Fix.
Chapter 5
"The Abrupt Hokage"
"What would life be worth if there were no death?"
A review pointed out this chapter is highly dissonant - and it is - with the previous chapters, but that's just how this chapter has to be. The previous tone will return following future chapters.
Edit: The above may be somewhat disregarded. Said previous chapters have been rewritten. Enjoy!
The next time he opened his eyes, there was no pain at all.
No headache, no migraine. While something felt off, not even his legs hurt, his clothing was unmarked and his skin unblemished.
It seemed cold, and away a short distance the blond could see both a campfire and vaguely a man seated beside it. Nothing else, and there was a distinct lack of light in any other direction. With a purpose, to figure out where he was, he strode forward. Eerily, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the smooth floor – white, if the light in the distance was to be trusted – was the only thing he could hear besides the slight crackles of the flames.
The man stood as he approached, and the boy noted he seemed familiar, but couldn't quite place the resemblance. In fact, he couldn't remember much of anything.
What was he doing, again? The boy paused, looked down and noticed the shifting of the fancy white cloak draped around his shoulders. It was evidently well-made and of a good material, but despite its familiarity, he couldn't remember its purpose, or where it came from. He frowned, and searing with an increasing amount of questions, pushed into the square of benches surrounding the campfire.
"Who are you?" he asked, seating himself opposite of the fire and rubbing his arms. Warmth seeped into his body and he realized only then how truly cold he had been, as if the fire was the only source of heat in existence. That seemed wrong, but he couldn't say why.
The man opposite him frowned and sat back down, crossing his arms. In a word, he seemed disappointed.
"You're already passing on, huh?" It was said quietly enough that it would be remiss for the boy to assume it was meant for him, but he would respond nonetheless.
Testing his tongue, noting an increasingly common sense of familiarity, he spoke. "What do you mean, passing on?"
The man tilted his head, and the boy had the thought that something in the man's eyes suggested he was no longer interested in speaking.
"Your soul is being prepared for recycling," the man said blandly. "I had thought… well, nevermind." Sourly, the man stood and turned to leave.
The boy immediately leapt to attention. "No, wait!"
The man paused and gave the boy a searching look. "What do you want?" A gleam of curiosity – how the boy knew it, he didn't know – appeared in the man's gaze.
The boy gulped. What did he want? He knew, somehow, that he didn't want the man to leave. He didn't know why.
"I-I don't want you to leave." He sounded conflicted even to himself, and it rubbed him the wrong way.
Slowly, the man backed up to his seat and slouched back down, the boy appreciatively doing the same. The man then remained silent, so it fell to the boy to speak again.
"Who are you?" he asked, repeating his initial question.
The man bowed his head slightly, measuring the boy against something unknown to him.
"I am Minato Namikaze," the man frowned at the lack of immediate response, "I'm a spirit vassal."
The name tickled something in the boy's gut, but he now had something to go off.
"Why are you here?"
Minato leaned forward, placed his forearms on his knees and looked longingly into the boy's eyes. "Personal reasons."
"Oh."
"What do you remember?"
The boy blinked. It was the second question the man had asked him, but it seemed much more loaded.
Then, what did he remember? He frowned in concentration, and as the moment waned and the stranger's curiosity began to ebb, something came to him.
When he tried really hard, he could remember one thing – a specific thing that must have spent more time in his thoughts than any other.
The boy looked up victoriously.
"Ramen."
The man fell off his perch and hit his head on the ground, made an odd squeak that sounded vaguely like swearing, and returned to his spot the next moment.
He coughed into his hand and looked at the kid oddly. "You remember ramen?"
"Yes!"
"The noodles, ramen?" he reiterated.
"Uh-huh."
The most bizarre part of it all to Minato was easily the proudness the boy displayed at remembering his – probably – favourite food. But then, that just made the circumstances more inordinary.
"It's… irregular for a soul passing to retain any memory," he said. It would then make sense to think that the boy was suffering a temporary death, but there was too much damage for that and too much time had passed. He was dead, plain and simple, but something kept him bound to earth and it was assuredly not ramen. Minato himself was bound to the Shinigami, for example.
Perhaps, when one soul is intrinsically linked to another, especially a soul of an immortal being…
The boy tilted his head at the man's remark and patiently waited for the inferred explanation. What was there to tell him, however? The kid wasn't going to return, it was practically impossible to revive and recover the soul of a person. But was he really going to leave his son as a broken, ignorant ghost? Minato had observed him over the years, every now and again – more as a hobby than anything – as the kid was his legacy. There was little he couldn't take the time to explain to him, and they had much time, but-
"H-huh?"
The blond flashed a pale blue and Minato immediately had his mind made for him. He was not in condition to be revived, however it may be about to be done.
He closed his eyes, contacted his master and within the moment he received assistance, none too soon. The perks of the job, so they say.
"Alright. Listen to me now and listen to me well, Naruto."
The boy shivered, the light disappeared, and he nodded. He had no problem taking to the name.
"We are in limbo, an alternative reality between death and rebirth. We're in a time accelerated space, because your friends are trying to bring you back to life and you're not ready for that."
Apparently devoid of his experience, Naruto had not the personality to do anything but meekly nod. It was Minato's hope that some semblance of memory would be returned on revival, but he'd have to prepare the kid for the worst-case-scenario.
Despite the terrifying nature of the kyuubi's emergence to the world, little damage was done to the village thereafter, or even to the shinobi nearby.
In fact, while they were lacking an explanation, the retreating forces of shinobi seemed to be receiving aid from the fox. There was no other way to fathom the kyuubi's actions, as the fox immediately moved to push the other biju away from the village with the expulsion of vast swathes of horrifyingly powerful chakra and engaged it in the distance.
While they understood what it was doing, they didn't understand why – as such, retreat remained the only reasonable action, and in a dramatic twist of events the Leaf shinobi were assisting in the swift extraction of the citizens of the Sand.
Even then…
"One must be sealed," Baku mused, watching the distant beasts collide. The small group including himself and Shikaku sat on a high dune located on the opposite end of the village, shinobi and civilians alike running amok beneath them. The visage of the kyuubi was so large and its power so palpable that it was doubtless any and all within Suna lay eyes to its swishing tails at least once in the last minute. Not one shinobi was excited about their prospects of surviving this disaster. It was a testament to the strength of the tanuki's specialty that it wasn't simply swept aside by its much more powerful sibling.
Shikaku nodded solemnly, casting a glance to the corpse of the hokage beside him, nude and seal expanded. Swiftly following recovery of the body – alongside that of the toad summons – they set the sand's seal master, Chiyo, to studying his seal. If anything could be gleaned from Jiraiya's work, it was something that would immediately be useful.
It was simple to determine the blond's cause of death, his legs mangled and so saturated with the ichibi's chakra that even with prompt and skilled aid he would have died quickly of blood loss without an unreasonable amount of blood transfusions. Thankfully, the seal wasn't meaningfully damaged – it must have been in its shrunken form when he was attacked.
The three and those around them; entailing several other important figures and administrators organising the retreat, stumbled as the earth shook and the sand threw the group blind for just a moment.
Biju fighting amongst themselves was the very definition of natural disaster and judging by the destruction the two evidently had the ease of creating, the Land of Wind would only be the first casualty if their battle wasn't stopped. It was expected of them to put a stop to it, because if not the shinobi within the Land of Wind – who would? Certainly not the rest of the countries' population, who would all be dead within a matter of days.
Even if the kyuubi intended to help them – which was only a hopeful guess at best – that left the ichibi.
The old woman seated beside the standing Nara drew his gaze as she clenched her fists and shook her head. He gave her the questioning raise of an eyebrow.
"The seal is a masterpiece," she said shortly, her tone distasteful. "But I can't replicate it," Chiyo snorted, "and nobody else can, unless they're capable of summoning the Shinigami."
It was expected, but it still left a sour taste in his mouth. "The last man to know the jutsu died moments ago, and the two before him died using it," Shikaku said, eliminating the option and crossing his arms. He ignored the gleam that entered the elderly woman's eyes. There wasn't a lot they could do. While the kyuubi's apparent helpfulness was an extremely welcome surprise, its existence here clearly created a problem much bigger than the ichibi on its own. The solution remained the same, however; to seal the tanuki. If they had to seal the fox afterwards, so be it, but that was an issue for later.
Jiraiya would have had trouble, but doubtlessly would have had the skill to do something. Unfortunately, just to add a heaping of salt to the entire clusterfuck of a situation, he was found quite dead. Next best was Chiyo, but she herself admitted to a lack of capability. It wasn't like they were the only specialists either village had, but they were the only ones skilled enough for a matter like this. Or, Shikaku corrected, Jiraiya was the only one with such skill. That man's death was now worse for them than the hokage's was.
"Chiyo," Baki called meaningfully, turned to gaze into the elderly woman's eyes. "It might be the only option." He said it with an edge of softness the Nara was unaccustomed to from the man.
The woman's face squashed in derision but said nothing as Shikaku drifted between the two.
"Option?"
The two's eyes briefly met, and Chiyo turned away with a huff of disgust.
Baki gave a slight smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Chiyo is the creator of a potential reincarnation technique."
While it seemed at its surface like great news, Chiyo's reaction and Shikaku's own experience with reincarnation techniques left him unimpressed.
"If it's anything like Impure World Reincarnation…"
Chiyo herself shook her head. "I invented it for my puppets," she murmured, "and it's a very powerful healing technique, because it draws directly from the user's soul."
Perhaps she wasn't the greatest fuinjutsu expert but creating such a mythical jutsu placed Shikaku's opinion of her significantly higher.
Given the universal rule of give and take governing jutsu, Shikaku inferred that reviving a person would probably kill her, and even then – was it better to revive the seal bearer, or the seal master? Was that a treasonous question? No, he decided, because the hokage was already dead. But of course, when the seal bearer already represented the epitome of the seal master's work – and given what Jiraiya himself would probably say about the choice – it would then make more sense to revive the hokage. It helped that the boy was an Uzumaki, which are specifically good as vessels to biju.
If it was cold and unreasonable to compare one life to another for the sake of rebirth, especially at the cost of another life… the Nara wouldn't let it bother him, and he made a significant gesture towards the visage of the blond.
"If you're capable, then…"
While the old woman clearly didn't appreciate being so callously asked to give up her life, she must have appreciated her cause, for she merely asked for a handful of chakra pills and a team of medical shinobi to heal the boy's wounds before revival.
There was a lot at stake, after all. The entire country's future hung precariously on a balance between the forces of the two biju assaulting it, and their one hope was a relatively untrained child that had already died to one of them and released the other.
The two biju engaged in a melee of terrifying level. Fully released, their power was high and their energy practically limitless. The fox had the general advantage of being significantly larger and having a multitude more tails just as large as himself, while the tanuki had the great advantage of terrain.
The ichibi smoothly sunk into the sand at a speed unbefitting for its size, ducking beneath tails and inhumanely powerful swathes of chakra as it did so. The kyuubi growled as it was assaulted and pushed aside by the weight of colossal tsunamis of sand as large as itself, but sustained only superficial damage, and sunk a claw deep into the sand, carving gouges into the ichibi's chest. The ichibi rose, the two roared, and they swung their limbs at one-another like a couple of god-borne children having tantrums, causing one another inconsequential injuries and permanently scarring the landscape.
When the ichibi would attack with enough sand to swallow a city, the kyuubi would cleave through it with enough force to destroy one. Biju weren't designed to fight one another, nor with the ability to destroy one another, and despite the kyuubi's promise to stop the ichibi, there did not seem to be an end to the battle in sight.
It was indisputable that the kyuubi held more power, but no biju has reached the threshold of power necessary to destroy one. Simply put, they were energy with form and consciousness. Immortal, incredibly powerful; a natural disaster. He could stall the ichibi – for what, he didn't know – and he could push the biju around and practically do what he wanted with it, but he would have incredible trouble keeping it restrained and he wasn't capable of killing it.
"Why do you fight me, Kurama?!" the ichibi growled, swishing its tail and parrying an unorthodox slash of one of the kyuubi's own. "We're free! It's time to take over the world, kill who we want, do what we need to! We don't need to be sealed ever again!"
Kurama backed up a step and huffed, tails swinging in agitation. "Our mission was to protect the world, you idiot!" The smaller biju attempted to stutter something out in response, but the fox leapt forward and shunted it even further away from the shinobi it was tasked to protect. "We don't need to fight if you stop trying to kill them."
The biju snarled and growled at the fox, "it was our mission until they attacked us! It's not my fault they're all idiots, they're-"
"You're insane!"
"No, Kurama, you're the insane one. What have they done to you, huh? Is it the Sharingan I've heard about? Have they mind-raped you, Kurama? This isn't you. You're the Kurama, the most powerful of the tailed beasts! But you know what? You're a disgrace of a biju! You're no more than a pet to those humans, used for your power. This isn't what father wanted!"
The slight trace of plausibility in the surprisingly lucid biju's words gave the fox pause, but he was resolute in his position.
"Just give them a chance, Shukaku," Kurama grunted. "They might surprise you."
The great tanuki shook its head, "I gave them a chance," it muttered.
Before either could pounce on the other, both had their attention drawn to an oddly familiar presence they sensed on their peripherals, back towards the encampment. By the time Kurama realized what had somehow occurred, it was too late to prevent the fast-fired bijudama of the ichibi.
But then, the kyuubi wasn't sure it was something he wanted to stop.
Now clothed, healed, and a little bit colder; Naruto's corpse was watched by a gathering of hopeful shinobi, waiting with bated breath for the boy to stir. They remained atop the dune for the sake of vision, the dozens of shinobi sparing glances to the biju on the far side of the village, evidently conversing but not quite loud enough for their voices to reach the distance.
In the middle, amidst the watchful eyes and earnest expressions, Chiyo sat with her hands – side by side – over the blond's stomach. Two medical shinobi sat behind her, each with a hand placed on one of her shoulders and carefully channeling their chakra into her coils. The woman's hands radiated a soft cerulean blend of chakra, and she slouched just a bit lower with each moment passed.
Realistically, the woman's alternative was death by age, helping or saving no one at all. At least this way, as her eyelids stooped and her shoulders dropped, at least she died for a reason. In a way, she would die just like her children did; for her village, and that gave her a small peace that she wouldn't otherwise have. She developed this jutsu originally in an attempt to bring back her children, if only in a faux manner for her grandson, but that became impossible. It was fitting, then, that she instead sacrifice herself for what her children sacrificed themselves for. If she resurrected the hokage in doing so, then – she snickered – she'd just have to live with that.
The blond twitched, and all eyes were drawn directly to him. No longer the center of attention, the woman fell back; forgotten, deceased, and her bloodline eradicated.
The hokage woke slowly, bleary, but the attention of the group was quickly drawn to a matter more pressing.
A boy shivered as his senses were assaulted and his mind spun. He ached everywhere, his thoughts were sloppy, and he had a great difficulty moving his eyelids, which was his first instinct.
He remembered… too much. Too much information. He remembered an old, kind man and his death. Then, he remembered a slightly younger, but still old and kind man, and his death too. In fact, many people had died, and while the memories were the opposite of pleasant, he was glad to remember them now.
He could recall who he was. Naruto Uzumaki. He was the fifth hokage, in office for less than a week – he knew that from his father, but he hadn't known the experience – and he was both the weakest hokage in history, and he'd had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
He remembered the distasteful treatment he beheld as a child, at the behest of both the civilian and shinobi population. He remembered his adoption, his condition being explained to him, and he remembered the kind man who introduced himself as his godfather who began tweaking his seal, who did so for many years to come. He remembered entering the academy; training with his seal, vaguely making friends with some of the students, graduating around the middle of the class, becoming a genin, getting nominated secretively as his adoptive grandfather's successor, going to wave, going to the chunin exams…
He remembered showing off his cool powers for the first time and beating up the ichibi, he remembered hearing about his adoptive grandfather's death and immediately becoming hokage, he remembered how poorly he handled his speech and he recognized how poorly he acted as hokage the days following. He remembered choosing to continue the war the Sand started, he remembered killing his fellow jinchuuriki for naught, and he remembered dying.
Most of all, he remembered what happened after he died.
He was never a skilled fighter, and never a trained diplomat. But he was hokage, and his father sought to rectify that as best he could. With his memories now intact, he could see exactly where he went wrong, and while he couldn't exactly train his body, his chakra, or really much of anything as a soul, they managed. He would be a better hokage now, all he had to do was prove it.
His body quickly grew to a usable state, and the first thing he did was subtly press a finger to the inside of one of his pockets. Satisfied, and sensing great doom approaching, the blond stood – for a moment, he almost tripped – and followed the gazes of the rest of the surprisingly large cohort around him, who moved to give him space.
A bijudama – for it could be nothing else – zoomed towards the group far too fast to do little more than dive for the ground. Still, most of the shinobi ran for cover.
Naruto didn't feel like dying a second time.
"GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
He pushed someone failing to scatter aside and stole the pouch right off their hip. Quickly, he took two kunai, momentarily focused on the pair, and under the gazes of close to a hundred shinobi, leaned into a throw away from both the village and the evacuation, then twisted and threw the other kunai towards the intensive, heavily concentrated ball of godlike chakra that was now within the single digits of meters away.
In the moments before the deaths of those ducked to the ground, they would look back and re-imagine the explosion of yellow chakra that misplaced the single most destructive power known to mankind, just to reaffirm that they did the right thing by following the fifth hokage.
The very instant that their lives were meant to be quashed, the explosion that would have wiped them out inconsequentially destroyed some of the grainy, earthen landscape instead.
"Was it that hard to get out of the way?" the blond grumbled. He shook his lightly burned throwing hand and left, away from the gathered shinobi and toward the biju, who seemed to be re-engaging into combat.
Shikaku sped forward, a million questions on mind but only able to ask one first. "What are you doing, Hokage-sama?!"
"Ah," he paused and turned around, willing to answer the man who he now realized was the only thing keeping his reign smooth at all. "I'm going to go seal the ichibi, you can all - no, scratch that." He coughed into his fist and raised his voice, "wait here, all of you. But get that capitulation contract marked up if you can." He turned back towards the infinitely larger-than-he monsters and walked forward at a comfortable pace, waving a hand over his shoulder. "Ja ne!"
Whether it was the fact their hokage was so willing to accept his revival – not a question or even an odd look – or that he was so confidently striding toward the biju, whose fight would cause so much collateral damage that being near them was a death sentence of itself, none were willing to stop him, or decline his order.
He had, after all, just displayed an advanced variation of the Hiraishin technique, the signature jutsu of the fourth hokage, which was once used to kill a thousand men in a matter of seconds.
AN:
I don't really like the quality of this chapter, but I bet that's because I looked forward to writing it.
I'm back at university this month, but I'll try to get another chapter or two up before that.