Chapter Eight
Soft rain pattered against the sole window of Naruto's study. Dawn brought an unexpected storm that the metrologists did not expect. Nevertheless, life continued in the street, his study overlooked, undeterred by the thunder and lightning. He turned the page of the current tome open upon his desk and paused to watch his people go about their mundane lives. A couple walked with their young son toward the main road to the civilian school nearby, happily enjoying the downpour under a colorful umbrella. Their laughter and smiling faces reminded him of his brief happiness with Hinata.
Before becoming Hokage, they always walked Boruto to the academy. Then they stopped for a quick breakfast at a small café by their house. He always ordered pancakes with a hearty helping of scrambled eggs, while she preferred a cinnamon roll with egg whites. The brief date, a moment of calm in a life full of obligations, refreshed their love for one another. It kept him grounded in the most important things in his life. But, like all the good things in his life, it came to a tragic end. The duties of Hokage consumed everything, leaving his family a broken shell, never to be mended again. He was a villain to his son and a ghostly father to his daughter. Hinata, the woman he promised to love forever, left their marriage doomed to a life of loneliness, unable to move on from him and too fearful to open herself again to him. Now, as the world crumbled, he was alone once more.
Naruto opened the right drawer and looked down at the loaded revolver glistening in the light of his desk lamp. He removed it from the cushioned mold, running his thumb down the pearl grip. As a rule of thumb, Ninja did not use firearms due to the noise and inability to enhance them with chakra. A few groups, notably Iwa, tried to deploy them on the battlefield but found limited success compared to standard tactics. As a result, only civilian militaries used any substantial number of rifles or handguns. The revolver he held came from a general in the Land of Fire's defense force as a wedding gift. He had only fired it a few times but kept it in his desk for safekeeping. His finger pushed open the cylinder.
Three rounds.
He pushed the cylinder in place before pulling back the hammer to prime the weapon. His eyes returned to the withered manuscript depicting an image of a goat-goddess once worshipped by a nomadic people in the jungles of the southern lands. Their shamans believed their goddess would emerge from the earth in the future to uplift her chosen into a new world free from the sufferings of the old. The similarities to the Church of the Red Goddess seemed limited on the surface, but the themes matched. The next page depicted a monastery in the Land of Earth that worshipped the fearful Nine-Tailed Fox and a pantheon of kitsune deities. Kyūbi, the name given to the Nine-Tails, was always depicted as an anthropomorphic vixen that looked over the blessed much like a mother would. But, according to their holy book, The Scarlet Scripture, she promised to return to them once the world got too corrupt and deliver them from the evils of humanity.
Naruto tried to ignore the tears running down his face at the picture clearly inspired by Ama. He did not want to believe that Kurama, the Nine-Tailed Fox he had befriended and trusted, could be the same entity that now worked to destroy everything he had ever known. Yet, Hanae offered evidence to back up her outrageous claims in the form of six large books ranging from a modern treatise on religion to a book that pre-dated the coming of Kaguya by two thousand years. The truth could not be ignored.
None of the tomes made sense on their own, with each one presenting a different conflicting narrative on the nature of the entity that spawned a cult that stretched back aeons. Some painted her as an alien that crashed onto Earth billions of years before humans took their first steps. The more religious texts claimed that she is the arch-devil plotting the ruin of humanity and heaven, corrupting the faithless into her service through dreams. When put together, however, the fog parted to reveal a vista that only glimpsed at the mysterious nature of the entity that sought dominion over all things.
With a deep breath, he placed the revolver barrel between his lips. Shikamaru and Sasuke believed it was the only way to escape the downfall of humanity. Perhaps, he thought bitterly, this was always the way he was meant to go. As a child, those crueler villagers told him that he would die alone and unloved. Maybe their words were more prophetic than any of them could imagine. Everyone believed him limitless, expecting him to always have the courage to continue, but even he had a limit. Death would allow him to fly beyond the world's problems and grant him rest.
He couldn't go on. Freedom came to those who were not afraid of the end.
A sharp knock at the door forced the gun from his mouth and back into the drawer. "Lord Hokage? I brought you something to eat."
"Ah. Thank you, Tenten. You may enter." He closed the book just as Tenten pushed open the door. His stomach grumbled at the smell of chicken fried rice. "You did not have to make me lunch. I could have cooked something for myself."
"Of course, I did not have to make you anything. I wanted to make you something." Tenten placed the bowl in front of him and stuck a pair of chopsticks in to complete the look. "With Shizune sick, someone must babysit you. Figured I would take the job." She glanced at the open book, scrunching her face at the sight of the demonic vixen. "How's the reading?"
Naruto groaned and slammed the book shut. "I hate reading about subjects I like. So you can imagine the torture this stuff is. No wonder Hanae is fried in the brain."
"You should have heard Flamingo complaining about her this morning. Apparently, the woman won't sleep in any hotel room above the second floor and requires at least two windows in the room." Tenten sat down in the recliner next to the unlit fireplace. "Do you really believe the Kurama is this 'Red Goddess'?"
"It's possible."
"If so, she pulled the greatest prank on all of humanity. She even fooled the Sage of Six Paths!" Tenten frowned at the thought of anyone managing to outsmart the founder of all ninjas. "Hypothetically, let's say that Hanae is one hundred percent correct. Kurama is really some type of ancient alien deity that wants to rule over the world. What hope do we have in stopping her? Her intelligence would be far more than anything we've encountered. Let's not even begin with what possible powers she could use."
A valid question and one that he had been thinking about. "Simple. We don't."
"Eh?"
"Kurama, at least if these books are correct, is sleeping. She interacts with the world through dreams. Cull the cult, and you limit what she can actually do." He frowned and glanced down at his notes. "The mystery remains in how she has created a physical body apart from her actual form."
"Hanae kept rambling about that. The 'real' Kurama is sleeping, yet we've seen her fight before. Hell, she nearly destroyed Konoha before." Tenten remained silent as Naruto continued to eat. Her reservations remained despite the books, claiming that specific facts could be misinterpreted to paint a darker picture than what is happening. He did not necessarily disagree with her, but his recent experiences with Ama forced him to believe the accusation. "You could ask her."
"No." He shook his head, placing the chopsticks back into the bowl. "I am not ready to confront her again."
"You have to go to sleep eventually." Tenten's face softened into a look of pure concern. "You've been up for over twenty-eight hours. We need our Hokage well-rested for the events to come. At least take a nap or something. Then, when she enters your dreams, ask her about the Sage and how she got a body. Think of this like a sleep mission for the village."
Her infectious smile forced a matching one on his face. "I'm the one that's supposed to assign missions."
"Then assign yourself a mission to take a nap." Tenten hopped from the recline. "Sleep right here. I've got some reports from the patrols around the cathedral that will take about an hour to read through. I'll wake you up once I'm done."
Neither savannah nor forest greeted Naruto upon his entry into the dreamlands.
He stood in a stone chamber lit only by dim torches but full of humans dressed in the pelts of animals and decorated with jewelry fastened from bone and jade. They circled a large fire pit in the center of the room underneath a circular cutout that allowed the smoke to drift into the night sky above. Their speech and chants, utterly alien to him, told of a shared pleasure of life boarding on maddening ecstasy. He tried to grab ahold of one of the people but found that his hand had passed straight through.
"This memory is of a time far more recent than the previous one." Ama's voice came from a crude bas-relief carved from obsidian. It depicted a strange, hunching creature with the head of a goat, multiple human breasts dripping with milk, and paws from a canine. "They found my idol in a conquered temple and returned it to their city as a treasure. But, unbeknownst to them, I was interested in their primitive ways and reached out."
"Why?"
"Curiosity. They were different than the other civilizations that inhabited the jungles. These people preferred to look to the stars instead of making an unjust war upon their neighbors. In the many unspoken years between my first encounter with your ancestors until now, only a handful of groups managed to catch my eye enough for direct contact."
A couple emerged from a side chamber. Their lavish crowns signaled their royal rank when compared to the others. The king raised a scepter above his head, silencing the room with a single word. He glanced at his queen briefly before leading her to the bas-relief and forcing her to the ground. Then, he began to chant a mournful prayer that the others joined with tears flowing down their faces. The queen simply stared at the statue of the goddess, dazed and dumb to the song around her. Once the king stopped singing, he brought the scepter down upon the back of her head rapidly until only a ruined mess remained. The onlookers cheered and started dancing once more.
Naruto watched as the king joined the celebrations. "Do you require all of your worshippers to offer up a sacrifice? What happens behind closed doors at your cathedral in Konoha?"
There was a momentary pause as the memory around him froze. He looked at each person's twisted faces of fanaticism and found himself revolted to be part of the same species as these people.
It sickened him to think that such activities were happening in his village. But, then again, these were the same people that thought it socially acceptable to shun and abuse an orphan. Despite believing itself the bastion of civilization, Konoha was little better than the savages dancing around a fire.
"You have figured it out."
"With a little help." An understatement. His mind would have refused to make the connection without outside help. "Were you ever planning on telling me?"
Another pause. "When the time was right, everything would have been revealed to you. Who told you?"
"Hanae Hyūga. Apparently, one of your crazy cults killed her brother. She has been obsessed with you ever since." Naruto maintained his composure despite the urge to lash out. Only the desire to gain information and the hope of all of this being a misunderstanding kept him calm. "You've lied to me."
"No!" The memory vanished instantly, replaced with the forest that seemed far less beautiful than before. Ama appeared from the tree line in a sprint that ended with her pulling him into a tight embrace. "I have never lied to you. I have not told the entire truth, but that is not lying."
Naruto wanted to believe her, but for the village's sake, he remained focused on gathering information. "You still sought to deceive me. An admission of the truth is just as bad as a lie. You caused the death of Sasuke and Shikamaru. You've caused the death of untold millions with your cult. At least tell me why you did…why do you do what you do? What are you?"
Ama closed her eyes and released him. "You're planning on marching on the cathedral."
"Hmph. Hanae warned me that you could gain access to my thoughts during these little visits."
"Yes, I know the hurt you're feeling right now." Ama disappeared into the forest once more. "My feelings for you are genuine, Naruto. You are very important to me. Everything I've done has been for you and those you love."
Naruto's mask of passivity started to crack. "Liar!"
"Use the last bit of trust you have in me, Naruto, and take my advice. Gather those closest to you and leave Konoha. Go to the mountains, far away from the civilized world, and wait for me. Depart from this world and await the coming of the new one."
"Shut up!"
"If you order your forces to march upon the cathedral, you'll enter the new world covered in blood."