With all the immediately-executable preparations complete, I sat back to governing the village. I used only [Multi-Focus] clones when I could help it, and no time dilation. The clones mostly worked on my mastery of seals and other skills. The people of Whirlpool were slightly irked when I ordered increased emergency drills and a few complained about the discrete sirens I placed around the village. Seeing the seal-masters, ninja, and various construction crews out and about working hard to secure the village scared them a bit, too. I could have claimed it was an infrastructure overhaul, but the fact I'd called back all available ninja rather than sending them on missions to earn money for the village would have made it an obvious lie. The Whirlpool council's reassurances and the steady stream of spies brought in for interrogation weren't helping the problem of mixed messages.
Leaf's leadership had taken a cue from us and started preparing for another war. Skirmishes started up along several national borders as Cloud, Sand, and Stone either followed suit or stopped pretending they hadn't already been building their militaries. The smaller countries were stockpiling food and supplies, so everything got more expensive and traders became both more important and higher priority targets. The sudden surge of food available to those who traded with Whirlpool was remarked on and undoubtedly produced a ton of conspiracy theories, but the truth was that I was selling the excess food produced in Bastion and Elysium and not consumed by the populace since the storage systems were already nearly overflowing with products of all types in stasis. My minion golems did good work, but would be phased out of use in Bastion when the local farmers and such got there.
I didn't know a whole lot about the war started in the original timeline, but I'd gotten the impression that a lot of countries hadn't been nearly as prepared for open conflict as they were now. The food flowing from my nation was keeping things from escalating as quickly as they could have since everyone was eager to fill their stores, but Whirlpool was also becoming a bigger target for its food production. Sand was benefiting the most, since they were allies to both Whirlpool and Leaf. I'd given them several compact jars that produced infinite water to store underground and keep their reserves topped off on the condition they keep them absolutely secret, and was selling them food at a discount. With their population and activity no longer limited by the upper limits of the natural springs and oases in the area, their loyalty to the alliance was redoubled and their people happier than ever despite the threat of war.
The Land of Iron, home of the samurai, had been recruiting steadily and building new border fortresses since word of imminent escalation got out. The smaller villages like Waterfall, Grass, Rain, Valley, Hot Springs, and Frost were all doing their best to consolidate their positions for when troops inevitably fought on their land in skirmishes between the larger powers. The anticipation built over the months to the point where even the most laid-back people were on edge and a bit snappish with foreigners. The whole time, we built.
I refused to explain to the seal-masters and builders who had access to the sub-dimension why the entrance was now guarded by an incredibly advanced (and enchanted indestructible) security checkpoint with retractable weaponry the likes of which they'd never seen and I wouldn't let them examine. I hadn't had to explain the wards yet either, which was nice. The indestructible prison with receiving cells for those who were picked up by the wards annoyed them a bit though, since they had to re-work some of the city plans again to go around it.
The days leading up to the attack actually started triggering my innate precognitive abilities. It was going to be bad. There was something I hadn't accounted for, and it was going to be very bad. I started evacuating parts of the inner city and the outer islands through the portal early, but it did little to ease the sense of imminent doom. Government departments were now being run via proxy by clones from within Bastion. Was that a giant slug with a bunch of tails? And a horrible turtle monster? Ah. That's what I'd forgotten. They could and would attempt to unleash such things in the middle of the village, rather than approach from afar. I'd never really been much of a politician or military leader before this. Sounding the alarm to begin evacuating the rest of the citizens, ordering the planned defenses brought online, and sending a telepathic message to one of my clones in Leaf took only a few minutes. After that I started approaching the tailed beasts on foot to assess the situation and eliminate any attackers I found on the way. Ember, Konatsu, and Ukyo followed behind as my guard while the rest of the administration building personnel coordinated the evacuation itself.
-
As the barriers rose around the village and I rushed toward the rampaging demons, civilians streamed past me toward the temporary portals into Bastion as directed by those in the know. The portals would self destruct in about four hours unless I triggered that feature early with one of the temporary seals on my arm. I had no idea if my plans had changed things enough to actually win the battle the normal way, but a slow fighting retreat into the center of the city where the last portal would allow my people to escape before I blew our enemies to hell? That I could make sure of. I brought myself to full battle-readiness in the first few seconds after the attack started, and made sure to have [Active Precognitive Defense] as high as it could go.
The tailed beasts, I reflected as I approached, were things of beauty. While they were ugly as sin on the outside, on the inside they were constructs of chakra, divine energy, and soul energy that only imitated the physical while still allowing them to be as alive and aware as anyone else. Just looking at them gave me enough data to improve my chakra chains, [Mystical Energy (Body)], [Mystical Energy (Generator)], and more. These were actually the creatures I'd based [Mystical Energy (Generator)] on, so observing them confirmed several of my theories. Sadly, if I was to derail whole plan to resurrect a pissed-off rabbit goddess they were going to have to go. I could and would seal them away if I failed, but being able to see their internal structures gave me hope that I could actually kill them permanently.
The tails themselves generated energy in ways that made conservation of energy weep, but the bodies and souls did the same to a lesser extent. They weren't completely natural, and I could see where faults in the structure of each body were sort of patched over with divine energy to keep things running smoothly. That would be my first target, then I'd attempt to tackle their regeneration. If I could get at the soul energy underneath I could force an exorcism through and eliminate some of the key components to revival of the over-arching villain of Naruto: Otsutsuki Kaguya. The more tailed beasts I killed the less likely she was to come back and the less powerful she'd be if she ever managed to do so. I absently batted an errant Mist ninja off the rooftop I landed on to begin the first stage of my plan, and he splattered against an adjacent high rise.
With precision I'd never had to use before, I reached out to the three-tailed turtle Isobu and tore at the divine energy holding its form together, draining it into the storage of my watch. A wail of agony and fury echoed across the village, and it ponderously turned toward me while gathering a tremendous amount of energy in front of its mouth. The six-tailed slug Saiken also turned, energy gathering at the tips of each tail. A quick assessment of the status of the evacuation with [Panoramic Survey] and [Mystical Energy (Sense)] showed that there was still a long way to go and a lot of my people fighting to hold back the enemy ninja that were now either leaving cover from where they'd infiltrated or attempting to enter the village proper.
With one thread of thought I prepared to bend space, with another I prepared [Universal Nullification], and with the rest available to me I concentrated on restraining the creatures before me with chakra chains. The specialized constructs and a ton of power allowed me to both limit their access to energy and physically stop them, then point their heads into the sky in case the techniques they were charging discharged. The slug beast was only momentarily inconvenienced: though it was forced to abandon the attack it also slid through the chains themselves as if it were liquid. I wasn't so lucky with the turtle. Even at a high angle facing away from the village his technique was further along and more destructive. Instead of dissipating relatively harmlessly like the other, the ball of energy in front of him violently detonated and would have flattened buildings for several blocks.
A [Universal Nullification] fired off by my precognitive thread reduced the power of the explosion significantly by completely eliminating the mana component of the blast and blunting the ki component, but it still killed a few people and left a crater. More of my concentration was taken up by dodging around and countering the slug-beast's attacks, so I gave it something to worry about by ripping away its divine energy too. It was much more difficult than it had been with Isobu, but actually reduced the body of the creature to an uncoordinated but massive puddle of corrosive energy. With Saiken vulnerable and Isobu restrained I struck with an extremely powerful exorcism at the more powerful tailed beast.
I could see the soul of the thing flicker, and the energy that made up its body began to completely destabilize. In my mind's eye I watched as it exploded outward and my own vision went dark, warning me of what would happen if I left it there uncontrolled. With my reserves greatly reduced I consumed the divine energy stored in my watch and threw all of my remaining [Multi-Focus] threads into draining the energy left over from the now-dying tailed beast into both myself and the watch. I hadn't expected the pain that would come with absorbing seven active and now undirected [Mystical Energy (Generator)]s, nor had I expected the total energy of the beast to be several hundred times my own maximum capacity.
In only took a second for my physical form gave way to [Mystical Energy (Body)], and I finally had a place to put the still-active generators. I took the form of a kitsune built mainly from chakra and [Holy] energy, then shoved the damn things into my own body and tails. The change disrupted my concentration on both my chakra chains and my active defenses, but also stopped the ongoing battle cold. Nobody had seen the Kyuubi in many years, but they knew the creature I'd become wasn't him. Between only having six tails at the moment and being a bright pearlescent silver instead of an angry red-orange the differences were pretty obvious. Isobu stared at me in horror, my new link to the rest of the tailed beasts telling me he knew exactly what I'd done.
When I did the same to him he didn't even have time to react, his soul was banished to the afterlife and his energy consumed before he could recover from the shock. Notifications popped up all around me and were unconsciously shifted out of my line of sight as I set eyes on the attacking forces. There were still far too many of my people on the field for the final gambit, so I'd have to buy time. Re-instating my active threads took a fraction of a second, and allocating threads to control each tail independently took even less. With the divine energy of my own soul, that I'd taken from the beasts before exorcising them, and my own knowledge false flesh surrounded me. I had no idea what I was going to do after this, but for now I was a massive energy construct and I was going to take advantage.
For those on the battlefield below, it must have been a hell of a shock. First some asshole had eaten two of the legendary tailed beasts, then said asshole had become a tailed beast, looked around, and vanished only to reappear standing on the water where the main force of the attacking ninja were trying to gain entry to the city. For those without sealing expertise, the Senju bloodline, the Uchiha bloodline, or the Uzumaki bloodline tailed beasts were unstoppable forces of nature. The Mist and Cloud ninja had been counting on their jinchuuriki [1] to destroy most of the village before they were restrained, or at the very least provide a lasting distraction while those few capable of wielding the weapons the tailed beasts were weak against were forced divide their attention.
When my feet/paws touched down on the water outside Whirlpool after my first teleportation in energy form, I immediately started pouring heat and lightning into the water below me to kill the invaders who hadn't yet surfaced. The delicate ecosystem would be destroyed as well, but at this point there wasn't much I could do. It would recover in time and I might be able to help it along a bit, but the people were my top priority. The sea boiling under my feet, I started swiping at those that had managed to make it to the surface and hadn't yet succumbed to the heat radiating from below. My tails did much the same, but also took time to telekinetically assist my own troops and scoop up loot, bodies, and anything else that might be useful in the future.
What had in the canonical timeline been a prolonged but ultimately futile defense was turning into more of an ambush. Those attackers that could attempted to flee while I attempted to keep them close enough to be within the blast radius of our last defense. Many of them tried to fight me, and those that weren't especially powerful were completely ignored. A group of senior ninja that had been commanding the attack attempted to seal me away like they'd done the beasts I'd consumed, but [Active Precognitive Defense] cast [Freedom of Movement] and [Universal Nullification] in my defense. Their failure attracted my attention, and they received a blast of superheated plasma in response, leaving the area filled with scalding steam and electricity.
When the last of my people left alive finally made it through the portals to Bastion and the portals themselves closed, I took a moment to gather my wits about me. The outer barriers had fallen and those enemy ninja that hadn't fled or been killed were busily destroying the city and looking for survivors. Many of them were probably looting, too. Konatsu's and Ember's health bars were still in good condition, but Ukyo was badly injured according to my heads up display. Her health was wavering up and down at about ten percent, but she was within Bastion proper. I growled loudly enough to be heard across the battlefield and raised my own barriers around the islands in case the coming blast was less controlled than anticipated.
With a little bit of mental effort I pulled hard on my connection to my physical body, resulting in me popping back into human form and a near-overwhelming pressure popping up in its place where my alternate forms were normally stored. I looked sadly at the land below me, teleported immediately outside the barrier, closed my eyes, and activated the last seal on my arm. It dissolved into nothingness over the course of about five seconds, then the world flashed white and enough energy to vaporize a good portion of the elemental nations was funneled from beneath the islands up into the sky where it stopped just short of the upper atmosphere.
There was no shockwave, no sound, and no heat. The measures the seal masters and myself had taken to ensure the blast was contained combined with the last-minute barriers I'd erected made sure of that. Everyone who'd had an unobstructed view of the scene for tens of kilometers around was instantly blinded, and I felt the pain of my retinas disintegrating even as Gamer's Body limited the actual damage to hit point loss. My skin and much of the muscle underneath would have been gone without that and my near-immunity to harmful radiation. As it was I suffered the [Blindness] status effect, and had to teleport into Bastion without my sight since it was taking a long time to dispel.
When the army of Leaf ninja arrived to back us up, all they found was a mostly-filled depression in the near-boiling ocean floor and the most intense fog any of them had ever seen. Whirlpool was gone, as were the armies that had attacked it and the islands on which it sat. The world plunged into war, with Mist and Cloud having suffered losses even heavier than those in the original timeline. Leaf and Sand crushed their remaining forces, and Stone stayed well out of the conflict after seeing the alliance they'd hoped to join disintegrate.
[Title: Light Bringer leveled up!]
[Title: Morning Star leveled up!]
[Quest complete: Bastion!]
[Quest complete: Hippie Agenda!]
[You've obtained the title: Devourer!]
[By earning a title that spawned a legend, you've earned an extra title slot!]
Devourer (Title, Equipped)
Wren consumed the essence (but not the souls) of the legendary three and six-tailed beasts (Naruto) when Whirlpool was invaded at the start of the second world war. He gained a six-tailed alt form of his own and began to incorporate aspects of the Naruto world's proto-divinity into himself. This title allows him to more easily perform energy draining attacks and integrate foreign mass and energy into himself.