The return of Uzumaki Kushina and Senju Tobirama to Leaf was dramatic, I'm sure. That's exactly why I didn't go with them. I did send them home with amulets for themselves and whoever else they cared about. If the wearers were on the verge of death, spoke the proper word, or simply concentrated on escaping hard enough they would be whisked away to the under-utilized hospital in Bastion, which was now staffed almost entirely with soulless minions since conditions requiring complex treatment were rare amongst people with regeneration and immunity to disease and poison.
In case of an overflow of patients the minions had access to potions, poultices, salves, stasis beds, and other healing equipment I'd come up with in my spare to keep people stable until more talented healers could be called in. Everything was based on seals, chakra, or the plants and other resources that now grew naturally in the demi-plane itself so the citizens wouldn't come to rely on me for such things.
The wards would still freeze anyone who intended to harm another sentient being inside, but would also put those badly injured enough to be in danger into full stasis to prevent them from dying. I'd start working on a pair of portal devices soon, which could be activated by Konoha to reach us as their allies for healing, trade, or social interaction. Those in Whirlpool who wanted to fight would be able to leave for Leaf, but couldn't come back until they were done except for healing.
I was pretty sure the original plot was well and truly destroyed by that point, but just to be sure I took the time to flood the Elemental Nations with even more clones then scryed for and consumed the rest of the tailed beasts as I found them. The statue was last, and involved a lot of sneaking since it was guarded by a supremely old Uchiha Madara in a cave. Who knew what tricks he had up his sleeve. Why was he sitting in the dark, all silent and alone anyway? That wasn't what I looked like when I was trying to avoid attention, was it? Also, what was with the plant people? There was actually a cozy place to live a few tunnels down with a nice garden and some artificial light, so hopefully he didn't just sit there all the time.
'Hey, you're not done yet,' Washu prompted me after I finished ripping the energy from the statue and deconstructing the pieces.
'Really? This looks pretty done, to me,' I replied. The following explanation about how the plant people were made by the insane goddess thing I was trying to prevent from returning, the black one was evil and needed to die, and the white ones were innocent victims but should probably also be put out of their misery actually prompted me to ask Washu if she was racist. Or plantist. Something. A ridiculous amount of laughter from my benefactor later she replied that no, she wasn't racist, and I could blame someone called Kishimoto if it sounded that way. I recalled he'd been the author of the story in my home universe, but unless he was also a creator deity I didn't think that it was entirely fair to put the blame on him.
Deciding to take care of the old guy to keep him from stirring up trouble later, I incinerated him in his sleep, then did the same to all the plant people I could find including a black one. I left the cave in a bad mood, but at least I'd completed a quest and gotten some nice fruit. The old guy's garden had tomatoes in it, and I'd taken them just in case he managed to come back like the one I'd faced in the Gamer universe. It would serve the prick right for being so much trouble and cooperating with dubiously racist plotlines.
[Quest complete: Enduring Peace!]
The emergency teleportation devices turned out to be a big hit, and when I finally started up my shop/local retirement plan I'd be selling a lot of them. I set up a new demi-plane just big enough for a large-ish supermarket and built a nice market stall into the side of it. Some consultation with Tobirama and his soon-to-be successor Sarutobi Hiruzen got me a place on the wall of a secret facility in Leaf to open up shop. I could open up the windows and front door to make the building look like it was a store while their special forces used other entrances that actually went inside the structure instead of through a portal. Ukyo and Konatsu opted to run a restaurant up front while faux-merchandise was displayed on the walls and real stuff was sold in the back. It was better than sports paraphernalia, anyway.
We received a few interesting patients from the first round of teleporters. Tobirama turned up looking like hell and had to be put in stasis for a few days, and another of my Senju cousins nearly lost her boyfriend before she figured out that she could bring someone with her. I didn't regret saving the guy, but letting other people tag along into Bastion or wherever the future devices went could be a liability so I made a note to restrict it. They already wouldn't activate for anyone but the first wearer and self-destructed if someone started trying to take them apart, but I didn't like the idea of anyone being forced to take someone with them unwillingly.
Tsunade, the Senju relative with the nearly-dead boyfriend, ordered a whole bunch of the emergency devices after that and started giving them to her friends, family, and teammates. That meant I had to come up with a proper name for them, since she was basically advertising for us. I ended up calling them Recall amulets, and wrote up a little usage manual to go with the revised versions I'd be releasing for production by the locals. They'd use seals exclusively and require a sizeable beacon of sorts to return to, but could eventually be adapted to be used with multiple beacons as long as they had the energy and the security protocols weren't violated. Bastion itself was protected from entry by undesirables thanks to the wards and my own subconscious judgement, but future beacon locations probably wouldn't have that.
There was a little (friendly) friction in the family when I showed off my new alternate form. Ember was exceptionally jealous of my ten-tailed majesty, and annoyed that it was more wolf-like than fox-like [1]. I shifted to look like our twin ninetail forms (plus one, hah!) and really really big, to which she replied with a growl and a playful swat. I pinned her under one paw and proceeded to lecture her about giving her big brother a hard time, but backed off when she started threatening to tell embarrassing stories about me. That started a running joke about how I didn't get any respect from the family, which got weird stares from the citizens of Bastion and made us all giggle hysterically at said stares.
-
My retirement as village leader came as no surprise to anyone. I'd been talking about it a lot and preparations had been put in place during the year I spent preparing for the invasion of Whirlpool. My moving into the shop with Ember, Konatsu, and Ukyo to work on bringing economic dominance to Bastion rather than the peace through superior firepower route that seemed popular was considered at best another oddity. Setting up a bunch of copies of the initial shop in the supermarket-sized sub-dimension run by clones and minions was easy and helped to stretch my muscles as a builder, as did warding the entire place against theft, violence, and a slew of other things. Having my clones surreptitiously acquire paperwork and properties in other villages would take more time, as they'd have to bluff and/or bribe their way through a bunch of different vetting processes.
Uzumaki Imports officially opened in Leaf just a few days later, with a nice restaurant up front and a very firm set of rules posted regarding acceptable behavior. We didn't sell anything directly useful for combat, at least nothing traditionally useful. Instead we went for survival and utility gear as a base with food and luxury goods to round things out and attract more civilian customers. Storage seals that didn't require blood or chakra to use but could still be secured if needed, medical supplies, a wide variety of food, high quality cooking and camping gear, small generators with attached batteries that either ran on ambient energy but could accept channelled energy for an extra boost, energy efficient appliances, and various other things passed through our doors daily.
We did our best to charge reasonable prices that allowed the locals to compete a bit, but our products were almost always higher quality and more available since they were backed by a village essentially free of the conflict plaguing the rest of the world. When our stores opened up in Sand and Rain we ended up having to boost production based on demand. Sand wanted additional food variety and luxury goods, while Rain needed a massive amount of food and consistently placed orders via the government for medical equipment and survival gear.
The leader of Rain, a man by the name of Hanzo, had been tough to convince to allow us a place and insisted on a daunting list of regulations, a substantial special tax, and ninja guards native to Rain. We still sold every scrap of food, survival gear, and medical equipment we stocked until I updated the stock to be supplied with Builder magic until the demand went down to reasonable levels. In order to keep things organized and provide both customer service and help to the community we ended up hiring some of the local orphaned children and less fortunate adults in Rain.
There were some problems with theft due to rampant poverty in the city, and after the third time someone was ejected into the street in nothing but their underthings due I ended up having to adjust the wards to treat thieves a little differently based on their motives. Those who tried because they were desperate usually found their clothes stayed on after that. They also enjoyed much softer landings and sometimes found helpful things in their pockets later, like basic food and other necessities with no memory of how they got there. A strong compulsion not to associate the findings with our store in any way helped keep them from returning endlessly.
It wasn't that we didn't want to help people in need, but people thrown out by the seals and wards tended to be looked on with suspicion by the locals if they came by again and it would be weird of us not to ban people who were repeatedly caught. If we thought it would do anything we would have started donating to social services in Rain, but between watching how the village leadership worked and looking around we'd already determined that what few support structures existed for those in need were more fronts for war fundraising than anything else. We had a bit more success helping the poor in Sand, but they also needed a lot less help after mysteriously acquiring infinite sources of water [2] that they passed off as newly-discovered underground springs.
The whole second ninja world war thing had been calming down pretty quickly until Stone kicked over the ant-hill by getting involved. I'd hoped it would end more quickly, but didn't place much faith in the ability of human beings to act rationally or selflessly in large groups. The whole child-soldier thing bothered me a lot too, but I knew from my own world's history that when adults were desperate enough to end each other children usually suffered too. Running the store itself was starting to feel a bit like war-profiteering even though we were doing our best to keep people alive and happy rather than fuelling the conflict to increase sales.
It was easier to focus on the family than the rest of the world. Ukyo and Konatsu had gotten together and Ember was seeing a nice but eccentric young man by the name of Jiraiya. I choked on my own spit when I found out who he was, but he did genuinely seem to be an alright guy. I cautioned Ember not to tell him too much without being sure of his loyalty since he acted as a spy in the series, and she scoffed at me before telling me she wasn't stupid. Apparently she was both well aware of Jiraiya's occupation and very happy with his lack of social inhibitions. He quietly confided in me one day that my sister had him on a short leash regarding other women but he was happier than he'd ever been.
My ability to multi-task kept growing with my level in [Multi-Focus] and my ability to absorb the information I gained from dispelling clones. I watched from multiple points of view as my family grew more concerned with their own matters both romantically and to shut out the conflict around them just as I was doing. Some discrete talks with Washu ensured that even if she decided to stay Ember would have access to Bastion and from there the rest of the family. She was really flourishing now that she was both used to being human and in a somewhat stable environment [3]. Our cousin Kushina had finally gotten together with the Namikaze boy when I felt the odd sensation of something tugging on one of my alternate forms. My tailed-beast form, in particular. That wasn't supposed to happen since I'd roasted old Madara (once), but I found a nice empty space to transform into a look-alike of the original nine-tails before allowing the summons to work out of curiosity.
In the barest fraction of a second I went from interested to furious. Minato was unconscious on the ground, pinned down with early prototypes of his teleport beacon knives in each hand. His and Kushina's Recall amulets were burning in black fire to one side, and Kushina herself had been repeatedly slashed across the stomach to break the seal there but was regenerating rapidly and attempting to stand. In the middle of it all stood a younger, very familiar version of the old man I'd roasted in the cave. Uchiha Madara was back looking just as young as when I'd faced him in the Gamer but much more powerful, with a bloody hand in contact with a summoning seal on the ground.
He looked at me with freaky blood-red eyes and black sclera and attempted to dominate my mind even as my [Active Precognitive Defense] fought its way through hundreds of scenarios against his own precognitive ability. Combat options raced through my mind as I looked down on possibly the most twisted, spiteful soul I'd ever seen, and I made a decision. This one was going to need to be personal if I wanted to be sure he was down for good. Madara's remaining eye just had time to widen as I took control of his body with a combination of [Elemental Bending], telekinesis, barriers, and nullification. His precognitive ability didn't help him because I'd shut down every source of supernatural ability he had, including the mana and divine energy mixed into his ki that turned into chakra.
His flesh and blood following my every command, his body locked against movement twice again with telekinesis and body-hugging barriers, and his powers gone, he could do nothing as I locked his soul in place and took said body apart piece by piece. For the sake of thoroughness I scanned him first to create a Builder blueprint, then deconstructed each piece of him after it was separated. An absent thought scanned and deconstructed the knives keeping Minato in place, healed both him and Kushina, and teleported them back to the Leaf leader's office.
The soul before me was undoubtedly human, and would need to be judged as such. Since I wasn't the creator of the local multiverse and had been doing my best to let the afterlife take shape on its own I called on a higher authority. Washu responded immediately, freezing time and stepping out from behind a rocky outcropping. Death arrived only a moment later. The world faded to white around us and the trapped soul, then thousands of distinct figures appeared around us. Each of the tailed beasts, with the nine-tailed fox at their head sat to one side of countless human and even a few animalistic souls. Death turned his skull-faced visage to me, his eyes blazing points of blue light.
YOU HAVE DONE WELL TO BRING THIS ONE DIRECTLY. HE HAS ALREADY CHEATED ME SEVERAL TIMES, AND WILL NOT ESCAPE AGAIN. MY BLESSING STANDS, AND WILL GROW IN POWER ONCE YOU COMPLETE YOUR MISSION TO DENY THE HUMANS DIVINITY. THAT WILL KEEP THIS FROM HAPPENING AGAIN.
A set of scales appeared behind Madara's bound soul, and slowly but surely it tilted to one side as invisible weight was added to it. When the movement stopped Washu and Death conferred for a moment, then Death stepped forward and addressed the man.
YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED AND FOUND WANTING, BUT NOT IRREDEEMABLE. AS A CREATION UNDER THE JURISDICTION OF THE GODDESS WASHU, YOUR SOUL WILL BE WIPED CLEAN AND BORNE AGAIN INTO THE WORLD. LET THOSE YOU HARMED BEAR WITNESS TO YOUR FATE.
About a third of the crowd vanished, along with most of the tailed beasts. Death drew a sword from his hip, and sliced down into the cowering soul of Uchiha Madara. With an unearthly wail and a pulse of power everything but the barest essence of who he was flowed into the sword and was forever destroyed. What was left was a shimmering mote of light, pure and innocent. The tailed beasts both reverted to similar forms and faded away, as did many of the human watchers. Those who remained looked solemnly at each other and seemed to step in a direction that wasn't visible to me, fading in a way not entirely unlike those before them.
-
Washu approached me, blocking my view of Death and the former Uchiha. After a brief hug, she took my hand and the world around us faded to a darkened laboratory filled with machines of indescribable function. My scan and observe abilities stopped working, and she sat me down on a hovering chair while preparing some tea at a workstation with a hot plate. Another chair and a floating table arrived for her, and we drank in silence for a while before she looked back up at me.
"You're technically done," she said quietly. "That's it. You're powerful enough to make the experiment a success, and wise enough to let others judge someone who's hurt those under your protection when you couldn't do so impartially. If they'd been closer to you it would have been more difficult and there's a long way to go before you're a fully qualified creator of multiverses all your own, but that will come in time. From observing you and your alternate selves I've learned a lot about how my sisters and I must have started." I nodded along, unsure but willing to see where this went.
"As a god you'll eventually earn your capital G. I've no doubt about it now. From here on out there's some things you need to know: first, since the end of the Gamer Jump I haven't been fully fuelling your powers. Normally Jumpers gain perks and drawbacks that are backed by their sponsor and eventually their Spark, but with the way you went about doing things I've had to contribute less and less as time went by. Your divinity has been filling in for me there." She took a sip of her tea, and stared at her cup as she continued.
"Second: you've already started to manifest a Spark on your own by creating and travelling between dimensions, then unconsciously tapping your creations for power. Third: your ability as a shapeshifter is almost to the point where you'll no longer find true alternate forms any different than those you use regularly, and your ability to be in more than one place at a time with powers intact is greater than mine was when I started. Fourth: I've become quite fond of you, and want to see you reach your true potential. I know I'm not your first, but I'd be honored if you'd call me mother." Her eyes locked back on mine, carefully concealed hope shining through her otherwise neutral expression.
Tears blurred my vision as I considered what to do from here. Hearing that I was so close to reaching my own goals and that I'd surpassed the many of the ones Washu had set for me leant me hope that I'd be able to reunite with Guinevere sooner rather than later. Tutoring from my favorite multi-versal Goddess was nothing to be scoffed at, and the offer of familial ties left an ache in my chest I'd long since gotten into the habit of suppressing. The truth was that I missed my first family, and I'd spent longer as a Jumper than I had alive. I would always treasure them, but I wasn't sure if I could go back to the way things were before after all I'd experienced. My mind and soul were irrevocably changed, even if I did somehow fit into a mundane human body again.
Guinevere had been my rock all these years, either as a goal to reunite with her or as a companion when she was in some way present. A gentle hand on my shoulder brought my attention her gently smiling face at my side, and she crawled into the chair with me. I cried for a time about the loss of closeness with my first family and those friends I'd made in that life, but my decision was already made. The gulf of time and experience between us meant even if I did go back I wouldn't be the me of the present. I couldn't be. Or could I? I could send an avatar once I figured out how to make one, with only my memories up to that point and no powers to lessen the impact of grief and life out the rest of my natural life. That would satisfy my urge to reconnect with them, and on the off chance that I decided that world was too far off course I could conceivably either talk to the local deities or take control myself.
Whether I'd intended it or not, Washu was now part of that family. I'd started to think of her as a sort of nebulous relation sometime during the first Jump, and the feeling had only strengthened since then. When she gave voice to it the term mother really was a fitting one. I'd had several mother figures, but only she and a few people in my first life had the kind of impact on me that would merit the word. The discussion that followed between myself and the ladies present resulted in Washu-assisted avatars of our original selves being sent back to our first lives. Guinevere, Washu, Ember, Konatsu, and Ukyo were all family now and I wasn't going to leave them to resume my old life on my own.
We'd finish the Naruto Jump at different times, with me "dying" first and the others following when their business was done. The people of Bastion would continue to live alongside their counterparts in the Naruto universe, with me maintaining the connection between the two places indefinitely unless something forced my hand (the heat death of that universe, for example). When I left, so too did the divine aspect of chakra and with it the ability to re-define the rules enforced by both magic and the nature of the universe.
[Quest complete: Aspect of Tsunami!]