Devil From The Heavens
Chapter 28: Prelude
The Day After Konoha's Siege...
A looked out over his village with tired eyes. The sun was just beginning to set and he sighed at the site. He didn't intend to stay so long but a Raikage's work is never finished and he got too tunnel visioned. He was about to rub at his eyes when he notice the slightest movement of some dust at his feet. The Raikage instantly twisted around with his guard up as two men just up and appeared in his office.
He picked up on their robes. Those damned red clouds. They should have been thorns; it was a lot more reflective of what they were to him.
"No guards? You're making this too easy for me, A." The first one said as he casually looked around. He recognized the orange mask from the many reports from his shinobi. Tobi, a childish, manic personality. The other behind him was new. He was a pale man towering well above the two of them with solid yellow eyes. Eyes that looked at him like dinner.
Was that Samehada wrapped on his back?
"Tch, that'll teach me to not go home when I should." A replied bitterly as lightning pulsed across his arms. He wasn't overly worried; his sensors should have already picked up on his signal and his best will be on their way. Not that he needed them.
"Bold of you to come in here, Akatsuki. Surely, you don't believe any good would come of confronting me?"
"Oh, this is not a confrontation, Raikage." Tobi shifted his head ever so slightly and a burning red Sharingan peeked out from the hole in his mask. "Think of it as...a negotiation."
'An Uchiha?' A thought as he looked away. A Sharingan was a wrench but he was still confident. The issue was that none of his reports ever mentioned any of the Akatsuki outside of Itachi being an Uchiha!
'Tobi' laughed, a dark mocking thing. His demeanor didn't match any known description of the terrorist. Was his behavior before just a ruse and this was the real Tobi? Or was this an imposter? "I would not be so forward as to use such underhanded tactics, A. It wouldn't be fun to have such undue influence over you."
"I know what you scum want. The whole of Kumo will come down on your heads if you make any attempt-"
The masked man held up a hand to cut the Kage off. The pale shinobi locked the door. Pointless to keep anyone out but the message there was clear.
"You love your village, don't you, Raikage? I would hope so, given your title."
A began to sweat. They were too confident for his taste. There was a trap here but he couldn't see it. "I won't dignify that."
"Do you love it more than your brother?"
That had A pause for a moment. "What are you planning? Tell me now or I'll-!"
"Spare me the empty threats, A. I'll make this quick." The Uchiha moved over to the window a smug stride. He didn't even have his lone eye on the Raikage. He could just- "I'm sure you're aware of the destruction of Suna and Taki."
Annoyingly so. They were still trying to investigate what happened there but since both events happened in other lands, information was thin. A grunted an affirmation.
"Good, now, what if I told you it was done by one person? Better yet, what if I told you that Konoha fell to them yesterday?" Tobi pointed to the man behind him before A could answer. "This is your culprit, Raikage. Meet Zetsu."
Zetsu grinned at the introduction. A tail, not unlike a monkey's, slipped out from behind his robes and flicked to and fro.
A cloak of lightning chakra instantly coated A as he burst through his desk and slammed into the pale man. A was the fastest shinobi since the Fourth Hokage; Zetsu stood no chance of reacting to his movement and he didn't. The dust quickly settled and A smirked as spittle fell onto his arm. His fist had gone straight through this proclaimed village killer with ease and destroyed most of his wall.
A pulled his fist out and shook it free of the various liquids on it. "You really came here to threaten me with this?"
Tobi chuckled in response as his body swirled inwards. "I'll see you again in a moment."
A hand fell onto the Raikage's shoulder and A turned around in shock. Wild eyes met his as a glowing green fist crashed into his face.
Outside, down at the village, Tobi stepped to the side as A's body slid along the road he stood on. The Kage's office collapsed moments later. As A came to, the Zetsu strode out of the rubble with a hole in its robes but otherwise no longer harmed. Dozens of shinobi swarmed around them but Zetsu threw up a barrier around the three of them. Jutsu crashed against its walls with little effect.
There would be no help. A launched forward at Tobi but he went right through the man. Zetsu came in with a heel kick to his ribs that he was too surprised to fully block. The Raikage smacked against the barrier but he kicked against it. His form was like a bolt of lightning as his Lariat crashed into the Zetsu. The pale man crashed against the opposite wall but A didn't let up.
He grabbed the Akatsuki and lifted him above his head.
"Liger Bomb!"
As he brought the Zetsu down, Samehada seemingly exploded from its wraps. A, unprepared for this possibility, had his grip broken before Zetsu's tail smacked him aside. Zetsu, hair now a neon green and standing on end, caught the Kage by his ankle and swung the sword into his abdomen crushing him between the weapon and the ground. The pale man brought the weapon back up once more as it became swollen on the Raikage's chakra and swung it down once more. The ground, Samehada, and Zetsu himself was painted with A's blood splatter.
"Alright, Zetsu, you've made our point. Don't kill him yet."
The weight disappeared from his chest. A struggled to stay conscious. His torso bore a close resemblance to ground meat at this point and he struggled to breath past his broken chest yet he remained lucid enough to witness Tobi standing over him.
"I was hoping that this would be much simpler but you force my hand, A." As Tobi spoke, a green orb fell from a cloud in the sky. A followed it with his gaze. It was falling to them. "Now watch the consequences of your actions."
A instinctively brought his arms across his face and closed his eyes as it impacted. His eyes saw the blinding light even past his guard and eyelids. A sound like an immense giant groaning beneath him shook them all. A let out a long held breath as his lungs burned. The air inside the dome was suffocating and he found himself quickly weakening under the heat.
A hand grabbed the back of his head and pulled his face from his arms. Zetsu dispersed the barrier with a grand gesture and cleared most of the smoke and debris in the air. A had never felt the kind of anger and helplessness he did now as miles of the village he loved were little more than rubble.
"There are dozens more of him above those clouds." The masked man's voice hissed in his hear. "You have ten minutes to hand me the Eight Tails. Every five minutes afterwards and another part of your village is glassed. If you try to move your people out of the village, they will be hunted down and murdered."
His body swirled back into the Sharingan in his mask. Zetsu was seemingly being left behind. Not that seemed to be news to the pale man.
"Deliver him to Zetsu here. I'll be waiting."
Tsunade fell to her rear on the nearest piece of debris that allowed it and rested her head in her hands. The Hokage was on the brink of passing out from exhaustion but her work, for the moment at least, was done. Two straight days at the beginning of directing their remaining forces, delegating work that needed to be done, helping in the most serious and dire operations to keep her people alive, and only now, a week after the fact, could she justify a break to herself.
An equally exhausted Kakashi sat by her. While his duties weren't as varied, he'd pushed himself just as hard to locate any survivors with his dogs and setting up shelters for civilians.
"How are you holding up?" He asked, his haggard voice barely audible.
She made a noise of sorts. What it was supposed to communicate escaped them both.
"Glad to hear it."
She lifted her head and braced her chin against her knuckles. The corpse of the village was all she could see. She had once considered the role of Hokage a fool's job and then she was convinced otherwise. Of course, she'd be proven right so early into her role.
"I need a drink." She said after some time.
Kakashi chuckled. "I'm sure some could be scrounged up if you said the words."
Tsunade shook her head. "I can't drink myself into a stupor as much as I want. Not now anyways." She followed up with an exhausted sigh. "How's Naruto?"
"Sound asleep last I checked. Sakura and I are taking every moment we can to keep an eye on him. Hinata's awake and lucid by the way."
That lifted some of the weight off her shoulders. The poor girl had collapsed right after they arrived. "Thanks for letting me know. I'll need to speak with her soon."
"Go easy on her, Tsunade."
The Hokage eyed the Copycat ninja. "Kakashi, she defied a direct order from the Hokage during an attack on the village. Standard punishment for that is execution." She stopped him with a rise of her hand. "Of course, I won't do that because she is directly responsible for saving the village though she'll wish that was the case with what she'll have to do."
Some commotion rang out nearby and Tsunade shot to her feet with Kakashi right behind her. No violence but her gut told her this wasn't a rowdy civilian or a stressed shinobi. The two made their way straight to the disturbance and an anger like Hellfire erupted in her.
Across from her Jiraiya and her shinobi stood Danzo and his Root.
"Danzo." Her tone had everyone in earshot snap to her attention. There was an undercurrent of anxiety among the Leaf and its civilians but Danzo appeared unbothered by what was going on. The Root stood emotionless as ever. "I demand an explanation.
"Tsunade." He said, his lone eye betrayed nothing. "I wish to speak with you. Alone."
Konan stared at the unconscious man for some time, powerless to do little more than sit here. She had been promptly re-imprisoned right after they picked her and the Hyuga woman up which she anticipated. She wouldn't trust herself if she was the Hokage even after the help. Especially after all this.
She had only asked that she could see Broly from her cell. Tsunade mercifully granted her request. As if her presence could somehow prevent any of what was to come.
It was pretty unanimous what the Leaf shinobi wanted based on her attempts at eavesdropping. Once they wrung whatever information they could out of the man, they'd let him die. What Tsunade did was stabilize him and nothing more. He only needed to be alive long enough for their attempts at information gathering after all. Once those machines were removed, he was a goner. Innocent or not, brainwashed or not, keeping him alive was not an option for anyone.
The seals of his improvised room seemed to pulse like heart beats as they were constantly at risk of breaking under the strain. His guards seemed to be wary of them, unconsciously so from her observations, and stayed as far away as they could while still technically fulfilling their role's requirements.
One of her own guards spoke. "When do you expect he'll wake up?"
The kunoichi stationed alongside him shrugged. "He might be in a coma for weeks. He might never wake up. I've seen better looking road kill than him."
"Tch, I kinda hope he wakes up. Maybe we can convince Tsunade to make him suffer some more before he bites it."
"Look, man, I hate him too but I want him dead asap. Every second is alive is another second all this goes to shit again."
Konan tried to shut their talk out. She wasn't worried about their desires coming to fruition; Tsunade was a doctor first. Cruelty was antithetical to her nature.
But there were others and the Hokage couldn't be everywhere.
The hairs on the back of her head suddenly stood and Konan straightened out. Someone was here and they shouldn't be. She looked around, her gaze smooth and slow so as to not warrant suspicion, and she saw the signs. Her chakra might be restricted by Jiraiya's handiwork but her training couldn't be. There were multiple hostiles(?) around that had just arrived. Competent ones though not quite her level.
Her guards fell over promptly with little darts sticking out of the back of their necks. Broly's did the same not a fraction of a moment later. ANBU appeared right after and restrained the shinobi and set them aside. They kept them alive despite not having reason to.
One of them raised a hand to their ear. "Targets secure." Their tone was cold and devoid of any emotion.
These weren't ANBU; they were Root.
They weren't hurrying to take them away; they wanted to be seen. A coup attempt by Danzo? In her periphery, she caught movement and she snapped her head to it.
Within his cell, Broly's hand twitched and then his lone eye opened.
Sasuke huffed as the Zetsu surrendered. Behind him, his team simply collapsed on the spot once their 'spar', if it could even be called that, was finished. It was a brutal beat down for the majority of it and that was with the Zetsu purposely limiting itself.
The Uchiha pulled his Susanoo's sword from the thing's shoulder.
Jugo came in afterwards and meekly handed it its arm back.
"Here you go, sorry about ripping it off."
It gave the man a slight smile and reattached the limb with a squelch. Suigetsu and Karin simultaneously shuddered at the noise but the former reached out a hand to help out the Zetsu.
Sasuke scowled. The only reason that creature wasn't dead was because Madara explicitly told them not to kill it. Maiming it wasn't out of the question but were he to find it dead, they would be too.
And until he found out more information regarding his abilities, Sasuke would err on the side of caution when it came to his fellow Uchiha and, he had to admit, having such a tough partner in the form of this Zetsu was improving his abilities. That's what mattered here. Even if he felt small in comparison to the freak. As his team interacted with the Zetsu, he felt disgusted. They chatted with it and even tried to be friendly with it.
Even the dizzying heights he had reached paled in comparison to the monsters he'd found himself walking amongst.
He had to get stronger still, he had to eclipse them all so that he could destroy Konoha for wiping out his clan and ruining his and Itachi's lives.
As they exited their training room to lick their wounds, Sasuke spotted Madara with B, the Eight Tails jinchuriki, on another Zetsu's shoulders. He remembered when they were supposed to be assigned the mission but Madara decided against it before they headed out. Something he had not forgotten in the weeks they had spent essentially isolated.
Something he would rectify.
Madara noticed him approaching and tilted his head. "You have something to say."
Sasuke nearly spat at the man. "You said you'd help me destroy Konoha but we've been stuck in here with that." He pointed at the Zetsu who looked almost saddened by the comment. Karin, awkwardly, pat it on the shoulder. "If something doesn't happen soon..."
There was quiet for a few seconds before Madara's Sharingan shone. "Let me show you something, Sasuke."
Their eyes met and Sasuke was seemingly transported to another location. He was in a forest on the outskirts of a village, a forest he recognized. His vision changed once more and Konoha was at the horizon. A green energy ripped through the village.
And he saw it all. The images played themselves over and over in his head. The utter annihilation of Konoha in so little time. Whatever it was that Madara sent was indiscriminate and whole with its violence. No man, woman, or child was spared.
Just like how Sasuke desired it and he reveled in what he saw.
But he wasn't satisfied.
"That was supposed to be me." He snarled as the vision ended. "We had an understanding."
The masked man gestured for B to be taken away and the Zetsu walked off. "Apologies but I'm on a timetable and I could not wait for you to be strong enough for that but do not fret. Konoha's leaders, or most of them, yet live." The Uchiha put a hand on Sasuke's shoulders. "I've said before, your purpose will come soon. Well, here it is. The Kage will have a summit together to discuss what to do regarding us. Eliminate them. In one fell swoop, you will destroy all resistance to us and you will land the killing blow on the village you had once called home. I'm sure that will satisfy your urges."
Sasuke's hand squeezed the hilt of his sword. He was being handed scraps and told to be happy with it. Madara would regret this.
But he had to bide his time for now. The missing-nin put on a please face.
"Fine."
Author's Notes
Sasuke is a real struggle to write because I've forgotten basically everything about him and I had to scrape basically everything from the wiki. It doesn't help that I've never liked the guy either. Every time he was on screen in shippuden, I lacked the physical capacity to roll my eyes as hard as I wanted to. Itachi did the 2edgy4me thing too but I never found him as unbearable.
But, nevertheless, he's rather integral to Naruto so I gotta include him.
We're going to be transitioning to the final arc of this story over the next few chapters and we're already getting indications of the next conflicts. Can't wait.
Ent out.
Review Responses!
Dontus -not Donut- Powerus: That's essentially how I'm gonna treat the chakra constructs. I do agree about Hagoromo though. I might go back and edit it to be a bit less sudden.
fightingchampion: Oh yeah, if this Broly ever gets free, he'll be absolutely insane in terms of power.
Abyss Emperor: The whole Zetsus with their tails and the full moon thing completely slipped me by. I'll need to rearrange some stuff later. c.c
Jutten: *sighs* It's just...the guy makes me want to forget him, y'know?
DTLA1992: And cheers to you, my friend!
SilverJoJo: Madara does know that he no longer controls Broly but he assumes that Broly has drowned. I'll touch on that some more later on.
Isaiah: Yes-ish. Kabuto won't show up for a long time but he will absolutely take an interest in Broly.
Guest: Hey, you good? Also have any Broly zetsus been shown to use chakra? I don't remember that ever being the case; I've made sure to have them only use brute strength or ki based abilities.
Isaiah Navarro: We got a little taste of Samehada/Zetsu action here and we'll get more in the future!
Primal Warrior: When you think about it, you're not wrong. Hell, Broly stronger than Nappa, Raditz, Goku, and Piccolo at the start of Z combined when he was born.
Guest: Well, I never guaranteed he'd show up and, if he did, it would be no more than a cameo. If I get enough pushback on that idea, I'll think about scrapping it entirely.
