Disclaimer: Naruto is the work of mangaka Masashi Kishimoto, Harry Potter is the work of author J.K. Rowling. The author makes no claim to ownership of the aforementioned works and no profit from this fanfiction.

Uchiha Fukurou

Of The Womb, The Mirror and Painful Contemplations

Koharu and Homura met for tea. Homura planted a seal on the floor as he sat down, not entirely feigning the groan that ground out as he bent his knees. For a time the two drank in silence, "It is done." Koharu stated.

"Oh, he took the bait?" Homura asked surprised.

Koharu nodded, "For all that he is, he can still be outsmarted."

They were careful not to use any names.

"How did you convince them of what needed to be done?" Mitokado queried.

"A slight reworking of past events and evidence. Sarutobi left the job of covering things up to us after all." Koharu told him. She faltered slightly before continuing, "And a loyalty enforcing curse seal on one."

"How cruel, to be slain by they he trusted in ..." Homura stated.

"Yet, as sad as it is, such cruelty is just the nature of our world of shinobi." Koharu finished the old proverb.

For Konoha...

His name was Kurosuki Ranmaru and his life was one of many tragedies that played out across Water Country in this era. Sickly from birth he was hidden away, entrusted with a retired retainer from one of the few remaining allies of his clan. This was not a form of mercy. Mercy in the Land of Water was a swift death for the sickly, the orphaned and the crippled. He was a confirmed bearer of his clan's doujutsu based kekkai genkai the Amatsugan, a talent of lesser renown only due to its rarity and the fact that its traits had only recently begun to reliably express themselves safely. It imbued one with the ability to cast illusions that confounded even the Byakugan and Sharingan and the talent to see the lifeforce within all living creatures. Even a sickly wretch like Ranmaru was hoarded like gold for future harvesting after puberty. Sparing his life was not a kindness.

He had no knowledge of how truly horrible a fate was planned for him, one sacrifice in a long chain of atrocities that began with a captured Uchiha during the first war. He had no understanding of what was happening save that he was left behind and alone. One day his mother took him to this temple overlooking a village and left him there. The shock at the suddenness of his abandonment initially prevented him from crawling after her, too weak as he was to stand. If he had he would have asked for her mercy rather than this, being left behind on this temple on a hill...alone. He lived on his own with no contact with others save for the village headsman who covertly left him food in the guise of temple offerings to eat and fresh linens to sleep in.

He had no means of understanding the causes of his situation, so he could not have known just how senseless his clan's destruction really was. So many years of struggle to produce a viable heir and maintain the bloodline, so many dead capturing the samples needed to perfect it now all for naught. It was all gone with a single order from the Mizukage that disregarded decades of sacrifice and loyal, loyal service. Just like that, one of the few countermeasures against the Sharingan and Byakugan that Hidden Mist possessed was all but lost. Only Ranmaru alone remained.

And so he dreamed. Children in Water Country were raised on the legends of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. Some were upheld as paragons of the shinobi way. Others were quite literally monsters. Their swords were considered national treasures and each had a tale to be told. Ranmaru's favorite was the Raitō, Kiba. He imagined going on adventures, not as a hero… but as a friend of the hero.

Yes, he could picture it even now, over the screams of the villagers in the decimated town below. He would be the eyes and ears of his hero, Kurosuki Raiga, a good name. His hero wouldn't care that he couldn't walk very well or for long. He would be Raiga's eyes and watch from his hero's back. They would have so many adventures together…

This was how a soul weary Ringo Ameyuri found the last Amatsugan bearer. The boy's eyes were open but his mind was turned inward. The child did little but smile as Ringo's shadow loomed over him. The man clenched his teeth and sighed through them. The smell of burning houses and worse hung upon the air, the screams had fallen silent just a few minutes before he'd reached the temple. "All this death to kill just a single child." His lips thinned at the thought and he sighed, "I do my duty child." He whispered.

The boy did not answer. Ameyuri stood before him and just looked at the catatonic Ranmaru for a moment. He readied himself as the child's chestnut eyes focused on his own.

"Have you come to kill me?" Ranmaru asked the man curiously.

Ameyuri was a loyal follower of the Mizukage, oath bound to obey even the most troubling of orders. He nodded solemnly, "Hai, by order of the Mizukage…"

The boy was no longer listening, running a fever and delirious, Ranmaru held out his hands with a smile, "Raiga… Raiga… Papa…"

Ameyuri showed him what mercy he could.

Ranmaru was simply ecstatic that he didn't die alone.

The Mist Rebels arrived too late to save village. None of them had any idea what the Root shinobi would find in the temple on the hill, the Kurosuki clan hadn't survived long enough to contact the Rebellion so they didn't know much about the Amatsugan bearer. The Kiba were dutifully handed over to Mei's people to do with as they pleased. Ranmaru's body was taken by Root with no argument. Their access to the suspected bloodline wielder was undisputed.

A letter of resignation was sent to the Mizukage by a crane. It was a loyal retainer's protest of his master's actions. The blood speckles on a corner of the scroll was proof of how Ringo Ameyuri resolved his honor with his conscience. His body was cremated with those of the villagers. He lived as he'd died, by his swords.

Fukurou looked up at the starless sky and sighed. The child's body had been placed in a cold, time contraction chamber on Mu Base until it was ready for autopsy and study. The chair that he sat in was comfortable and the lighting was pleasant as well yet he felt uneasy. On all accounts he should be happy to be away from the chaos and violence of Water Country's civil war. No massacres to witness, to pitched battles to fight, no Mei trying to seduce him…

He chuckled at the last one, Mei's desires were remarkably domestic in nature, a handful of children and a husband to take care of them while she was at work. Recently her target had been shifting to Zabuza much to the man's apprehension. Fukurou signed a request for more lighting fixtures in the green houses and rejected another request, this one for a fourth dilation event for a training group that had already experienced three. Mu Base wasn't like the other Root bases. It was perhaps the safest place imaginable for Fukurou, the seat of his power, perhaps literally. Yet he felt uneasy.

According to the Uchiha ancestral tablet the capabilities of each Mangekyō was unique to its wielder. Fukurou found that he had little need for Amaterasu, described in the ancient text as the Shining-Flames-of-Heaven. His own techniques held the potential to surpass mere Yin-Fire so why even risk his eyes casting the comparatively subpar Enton? He did however develop a fire manipulation ability derived from his mangekyō and put it to good usage in controlling those of his techniques that were more difficult to master. In particular among these were the more volatile iterations of his kekai tōta, self-styled the Gyōton: Dawn Release, skills.

His application of Tsukuyomi, described by the tablet as Ākāśa-Under-The-Crimson-Moon, was often oddly inverted. Never having liked manipulating others although highly skilled at it regardless, Fukurou's Tsukiyomi seemed to only work at its best when ensnaring Fukurou, himself!

It made a weird kind of sense though, considering that he had spent the better part of his life strictly exercising control over his own mind using Occlumency. The personal subjective space-time dilation allowed him the advantage of cramming several hours' worth of image training, study and rest into just a handful of seconds, a tiring but useful ability. The doing the opposite to a person's sensation of time would have been an even more useful skill in battle, if only he could use it on someone other than himself. Generally Fukurou stuck to his sharingan's more passive enhancement of his illusion-casting. What was the point of using Tsukuyomi if it harmed him as easily as it did his opponents?

Susanoō, His-Swift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness, seemed beyond him. Eventually Fukurou found that his problem lay in the fact that he simply didn't… Hate enough. Ironic since he was the Konoha no Asura that Kumo had placed a bounty on, not that they knew it was really Uchiha Fukurou they were after. They merely described his Gyōton: Shitenoō Yottsu no Enkan, the distinctive technique that had held off a bijū ball on the off-chance that its user had actually survived the fight with Yugito and not been incinerated.

Even after finding a way to ameliorate the adverse consequences of using his Mangekyō, so long as he was careful to fully charge the seal on his forehead, Fukurou found that most of his eyes' abilities were useless to him. That belief lasted until six months after having taken full control of Root. It was inevitable by then, that Fukurou would eventually try to apparate while his mangekyō sharingan was still activated. Where normally his sharingan merely saw a twisted tunnel that he was quickly squeezed through, his mangekyō perceived something more than just a warping of space.

Somehow his eyes showed him an alternate path that turned upon itself in a seeming three dimensional impossibility. Following this path led him to a vast space seeming to be composed of cubes etched with runes. He didn't understand at first what was going on and couldn't suppress the nervous thrill that passed through him. This definitely wasn't the River Base.

It was a space so vast that he couldn't see the limits of it, merely a starless void softly illuminated by an all pervading light from a distant sun or full moon. As he calmed himself he noted that the single point of illumination couldn't possibly account for the all suffusing nature of the illumination. The light seemed to pulse in time with his pounding heart and the cubes drew together or apart seemingly in accordance to his will. This was how he discovered Taizōkai, the Womb Realm.

The Womb Realm, as he called it, was a pocket dimension that perhaps paradoxically existed both within his metaphysical being while yet physically existing somewhere beyond space and time. Fortunately leaving was simply a matter of apparating with the mangekyō activated. The place became even easier to get to with time and practice. Over a period of weeks he experimented, learning how to send objects and individuals to and from Taizōkai. The dimension's true value however would remain unrealized for some time after its discovery.

It was in exploring the properties of this vast dimension that Fukurou's seemingly most useless mangekyō skill, his Tsukiyomi's propensity for self hypnotism, crystallized into something more. The words of the Uzumaki scroll had long stayed with him and he even spent time meditating while within the Taizōkai. As his mind pondered on what it meant to become a part of the pulse of the world, Fukurou used his Tsukuyomi to alter his perception of time.

It wasn't until then that Fukurou understood that it meant to be the master of Taizōkai, a realm both of him and beyond reality. At first, all he felt was simply annoyance when the time dilation effect didn't exceed a rate of three minutes for every second passing in the real world. His frustration changed to shock however, when Miho derisively drew attention to the scraggly, nine days of stubble that had accumulated on his chin in the space of what was impossibly a little under an hour and a half.

Root gained new recruits from three sources. They came from allied ninja clans within Fire Country, especially the recent acquisitions emigrating in from Water Country. Shinobi headhunted from the AnBu program, of which there had been only a handful in recent times. And the most plentiful, orphanages and juvenile reform centers secretly sponsored by front companies and staffed by deep cover agents.

The adolescents were mostly seen as a long term investment and many did not make it into Root's training program. The older teens from the juvenile reform centers came in as youthful offenders and the homeless from big cities desperately grasping a chance to avoid time in an overcrowded prison and a free meal. They left as upstanding and responsible members of society with a wide range of useful skills, frequently finding gainful employment.

Those who did not join Tengu Corporation or any of its subsidiaries were usually self-employed with seed money provided from charities affiliated with the reform centers. Many became carpenters and blacksmiths, turning out to be amazingly talented for their youth. The list of skills taught to residents extended from masonry to cooking, one group became farmers and formed a rather successful cooperative that produced rare medical herbs in addition to a variety of marketable crops on land indirectly acquired by Root.

These graduates spread throughout the Elemental Nations, some of them were more than they at first seemed. But they all were grateful for the chances given and donated what they could to their benefactors, writing of all the interesting things that they'd see on their travels, sometimes planting an innocuous black cylinder as a symbol of setting root in a new country.

It was all made possible by that one technique. The ability that Fukurou discovered quite by accident after having it inadvertently pointed out to him by Miho, Kamishinjin, the ability to control and manipulate reality within Taizōkai as he wished almost with full impunity, even down to the passage of time. While creating Taizōkai took no chakra at all, manipulating it and maintaining multiple effects beyond the normal placid space filled with nothing but lukewarm air and floating squares drained Fukurou to the point that he was only able to keep it going for twelve hours at a time.

Even so, the world did not end when he left it. Not feeding chakra to Kamishinjin merely returned things to a placid state under the soft light of a single distant star that pulsed in time with Fukurou's heart. Fukurou was still linked to the seal communication network while within Taizōkai although anything else that wished to enter or leave required the power of his mangekyō and express permission from him to do so.

Thus, being the pragmatic person that he was, it was no surprise that he created Mu Base, the most secure of the Root training facilities within Taizōkai. He moved equipment, supplies and people into that space to construct the base and for twelve hours at a time twenty trainees under time dilation would spend the equivalent of ninety days undergoing hostile environment training.

One collection of floating squares would be arranged to create a gigantic water basin, practically a lake, upon which a variety of sea conditions could be simulated. Others would have jungles, deserts and anything else that Root's demented trainers could imagine. There was even a hollow chamber where trainees could train under the influence of higher than normal gravity.

New recruits completed their year's worth of training in a week, real time, a period Fukurou divided into twelve hour long shifts of maintaining the Kamishinjin created time dilation and altered environments in certain areas. He then released the effects before he reached his limit. Even so he would often spend the time in between the shifts exhausted while his young recruits grew closer to him in age by a year. Kamishinjin blurred the boundaries between reality and illusion much like Izanagi did, but it was closer in nature to the Sage's legendary Banbutsu Sōzō no Jutsu which allowed one to give form to imaginings. Rearranging the floating cubes was still just about the only thing that didn't require chakra. As a result, food supplies and furniture were taken from the material world while in a few areas the cubes were shifted about and converted into barracks and farms in order to cut down on the amount of strain on Fukurou to provide things.

The Jūninriki members who were adept at genjutsu helped with reprogramming and flash educating the constant stream of juveniles that passed through the doors of their public facilities. Fukurou's only involvement was in acquiring the skilled masters who would provide the necessary experiences and skills. The education and training occurred within Taizōkai while under time compression letting the temporary disappearances of masters and students pass unnoticed. It was slowly in this manner that Fukurou turned Root into a twelve hundred man strong crack military unit. Although to outsiders things must have seemed to happen with alarming swiftness...

Fukurou languished on the wooden floor, moaning in mock defeat. His one year old daughters Mitsuko and Motoko giggled merrily as they wrestled with his arms, twisting this way and that to avoid being tickled. Shy Chiyome watched from beside her elder sister Chiasa. In another year the older girl would begin attending Academy classes until then Tsuruko trained her. As Fukurou watched from out the corner of his eye, Chiyome tugged on her sister's dress and whispered in her ear. In response Chiasa waved for Fukurou's attention… and wriggled her fingers at the sides of her head.

"Aah…"

With a rueful smile Fukurou was gone and a green eyed black cat took his place. The girls squealed in excitement and even shy Chiyome turned shining eyes upon him, "Kitty." She whispered.

"Feh…" Their father huffed internally but did not stop preening under the attention of his daughters. It hurt when Chiyome grabbed his tail but it was worth it to see them smile and babble excitedly, lisping words of joy. He doted on them like nothing else. Moments like this reminded him of what it was he fought for.

Even in a time of war it wasn't feasible to spend too long away from directing Root's overarching concerns. Therefore, Fukurou found himself delegating responsibility for the Water Country campaign to his subordinates. Fu and Torune were excellent field commanders. Their teams had each been responsible for taking down difficult to capture positions and assassination targets. He left them in the field with a Jūninriki assigned to each of their squads.

Unfortunately they weren't even remotely a match for Mei. If Fukurou had left things up to them then he'd have had to be on top of the situation constantly lest he somehow find his agents in the permanent employ of a foreign power. He looked for a shrewd strategist to lead his people in Water Country. That person also needed to be canny enough to handle Mei's charisma and see to Konoha's interests. It was a tall order but fortunately, as part of his deal with the Hokage for authorizing the operation, he'd managed to snag two old and very trusted friends that he was sure could do the job.

So he returned home for two weeks, living in the lavish central building of the compound that had once been a utilitarian collection of sheds in the woods. He stamped after-action reviews and filed them with the Hokage. He scanned through expense reports for the various businesses legal and not, though increasingly the former. He noted idly that they were in the black. He spent time with his children and their mothers. They asked no questions about what he'd been doing, even Miho merely held him to her breast on their first night together in more than a month.

He made it up for her in the morning, midday, afternoon and late evening. He'd rarely slept that well in his life…

On his last day, he worked up the courage to look in on Chun Chu. She'd grown older, but had done so gracefully, "Hmph! Look who finally has time for little old me…"

She playfully berated him for not visiting for more than half a year and then fed him curry. Chun Chu's cooking skills had also aged gracefully, which is to say that his enjoyment of the meal was not entirely feigned. He was just setting down his fork when TenTen, Chun Chu's now thirteen-year old daughter, brought her teammate's home.

"Ehh? Ah! Fukurou-nii!" She squealed. There was a goofy-looking kid with thick eyebrows and a haircut he'd seen somewhere before behind her along with a Hyūga who seemed to smile all the time. Perhaps he was exaggerating but this Neji person was strongly reminding him of Hiko. The only difference was that this kid actually thought before he spoke.

Any awkwardness of the meeting dissolved when he showed TenTen the present that he brought her. Knowing the tastes of mother and child Fukurou had brought an exotic weapon. It was some type of bolas/meteor hammer cross, that he'd brought from Water Country. It was the only way that he could really clue in Chun Chu on what he'd been up to. She was sure to recognize the regional idiosyncrasies of the metal working and he knew that rumor at the Jounin level would take care of the rest. The former master and student held an entire conversation without saying anything, all while he showed TenTen how to properly use the weapon.

Her mother's face gave away no hint, not even to the amused looking Hyūga, of what the little things that Fukurou showed them truly meant. The weights were designed like a yo-yo and the three of them each rolled up and down a braided metal cable connected to an iron ring. Fukurou spun them about expertly in a complicated maneuver that sent the three spinning weights in different directions and then used his body, the tension in the wires and the momentum of the dull metal disks to attack a training post from multiple angles.

By the time he got around to showing TenTen the basics of using the tool, her mother knew without a doubt that the weapon's former owner had tried to kill him with the very technique that destroyed the post. Knew by the expert way that he'd used the exotic weapon that Fukurou had not only destroyed his opponent but most likely had prolonged the battle just so that he could tease out every last trick to using it out of the shinobi. It spoke of his skill that he could do such a thing, of his situation that he could find himself doing such a thing and of his nature that he likely tormented a man for no other reason but to later entertain a thirteen year old weapon otaku.

Chun Chu smiled at him, "Next time bring your girls by and don't be a stranger." She hugged him tightly, "What's important is that you come back to us hmmm? Fukurou–kun." She murmured into his ear. His eyes were slightly moist as he let his old sensei go, his composure restored by the time Neji got smacked for a comment about Tenten's mom cheating with another man. All was well. He might be a monster but he was still welcome in the home of his sensei. It meant more than he'd cared to admit.

Hiko and Shigure greeted him at the entrance to Mei's latest hideout. How pleasant, even in this war, to have these two by his side once again. His old teammates exchanged a look behind his back.

Yondaime Mizukage Yagura, stood looking at a crane as it departed through the air, a tear ran its course from the corner of his eye. Yondaime Mizukage Uchiha Madara tossed an open scroll into a bin with all the other pieces of trash. Things like requests from the Daimyo to discuss civilian casualties, pleas for amelioration from farmers and more demands from the rebels. He hissed in annoyance and draped the Kage's hat on the younger man's head as if he were an inanimate object. He plopped down in his seat and leaned it backward, carelessly setting his feet on the desk.

"Things are moving far faster than I ever anticipated. As I thought, that Fukurou is something else. I knew he was special but… Ha!" He sharply barked out a laugh.

"Not only did he kill Danzo, but he took over Root!" At that the man stood, grabbed Yagura by the chin and forced the mesmerized shinobi to face him, handling him with what would normally have been unforgivable roughness, "Do you hear that! He killed that brat Danzo and took control of Root just like I took control of this… Entire… SHITTY... COUNTRY!"

He stepped back and turned away from the unaffected Yagura. Madara took a deep breath and slowly calmed down, "I'd like to shake his hand one of these days, before I kill him. That boy has crossed me one too many times. The Uchiha…" Madara snorted, "But to come into my country, and mess with my tools!"

"I'm going to shake his hand," He finally decided, "Before I pluck out his eyes."

After a moment, Madara simply sat on the window sill and stared out over Hidden Mist. Finally he decided on a course of action. He'd wait a little while and maybe use his pet Sanbi to gauge how dangerous Fukurou could truly become before making a final decision. Pain was an excellent pawn, but if it was as bad as he thought it was, "I guess I'll have to take off that little boy's shackles." He mused, "It was fun though, watching Nagato become the new leader of Amegakure. That crippled, talking corpse had quite a mouth on him. It was just so amusing, watching people call that pathetic sack of crap, God... If there's no other choice I'll feed him some chakra-meat."

He began thinking furiously, biting his lip as he thought. He moved pieces, measured outcomes, contemplated the gains versus the losses, all the while Madara kept an eye toward the future. Idly he thought, "That boy reminds me of myself…"

He did not realize how true that thought was.

There was a trickling sound like running water, and a faint whimper came from the man beside him, "What?" Madara growled, annoyed at having his thoughts disturbed. His eyes widened and then he pinched the bridge of his nose, "Of all the… Fine! Yes, you can use the bathroom, go change your diapers!" It was a credit to Yagura's mental fortitude, given how long that he'd been under Madara's ruthless control; that he still retained enough of his mental faculties to do even that much without step by step instructions.

As the mentally hobbled Yondaime Mizukage toddled off to his box in the corner, the real Yondaime Mizukage planned how best to use Water Country to further his plans. He felt uneasy though, he'd kill to find a better chair for his office…

AN: Took a week to update but I got it out in the end. It's interesting reading those reviews but try to keep it civil everyone.

TTFN