Cold

Yoisen is lying under him and her blood is soaking his hands.

Already, she is growing cold.

With her last shuddering breath, she presses something into his grasp, something he hadn't mustered the strength to summon himself.

No, not the ornate sword Agehachō-Yosei had glimpsed with mocking detachment. That's of no use now. It's a token she entrusted him with, certainly, but the urgent matter is something else, clenched in his fist:

A blood-soaked rope.

Her barriers, incomplete as they are, still hold, even in death. Or is it that death made them stronger?

Agehachō-Yosei is talking, gloating, perhaps. But its words, Naruto can't hear.

His heart knows anger; his mind, a path of confrontation so fraught with peril.

But then again, he's lost a bond, both old and young, fragile yet strong.

But then again, the others are far, far away… and he sees no alternative path.

None where they may live.

Besides, she paved the way for him. So he takes a chance.

Naruto stands up slowly and the fury turns cold.


THE LIGHTNING TREE

"Shall we move on to the next?" Agehachō-Yosei asked, entirely nonchalant.

"The sequence of their demise is of no consequence. Once you bow to change, I'll resurrect them — provided you don't wear my patience thin. You may choose who falls first."

Naruto moved, a blur of motion, halting just outside the kami's immediate, most dangerous reach. Agehachō-Yosei sighed, clearly unimpressed.

"Yes, yes." It said. "You may run away further if you want. As long as you bear my mark, you are as conspicuous as a beacon to me."

A wild look gleamed in Naruto's eyes. "Your mark?" He repeated, his voice hoarse.

The kami chuckled. "Oh, my. Did I break you, by any chance…?"

"The carving, you say?" Naruto's voice rang out, a new fortitude in its timbre. "Now seems like the perfect time." He spat, and his right hand, alight with azure lightning, hovered over his heart. "Your gift? Unneeded. In fact…"

A flicker of curiosity crossed Agehachō-Yosei's ancient eyes.

"…I return it to you!" Naruto stated.

He drove his glowing hand into his own chest.

Agony wracked him, a tempest of pain that might have felled another man. He endured, his teeth grinding. Raw chakra flowed from the lightning spark in his hand…

And into him, through his spine.

On his other side, the seal that had linked him with Agehachō-Yosei, Chōho, reacted immediately.

The link went both ways, of course.

As humans tapped into a kami's essence, becoming yōkai with too much celestial energy, so too did kami draw from them.

This wouldn't do, especially now.

Naruto's carving flared bright blue, igniting as if caught in celestial… no. Human fire. An intense burst of energy exploded from the seal, warping the environment around him and straining his resolve.

Testing his will.

Accepting a kami's gift was hard enough; refusing it was worse.

But he had grown powerful enough. He had to believe it.

Yoisen did.

"I am not your vessel!" Naruto roared into the storm of energy.

A rush of noise. And then there was silence. Naruto went down on one knee.

The rune from years ago faded.

The link to the kami was severed.

Agehachō-Yosei expressed true surprise for a fleeting moment. It was soon replaced by the same mocking indifference.

"Was there any need for this? I shall find you wherever you go." It asked. "Besides…" A pause filled with cosmic profundity, an eternity captured in a moment's breath. "Am I not here already?"

Naruto narrowly escaped the ensuing wave of energy, rolling to his feet.

"…It was necessary. Did you think me so foolish?" Naruto rasped out. "Did you kami think I would never notice that for every touch of power I took from you, for every miserable boon… you leeched from me as well?"

"It is a balanced transaction." Agehachō-Yosei noted, watching Naruto with an irked amusement.

Or it had been balanced, before the kami decided to stop holding up their end of the bargain.

"So you had the power to remove the carving… and yet, you chose to retain it until this moment?" Its voice dripped with sarcasm. "Had I not the wisdom of the cosmos, I might believe you had masterminded this entire affair."

Such audacity. That a human had dared to beg for its power in the first place, that he had chosen to reject it… And that he had managed.

"So. When did you realize?" The kami probed, genuinely intrigued now.

"When I fought your pets." Naruto said. Fūjin-Yami and Raijin-Kaminari.

It had been a mere hunch, as likely to betray him as aid him. And it had taken a lot for him not to do something like this right after.

Naruto flexed his fingers.

"Once I figured it out, it was like a switch had been flipped inside my brain. I couldn't ignore it anymore. Your so-called 'boons' were leaving a cold touch within me… and leeching away at my own power. Helping you manifest, likely."

The cold touch; the growing presence of the blights; intertwining with his rise to power.

"To merely notice it is mundane, hardly worth mention. But to break it…?" Agehachō-Yosei swiftly reined in its surprise, its grin remaining intact. "That is a first. Quite extraordinary."

Naruto's scoff sliced through the tension.

"I've severed our little pact." He declared, drawing closer, eyes mapping the dangerous terrain where the kami's power pulsed.

Agehachō-Yosei's shadow was rising to its full height, and the kami was barely holding back laughter. "If you think this alters anything, you're tragically, deliciously mistaken."

"Oh, but it does." Naruto's smile was a shadow, a dark harbinger. "I've kept another surprise for you."

"Oh. Truly?" The kami responded, its voice laced with feigned curiosity. "I have always dearly enjoyed them. Do enlighten me."

"Drop the pretense." Naruto snapped. "You've confirmed our suspicions already."

Agehachō-Yosei's eyes were fixed on his; amused, curious.

"You can play at omnipotence, but you're not invincible. Nor all-knowing." Naruto's voice rang with certainty. "You merely speculate on our thoughts, masking your ignorance."

"Are you absolutely certain of this, mortal…?" The kami's voice took on a musing tone.

"I am."

Chakra swirled and converged around Naruto, his silhouette pulsating with its radiant energy; a whirlpool at first. Branching out from him in wild arcs, it left streaks through the air, patterns reminiscent of a tree sculpted from pure white light.

"I knew you had the capability to eavesdrop on us, even though I did not understand the means." Naruto continued, fury rising. "On our Council meetings. They made for an enticing bait, didn't they?"

"Hardly." Agehachō-Yosei retorted dismissively, a hint of cold creeping into its voice. "For bait to be useful, it must lure something worthwhile."

With a grim smile, Naruto answered. "Indeed. And speaking of… I do have one good bait. One that you've been scattering carelessly."

Agehachō-Yosei lifted an eyebrow.

Naruto finished. "…And the mightiest of catches."

He joined his hands together, as though it were a prayer.

His heartbeat thundered in his ears, a mix of fear and anticipation knotting in his gut. This was a dangerous gamble, one that could very well end his life.

But most importantly, the remaining humans on Earth, too.

Hope rested on Orochimaru's ability to evacuate the people and Yoisen's imperfect barriers.

But then again, wishes were rarely granted—

Naruto closed his eyes and pushed the doubt, the fear away. He wasn't that same young man anymore. And… He wasn't Indra either.

He had learned.

He had.

This wasn't a weight he needed to shoulder on his own.

The weight of past failures was an anchor that threatened to sink him in this coming tempest. So he cast it away.

Time to make a wish come true.

Agehachō-Yosei stopped for an instant. "A prayer?" It asked, dark laughter bubbling. "You have finally lost all sanity, then."

The world fell into a hushed quiet again.

"Insane or not… It hardly matters to me. Neither this nor your art from before will suffice." The kami sighed. "Your child, then."

Chakra flared.

Agehachō-Yosei shook its honored head dismissively.

Uzumaki Naruto remained stubborn, this insignificant mortal.

The celestial being steadied itself, poised to soar into the boundless expanse of the cosmos in search of the mortal's offspring. Such a journey, even for a being of its stature, would demand time and deliberation.

And then it paused.

It was the sight of a small, bloodied piece of sacred rope in Naruto's left hand that arrested its attention.

Swiftly, the pieces connected in the kami's expansive mind.

The display of his chakra strength, the residual cosmic energy, the mortal's connection with the kami - they all suggested a multitude of possibilities.

All of them, related to the divine.

But all were shrouded in ambiguity, tangled in celestial enigma, offering no clarity.

None that made sense.

None.

For the first time, Agehachō-Yosei found itself truly probing the mortal's motives, a new sensation in the grand cosmic dance.

Was he launching an attack…? Luring Agehachō-Yosei to strike him…? Summoning divine power through limited, mortal means? Hoping to invoke a minor kami's blessing, easily disregarded by Agehachō-Yosei?

The deity found the self-questioning distasteful.

However, in the grand cosmic dance, this mattered little.

The mortal was elusive, and catching him had proven rather difficult before:

The deity observed with intrigued amusement as the mortal embarked on his seemingly desperate final stand.

The Jūbi chakra surged, a cascade of energy drawn from Uzumaki Naruto's innermost well of power; nearly all he had left was summoned and then expended in an instant, vanishing into an unseen realm.

The mortal's hair returned to its original golden hue. his lips parted—

Agehachō-Yosei steeled itself for a myriad of scenarios — another futile technique or artifact, a desperate cry, a wrathful roar.

Something else emerged from Uzumaki Naruto's throat.

A sound, potent enough to resonate through the boundless cosmos, vibrated.

It was an unorthodox note, a phoneme that the mortal should not have been privy to. Could not have been privy to.

It was the one sound that could make Agehachō-Yosei freeze in its tracks.

Not because it held any sort of power, any sort of dominion over the kami, however. Nothing did, beside the Oath.

No. But because it was the harbinger of the most terrible of storms.

A Name.

The True Name of the precursor to calamity, striking man and kami indiscriminately, wielding terror over both.

Tethered to this terrible sound, trailing in its echoing wake, came not merely a storm, but the ominous herald of doom. Anchored to the mortal realm not by the sacrifice of the soul, but by the finite power of the Jūbi chakra.

And Agehachō-Yosei, a being of supreme confidence, was seized by genuine fear.

It recognized this language; it was its own.

The meaning of these words, as they struck it with an icy chill, Agehachō-Yosei knew all too well:

"That Which Breaks Waves."