Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Highschool DxD, and I make no profit writing about it.
(AN): Had a couple of weeks there that were heavy on uni and work, and all I had time for was throwing a few minutes here and there at UZUKAGE RULES.
Blood splattered in thick dark droplets as Sasuke clenched his fist, the translucent fingers of his Susanoo mimicking the motion and crushing the last of the Kumo shinobi into wet paste. Little chunks of gore dripped through the spaces between the ghostly warrior's knuckles, landing on the broken ground with wet plops.
"Keep moving." The Uchiha ordered his handlers, letting their horrified gazes slide off his back like water. He had never been the sort of person overly concerned with what the faceless masses thought of him anyway, and with the thrill of victory humming in his undead chest Sasuke gave even less of a damn than usual.
It had been too long since Sasuke had experienced the feeling of utterly dominating his enemies. In Gehenna he was an ant scurrying underfoot trying to avoid the predations of giants. But here, in the world he had been born in, Sasuke was strong. He was stronger than anyone else in the world except Naruto, and even that was questionable given that an Edo Tensei construct never tired and felt no pain.
So what if Gaara's little stooges were losing their lunches? Their opinions meant less than nothing to him next to the feeling of violent fulfillment.
He wondered if Naruto – who had been born and bred for war just as Sasuke himself was – also shared the uplifting sensation of triumph that now bloomed in his breast.
Letting the last vestiges of his Susanoo fade away, Sasuke eyed the coral tint that slowly stained the horizon. Dusk was drawing near.
With the undead Uchiha spearheading their offence the Southern alliance had crushed half a dozen outposts since they'd started fighting just after high noon.
If they pushed on through the night at a similar pace they'd be in spitting distance of Konoha itself, but it was probably better to cut their speed in half. The armies following his invasion force could only invest and fortify so quickly, and while Sasuke didn't need to eat, he'd rather not have his handlers die because the defenders cut their supply lines.
It was better to take the time to do things right; a lesson he'd learnt hard in his first life.
Turning away from the shattered battlefield, Sasuke gave Shino a sharp nod and launched into a tireless sprint.
A handful of curses met his ears as the living shinobi scrambled to follow in his wake, but Sasuke didn't bother to look back. They had orders to follow him, and since he'd done all the fighting there was no reason for them to be too fatigued to keep up.
"I would suggest-"
"I know. Half-march." Sasuke ruthlessly cut off Shino's puffed words once the Aburame had managed to draw level with him. He already knew what the best course of action was and didn't have the patience to have strategy babyfed to him by his old classmate.
Naruto would have scolded him for being rude, but Sasuke had no attachment to most of the people he'd left behind. Twenty years apart had dulled his sentiment to the point that it was no skin off his back if the Aburame got all pissy about being shrugged off. All the people he cared about now lived in Gehenna.
Sasuke only cared about Konoha in abstract terms, because he didn't want to admit that everything he'd fought for had been for nothing. If their sacrifices in the name of peace for Konoha had turned out to be pointless, who was to say any sacrifices they made for the sake of Gehenna wouldn't be similarly pointless?
No.
Sasuke viscerally refused to accept that possibility. They would have peace by any means necessary.
The stub of his left arm throbbed with phantom pain, but A bore it stoically and signed the last of his paperwork off with a flourish. For twenty years he'd lived with the pain, rejecting the well-meant suggestions of his subordinates to get some kind of prosthetic.
The Yondaime Raikage always scoffed that looking for a replacement for the left arm Uchiha Sasuke had cut off was an affront to his pride. The idea of grafting on one of those Zetsu limbs was repulsive, and beyond that he'd just end up looking like a warrior ashamed of his scars. But beneath the pride was a sense of shame, the feeling that even if he could that he didn't deserve to walk around hearty and healthy.
A had chosen war over peace for the sake of his people's continued survival, soaking his hands in blood and turning his back on the supposed 'Child of the Prophecy'. A bit of phantom pain and a few ugly scars in exchange for the lives lost and the dreams abandoned was a cheap payment.
Ah, if only the Uzumaki boy had lived! Naruto had an earnest innocent and exuberant charisma that appealed to everyone from brats in their cradles to hidebound war veterans like Onoki. With Naruto as their spokesman maybe the shinobi could have weathered the economic depression together and found a new destiny. The future Naruto had promised had been so bright it was like a spiritual fantasy, ringing down from some distant heaven.
Maybe though, even with Naruto on their side, fantasy was all peace could ever be.
Shinobi weren't warriors, they were liars, killers, and thieves, and if they stopped being paid to do those things, then what was left? How could they put food on the table when no one hired them to wage war? There'd been some talk of adapting jutsu to the various civilian industries, but that kind of development took time.
Time no one had when the people were marching in the streets looking for someone to fill their hollow stomachs. If Kumo hadn't gone to war against Konoha, it would have eventually gone to war with itself, which was even more unthinkable.
"Raikage-sama?"
"What?" A barked irritably, slapping his meaty palm on the desk and glaring at his sheepish secretary. "What do you want, girl?"
Long used to the Raikage's moods, his secretary didn't quail or stutter at the first sign of his displeasure. Instead she simply pouted a bit before stepping fully into his office and laying a thick folder down in front of him. "This is the latest batch from the Tsuchikage. The cold war with Sand might go on forever, but she's pitching a few ideas about how to solve the economic problems without a Kumo-Iwa war if we do conquer them."
"Fine, fine." A grumbled, waving her off and eying the papers with half-hearted interest.
Everyone with any political sense knew that it was in the best interest of all the shinobi nations to prolong the conflict rather than have a definite victor. Promoting eventual victory for the sake of patriotism or imagined slights was simply abut appealing to the masses. A could have destroyed the Southern Alliance years ago if he wanted a purely military victory. Allowing the 'enemy' to exist was necessary for the survival of the shinobi system, because enemies meant competition.
When some chubby merchant decided to get one over on his rivals by hiring a Kumo's shinobi to assassinate them, his rivals fought back by hiring Konoha's shinobi. Obviously no village would pit its own soldiers against each other in death matches as a matter of course – the decline of the Bloody Mist was all the proof anyone needed of that. Naruto's peace had made them function as one decentralized village, turning away conflicting missions for the sake of avoiding bloodshed, which meant a lot of shinobi had been forced out of work.
They needed the pay that came with competing missions to flourish, and thus they needed war.
So Kurotsuchi's little peace proposals could be one of two things. Either she was naïve enough to believe that the shinobi lifestyle could ever lead to peace, or she was just putting on a show of seeking a new path for the sake of her advisors and political opponents.
A personally was never quite sure what that girl honestly wanted. She played her cards too close to her chest. It made him miss Onoki, stubborn old fossil the man had been. At least A had understood him, fellow men of war that they'd been.
Totsuka Ken rubbed at one crusty brown eye, fighting back the urge to yawn. He hated night shifts; almost as much as he hated getting posted in Konoha at all. It was too hot, too humid, and too hostile. The natives glared at him like he'd personally murdered their babies every time he walked down the streets. Compared to the clean cool air of Kumo and the warm faces of his countrymen, Konoha was a shithole.
Not to mention Ken had left his fiancé behind when his bosses had deployed his team down to the South.
Airi was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, with her warm green eyes and fingers calloused from good honest farming. Sure, she wasn't a supermodel, but she was more real than any of the bimbos he'd seen in the magazine ads, and Ken loved her. Once he finished his current rotation, he'd have saved up enough money for them to get married and start a new life. Maybe he'd retire and work on a farm himself? Shinobi work paid a lot better but he wanted to die in his sleep at the age of a hundred years rather than die with a kunai in the throat at half that.
"Still mooning over your girl?" A voice barked in his ear as a heavy arm was slung over his shoulder.
Yakumo mussed up his best friend's hair, grinning when Ken squawked and tried to shove him off. "Look bro, I get that you want to keep it all on the up-and-up but a man's got needs. No one's gonna rat you out if you go take a tumble. You're missing out! Not to mention the girls down at the Maiden are just…" he kissed the tips of his fingers.
A cherry red flush lit Ken's cheeks, and he pulled away from the older shinobi with a glare. "No way! I'm not a dirty perv like you."
"You're just saying that because you're still a virgin." Yakumo crowed.
"I am not!"
Bringing his fists to his chest, Yakumo flapped his bent arms like wings and clucked like a chicken. "What was that, Virgin-kun? I couldn't hear you over all the chirping. Bwuck, bwuck, bwuckack!"
"Fuck off!"
Their antics drew the attention of a couple of their fellow watchmen, who joined in on ribbing Ken with gusto. Their good-natured teasing ate up the time and might have carried on longer if not for the sudden flicker of flame that appeared on the southern horizon.
"The hell is that?" Yakumo muttered, squinting at the small but growing light. "Did some asshole decide to get their breakfast in right before dawn and start a forest fire?"
Ken sighed, brushing off his sleeves and standing tall now that his friend had been distracted. "Might be." The chuunin agreed easily, sparing a glance for the slowly spreading fire. "Wouldn't be the first time these asheaters forgot how to cook like civilized people. Do you want to send the message or do you want me to?"
Screwing his face into an expression of distaste, Yakumo turned shook his head and shoved at Ken's shoulder. "No chance. You can deal with the captain this time. Sage knows he'll be passed out drunk in some wrinkled whore's tits again, and it's not my turn to listen to his rants about proper respect."
A rather large part of Ken wanted to just roll his eyes and try to bribe Yakumo into doing it again. Everyone hated Iwari-taicho and the captain hated them right back. It was mystery how someone so disliked by the men ended up in charge of them – most people put their bets in bribery or blackmail. Ken personally thought Iwari had used family connections to leapfrog his way up the chain of command.
But the larger part of Ken nagged at him to be fair. Everyone took their turns putting up with the captain for the sanity of the whole unit. So when his term came around, he really should do his part. "Fine, fine. Just don't expect me to badger him about your vacation request. That's on you."
Yakumo grinned toothily, but whatever reply he offered was drowned out by a sudden rush of sound as the trees below the walls of Konoha suddenly exploded with a sun bright flash of brilliant orange.
Twenty years out of the saddle left Naruto feeling a bit winded, perfectly resurrected body or not. But that little bit of fatigue burned away in an instant when he cleared Konoha's walls in Kurama Mode only to find that the faces of the Hokage Monument had been smoothed away, leaving a featureless grey expanse.
At the point, the only thing left was a red-hot ball of pure rage boiling in his gut. Slitted orange eyes narrowed as Naruto forced his gaze away from the empty space where his father's face should have been to the foreign tower crowned with a Kumogakure flag. "Bastards." He rumbled, lurching forward.
Rock and wood crumbled beneath the toes of Kurama's fluid body as the giant chakra monster stomped up the streets, roaring so loud hundreds of windows shattered. Maybe he should be a bit more careful about the collateral damage, but the deeper he moved into Konoha the more Naruto found his anger building.
It wasn't just the Hokage Monument that had been scored away. He could see the distant grove where the memorial stone should have been, but instead the entire forest had been cleared away for a cluster of condos. The rounded red tiles roofs of his childhood had been almost entirely replaced by square shining metal panels.
The invaders hadn't just conquered Konoha, they'd destroyed it and remade it in their own image. There was nothing left of the home he had such precious memories of.
"Easy kid."Kurama cautioned. "Buildings are just buildings. Blow 'em up and rebuild 'em later if you want. Don't lose your head."
Swallowing thickly, Naruto clenched his fists before relaxing with a sigh. "Yeah, I guess." He allowed, trying to throw off the fury and focus on his mission. He couldn't get too attached to material things. The conquest might have turned Konoha into an eyesore, but if he couldn't forgive that how could he ask people to forgive the lives that had been lost?
Fireballs and bolts of lightning rippled over the flank of Naruto's summoned chakra construct, sucking at his reserves like tiny little mosquitos. They wouldn't be a threat for another few hours, but if he just sat around eventually he'd tire out.
Time to take care of business.
Mentally stepping back a bit, Naruto let Kurama's consciousness come to the fore. As he gave up bits of control over his own body, the flaming orange fluid of his bijuu transformation began to turn solid. If they switched entirely the liquid chakra would be replaced by flesh and bone, but they didn't need to go that far. They just needed to go far enough for Kurama to be able to speak.
"Surrender now, mortals, or I'll slaughter you all!" Kurama's voice projected over the village like a sonic blast, making Naruto snort in amusement even as the seemingly wild bijuu made threats.
Then, just to prove he could, Naruto swirled up a tailed beast bomb and fired it directly up into the sky. A couple of heartbeats later the ball of chakra exploded, splitting the clouds with a nova of pure white flame. It was large enough to blot out the rising sun, and the rush of wind it generated rose to a ghostly wail.
"You want another one, bitches?"
"Are you trying to be a yakuza or something?" Naruto muttered, glaring down when the volleys of elemental jutsu launched at them only increased. "Because it's not all that scary. Just corny, yeah? Have to give these assholes points for being brave though, I'd have thought they'd be pissing themselves running home to mommy by now."
"Bite me." Kurama sulked, giving up all control to Naruto. "You're on your own then."
Shaking his head at the tempermental bijuu, Naruto clicked his tongue before lashing out with one of his tails. The orange appendage wrapped around the nearest watch tower and began to squeeze, painfully slow enough to give the enemy soldiers inside time to escape. He wasn't afraid to kill when he had to, but they weren't at that point. Not yet anyway.
"How much longer are the rest of them going to be?" the blond wondered aloud as he sought out a tower flying an Iwa flag and barreled right through it, bricks and mortar shattering beneath the weight of Kurama's body.
Naruto had gotten a bit excited when he caught sight of Konoha, but he hadn't run that far ahead of the troops. They should have showed up by now and started pushing for a surrender.
Then blue flame collided with Naruto's construct, throwing the giant orange fox off its feet and into the face of the former Hokage Monument.
Shock gave way to resolve as Naruto climbed back out, wincing at the crack of granite that echoed as an entire sheet of rock fell from the ridge and hit the ground far below in a shower of dust and fragmented stone. "We should have known." He murmured, more to keep Kurama calm as the fox swiftly shifted from surprise to an all-consuming hatred. "I'm sorry."
"These fucking humans are all the same."
Naruto thinned his lips, but ultimately didn't deny that. He didn't have time to get in an argument with Kurama over the idea of collective guilt. Not with the giant azure hellcat glaring them down.
In the end, it shouldn't have been a surprise. They'd chosen war over peace, so why not create more jinchuuriki?
"Let's do this."
Then he launched forward like a missile, chakra burning with hostile intent.
(AN): Another 3000. Threw in A's POV to make the point about him doing what he thinks he has to, rather than just being an irredeemable arseling. I also did a quick outline of the economic problems that would come up with Naruto's canon idea of peace.
The shinobi system functions because of its permanent cold war. Many missions come by because you need to hire shinobi to counter the shinobi hired by your enemies. Peace means those missions go away because shinobi no longer fight each other on the behalf of third parties. The result of this is a recession, and the quickest cure to that is a return to the cold war with periodic hot flashes.
In canon, peace came because Naruto and Sasuke forced it to. They're on the same team with godlike powers and punish anyone that fought against 'peace'. Over time the labor surplus corrects as shinobi die of age/illness, retrain into other industries, and less people decide to become shinobi in the first place. Here there was no stabilizing element weather the recession and stand against the war hawks.
