A/N: For those who don't know, I'm a BSN-RN (a registered nurse with their bachelor's in nursing) and I work at a skilled nursing facility in California. It was difficult to acclimate to working full time as a nurse in such a physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding environment but then COVID-19 came along and made things painful. On top of that, I'm returning to school to begin work on prerequisites to apply for med school (something that makes me unbelievably happy but that is also challenging). Then, with me struggling with my mental illness, I've been in a really difficult transition period of my life at work, at home, and within myself.
With that in mind, I wanted to give my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been sending me messages of encouragement and well wishes! I can't explain how much it's meant to me to receive such an outpouring of love, understanding, and support. Reading about the joy this story brings people always makes me so happy! I am always absolutely delighted when I get a surprise email alert on my phone and get to read your messages. I'm thinking of you wonderful people when I find time to write. I truly hope this new chapter helps make your quarantine a little brighter!
Content warning: graphic depictions of violence, death.
For the twenty-seventh time that day, Madara carefully laid a corpse in the mass grave at the edge of the Nakano village.
He paused a moment, reaching down to lace the fingers of the newest addition to the six foot deep trench. He was grateful to have the opportunity to respectfully position this body, especially considering the age of the young girl who now laid in her final resting place.
Most of the people here had been killed so viciously and left for so long that it was difficult to lay them to rest with any dignity. The Nakano had died gruesome enough deaths before the animals in the forest helped themselves to their remains.
This was a part of war that most people didn't see: the aftermath of battles fought with chakra and jutsu. Picking up what you could of the corpses, silently debating over what constituted a large enough piece to join the grave. Agonizing over intact bodies and bracing for the potential of traps hidden beneath their rotting masses. Being forced to make a group pile for the severed limbs and mangled pieces, unable to spare the time to match the parts to the heads like some kind of sick puzzle.
The aftermath was always the most difficult part of the battle.
As Madara and his team worked together to cart the remains of their allies to the gravesite at the edge of town, they investigated both the bodies and the half-destroyed village with their Sharingan. While he was the only in their group who was a sensor, his teammates made up for it with their own exceptional skills.
Chiasa had been raised to be a hunter before she was drafted into becoming a shinobi following an enormous loss during his father's leadership. Many of the huntsmen were taken from the forests and dropped into battlefields and Chiasa had been one of the few from this desperate experiment to survive.
While she bore the scars of her initial inexperience on the battlefield - her right leg lost to one of her first fights - she had become an enormously valued shinobi in their clan. She combined her skills as a huntress with those of a ninja, creating one of the most unique fighting styles Madara had ever seen. She was a tracker unlike any in the clan and her skills were essential for this investigation.
Takumi was a special case even among their family. He was young, barely young enough to begin fighting under the new laws of his clan. During one of his first missions outside of the village, he had been forced into a chance battle with a pack of Inuzuka shinobi. He had been lucky to escape with his life, the rest of his squad sacrificing themselves to allow the young man to flee, but Takumi had escaped with something else of incredible value: Inuzuka clan jutsu.
Having awakened his Sharingan during the battle, he had copied a few of the Inuzuka's well-guarded clan jutsu from an inexperienced member of his foe's group. While Takumi was the only member of their family comfortable settling into the role of berserker on the battlefield, he made up for their hesitation with his own feral glee on the front lines.
At this moment, however, Madara was more interested in Takumi's ability to replicate the Inuzuka's ability to amplify their senses to the height of a canine's. His expression was constantly twisted into one of revulsion, the stench of this days old battlefield vile to even Madara's unamplified sense of smell, but he did not falter in his search for clues.
The only thing they had learned in their investigation here, however, was that the Nakano had been massacred with such violence that it left only a handful of potential assailants.
Whether it was because of Takumi's stolen jutsu or the remnants of the animalistic assault, Madara first suspected the Inuzuka clan. They quickly ruled out the possibility when the huntress Chiasa declared there was no evidence of their ever-present war hounds. The Inuzuka never made any attempt to mask their presence and would have no reason to conceal signs of their dogs following a melee.
The Kaguya clan was his second suspect, the family a mob of monsters who cared for nothing but sating their own immediate impulses no matter the cost. They functioned as if off of instinct more than thought, their decisions as a clan both baffling and sickening. While this battlefield appeared as if animals had torn through it, it lacked signs of the atrocities that followed that family.
The Nakano may have died horribly but at least they hadn't suffered as much as they would have at the hands of the Kaguya.
Madara's thoughts raced, his mind cycling through the numerous families and clans and villages and groups who considered the Uchiha their enemy. The list had grown exponentially since they became the sole customer of Sora-ku and, as he stared down at the gaping pit slowly filling with the corpses of his allies, he feared that this was only the first of many attacks such as these.
Even if this wasn't a targeted attack against those partnered with the Uchiha, it reflected how thinly their forces were spread to where they couldn't even protect their own allies.
"Madara, you need to come see this," Takumi called down from the edge of the mass grave, distracting him from his thoughts.
"What is it?" Madara replied, leaping up to stand next to him.
"We found Lady Nozomi."
"Where is she?"
"This way," Takumi directed with a nod before leading him into the remnants of the village.
He brought him to an eerily silent home that had been decimated during the ambush. Half of the building had collapsed entirely, light flooding into the heart of the home. The young man led him further into the building, passing into a still stable hallway and to an already opened door leading into the still standing portion of the wreckage.
The stench of death and iron was already powerful in the destroyed living room, a rotting smell that only grew stronger as he entered into the darkened bedroom. Even in the dark, he could see splotches of pitch black against the dull grey of the room. The sound of his sandals squelching on the wet tatami mats beneath his feet answered his question as to the source of the pungent stench.
He looked to Chiasa in the corner of the room, the woman impatiently fiddling with a row of fusuma that remained lodged in place. Abandoning her previous finesse, she yanked on the first in the row of sliding panels, tearing the frame from the wall but freeing the entryway. As she opened the fusuma, warm light from the setting sun illuminated the room in shades of red and orange.
Madara was unable to restrain his frown at the scene before him.
The room was covered in an astonishing amount of blood. Far, far more blood than could have come out of the two corpses in the corner, one laid over the other as if they had spent their final moments protecting the other. There had been many more bodies here that had been moved. Perhaps a dozen people had been killed in this room, their blood the only thing that the surviving attackers had left behind.
Madara easily recognized the fiery red hair of the Uzumaki runaway Akane, even matted as it was in gore. He struggled to recognize Nozomi, his only clues being her stained but expensive kimono and Akane's final stand.
The two had been in love as long as he had known them and it brought him some odd sense of satisfaction knowing they died together in the end, as violent as it was.
His eyebrows furrowed as he noticed the unusual way the Nakano family leader held her hand, her fist tightly clenched even in death. He reached out and, as gently as he could, uncurled Nozomi's fingers enough to free a slip of parchment. Unfolding it, his eyes widened at what he found.
A smudged, sloppy drawing of the Hagoromo clan crest.
The Hagoromo were supposed to be allies of the Uchiha, enemies in the fight against the Senju. While neither bore any love for the other they had been loyal allies for longer than he had even been alive. What reason could they have possibly had to kill the Nakano - known, long time allies of the Uchiha?
Unless...
Stuffing the crumpled piece of parchment into his coat, he walked to the open fusuma. Stepping out into the fading light of the setting sun, he paused, closing his eyes as he took a deep breath in. Slowly breathing out, he began channeling his chakra and used that focus to extend his senses as far as he could reach.
Skimming across the miles of terrain they had covered, the only sources of chakra being scattered wildlife, he continued to search. He reached farther and farther until, with a start, he felt the familiar chaos of a battlefield. Sharpening his focus as he narrowed in on the distant conflict, it was easy to recognize the chakra signatures in the distance.
Hitomi, Noriko, and other non-shinobi were being escorted away from the battlefield by Haia and the other scouts. Katsumi, Katsurou, and the rest of the shinobi of his family fought against a battalion of soldiers that took Madara little time to recognize as the Hagoromo. At the center of it all, he found Sakura - her chakra feeling more like staring into the sun with it shining so brightly - traveling in the direction of the repulsive chakra of Junshi Hagoromo.
What worried him the most, however, was what he couldn't sense. Where was Izuna?
Finally taking a breath in, Madara's senses rapidly snapped back to focus on his current surroundings. He was grateful for the insight afforded to him by his abilities as a sensor but he was never ready for the wave of disorientation that came from reaching so far. Blinking back against the vertigo, he turned to face Chiasa and Takumi who looked on with concerned expressions.
"Can I leave you both here to finish the cremation?" Madara asked immediately, both his companions glancing at one of another before frowning in confusion and worry.
"Of course, I'll make sure the boy comes home safe," Chiasa promised simply, Takumi growling in irritation but refraining from one of his usual, biting comments.
Instead, he settled on brevity, "We'll be fine." His frown deepened. "But what's happening?"
"This is a distraction. The village is under attack," Madara answered, already turning and walking out the open fusuma and towards the setting sun, "I'll be going ahead."
All he heard before he vanished was Chiasa's request: "Keep them safe."
Izuna sprinted through the forest, his defeated foes behind him but the sound of a much greater conflict ahead of him. The dull roar of distant explosions echoed through the darkened trees surrounding him, a great fire lighting up the sky in the direction he knew was home. Splashes of red and orange flashed on the horizon, lighting up the undersides of the clouds in a glow that was all too familiar.
He counted the seconds between the flashes of light and the tremors, slowly counting down the distance between him and the battle as he ran as fast as his legs and his chakra could carry him.
Scowling deeply, he pushed onwards, berating himself as he ran. He couldn't believe that he had allowed himself to fall for such an obvious trap. He had been so concerned with his brother and a quarter of the clan gone that he had allowed himself to get lured away in the hopes of defeating the threat before it arrived. He should have known that the force of shinobi near their borders was a diversion to draw him out, to separate him from his family and weaken both him and the village.
The Hagoromo had been doing their research. They knew the Uchiha were spread thin, dozens of his clanmates deployed throughout the country and tending to the numerous missions from their massive influx of scrutinizing allies. Most concerning, they had to have known that Madara was gone for them to attempt such a bold assault, something that made Izuna wonder if the Hagoromo clan had any part in the Nakano Massacre.
They had tricked him into chasing down his own assassination while opening the doors to the invasion of his home. Izuna had never felt the nauseating mix of self-loathing and unmitigatable fear that churned within him as he sprinted towards the flashes of light behind the trees.
His heart jumped as he felt a tremor rattle through the earth, this one much different than the quakes from before. They were a sure sign that Sakura was fighting and a sign that did nothing to alleviate his fears.
If Sakura was using the full extent of her strength in their own village, the situation was nothing short of dire. She would never risk the destruction of their home and the fact he could feel her unrestrained attacks rattling the ground beneath his feet only spurred him to run faster.
As he grew closer to the battlefield ahead, he finally got close enough to be able to pick up the distant chakra signatures. He immediately found Sakura, her enormous chakra like a star against his senses. When he was greeted with a foul yet familiar chakra signature, his scowl broke through his carefully neutral expression like glass through parchment.
Forcing a dangerous amount of chakra into his feet, so much so that his skin and the muscle beneath began to burn, he ran faster. Be bit back against the pain and continued onward because, if he was right and if the Hagoromo patriarch Junshi had appeared on the battlefield, his closest friend was in mortal danger.
While the madman boasted limited physical strength, unremarkable taijutsu, a detestable skill with genjutsu, and basic talent with ninjutsu, he made up for it to the extreme with his alarming speed and his devastating mastery of seals.
The man had always been a ghost on the battlefield - capable of evading any strike levied towards him and so swift on his feet that even Tobirama could never keep pace. Despite his speed, however, he had lacked the actual hitting power to be a truly worthy foe. He was little more than a mosquito during combat for many years.
Until Junshi successfully abducted a revered Uzumaki elder, an accomplished kunoichi who he was said to have grown frighteningly obsessed with before her kidnapping.
With a Fuinjutsu master as his captive, he stole a skill with sealing ninjutsu that quickly made him one of the most dangerous contenders in the war. Through his obsession, he single-handedly brought the Hagoromo name to the level of the Uchiha, the Senju, the Uzumaki, and the Hyuga.
After a decade of honing his new jutsu, the only shinobi who was more skilled with Fuinjutsu than Junshi was the grandmaster of sealing ninjutsu herself, Mito Uzumaki.
Izuna had no doubt in Sakura's skills. He respected her as an extraordinary ninja and as an equal on the battlefield. Even so, his mind raced. Thoughts of her potential lack of knowledge regarding Junshi's battle style swirled in his head. He wondered if information about her skills was now common knowledge after her participation in the defense of Kiso or, at the very least, if that tactical advantage was something attainable by the Hagoromo patriarch.
A dread that could not be abated grew in his chest with every step he took towards the growing wildfire ahead.
Several tremors rocked the earth in rapid succession before an immense quake that outmatched any before it rattled the forest itself. There was a brief pause - an eerie stillness that lasted only a breath - before an explosion of chakra more powerful than anything he had ever felt detonated at the center of the village.
Within the span of half a heartbeat, the flash of the incomprehensibly enormous amount of chakra - a silent detonation that lit up his senses and left every cell in his body buzzing - disappeared. The power behind the explosion was so unimaginably vast that it's appearance - even though it only existed for half a moment - left a stain on his perception like when one looked too long at the sun.
The chakra was so tremendous that, for a second, Izuna feared that Junshi had done the impossible and somehow enslaved a legendary tailed beast to attack his family. With its immediate disappearance, however, he didn't understand what had happened.
When he realized that Sakura's chakra - a once near blinding spot against his perception - had also disappeared, his stomach dropped.
His instantaneous desperation allowed him to look passed the burn on his senses to the source beneath. Initially, Izuna was relieved to find a flicker of Sakura's chakra but the unusualness of it raised even more concerns. He was not as skilled a sensor as his brother or Tobirama but he could tell that something was different. Something was wrong.
What had Junshi done to Sakura?
Izuna's burning legs remained strong beneath him as they carried him closer and closer to his village, the warm light from the fires growing brighter and brighter through the canopy above.
Sakura's last words to him echoed in his mind as he ran, already activating his Mangekyo Sharingan.
"I refuse to allow anyone else I care about to get hurt."
He knew that she had made a promise that she intended to keep and the weight of that reality sat directly upon his heart. The cost of that vow was a source of ice cold dread that had him silently praying that when he saw Sakura next, it would be with her still on her feet.
When Izuna finally broke free of the tree line and into the clearing his village was built in, his breath caught in his chest at the sight of the destruction that greeted him.
The inferno was vast, easily encompassing a quarter of the village, and those who should have been fighting the fires were contending with invading Hagoromo shinobi. Thick smoke blanketed the streets, choking his senses as he navigated through the battlefield his home had become.
An entire neighborhood was simply collapsed, critically injured non-combatants being shepherded away by panicking scouts. The layers of dirt and ash that covered those being pulled from the rubble was only interrupted by streaks of crimson that shone in the light of the fires.
The stench of burning buildings and burning bodies was carried on the same wind as the acrid sting of the suffocating smokescreen. It was only because of Izuna's familiarity with the terrain and familiarity with battling during wildfires that he was able to continue largely unabated.
Just as he passed into the edge of the village, cutting through the collapsed buildings to avoid the fire, a scream echoed through the air. The screech was hardly even human, closer to a roar from a feral animal than any noise a person could make. Even so - even through the incomprehensible pain and blinding rage drowning out the humanity of its source - he could recognize Sakua's voice.
Izuna's heart skipped a beat at her scream but, when he felt a somehow familiar, terrifying power begin to grow from beneath their feet, his heart stopped.
He leapt backwards to dodge as a barren tree - a monster of a thing so unlike anything Hashirama had ever summoned before - erupted free from the earth. Great thorned branches shot out in all directions, screams of pure, physical agony filling the smokescreen as the branches found their victims.
His shock was only tempered by his white hot rage, his all encompassing fury rising at the realization that Hashirama had teamed up with the Hagoromo to massacre his family.
While Madara may have always been the one to challenge Hashirama during their battles, Izuna would not hesitate to strike down the leader of the Senju in the place of his brother. If it was to protect their family, he would not shy from the opportunity. His brother could suffer with the resentment of having the death of his rival taken from him. After all, Izuna would expect no less from Madara if he were faced with Tobirama in combat.
Unable to falter in his rush to Sakura's side, he ducked around the enormous tree, weaving through the branches which violently emerged from the ground all across the village. Aided by his Mangekyo Sharingan, he expertly maneuvered through the barren forest, but it was because of his Mangekyo that he spotted one of the jutsu's victims: a Hagoromo shinobi.
He watched, horrified, as the tree rent the man to shreds in jagged, jerking motions like a child tearing apart a flower. A deluge of blood and viscera rained down from it's barren canopy, drenching the ground at it's base with gore.
Izuna had fought a hundred battles on the same fields as Hashirama and he had never witnessed him take part in such excessive brutality. The violence behind it made even his war-leadened stomach twist in revulsion.
It was the fact a Hagoromo shinobi had been killed, however, that made him take pause before another scream from Sakura in the distance urged him forward and around the patches of crimson rain.
As he sprinted towards the center of the village, ducking between an alleyway to weave around a burning home, he encountered a group of Uchiha civilians, skittering backwards from a badly bloodied Hagoromo soldier. The enemy shinobi descended upon the Uchiha, his half-broken flail raised high, and Izuna drew his sword in the instantaneous motion of a trained swordsman.
Before his weapon could find it's mark, Izuna's kill was stolen by the merciless branches of a great tree which shot out from the smokescreen above them. It snatched up the man by the middle with such speed and power that he heard the muted crumple of breaking bones. The shinobi was dragged upwards into the smoke, his distant scream ending with a sickening sound he hoped to one day forget.
Alongside his revulsion and his fury grew a third emotion: absolute befuddlement. His confusion was so unignorable that he paused in his tracks, his mind pinwheeling over why Hashirama would be attacking Hagoromo shinobi and defending the rest of the Uchiha clan.
"Why won't you die!"
The pure bloodlust in Sakura's voice made a shiver go down Izuna's spine. He was more than familiar with the thirst for violence, that need for blood, but the animosity in the voice of his friend was nothing he had ever heard from her before. She sounded lost to madness, no desire in her tone but the want for the life of another.
What the fuck was happening?
After herding the civilian members of his family away from the tree and towards the relative safety of the path he had taken to get there, Izuna leapt onto the half collapsed roof of the building next to him, exposing himself to danger from any nearby foe but finally affording him a view of the battlefield ahead.
Broad patches of thorned branches were scattered across the village beside jagged, twisting trees that moved with none of the Senju's normal finesse. The deadly wood style jutsu snatched up Hagoromo invaders, injured and fleeing alike, and tore them apart in a display of raw, unrestrained violence. In all the thousands of battles he had witnessed over the years, little compared to the sheer horror of the massacre happening before his eyes.
Despite the trees creating bastions of safety for all the Uchiha he could see, their absolute terror and confusion rolled off of them in waves as gore rained down upon them and their homes.
When his gaze finally found the center of it all, the first thing he caught sight of was a visibly frightened Junshi. A branch was snared around his wrist, quickly snaking up his arm, before the Hagoromo swung down with his katana. He cried out in agony as he cleanly severed his own forearm before he immediately turned on his heel and fled.
Fear drowned out any bite to the threats Junshi spat out over his shoulder as he ran. Izuna heard none of it as his gaze followed the extending branch to the source of bloodshed at the heart of his home.
When his eyes fell upon Sakura, bruised and bloodied and broken as she teetered on her feet, she collapsed to her knees as if toppled by the weight of his gaze. Any urge Izuna would have felt to rush to her side was absent as he stared wide eyed, unable to understand - unable to accept - what he was seeing.
Sakura dropped her head to scream into the dirt, howling like a wild animal. His blood ran cold at the sound, her inhuman shriek echoing through the bloody forest of rapidly withering trees. When she began to drag herself towards the crumpled body of Hitomi in the distance, his shaky, chakra-burned legs finally buckled beneath him. He watched, detached, as she spent her last few moments of consciousness in a desperate gambit to bring back one of their closest companions.
'Who are you?' whispered through Izuna's mind - a thought so disconnected it felt as if it had come from someone else - as he watched Sakura collapse.
The sprint back to the village was a run reminiscent of the night Madara had first met Sakura. On the day he contracted her as a healer to cure Katsumi and Katsurou, they took this exact same pathway to return to Uchiha lands. He could almost envision her presence at his side - and the wraith-like presence of Kuro hidden in the canopy surrounding them - as he ran.
This time, however, instead of worrying about an extraordinary yet unusual kunoichi at his side, he worried for the cherished companion he shared a home with.
Even though he worried, he knew that Sakura and Izuna would protect their family. With them both in the village, they would work together to overwhelm Junshi and whatever fighting force he brought. The Hagoromo's speed and mastery of seals made him a deadly foe but, with Izuna's Mangekyo and Sakura's seal, they would inevitably be able to corner and defeat him.
Junshi knew that the Uchiha clan was spread thin, over a quarter of their shinobi scattered across the country conducting missions or stationed at Sora-ku as the standing army of their newest and most valuable ally. He also knew that he still couldn't fight both him, Izuna, and Sakura all at once so he had massacred an entire family of innocent civilians just for the chance to succeed in an invasion.
He thought that he had an advantage but the Hagoromo leader had no concept of how powerful a shinobi Sakura was. He was severely underestimating both her and his brother if he believed he would succeed in this assault. More than that, his only advantage had been stolen from him by the dying act of the leader of the family he had wiped out.
Despite how uncertain Junshi's plan was, his confidence in attempting it concerned Madara. If he was confident enough to attack the village, even with both Izuna and Sakura remaining as it's defenders, he had some kind of plan. He was an obsessive and unstable man but he was also cautious and calculating. He would do anything in the pursuit of his current fixation but he wouldn't sacrifice the lives of his clan for anything less than victory.
As he continued in his sprint, the urgent pang of instinct nagged at him, bringing his attention back to what worried him most: his brother's absence on the battlefield.
Where was Izuna?
When Madara finally broke through the treeline at the edge of his home, he was horrified by the sight that greeted him. Scattered parts of the village still burned brightly, the tar black smoke slowly fading to white as the firefighters of the clan combated the remaining blaze. The rest of his home was blackened and smoldering, dying embers still flickering in the remains of what appeared to have been a wildfire. Light gray smoke rose from the still smouldering ruins of their homes, the air acrid with the sharp scent of a house fire. People covered with dirt, ash, and blood picked through the rubble, pulling out bodies and salvaging what they could.
The shocking sight of wood style jutsu jutting from his village like looming monoliths revealed to him what Junshi had done, the source of his confidence: he had somehow allied with Hashirama. He hadn't sensed the Senju leader on the battlefield earlier but there was no mistaking wood style jutsu.
While Madara would never admit it aloud, he still respected his childhood friend. Even though they still fought in the endless war between their clans, they had both banded together and silently removed the children from the battlefields. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he still distantly wondered if their shared dream could become a reality.
After learning how Sakura's old village had attained the peace they sought and after her theory that they could form an alliance and rise above the whims of the lords, he had found himself thinking about it much more often.
Seeing evidence of how he had lured both him and his brother out of the village to lay siege on the most vulnerable members of his clan filled him with a revulsion so deep his gloves creaked around his curled fists.
As he drew closer to the wreckage of his home, however, his repulsion made way for confusion.
Madara could recognize Hashirama's wood style jutsu anywhere. The familiar oaks that he morphed into instruments of war were unmistakable. These barren trees scattered throughout his village were jagged, wild things, more weapon than nature and more chaos than control.
More than that, Hashirama had never been the cause of so much bloodshed. The sheer level of violence that had taken place in his home made his stomach roll. The monoliths were soaked in human remains, gore dripping from their bare branches in thick, messy droplets and joining sheets of blood so thick it shone black in the light of the dying fires. His eyes narrowed at the flesh and viscera caught in their barren boughs, the remainder of the mangled bodies piled at the roots in heaps that made his home reek like a slaughterhouse.
He had thought that the massacre at the Nakano holdings had been atrocious but it did nothing to touch upon the sheer level of brutality that surrounded him now. At least most of the Nakano could be buried.
This couldn't have been Hashirama but what else could it be besides Hashirama's jutsu? There were no other wood style users in existence and there was no conceivable way that such a powerful Senju could simply appear from thin air. Had Hashirama learned to spawn trees such as these as he developed his technique? Even if he could, why would his attacks suddenly be so graceless and animalistic? More pressing, why would he ever make an alliance with the Hagoromo?
As Madara ran into the village and towards the heart of the destruction, his gaze snapping over the tattered corpses piled beneath the withered trees, he was faced with the most important question of all: why was it that only the Hagoromo were among those torn asunder?
Finally, he stopped near a tree in the center of the village, this one towering high above the others and especially twisted by the fury of its creator. Despite being the largest of the scattered jutsu, it remained free of blood save for a severed hand ensnared in a desperately reaching branch.
None of this was right…
Madara was so distracted by that thought, by the sheer wrongness and nonsensical nature of everything surrounding him, that it took him a moment to tear his gaze away from the tree and turn to regard his brother as he approached. Even with his confusion and his anger, nothing could diminish the wave of absolute relief he felt to see his brother was mostly unharmed.
"What happened?"
"We were ambushed by the Hagoromo. Nineteen people were killed and the number will only grow as we pull more bodies from the rubble," Izuna began, a deep scowl marring his normally aloof expression, "We've set up a camp at the north of the village as we gather whatever surviving supplies we can for our relocation. It's only a matter of time before the other clans send out squads to investigate the smoke and locate us and we're too weakened to fight again so soon."
"How did they get this far?" Madara pressed.
"It was that psychopath Junshi," Izuna spat, his fury and something else rolling off of him in waves, "He lured me out of the village before rushing in and using some sort of mass summoning jutsu to bring his army. We were caught completely by surprise."
"Where is Sakura?" he asked, desperately hoping that she was simply tending to the injured as she normally did following the aftermath of a battle.
"She fought Junshi," he hissed, his growing anger adding to the weight sitting on Madara's stalling heart, "He did something to her, used some kind of technique that destroyed her seal. The release of that much power…"
"Is she… alive?" Madara questioned in a voice far stronger than he felt in that moment.
"She was injured during the battle but she lives."
"Thank the gods," he breathed out, the crushing weight lifting from his chest and finally allowing his heart to beat once again. "Where is she?"
"She is unconscious in one of the still standing buildings at the south end of the village. I have Katsurou and Katsumi keeping her under guard," he explained, his anger still staining his voice.
"Under guard?" he parroted, eyebrows furrowing, "What are you talking about, why is she under guard?"
"Do you see all of this? All of this carnage? All those dead Hagoromo?" Izuna growled in return, gesturing broadly to the monstrous tree before them, "This was Sakura."
"That's… not possible," Madara denied even as his stomach bottomed out.
"I saw her when I was fighting Junshi! This was all her!" he snarled in response, "She's a Senju. Sakura is a fucking Senju!"
Even though his heart and his thoughts raced, Madara could think of nothing to say but that he had to be wrong. He couldn't believe this. He wouldn't, it was impossible that she was a Senju. She was Sakura. She was from the Haruno family. Her village was destroyed and she fled into the fire country looking for a better life.
If Sakura had wood style, if she was a Senju, that meant-
"She's been lying to us this whole time! And we were so stupid we believed her!" Izuna howled, the reason for his fury filling Madara with dread.
"There must be another explanation," he tried to argue, desperate for some other reason Sakura why would have Hashirama's jutsu.
"It only makes sense," he growled as he began to pace like a caged animal, "That's why her attacks didn't kill Tobirama or Toka, she was holding back to protect her clan mates. That must have been why Hashirama retreated in the last battle when he saw her, he couldn't risk her getting caught!"
"What if everything was a lie? What if her fight against the Senju at the Nakano's holdings was a farce? A set up so we'd trust her?" Izuna wildly theorized, betrayal hidden in his voice behind his anger, "Was she a spy this whole time? The Senju's pet project, turning the only other wood style user into a weapon specifically for us? Did we only get lucky because Junshi flushed her out in his attack?"
Izuna finally paused in his pacing although his hands remained tightly curled fists at his sides, his body shaking under the weight of his anger. There was a long moment where he was silent, before his expression unwillingly twisted from rage into hurt. He dropped his face in his hands, raking his fingers through his bangs as his shoulders slumped.
Madara tried to think of something, anything, to argue that Sakura wasn't a Senju. Anything that could explain why she had wood style, anything to convince Izuna. More than anything, he wanted something to convince himself, but he could think of nothing but how he didn't wish for it to be true.
"Gods," Izuna muttered, quiet enough so only his brother could hear the grief and pain in his voice, "I thought she was our friend." Quickly wiping the corner of his eye, he whispered, "...what are we going to do?"
Looking away from his brother, he instead turned to stare up at the jagged branches of Sakura's tree, feeling as if the ground had fallen away beneath him.
A/N: I really wanted to shed some light on how brutal Sakura's attack was when I addressed the battle from Madara and Izuna's POVs. I was inspired by the scene where Obito witnesses Rin's death and goes on a rampage, I feel like that energy would be reflected in Sakura's wood style following her incapacitation and Hitomi's murder. Speaking of Hitomi, I was genuinely surprised by how many people were broken up about her death and how many people were hoping Sakura was successful in her final gambit. I'm really pleased you guys enjoy my OCs so much! (also sorry? Haha)
This chapter touched a little bit upon Junshi's story but I'll be going more into depth later on. A lot of people were confused by what they perceived as a random OP villain showing up for no reason but I assure you he is just one of many powerful shinobi during this era. Madara and Hashirama are in a class of their own, naturally, but there are many different shinobi during this time who are in the same class as Izuna, Tobirama, and Sakura. Shinobi such as Toka, Mito, Junshi, the matriarchs of the Hyuga clan, and a handful of others.
The problem with Junshi specifically is that his strengths (extreme speed, mastery of seals) play directly on Sakura's weaknesses (mid range speed, no ranged/area effect attacks, use of a seal for chakra supply). Junshi would never try to fight the Uchiha clan at full strength but with the family spread so thin, he was able to lure both Madara and Izuna out of the village so he could try to eliminate the Uchiha as a threat in the war. Not to say anything about his strange obsession with Sakura and his mysterious plans to win the war… Something we'll return to later.
Chiasa, the name of the Uchiha huntress turned soldier, means "one thousand mornings". People seem to always go out before dawn to hunt and the fact Chiasa is named one thousand mornings is a reflection of her skills as a tracker. Takumi, the name of the Uchiha teen who managed to copy some Inuzuka clan jutsu, can mean "artisan" or "skillful". I named him such because he was skillful enough to manage to copy some Inuzuka clan jutsu.
For those just interested in my update schedule, there is none whatsoever. I work, I'm going to school, and writing is just one of many hobbies. For those wondering if I'm giving up writing this story, I will never abandon Homeward! If you're interested in additional content, be sure to check out my Tumblr Astroavis. It's there that I post updates regarding new chapters, sneak peeks, and WIPs. I also have some bonus scenes posted, I share all the wonderful fanart of my fanfiction, and I (try to) answer asks about my stories!