We're getting close to the end :)
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THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!
Note: this happens a second before the end of the last chapter.
CHAPTER 29
Naruto stood over Madara's singed form as the Uchiha's Susanno ribcage disintegrated, looking up at the bright night sky as the Nine-Tails towered over Whirlpool Country, clasping Rin's light bubble in both hands and holding her to earth.
In his evolved eyes, the world moved at a sluggish pace.
Naruto's ghost clones dispersed.
The Hokage didn't notice the wood clone Madara had replaced himself with at the last possible moment before the explosion that had been lying on the ground disintegrated into ash.
He looked directly at the ball of blinding yellow light. He couldn't peer through to see his sister's face. All he could hear were her frenzied and panicked thoughts heating the back of his mind, and he consoled her to hold on for just a second longer.
One second longer.
I'm right there, he promised her, and for a nanosecond, the panic stopped with an abrupt eeriness and her normal warmth permeated from his thoughts throughout his body. A small smile lifted the corner of the stoic Hokage's lips and he stepped away from Madara, vibrating his body and expelling red mist from his pores; a pair of thin, leathery red ethereal wings cracked from his back, made entirely from his chakra and both folded on top of themselves, facing downwards similar to the praying mantises he was infamous for summoning. He didn't like flying, preferring to stay close to the earth as much as possible, but it wasn't the first time he was going to break his self-imposed rule for his sister. One full second still hadn't passed after his transformation. Naruto reassured her again, reaching his mind for hers and holding her, I'm right there.
One second longer.
The wings hummed, flapping up so quickly that they were a noisy blur of red and black. He bent down in a ready position to take off into the sky and shot up, only for one of Madara's wood clones to tackle his middle back to the ground.
Naruto repeatedly jammed his elbow into the clone's nose and another wood clone grabbed the arm before he could strike again, pinning it to the ground. Naruto didn't hear the animalistic bellow ripping from his throat as he struggled, pulsing his chakra with enough power to tear the clones off him. Still, more clones clambered out of the woodwork, tackling him back to the ground and pinning him in place, bashing his face and chest with punches and kicks, trying to keep down the wild and uncoordinated flailing of Naruto's arms and legs, hitting him with reckless abandon.
Dozens more clones joined the mob, stomping on the Hokage and driving punches to whatever body part they could see or pin down.
The deafening hum of Naruto's wings never stopped and his feral snapping continued, despite his black eyes, his chipped teeth, his broken ribs, his fractured legs, his dislocated right shoulder, and his overall bloodied face and body.
He had to get to his sister.
He had to help Rin.
Five seconds had passed, and Rin's chakra and strength left her.
The light in the sky that had dazzlingly illuminated all of Whirlpool blipped off and the Kyuubi slammed its palms together. Naruto stopped. The Madara clones' attacks didn't, but the boy never once reacted to them or his gruesome injuries.
There was a prolonged silence that followed after Rin was violently swung back to the earth, and a quick wince crossed Naruto's expressionless face when his sister impacted the earth, reverberating up his spine and ending in his brain.
In the section of mental space he shared with his sister he heard nothing.
He felt nothing.
Even when she was sleeping, clinging to him as if he was going to somehow disappear from her embrace, and pressing her face into his chest, he felt a steady pulse of her presence, quietly and subtly thumping warmth and light that washed over his mind like the rays of the sun during an eternal sunrise that cast away the blanket of depressing blackness that poisoned his brain.
If she were awake and beaming at him with a cheery look, for whatever reason, he felt the yammering pace of her heart and the heat of her cheeks as she threaded their fingers together, strolling to who-knows-where and doing who-knows-what.
Always, since the death of their mother and since Naruto had gotten his eyes, Rin's presence in his mind pushed away the fog of darkness that enveloped his mind. Rin was the girl that kept his sanity together when the memories of the Kyuubi attack and the strain of the sharingan wanted to tear his mind to shreds. Rin was the glue that fixed Naruto and his father's relationship and opened Naruto's eyes to the wonderful existence of their baby sister.
Even as she was going through as hard a time as he was, she made sure not to let her twin fester in his thoughts, spreading light and joy in his mind constantly.
"R-Rin," he whispered tearfully, unfeeling of his many injuries and the crowd of Madara wood clones battering his body with blows. "R-Rin, I…I can't feel you…"
The Madara clones stopped and half-stepped away, looming over the mangled mess of blood, broken bones, and tattered clothes that were Konoha's Fifth Hokage.
One of them spoke, snorting with a dismissive look in his spiralling red eyes, "Like I said, pathetic."
Darkness took over Naruto's mind and his sharingan bled. He uttered a forbidden jutsu linked to his praying mantis summons that he had sworn to his father never to use in any circumstance.
"Summoning jutsu: Horseman of Pestilence."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Mikoto hurled the Otsutsuki Rasengan at Nagato; one of the clones transformed into a kunai and Mikoto launched that kunai-henge after the violently spiralling Rasengan. Nagato brought his hands forward and channelled the preta path, activating a chakra barrier, only for the Rasengan to cut through the shield like butter, paving the way for the kunai-henge.
He couldn't absorb Otsutuski chakra.
Nagato only had enough time to widen his eyes, seeing Mikoto's fierce grin, and whipping his body away from the Rasengan and the ninja blade. The kunai-henge dispelled and the clone wound around, catching the Rasengan in both of her hands and slamming it back at Nagato.
The real Mikoto rushed to the front edge of the battle fan and jumped off, catching Nagato between her claymore and the Rasengan, cutting into his left forearm and grinding the chakra sphere into his right hand.
"Almighty—"
Mikoto's eyes bugged wide in recognition of the jutsu Ao had used on her when they encountered weeks ago, and she acted fast; she planted her knee into Nagato's stomach and pushed off him, catching Temari's offered hand as she zipped by on her fan before she could plummet to the earth. He was still struggling against the Rasengan. It seared away his right hand, refusing to be absorbed or discarded.
"Grandpa Hamura hates you, jackass!" the girl called and jolted Temari to the right, dodging a rippling universal pull from the irate man, finding that his entire right arm was gone and the Rasengan was grinding away at the fabric of his reincarnated body; it was going faster than his body could regenerate it. The girl's smirk dropped when the dull, yet irritated man, materialised a sharp, metal tail and cut off the right side of his torso, propelling it to the ground with a wordless almighty push. His right side had already begun regenerating. "Damn it, I thought that'd work."
"What now?" Temari asked, swiping her fans at the man when he blasted to them, summoning hurricanes that were nonchalantly pushed aside by a widespread almighty push. "These undead people can't be killed and they don't get tired!"
Mikoto recalled so from observing the few seconds of Temari and Kankuro's fight with Deidara. Mikoto sheathed her sword, flicking through hand seals. "Fire Release: Great fireball jutsu!"
She exhaled a stream of fire from her lips that grew to eclipse Nagato once it reached him, and when he narrowly swerved away from it, Temari waved her fans, summoning wind to swell up the heat and size of the fireball and also to force Nagato against it, pushing hard on his control of gravity.
Nagato's answer was to annoyingly disperse the ball of fire by absorbing the chakra.
"We need to get him far away from Konoha so I can get to Whirlpool Country," Mikoto exclaimed, jerking Temari and the fan up and away from another grasping reach of Nagato's universal pull; the extra-sensory perks she received from being cloaked in a balance of her, Kyuubi's, and Otsutsuki chakra gave her a field of awareness several miles long, but she also knew that she needed many more years of training to fully unlock other abilities this cloak, and its other forms, could provide. She shook her head, chastising herself by thinking, not now.
Mikoto's eyes widened and she forced Temari down, also bending down when Nagato flickered onto the fan and swiped at them with his metal tail. Mikoto pushed Temari behind her and fixed her feet to the fan with chakra. The Suna girl fought to regain control as the fan spiralled uncontrollably.
Mikoto brought her forearms together and blocked a slice from the sharp metal tail, surprising both herself and Nagato when the cloak of chakra on Mikoto withstood the sharp tail, and her enhanced strength kept her steady.
She followed through, diverting the tail to her left and sending a hard back fist with her right hand, slamming the man's chin with her knuckles, driving a right hook into his cheek and leaning back from a stab at her face from the tail, grabbing it and pulling with all her might, running her right fist into Nagato's gut but getting it caught instead.
She looked at her captured fist, then at the Rinnegan man's furious stare. She cursed. "Shit."
"Almighty—"
A pair of clones leapt on him, knocking him, the clones, and Mikoto off the battle fan.
Mikoto caught the man in a chokehold and the clones gripped Nagato's shoulders for dear life, and all three harshly cursed when they heard a deafening hum in the distance. It was the sound of millions of metal-winged insects swarming and feasting indiscriminately.
"We're doing this now!" Mikoto declared and her clones nodded in agreement. Acting quickly, she took out two kunai from her weapon holster and plunged them deep into Nagato's eyes, scraping at the back of his skull.
The man's roar was indescribable, like the sound of an injured god.
They began falling from the sky.
Mikoto wasn't done.
"One more time," she urged her clones, using her right hand to keep a kunai wedged in Nagato's eye and the other she held out before his face. The clones hoisted themselves up the wailing man, tangling their legs and pinning Nagato's arms to his body, helping the girl mould and shape the growing chakra on her palm; this time it was Otsutsuki and Kyuubi chakra. The girl bared her teeth and concentrated on simply separating her chakra from the Kyuubi and Otsutsuki chakra, pushing it out of the pores of her hands for her clones to shape into a stable sphere; it whistled noisily, coloured glittering white with tinges of black and red slithering about its core, unstable. A stable Otsutsuki chakra shell with a chaotic Kyuubi chakra core, growing to the size of Nagato's head. "That's it!"
Mikoto pushed her chest forward and brought her Rasengan-holding hand back at the same time, forcing Nagato's face into the screaming sphere of chakra.
The effect was worse and faster than the Otsutsuki chakra Mikoto had used before, wearing down Nagato's face down from the skin, muscle, and bone without the slightest resistance, plunging into his head, where Mikoto stopped pushing as the sphere remained inside Nagato's head. She untangled herself from the man, realising that she was less than a yard from crashing to the ground, and jumped.
Temari swept in and Mikoto grabbed the edge of the battle fan, glancing back to the earth-shaking boom as Nagato collided with the hard ground.
She released the breath she didn't know she was holding, heaving herself back onto the soaring fan as it raced to Whirlpool Country and slumped on her back, looking at the starless sky. She covered her eyes with the crook of her elbow, ragged but still shrouded in her balanced chakra cloak.
"You're insane." Temari flicked her eyes down at the panting girl, shaking her head incredulously. "You're insane."
Mikoto laughed.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
A cloud of droning, thrumming blackness steadily stretched out from Whirlpool, traversing the water with little issue. On closer observation, the cloud of blackness was praying mantises with golden eyes and golden, metallic wings that vibrated as they flew, scratching against themselves to make that deafening hum.
From a few hundred pouring out from the forests of Whirlpool, gnawing away at the grass and sucking out the life of the island nation, they multiplied to thousands, swarming whoever their golden eyes detected without regard for ally or foe, massacring them and consuming them to the bone, and from thousands came millions of apocalyptic praying mantises. Their razor-sharp teeth and claws cut through surfaces without fail, scratching and scrambling with the frenzy of a maddened tailed beast.
Not only did they absorb the life in the air, they greedily and savagely inhaled the chakra in the very nature of the world.
Wherever they flew, the world turned grey and lifeless, desolate of any sort of life. Some went into the water, and from that a blur of thousands dipped under the waves, changing the colour of the water from its normal blue shade to the red tint of aquatic lifeblood and gore, to a lifeless hue of grey.
The cloud of praying mantises stretched further and multiplied, making its way toward the continent.
Mikoto shrouded herself, Temari, and the battle fan against the onslaught of the mantises with a balance of the three chakra types in her body, and despite that the ravenous creatures sawed through in minutes, prompting the girl to continuously push away the barrier and reform it again, repeating this cycle over and over as they pushed headlong into the cloud of blackness, until they burst out onto Whirlpool's formerly white beach, now grey and bleak.
The hundreds of mantises still flapping in the air, searching for any morsel of chakra or flesh to eat, swarmed down on Itachi's Susanno.
Inside the Susanno, the Konoha ninjas were congested, squeezed in as much as they could as the Uchiha dared not drop his sharingan manifestation. Sweat poured down Itachi's face and he bared his teeth, holding his arms up and to the sides. Remarkably, the teeth and claws of the mantises couldn't easily bite through the ribcage.
Many loose bones littered the beach, some still being gnawed on by the insatiable mantises.
On reaching the beach, most of the mantises wailed to Mikoto and Temari, only to be propelled away by the wave of chakra exuding from the Kyuubi holder's body. She pointed to him and Temari turned the fan to hurtle to them as Mikoto flickered her hands through some seals, showering the Susanno with healing and revitalising chakra.
A visible rush of relief passed through the dozens of Konoha ninjas crammed inside the ribcage, roughly over two hundred by Mikoto's quick assumption. It was breathlessly congested, with the injured pushed up and held over the heads of those who weren't injured.
Mikoto's chakra took effect immediately; the Susanno expanded dramatically, giving some breathing room to the surviving shinobi, and the pain in Itachi's expression lessened. Those who were grievously and fatally wounded found their injuries healed, and except for the restoration of limbs, any other injury from the battle sealed up neatly.
The attack of the praying mantises continued, pressing down harder on Mikoto when they saw that she was the abundant source of chakra.
"Get to Naruto!" Itachi yelled, pointing further into the grey island. "Something happened to Rin; she might be—!" he held back from finishing his sentence, pain returning to his face, but this time it wasn't from exertion; his head dipped and he shook his head, trying to discard the thought from his mind, telling Mikoto, "No sight of Yagura escaping. He might still be in there, but not likely alive."
"I'm not worried about him," Mikoto answered, urging Temari to set the fan down and ushering her to the Susanno as they stepped off, and at the same time releasing a massive blast of chakra from her body to repel the mantises. Itachi took this as his cue to snatch the Suna girl into the protection of his Susanno, opening the ribcage and manifesting a skeletal arm to sweep her inside with her battle fan, dispelling the arm and closing the ribcage. "I need you to stay here until I get back." The mantises madly came back down on Mikoto but the shell of chakra covering her continuously replenished itself, sealing even the largest cracks as soon as they formed. The fiery red chakra shrouding the Susanno flared as bright as Mikoto's chakra cloak, and she gave her older Uchiha cousin a thumbs up. "Wish me luck."
The girl took out the bark of Obito's god tree and grasped it in her right hand, still not sure what to do with it when she got to her brother; she had been running on autopilot, trusting Hamura Otsutsuki's guidance.
She wound around and sprinted headfirst into the thick fog of enraged praying mantises, pushing through the cloud of darkness and entering the forest, resembling a single flame zigzagging inside the void of blackness.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The millions of mantises ebbed over the water, spreading far and wide in a cloud of devastation, killing whatever animal and plant life they encountered on the water. Their progress was steady and ruthless, sapping life and colour from the very ecosystem.
Konoha's ships pushed their engines to escape the swarm.
The apocalyptic insects were a handful of miles from the shores of the continent, and Konoha's southern border.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Water Country
KG Research Institute
Finding Kabuto wasn't hard, killing him was another issue; a slit throat wasn't enough and a kunai to the heart was pointless.
The medic could run all he wanted, but Shisui caught him and dragged him into one of the facility's staff restrooms. He ignored Kabuto's slurring pleas, speaking through a broken jaw and a cut tongue, both injuries which were currently healing.
"I'll cancel the reincarnation jutsu," Kabuto begged, his jaw healed but his burst right eye was taking longer. He was slumped against a urinal, sitting on a puddle of his urine and water from a clogged toilet in one of the bathroom stalls. A kunai was firmly lodged in his joints, preventing them from healing or moving at all. He winced and turned his face away from the masked man as Crow's Feet whipped his head to him, narrowing his one good eye, then going back to what he was doing. "I'm more of use alive. Believe me."
Crow's Feet filled a sink with water and plugged the drain.
"What…what are you doing?"
Crow's Feet didn't answer, walking to Kabuto and grabbing him by his silver hair. Then the Uchiha mercilessly pushed Kabuto's head into the water, holding him there despite the medic's futile thrashing.
Amidst his gasps in desperation, Kabuto lost focus on the largescale reincarnation jutsu, releasing it.
Shisui kept drowning Kabuto for ten more minutes.
As Kabuto's eyes rolled to the back of his head and Shisui let go of his hair, letting the man slump back and fall on his back on the dirty restroom floor, Konoha shinobi back in Fire Country jubilated as the undead shinobi battering their defences disintegrated into ash and chakra.
Crow's Feet sniffed, somewhat disappointed. "Still not dead, huh." He cracked a punch into Kabuto's temple when the man was about to jerk back awake, knocking him back unconscious. He recalled his charred face from Mei's lava attack and his disfigured body from the same traitorous attack, and he shook his head enviously at the boy who refused to die. "Lucky bastard."
Then Konoha's finest spy reconsidered his compliment.
When the war ended, and all of Kiri's allies—Iwa and Kumo—were subdued, Kabuto and several people would be put on trial for crimes against humanity for what they did in Kiri, and maybe a few war crimes for using the forbidden reincarnation technique.
The meagre imprisonment Kabuto had previously been convicted of in Konoha, that he was jailbroken by Chojuro and the Needle sword holder, would look like a child's timeout in comparison to the hell the convicted were going to be put through.
Crow's Feet already had all the names and evidence he needed, and aside from that, the KG Institute was a treasure trove of crimes.
He decided not to kill Kabuto.
"You're not getting the easy way out," Shisui promised, adjusting his mask and giving Kabuto a hard kick in the ribs, waking Kabuto up for another punch to the face that knocked him back down. "Not after all the trouble you've given us."
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Whirlpool Country
None of Yagura's reincarnated shinobi was anywhere in sight, buried under mountains and mountains of manic mantises, constantly feasting on the regeneration of the undead shinobi as the ninjas were pressed down by the monumental weight of the insects.
From a dark mountain of droning insects, a sliver of purple chakra shone through the cracks, and Mikoto passed by it without thought, sensing a similar construct to the shell that was presently protecting Itachi and their comrades. Every so steadily, the Susanno covering Madara shrank, pressured by insects that readily feasted on the construct and prevented the Uchiha from absorbing nature chakra by also draining the environment of nature chakra.
The man winced as his Susanno groaned, caving in a little and cracking under the weight.
Mikoto passed by a large tree, eaten through and through by mantises; leaves, bark, roots, and all. Whoever had been inside was buried under the loud drone of praying mantises.
Madara's Susanno crumpled completely when the Uchiha disintegrated, the reincarnation jutsu keeping him alive having been cancelled. The mantises collapsed into the area Madara used to be, feasting on the loose bits of chakra floating in the aftermath of Madara's disappearance.
She smelled the air, detecting the familiar sulfuric scent of Kyuubi chakra, but this wasn't hers. She held back the urge to investigate, passing by a deep crater that burned with red-hot Kyuubi chakra, where the insects freely hummed, gnawing on the person inside the pit. The insects didn't mind the burn of the Nine-Tails chakra, and their golden, metallic wings glowed with the heat of the flames.
For a moment, Mikoto pitied the reincarnated shinobi.
Constantly regenerating but unable to put up a sustained fight against the swarm of insects as the insects feasted on their chakra perpetually.
It was hell.
A little bit away from the pit of burning Kyuubi chakra, Mikoto found her brother.
His mangled, broken body was encased in a hard shell of reddish chakra, which kept his body from falling apart. The red shell of chakra didn't cover his head, letting the Hokage kneel and hold Rin in his arms, hugging her still form and refusing to let her go.
A steady stream of blood trickled from Naruto's Mangekyo eyes, and he looked down at his sister with a twisted expression of torment and sorrow; his lips were curled down and he sobbed. His body shuddered, and droplets of blood fell on Rin's pale face, sliding down but never marking her immaculate face red.
Even in death, Rin looked like an angel.
The Angel of Konoha.
The Red Demon wept over his angel.
Samehada was nowhere to be seen.
Mikoto found herself staring at the sight, forgetting the insects ramming against the protecting chakra around her body. The only people in that grey landscape that kept their colour were the three Namikaze siblings; Naruto's red shell and his wild red hair, cascading down and shading his pale face as he kept Rin close to his body, her yellow hair and deathly paling undisturbed by the chakra leaching mantises, and Mikoto's fiery chakra that flickered like a candle.
Mikoto raised her left hand and touched her fingers to her cheek, and looked at the tears flowing down her cheeks. She tried to move her feet toward her brother, but they seemed to be made out of lead, too heavy for her to carry.
Her eyes swam with tears.
She recalled a memory from when she was five years old, and Rin was nine.
Flashback: Eight Years Ago
"Why doesn't big brother like me?" Mikoto murmured as Rin carried her little sister on her back, climbing upstairs. The youngest Namikaze had been dozing off in the Hokage mansion's kitchen, sleeping on the floor as Rin washed the dishes.
Rin faltered for a moment, then she proceeded, saying carefully, "Naruto's just sad. He doesn't not like you."
"…He shouted at me," Mikoto whispered sleepily, breathing calmly as her head rested on her sister's shoulder. They got to the top of the stairs and Rin turned to her and Naruto's room, nudging the door open with her foot; inside was dark, illuminated by the lights in the hallway, revealing bunk beds. Her face was grim with thought. "I wanted to go with him to see Tachi, and he shouted at me."
The older girl didn't answer. She got to the bottom bunk bed and sat down; Mikoto, despite her sleepiness, took this as her cue to collapse back onto Rin's bed, crawling to the pillow and looking at her big sister with a large pair of drowsy blue eyes.
Mikoto had been sleeping in the twin's room for as long as she could remember. In the future, when Naruto and Mikoto moved out together to the apartment inside the Uchiha clan compound, Mikoto moved with them and inherited their old bunk bed, assigning her very own room in the quaint home.
Right now, though, the five-year-old girl was too observant for her age.
Rin pursed her lips and laid down next to her sister, pulling the blanket up to cover them as she faced Mikoto.
She smiled as the little girl's droopy eyes became too heavy to stay open, and she closed them. Rin softly ebbed warm, light chakra from her body, enveloping the bunk bed in warmth and safety, and Mikoto sighed, falling deeper into a comfortable sleep.
"Give him time."
Flashback end
As much as Rin was a constant part of Naruto's life, she was also a constant, reliable part of Mikoto's upbringing.
She brought the Namikaze family back together after their loss.
Mikoto stalked to her crying brother and collapsed on her knees on the other side of her sister.
The praying mantises stopped their onslaught on Mikoto's protection, giving the three a wide berth. The area around the siblings quietened down, muted completely by the calamitous noise of the insects.
Naruto hadn't yet moved, his dark red eyes freely bleeding tears, sobbing and shaking his head. Mikoto took her left hand and slowly reached forward, grasping Naruto's shoulder. There was a moment of hesitation, where Naruto didn't process his little sister's comforting gesture, before Mikoto shuffled forward and Naruto fell onto her shoulder, weeping with breathlessly quiet gasps.
Red tears stained Mikoto's shoulder, and the younger girl shut her eyes, gritting her teeth hard as she cried from the twisting wrench in her heart. It was an unbearable pain, as if a hand had reached into her chest and was squeezing her heart, releasing wave after wave of anguish and sadness from her soul.
"Miko, I tried," Naruto said in a raspy whisper, speaking into his baby sister's shoulder. His shuddering tears had subsided, replaced by remorse so heavy and palpable that Mikoto threw her other arm around her brother, hugging him as they embraced Rin's body. "I really tried."
"It's not your fault—"
"I should have let loose sooner," Naruto interjected, shaking his head. "Holding back did this; that's why I'm being punished." Mikoto's embrace tightened and she shook her head rigorously. "I held back, and this happened."
"No one's punishing you, Naruto," Mikoto said, preventing her big brother from talking again with a harsh shake of her head. She put her hands on Naruto's shoulders and pushed a little, holding him at arm's length.
The dull boy fixed her with a deep stare from his Mangekyo; the whites of his eyes were a deep shade of red and the evolved pinwheel was coal black, oozing darkness and loathing, not for Mikoto but for life and existence itself; his eyes strayed over her shoulder, spotting Samehada weakly slither closer to the siblings, coiling at Rin's feet.
"Your sister," Kyuubi rumbled tiredly inside Mikoto's subconscious, speaking for the first time since Mikoto's fight with Gaara in Hidden Chill. It was still weak from exerting its power and protecting Mikoto from Gaara's final exploding sand technique. Mikoto didn't interrupt, feeling the sadness in her chest lighten that her lifelong companion was fine. The great beast wavered, setting its head on its paws and muttering, "She was strong enough to hold back the hatred and darkness in the boy." The same hatred and darkness that had been building up since Naruto had witnessed his mother's death, and since he had gotten his sharingan. Rin's existence had dammed the bottomless pit in Naruto before he exploded. The beast exhaled from its nose, slouching and steadily falling back asleep. "Now that she's gone…."
Thanks for the encouragement, Mikoto scowled and shook her brother's shoulder, forcing his eyes to refocus back on her. "You know better than me that any of us could go at any time." She touched her chest, saying, "I died like four hours ago," Naruto's eyes widened at the news, and Mikoto nodded, smiling a little and shrugging. "Sort of. Orochimaru ate me, but that's fine." She flexed her left arm and grinned, something that brought a scoffing smirk to Naruto's face. "I've got this nice power from Grandpa Hamura, and I even met Hinata."
Naruto closed his eyes with a sigh, wilting.
"This isn't the end, big bro," Mikoto promised, pushing the bark of Obito's god tree into Naruto's grasp. Naruto looked at it with confused eyes, steadily curling his hands around the piece of bark, feeling the heartbeat-like ebb of energy pulsing inside the tree bark; it was the same chakra he sensed from Rin Noharu. He looked back at Mikoto and the girl smirked. "Far from it."
Naruto slowly sat back, and the swarm of praying mantises all stopped.
The ones racing up Konoha's shores halted and the violent hum of their metal wings ceased, flying in the air noiselessly. The ones attacking Itachi's Susanno stopped their onslaught, hovering noiselessly in the air. The red tears left tracks on his face, red lines that raced from his dark eyes and ended at his chin.
He sniffed.
He tucked the tree bark into his jounin vest and eased himself up, carrying Rin in his arms. By that point, Naruto was only kept upright by a combination of his red shell of chakra and sheer force of will alone. He declared to his sister, "I know what to do."
The war Yagura and his allies had brought to Konoha had failed.
Now, it was time for the retaliation.
This time the darkness Naruto carried in his being, the one Rin had been repressing with her light and presence, was allowed to roam free.
Naruto was not merciful.
Authors note
That's that about that.
We have about two more chapters left in this story. There should be an epilogue afterwards, making three more uploads before I can officially declare this story as complete.
As for the coming chapters, I can say for sure that Naruto (injured as he is) and Konoha go on a rampage.
How do you think this story ends?
Thoughts on the chapter and the story so far are always welcome.
I'll see you when I see you.
Foy.