Chapter Six - Through Seas and Storms
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Is there any actual Naruto fanfic with a plot similar to this yet? It was through a fairly convoluted combination of ideas (mentioned at the end of Chapter 2) that I came up with this, but I'd like to think it's really original overall.
I also lol all the hate over my Hinata bash.
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Two and a half months had passed since Team 7 was formed. In the beginning, Kakashi gave Naruto and Sasuke some scrolls to use for training regiments while he focused on trying to either break Sakura out of her fangirl obsession or convince her to quit being a ninja. However, while he found some success in that avenue, he still encountered a great deal of difficulty. Once he got her out of the habit of punching Naruto at almost every occasion and losing focus on everything else to pay attention to Sasuke, he moved on.
Kakashi had also tried coaxing Naruto into wearing less distinctive clothing, something to which the formerly orange-clad boy took to surprisingly chipper. Naruto had just been waiting for an excuse to get out of his burnt-orange jumpsuit, and saying 'My sensei advised me to' was a good excuse as opposed to 'I realised on my own how ridiculous wearing orange was and decided to change'.
Sasuke had managed to upgrade both of his Sharingan eyes to two tomoes, but was convinced by Kakashi to not use his Sharingan too often - a spar in which Sasuke couldn't even touch Kakashi with his eyes activated showed the self-proclaimed avenger that he needed to train his body up to sync with his eyes.
Overall, when he took an objective look at his team, Kakashi thought it was still a mess, but less of a mess than it had been. Still, he wished that whoever had organized the team rosters in the first place had thought to not put together such a dysfunctional team in the first place. So much could have been avoided if either Naruto or Sakura were rotated out with one a genin from one of the other new teams.
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D-Rank missions were a pain for Naruto. While he could spam Kage Bunshin and get some of the more labour intensive jobs done fairly quickly, the clients that Team 7 worked for tended to know of his (supposed) status as the vessel of the Kyuubi, and he often felt the heavy stare of glaring eyes settling on his back.
It reminded him of a small chat he had with the silver-haired Yakushi a year ago.
*Flashback - One Year Before, Akatsuki Konoha's Underground Chamber*
Several members of the Akatsuki had ventured forth from various parts of the city, past ANBU patrols and other security to make it down into the underground chamber. The purpose of the meeting was a general annual meet, to reaffirm the bonds of the brotherhood and to review the previous year and look to planned happenstance in the next year.
The main portion of the meeting was over, and now the members had broken down into various cliques, some having casual chats, some off on their own musing over their own thoughts. Naruto, Kabuto and a couple of other members were off in their own group.
Kabuto had struck a particularly philosophizing tone in the conversation, leaned forward, arms on his knees. "Do you ever wonder what you would do if you could travel back in time?"
The other two had given fairly generic answers; the first said that he would have worked harder in the academy, while the second said she would have taken the chance to save a loved one that she had lost a few years back.
Naruto's answer startled the other three; not with why he said it - after all, they could easily understand the reasoning behind it. No, it was the fiery passion that danced in his sea-blue eyes when he answered, "I would go back in time to the day when I was born. When the Yondaime would try to take me out to the battlefield, I would struggle in his hands, and do my damndest to either crawl out of his grasp or bite his fingers when he tried to summon the Shinigami. See if that sort of omen of a newborn baby trying to run away isn't enough to warn him that he's damning an innocent soul to darkness."
*Flashback End*
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Naruto was brooding to himself as Team 7 made their way to the Hokage Tower, midway through the day already. The chunins that helped sort out the missions had finally given him word of two C-Class missions going out of Fire Country that should both almost take a month. A month out of Konoha in which anything could happen.
In fact, he had already come up with courses of actions that would be set into motion depending on which of the two C-Class missions that his team would get. He would request a C-Class mission when his team finally made it up to the missions assignment office, and with any sort of luck he would get it, whether he had to be calm or polite, or act up with his usual clown-like antics. Thereafter, he would send a scroll off to Ame, where one of the leaders of the rebellion would send orders to Akatsuki agents to set-up an ambush against Team 7. It was just his luck that he managed to get the mission heading to Wave, a supposed escort mission back home by a man who was supervising the building of a bridge that would link Keiyo Island to the mainland, as opposed to a diplomatic mission to Kusagakure.
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Tazuna was practically telegramming his nervousness and anxiety in as they walked down the beaten dirt path that led from northern Fire Country down southwest into Wave Country (seriously, Fire Country had decent roads for internal connections between cities and villages, but they had crap for walking to other countries. What was up with that?, was but one of the wavelengths that occupied Naruto's mind at the time). What made the situation even more unbearable to Naruto was that nobody had noticed it. How had the chunins who manned the missions department and processed Tazuna's request, the Sandaime himself, and Hatake Kakashi, an elite jonin, not managed to notice this? No wonder Konoha was in decline if its ninja couldn't even see through the paltry disguise of drunkenness that Tazuna put up.
And what's more was the mission request itself. Tazuna had come to Konoha for the sole purpose (well, primary purpose if you counted him buying sake as a secondary purpose) of hiring shinobi to escort him back to Wave? Really? Naruto just shook his head. It wasn't his problem, so long as the plan went along smoothly.
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Six days later of walking, Naruto was about ready to tear his hair out. Having hypersensitive senses granted to him as a byproduct of being a jinchuuriki could do that to you - he had to put up with Sakura's constant talking in a high-pitched tone that grated on his ears, and deal with the unkempt state of Tazuna, who positively reeked of sweat and alcohol. Couple that with the stone-cold visage of Sasuke and his accompanying efficiency with speaking the minimum words required in a sentence and a sensei who said nothing but to respond to Sakura's endless inquiries and the occasional giggle while reading his porn, and Naruto was at his wits end for surviving the walking trip. If only this was like a manga or television show where the trip to Wave would only last a couple of chapters or an episode as opposed to the real geographical distance between Konoha and the Fire-Wave border!
It was with a sigh of relief that he finally crossed the border itself, a small sign indicating where one country ended and the other began. So far, so good. Nobody suspected what was about to come up next, and unless Gato had hired somebody who was extremely proficient at Suiton jutsus, he wouldn't have any personal surprises spring up on him.
The gig was up for Tazuna, however, when they got to the small channel of water that separated the mainland of the Elemental Nations from the archipelago of islands that made up Wave Country; in particular, right across from the spot of the coastline Team 7 came to was the largest island in Wave, Keiyo Island, which was the island that Tazuna had been building his bridge to. However, since the bridge had yet to be completed, and the channel was too wide for anybody but the chakra well that was Naruto to water-walk across (not to mention only Kakashi and secretly Naruto knew how to water-walk, and that somebody would have to carry Tazuna cross), they would need to take a boat across.
It was an old-aged friend who Tazuna called a favour in on. "Oi, Raku," Tazuna harkened to his buddy.
Raku, who had been facing his boat that was currently anchored to the shore, turned around at Tazuna's call. Raku was only a simple fisher, but when he saw the four shinobi who had moved in behind Tazuna, he could tell that at least two of them were trained, just by the efficiency of their stances. "Oi, Tazuna! I see you got us some hired help to stop Gato and guard the bridge?"
That was the wrong thing for the fisherman to say as within the space of a second, Tazuna had been spun around, his shoulders suddenly protesting in pain at the grasp that Kakashi had on them. "What!" Kakashi hissed out. "What does he mean, stop Gato?!" Kakashi already knew who Gato was - Gato of Gato Corporation, a conglomerate shipping corporation. Slowly, though, he was beginning to put things together in his head.
Tazuna knew that he couldn't hide things any longer, so he began to stammer out what Kakashi wanted to know as he started sweating fairly hard. "G-Gato! He's the owner of the superbig Gato Corporation. You guys might know the corporation for its shipping empire, but in reality Gato makes his money through smuggling and drugs! In Wave, he's choked off our lifeblood: he brought in his mercenaries and accosted our citizens, taking away our boats and businesses. Without boats, we can't do any fishing past the shore, and without ships, we can't bring in supplies from the mainland." Slowly, Kakashi had begun to let his grip on Tazuna slacken, and Tazuna was down in a groveling position. "Our people are starving. Gato wants my head because I'm the head engineer and architect for the bridge. If we finish it, he will lose his monopoly that he has over our lives and prosperity! Please, shinobi-san, help us! This bridge is our only hope to save Wave!"
Kakashi couldn't help it: Tazuna was doing a damn good job of guilting him, but he wouldn't let it go just like that. Looking around at his three Genin, he outlined the new mission parameters as he saw it. "Tazuna has just revealed new information that has possibly upgraded our mission rating. Originally we were to merely escort our client back to his home: however, a powerful businessman wants Tazuna's head, and he has the money to hire high level mercenaries." He frowned to emphasise just how serious he was being here. "Although I doubt he has monks of any sort, he might have B-Rank nukenins, possibly even A-Rank nukenins, or wandering ronin under his pay. Knowing that, do you still want to go on this mission?"
Kakashi thought he saw a brief flicker of amusement and shock in Naruto's eyes, but when he blinked, that gleam was no longer there. Shoving that aside for later thinking, the copy ninja saw Sasuke nod his head furiously, before moments later Naruto conceded a "Hai, sensei" to make the motion two in favour. Turning to Sakura, he asked her, "And what about you, Sakura?"
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The pinkette of the trio was a bit nervous. So far on the trip, she had done nothing but really talk and learn a bit about Wave Country, and it had been her, not Tazuna, whose overall lack of stamina had forced them to pitch tents after ten hours of walking every day. Even if Sakura was slowly improving every day with her longevity, she was still nervous about getting into a mission with any real fighting, especially one against other ninjas. She had just now in the face of danger begun to understand that, for all of her prowess at theoretical, practical was what ninjas lived and breathed, and she was a failure at it. Without practical experience, she might as well have been a deadweight on the field.
However, the decision had been made for the cherry blossom when her Sasuke-kun had ardently agreed to continue the mission. She couldn't bear having Sasuke turn his cool hate on her for robbing him of his chance to shine! It was with a bit of reluctance that she nodded her assent, making the decision to continue onwards unanimous amongst the genin.
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The fisherman Raku watched the proceedings in silence, but when the shinobi had made their decision to continue, he had made his own decision. He wouldn't be a coward and refuse to take them across the river. If they were going to help fight off Gato and his minions, he would pitch in with his own bit, little as it may be. Understanding what Tazuna had come here for, he started to talk. "Alright, everyone. My boat's not much, but she should be sturdy enough to take you over river yonder."
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Thankfully, the channel wasn't very choppy, as the spring waters were fairly smooth. Even Sakura with her lack of training had at least gone through the ninja training in the shinobi academy that allowed for one to minimize the amount of seasickness their body would feel. Tazuna and Raku were both experiences sailers, so even as civilians, the minimalist rocking of the boat meant nothing to them.
Once Team 7 and Tazuna made it off the boat, they started walking again through a backroad along Keiyo Island. It was a lot less hospitable and a lot more treacherous than the main path, but Tazuna had insisted that few of Gato's men knew about this beat path, so they were taking it so as to duck the roving patrols on the highland.
Speaking of Gato's minions, Kakashi was worried. So far, they hadn't once been intercepted by any minions; he would have thought that Gato would have brought at least one shinobi into his fold. Ronin weren't so bad - usually they had flawed equipment (and Kakashi definitely didn't think Gato the type to pay for better equipment), and they were (usually) honourable, so he wouldn't have to worry about an ambush from ronin.
It was a twitch of motion in the environment ahead of them where there was no breeze that had Kakashi on full-alert. Wasting no time, Kakashi threw his right hand back in a 'stop' sign to his genin team and Tazuna, and started barking out orders. "GET BACK!" Slowly prepping his body by forcing the release of adrenaline to boost his central nervous system, he continued giving out commands. "Team 7, assume Majin formation, Sasuke, you'll be up front." With his genin out of harm's way, he only hoped that whoever Gato had hired would be more intent on taking him out personally, then moving onto Tazuna. Kakashi could easily fight off most ninjas - protecting a civilian client along with a team of greenhorn genin made it a lot more difficult.
Thankfully, luck was on his side today, as his assailant seemed to have tunnel vision only for him. Focusing his senses outwards, Kakashi heard the whistling of a kunai coming for his figure, and managed to duck out of the way with a roll to his left side. Looking to see where the kunai came from, Kakashi couldn't find his enemy. So, either his foe was particularly good at hiding himself that Kakashi could be looking straight at him and not see him, or he had moved without rustling the leaves, crackling the stones mixed amongst the dirt, or leaving a chakra trail behind.
Another whistling sound caught Kakashi's attention, and he barely dodged a barrage of shuriken, as he began to perform the hand seals for a jutsu that would release smoke into the air, which would hopefully obfuscate his opponent's senses by robbing him of sight and smell. Already he was beginning to get nervous - just by the skill his opponent had with projectiles and his ambush situation, Kakashi already had his nemesis pegged at a minimum of low A-Rank.
Finishing off the six-seal combo that made up his smoke bomb jutsu, Kakashi let his chakra burst out in a poof of white smoke; the jutsu being relatively simple, he had no need to pronounce the technique name for the extra focus. Feeling that he had at least a few seconds of safety while his foe tried to decipher his motives, Kakashi promptly went through another series of hand-seals; it was the original variant of a favourite technique of his, the Doton: Shinjū Zanshu no Jutsu. Doton: Kagerōwas extremely flexible, allowing the user to go underground, and was what the Shinjū Zanshu had been built off of. Once under the earth, the user could do almost anything possible within the limits of earth manipulation. While Kakashi could only do a few Doton jutsus, most of those copied from Iwa ninja during the Third Great Shinobi War, he had heard that a Kusa ninja had mastered the Kagerōto a ridiculous extent, to the degree that he was almost completely invisible underground and could move at high speeds.
Feeling for tremors in the earth that would indicate the movement of a mass of something between one hundred twenty pounds to one hundred eighty pounds, the range that most adult shinobi fell into weightwise, Kakashi began to be confused. For whatever reason, there were seven large tremors occuring that he could detect that were not from Team 7 or Tazuna, and each of them indicated a mass of between fifteen to forty pounds. Additionally, there were several dozen small vibrations in the earth that he would almost call microtremors. It was really odd, and unfortunately he was blind sight-wise to the outside world while underground.
He would have to make a calculated risk. While he would loved to be able to figure out the predicament he was currently in, time was of the essence; the more he dilly-dallied, the more the possiblity that his mysterious opponent might go after his genin team. Why oh why had he let them make the decision to continue on? Quickly abandoning thoughts unnecessary to the battle, he moved right underneath the heaviest object, the one that weighed forty pounds. He quickly resurfaced through a use of the Shinjū Zanshu, trying to get in a piercing blow with a kunai before whatever it was had a chance to react.
Kakashi's kunai went through hard wood before glancing off a piece of metal.
Quickly using a Kawarimi to make his way out of a swarm of senbon, Kakashi began to pale as he realised just what he was up against. Up in the treetops a man stood in a crouching position, donning a camouflage cloak. He had blond hair that was sun-bleached almost to the point of being white, with his skin showing a golden tan. On either side of him stood a pale clone of the original. It was what both clones and the man were doing that worried Kakashi; although most of their muscles were rigid, their forearms, wrists, and fingers were in constant motion, controlling chakra strings attached to the fingertips. At the opposite end of each fingertip were puppets; some regular sized, while some were much smaller, intended for getting past an opponent's defenses by way of being too small to detect.
Kakashi knew who this man was. He had defected half a decade ago, and was responsible for the death of over a half-dozen Konoha hunter ninjas. As an allied nation, Suna gave Konoha plenty of information on its own traitors, and that was the only reason Kakashi had the information required to have a chance at winning this battle. "Hakko Awai, also known as Shirosuna no Hakko."
The man in various shades of green smiled a grim smile, and his two clones disappeared. Kakashi knew that the feared Shirosuna no Hakko wasn't taking it easy on him; he had no doubts that Hakko had other clones that would take control of the puppets left behind his two dispersed clones. The difference would that they would be to the side and behind him. After all, why hit your opponent from the front only when you can surround him? Hakko saw fit to respond to him, if only to mock him in response. "Sharingan no Kakashi."
Kakashi couldn't help it. He was stuck deep in foreign territory, up against an enemy who had the advantage of knowing the time and place beforehand. His enemy wouldn't tire very quickly, while he would have to be on his toes all battle long. His own feats were well known, while he knew little about his foe. So what if his genin were children? They were still ninja, and they probably heard worse every day.
"Oh, shit."
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In another reality from the Konoha ninja's own, Uchiha Madara lived past the battle between him and the Shodai Hokage at the Valley of the End, Yahiko died in battle against Hanzo of Ame, and Nagato went through a ritual that allowed him to control six bodies of dead shinobi, taking on the moniker 'Pein'. In that reality, Akasuna no Sasori defected from Sunagakure at the age of 13, although four years later he killed the Sandaime Kazekage, taking his body to turn into a human puppet.. As opposed to this reality, where it was an Iwa-Konoha feud that started the Third Great Shinobi War, there, it was caused by Suna panicking over the sudden disappearance of their Sandaime. Sasori would later join Akatsuki in this reality, and many others.
In several of these realities, Suna's Puppeteering Corps would be devastated by the loss of their greatest puppeteer, and with Chiyo's retirement, the puppeteering art would fall into decline. In other such realities, however, a new puppeteer would rise to greatness in Suna - developing both the field of micropuppetry, which involved puppets smaller than six inches, and macropuppetry, which involved puppets over seven feet tall, Hakko Awai, cousin of the second Ichibi jinchuuriki, would go down in the annals of ninja history. In some variances of the realities that he rose to fame in, Hakko would follow in his predecessor legend's path and defect from Suna. Sometimes, he would join Akatsuki as well. In a few others, he would move against Akatsuki - one notable reality would be when he followed a blonde-haired man who, like him, shared a relation to a jinchuuriki, and became part of an organization known as the GoKanshisha.
However, in this reality, where Akasuna no Sasori stayed in Suna and took office as the Yondaime Kazekage, Hakko Awai's star never really shined - while he still pioneered new designs in puppetry, he was overshadowed by the Yondaime's human puppets. That had been OK with him, and so had being ordered by Sasori to go nuke-nin to sabotage the rest of the Hidden Villages scattered across the Elemental Nations. Although Sasori put Hakko in the books as a low A-Rank nukenin, Hakko was truly more of an upper A-Rank ninja, one who was dangerously close to crossing that treacherous gap that separated the upper A-Ranks and the lower S-Ranks. The reasoning was that hunter nin from other village who encountered Hakko wouldn't expect Hakko to be quite as powerful as he truly was.
And it worked. Once, a group of hunter nin from Iwa, who had had experience with puppeteers in the Third Great Shinobi War, had surrounded Hakko, expecting a tough fight, but one that they could handily win. They were slaughtered to the last man.
Hatake Kakashi knew none of Yahiko's plottings, but he knew that Hakko would have been the next legendary puppeteer of Suna if not for the Yondaime Kazekage. He knew puppeteers could be a dangerous bunch from the stories his father had told him of the Second Great Shinobi War. He had read up on Hakko's entry in the Suna Bingo Book, and knew that if he got hit by even a single projectile launched by a puppet, he could be dead within minutes by the poison. Lastly, because Hakko was a puppeteer, and one of the best, he could control multiple puppets at once, while barely moving around himself, and chakra strings used up little chakra. That was in comparison to Kakashi, who would have to be constantly dodging and moving around during the whole fight, and who had gotten lazy in the last few years with training since he had left ANBU. Kakashi knew that much, and so he summed his thoughts up in two eloquent words.
"Oh, shit."
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Neat. I bet you expected Zabuza! Then you were all "huh where's the demon guys", and slowly things began to change from there.
This chapter was overall a bit of a toughie to fight. Overall I'm trying to move things at a relatively fast pace for the first little bit because I don't want to bore everyone with an exact rewrite of the same events that you've read in the manga and in countless fanfics (which is why a lot of scenes are skipped), but I still like to provide a bit of detail with the going-ons and add a little deviation from canon (so here Kakashi finally realizes they're over their heads when the boat-owner lets the info on the bridge and Gato loose, and Tazuna doesn't use the 'grandson and daughter will hate Konoha' line but instead pleads for the sake of Wave itsel)). There are also sometimes moments that I want to write in and sometimes the way the story goes it doesn't quite work in well - for example I've had the scene here with Kabuto as an idea since the beginning of the story (whereas the scene in Chapter 4 where Kakashi teases Sakura about her likes, hobbies and dreams being to blush and giggle I wanted to do and it fit perfectly). I also have a problem with really trying to develop characters who I know won't ever really play a big role (ie. Sakura in this story) so I have to force myself sometimes to add her in somewhere. It wasn't really until about an hour before I finished this that things really got a role and I probably wrote about a quarter of it in that time.
A couple of the 'alternate realities' that are talked about in the Hakko Awai introspective will be the other plots I develop. You will definitely be seeing Hakko in 'Flame and Vortex' whenever I get around to writing anything, and maaaaybe 'Rise of a Kitsune'.' Hakko's 'Shirosuna no Hakko' title also lets me expand a bit on the Narutoverse - I think the 'Akasuna' in 'Akasuna no Sasori' is a title that Sasori received while a part of Suna, so I'm planning to have a 'colored sands' group in Suna who would be the rough equivalent of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, where the '___suna no ____' organization would probably have six people, and to receive the title you would have to be one of the strongest ninja in Suna. The title can only be passed on if the original holder renounces it or is killed, so those who defect have to be slain first for the title to be passed on.
Hakko's appearance also allows me to spice up the Wave Arc a lot (I would rather have done a new mission altogether but there were complications in plot ideas). Too often people basically rewrite the Wave Arc, with the only notable deviances being that Zabuza and/or Haku live/go to Konoha, or Naruto showing up with a stronger performance. Usually it's 'Team 7 confronts Zabuza, battle takes place after which Haku shows up and takes Zabuza's body away while Kakashi is out unconscious. A couple of weeks later, the time in between which they do the tree climbing exercise and Naruto meets Haku unmasked, the two sides fight again.' Then there seems to be a law of proportions going on in the Wave Arc - if somebody writes in TWO teams going to guard Tazuna instead of one, boom, Zabuza suddenly has a couple of new subordinates. Finally, there are the Wave Arcs that seem to stretch on and on and on without ever ending ('The Dichotomy of Namikaze Naruto' is one good example, which ironically just updated after two years of inactivity, with ANOTHER TWENTY THOUSAND WORDS IN THE WAVE ARC, as well as 'Black Flames Dance in the Wind') because their authors just want to add in more stuff...and more and more and more and more stuff.
Believe me, the stuff that happens next chapter won't take you on some hallucination-induced reading adventure, and it won't stretch on for fifteen chapters, but it will be outside the realm of normal. And I would prefer that just because I'm bringing in non-canon non-filler OC nukenins that are powerful doesn't mean that you should suddenly shout out "MARY SUE MARY SUE GARY STU!"
That said, with Zabuza and Haku not appearing, I've finally made up my mind on some of the changes from canon as a result of Madara actually dying at the VotE, so I will issue the verdict here: Yagura will still be in power in Kiri and the bloodline wars won't have happened (somebody nameless will be the Sandaime that Madara presumably used to be). I'm of the belief that Madara might have manipulated events in Ame to cause Yahiko's death anyways so it works out that Yahiko survived the battle. For the same reason why there's a number of Uchiha who still live: I highly doubt that Itachi would have been able to kill everyone without Madara's help, so he just killed the troublemakers and coup planners and bailed out. As for why the Kyuubi attacked: a wizard did it (or he just attacked on his own).
Finally, some ideas for feedback - for any reviewers, I'd like to bounce an idea off of you, which if I go through it will probably be universal throughout all my Naruto fanfics: specifically on an idea I have about bloodlines.
This idea is that EVERYONE in the Narutoverse has a potential bloodline, but few actually activate it. Those who activate a bloodline (ie. the first Hyuuga or the first Uchiha) and have children, their children will have a much easier time activating the bloodline because their parents managed to activate theirs. Siblings who didn't have parents with bloodlines won't necessarily have the same potential bloodlines, which is why the Nidaime Hokage would be heavily aligned with water as opposed to the Shodai who uses Wood, which is a mixture of Earth and Water - but parents who have bloodlines will pass along that specific bloodline to their descendents.
What makes the system potentially even more broken is that every person can activate up to three bloodlines: one for a body bloodline (ie. Kaguya's bones), chakra bloodline (ie. Haku's Hyoton) and doujutsu. The three bloodlines aren't necessarily related in properties to each other (so say if Suigetsu's water body form was an actual bloodline and not a result of experimentation, his chakra bloodline wouldn't necessarily be having a much higher alignment to water).
Most important will be the triggers to activating your bloodline. Children who had a parent with their bloodline will usually either be able to activate it relatively easily (which I'm fairly sure the Hyuuga can do with their Byakugan), through hard work, life-threatening circumstances (Sasuke and Haku are good examples), and in some cases some siblings will have a heavily dormant bloodline while it will activate automatically for others (Kaguya). For those who need to activate bloodlines on their own, they can do so either through extremely hard work and meditation and experience with chakra, through demon influence, or through sacrifice. The latter two, while quicker and easier, will end up producing weaker bloodlines. For all people, after the first bloodline is activated, the second bloodline will be harder to activate, and the third harder still.
If I actually do this, I'll also explain off the Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan under this formula. Madara and Itachi will have activated their MS through sacrifice (killing their best friend). The MS form wouldn't actually be part of the Sharingan doujutsu itself, but instead would be a chakra-based bloodline that works in conjunction with the Sharingan - the Tsukiyomi is the ultimate genjutsu, with genjutsus being done by inserting chakra into the target's body, hence a form of high chakra manipulation. Amaterasu is somewhat the same, as something that's as hot as the sun would probably require heavy concentration, or high chakra manipulation. Itachi's Susano'o and Kakashi's Kamui would probably be explained off in the same manner somehow, along with a little bit of bullshitting.
Since Itachi got his MS through sacrifice (killing Shisui), his bloodline is weaker than it might be otherwise - the drawback is that it causes his eyes to go blind. At the same time, however, he can still use the MS abilities, which is why despite being nearly completely blind while fighting Sasuke he can still use Amaterasu to a great degree, and of course his eyes bleeding after using Amaterasu or Tsukiyomi.
Madara taking his brother's eyes to replace his own would be considered 'sacrifice' again, and that would grant him his body power - slow aging (as opposed to immortality, which I don't think has actually been suggested in the manga, just longetivity) and the ability to do space-time jutsus (teleportation) without needing to do a jutsu or use fuuinjutsu. While he is fairly powerful, someone who works hard to activate two of three bloodlines could give him a run for his money.
In any case, feedback on that please!
Aaaand, next chapter, end of the Wave Arc (probably), and an intermission (possibly).