broly perked up slightly. "I think that's the first time since we met that you referred to yourself as a separate guy."
The Sage shrugged, a not entirely smooth motion. "Centuries of separation does that."
Broly smirked as he turned away. "So that's your pep talk? Keep fighting because it's pointless to give up?"
"And it would hurt the people who care for you." The Sage said with a knowing upturn to his lips.
The Saiyan scoffed. "Like that matters if I'm dead."
Some Time Later
"Look, all I'm saying is you can't assume he's limitless when even a cursory look into your 'evidence'" He raised two fingers on each hand and bent them up and down as he said the word. "Shows he hasn't done any 'infinite' feats or whatever the hell."
"Even if you don't count those, he still beats that hillbilly monkey with no effort!"
"Okay, now you're just being a mor-!"
Their heads swiveled as they both noticed someone just appear on the road in front of the gates. Red clouds on a tattered black cloak with dried blood all over. Both shinobi immediately felt an overwhelming fear grip their hearts. Akatsuki right at Konoha's gate?!
"S-STOP RIGHT THERE!" One of them pointed at the woman with a shaking hand as the other pressed a silent alarm.
And, to their surprise, she did. Moments later, a dozen ANBU surrounded her with weapons drawn and hands at the ready for any movement.
"If you do not follow commands, we will use lethal force. You are under arrest for-"
"Please, I come with a warning." She sighed the words. It was a haggard motion. "I need to see the Hokage. Our lives depend on it."
Tsunade stomped down the hall with an entourage of ANBU. The village is barely stable as it is as the story of Suna's disappearance spread like wildfire. She didn't suspect treachery there. You don't just cover up a whole village being destroyed.
"And you're sure that everyone who knows has been thoroughly informed?"
"We searched the area high and low. Luckily, it seems only the ANBU on site and the gate's guards know of this development. Everyone involved knows the consequences if this gets out."
"Good." She'd wring their necks personally.
Before she knew it, she stood in front of a holding cell with their most dangerous prisoner. Konan, stripped of her cloak and left in what was little better than rags, stood before the Hokage. Tsunade was more than confident that she could crush this missing-nin if needed but the seals in the cell rendered the woman powerless. She was little more than a civilian now.
"That was a ballsy move just walking up to our gates like that." She crossed her arms. "Something tells me you wouldn't survive a clash against the Leaf just by yourself."
Konan stood impassive in the face of the Kage's words.
"Madara is coming."
It was silent before with only the breaths of the ANBU around to break it. They collectively ceased for a moment in disbelief and the quiet left Tsunade's ears ringing. She had plenty of ideas of where this conversation could go. This was not one of them.
"Tell me everything."
It was a quick conversation. Konan was nothing if not straightforward but, as Tsunade left, she could feel the floor beneath her threaten to fall away. There had to be a play here. Mind games played by the Akatsuki to get Konoha to give up Naruto. She even said as much to which Konan volunteered to undergo whatever was needed to prove her word.
And here she was with her hands to her temples and a nearly empty bottle of Sake after Inoichi confirmed Konan's warning. It had only been a couple of minutes but she was only human, damn it! She needed some time to process what was going to happen and how to explain it her shinobi.
She thought her original theory was bad but this was easily exponentially worse. Broly was an alien and Madara had replicated his power? The Saiyan alone was horrifying but an army? What could stand against that? This was an existential threat to world as they knew it. She could only hope that the other Kage had understood her urgency when it came to the summit. That was still days away. The most she could do was bring back all her forces.
Anything less than one hundred percent here was tantamount to suicide. She even sent Jiraiya a message for him to return home as soon as possible without informing Naruto. They had that advantage. The Akatsuki needed the Nine-Tails. That's leverage they had.
She thought back to her grandfather and the first Hokage, Hashirama. Did he ever feel like this during the First Shinobi World War? When everything was so close to tipping into complete annihilation?
Tsunade pulled out another bottle. She needed another drink.
Two Days After
There was an odd hush to the atmosphere of the village as the usual morning hustle and bustle went about. At the gate, there was a dispute between a merchant and the guards which went mostly ignored by the other shinobi in the area. There was an abundance of them now as their missions had all been cancelled or ended prematurely.
The citizens had noticed but there was little in the way of information and there was nothing directly impeding them from going about their day to day. So that was what they did. All the commotion near the gate stopped as they collectively felt something wash over them.
There was a mass collapse among the civilians. Some of the fresher ninja felt their limbs weaken. The more experienced among them thought they recognized an element of killing intent within it but it was a fleeting feeling. There was nothing physical to it but their bodies reacted to it all the same. Hairs rose on their necks. Heat left them. Mouths dried.
They felt ruin.
They tasted disaster.
Of what they saw, they could not speak.
Red clouds. A Black cloak billowed. Green wisps floated away.
And then, there was only light and fury and nothing else.
Author's Note
*checks last upload date* I am speed.
If you want an explanation for my absence, look at my latest chapter on my other Broly story, An Unburdened Fury.
Otherwise, leave a review and let me know what you think, any predictions, and...other stuff people put in reviews. Put it into my veins.
Ent out.
Review Responses!
Tsukimine12: Well said.
Abyss Emperor: Konan is alive. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.
Guest: If you don't know where you're going, so will no one else! (Mostly kidding there) Also, big emphasis on 'if' he regains control.
GamerX568: I'd love a reason personally. Pandora's box is open though so they're staying unfortunately.
fightingchampion: Have things ever looked good in this fic? This shit is bleak as fuuuuuuuu-
DTLA1992: It sucked to kill him because I really liked Pain but the show must go on.
The Best Guest: Yeah, there was a throwaway line from Zetsu(?) in a previous that spoke of Sasuke and Itachi's fight which would imply Orochimaru's fate if that's what you're referring to. No reason for that fight to be different from canon.
Abyss Trinity: Hopefully we'll see the fruits of that by *checks watch* 2036.
Warga: Quite possibly the largest of oofs.
Recieve the Wind: Tsundere Broly is just a hilarious thought to have.
Primal Warrior: Their paths will inevitably cross. How that reunion will go is another matter entirely.
oscuro oscuro: Vamos a ver si sus predicciones son válidas en los próximos capítulos. (My spanish is a bit rough so hopefully that makes sense.)
coronadomontes: Thanks!
Guest: It would be.
