Hi
Couldn't update last week because I procrastinated a whole lot of other things, and meeting the deadlines took priority.
I'd like to thank everyone that's reviewed this story so far. All of your opinions are gladly appreciated.
Major plotline ahead.
There's a snippet of it happening in Chapter 19. It isn't a sudden event. It might seem so because of my inconsistent/weekly updates, and I won't blame you.
Warning: death, blood, and childhood trauma.
Enjoy…
CHAPTER 27
Sixty-Five Years Ago
Karatachi Village
Fire-Grass Country border
A four-year-old Yagura sat on his father's shoulders as the man watched over the goats and sheep grazing in the field, watching them with bright pink eyes and idly aware that his son was playing with his hair.
A few errant sun rays peaked from behind the fluffy clouds, warming the air and driving away the chill of the rain that fell the other night.
At his back was a sprawling village, populated with houses made from mud and grass. The people of the village wore simple, beige and white wool clothes, rough yet practicable for the rainy season. The warriors among them slung hook staffs on their shoulders and walked with sharp eyes, while the teenager and young children went about doing chores.
It was the weekend, so the children didn't need to make the long and tedious trek to Konoha go to school.
Somewhere on the other side of the village, the lazy moo of cattle oftentimes interrupted the quiet. The goats and sheep were too busy feeding on the fresh grass to make much noise, aside from the errant spit and blubber from the goats.
"Tired?" the man asked in a low, gruff voice, seemingly to no one.
His response was a grunt from the boy sitting on his shoulders, patting his father's head and running his small fingers through the older man's blonde mane.
The father leaned on his hook staff, letting the weapon and shepherding tool support most of his weight. "What's wrong?"
"…Yoshi called me short," Yagura mumbled.
"You're four," the man said incredulously, shaking his head. "He's just jealous."
"Why?"
"You scored higher in that fancy aptitude test." The toneless man hummed. "I choose not to question why Konoha loves looking for geniuses and prodigies, especially among children your age. It's odd. In that regard, I understand why the Elder Asami doesn't want us relocating to Konoha—"
"Pa," Yagura interrupted his father before the man could begin rambling.
The man sniffed. "Point is, don't let words get to you." The man cleared his throat, saying, "You'll grow."
Yagura was small for his age, so much so that it worried his parents.
Tests and examinations didn't bring up any answers. His bone structure was normal and his system worked perfectly fine, so the parents decided to leave it be.
"Pa?"
"Hm?"
"Why are the Senju and Uchiha fighting?"
The man didn't answer for a moment, rolling his tongue in his mouth and wondering how his son could have noticed the increase in the political temperature inside Konoha. As far as he knew, they didn't teach such topics in kindergarten.
The father pursed his lips.
Then he said, "Both of them want to lead and neither wants to follow." The man added under his breath, speaking with a subtle hiss, "And we humans have to suffer because of it."
Yagura didn't comment. He didn't want to comment.
The battle between Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha had displaced and decimated the Karatachi ancestral home, and Konoha had gone ahead and immortalized the event by erecting statues of those two shinobi.
It was a spit in the face of those that had lost their homes, their livelihoods and their families on that dreadful day, several years ago.
Yagura hadn't been born then, but he had been exposed to many recollections of that day.
Two shinobi, more akin to gods, had carved up the earth and salted the planet with the blood of those too small to be seen. The Karatachi clan were the unfortunate creatures caught in the battle, and their losses were astronomical.
The magnitude of their loss was incomparable.
This new home and their new situation were a faint shadow of their former selves.
Even though the only reparations the Karatachi received from Konoha were subsidized education and food stamps, the Karatachi decided not to press their luck by demanding justice. After all, Konoha still possessed great shinobi among their ranks. The Karatachi were simply outmatched.
They recovered their dead and honoured them with proper burials.
Let bygones be bygones.
It was the new mantra, at least only for the clan to move on.
The older Karatachi might have hated that, but their hands were tied.
Still, the survivors found a way to recuperate on their own.
"…Why are there gods?" Yagura slowly asked, hesitant and speaking in a muffled voice into his father's hair. His brow was furrowed with the question. "I thought we were all the same?"
"The unfair truth is that some of us are born with gifts, and others can either bow to the gifted or get broken." The neutral man frowned, his pink eyes darkening as he watched his goats and sheep grazing. "It's like…some sort of cosmic joke?"
It was human nature for the gifted to possess the majority of power, but in their world, those that were fortunate to possess gifts—bloodlines—ran rampant with their privilege, at the expense of the ants they trampled.
It wasn't only a case of the Senju-Uchiha conflict or Kumo's bloodline agitations. The power wasn't only physical; the Namikaze clan of Konoha dominated trade and commerce, squashing rivals inside Fire country and buying out competitors outside of the country, the Kazekage's clan were unmatched in metalwork and building construction, the Uzumaki clan of Whirlpool country, as secluded as they were, controlled the creation and supply of speciality weapons across the continent.
If a person wasn't closely affiliated with any of those larger clans or they didn't have a bloodline to back themselves up or you weren't some sort of genius, then it was close to impossible to survive in their world, and the Karatachi father hated it.
If you didn't have a gift, you had no value.
Normalcy had no value.
His descending thoughts were interrupted by his son.
"…Cosmic?" the four-year-old's brow creased and a whisper of a smirk lifted his father's expression.
"Sometimes, I forget that I'm talking to a child." Yagura pouted at his father's chuckling words. "I'm scared you're growing up too quickly just by being aware of these things."
The boy's cheeks puffed out. "I hear things too, Pa."
"I'm sure."
The man let go of his hook staff, letting it balance upright in the loamy earth, and reached up, grabbing his son and gingerly hefting the boy off his shoulders, setting Yagura on his feet and ruffling the pouting child's messy grey locks.
"Stay young for just a little longer, Yagura."
Yagura sat on the grass with a huff and closed his pupilless pink eyes. His father chuckled, crossing his arms and leaning on his hook staff, lifting his eyes to the animals under his charge.
A goat wandered up to Yagura and began to munch on the boy's hair, much to the child's consternation.
The genial atmosphere was broken all too suddenly by a blood-curdling scream that erupted from the village.
"Konoha shinobi!"
The person was silenced with a gruesome jolt.
Then a hail of water bullets rends a section of the village to pieces.
Yagura clambered to his feet and his father whipped around, waving for the boy to remain where he was. "Stay here."
The man sped into the village, gripping his hook staff in his right hand and dipping into a low run. The goat chewing on Yagura's hair never let go of the child, keeping the boy from running after his father.
"Pa!" he yelled, struggling against the stubborn animal. "Let go!"
Dark clouds gradually covered the village, thick with rain and looming with foreboding. That, and the clash and clang of weapons meeting, the snap of blows, the splintering of wood and bone, and the huffing ignition of fire bursting into vengeful life inside the village.
The fires and the burning homes reflected off Yagura's large eyes, and the boy stood there, horror-struck and aghast at what was happening.
Blood muddied the earth, creating small rivers that trickled from the village and flowed into the grasslands the animals were formerly grazing in. Yagura didn't realize the goats and sheep had scattered, fleeing the flames and the loud noise of despair, leaving alone the dull-eyed goat casually chewing on Yagura's grey hair.
Then a stampede of people ran from the fire, the elderly, children and a handful of women, covering their heads with their hands and wheezing for air as smoke and tears clogged their throats.
Yagura's mother scooped her rigid child up, and the goat bothering the boy released hold of Yagura's hair without a fuss. She was barefoot. Blood and mud-caked her feet, and the skirt of her beige dress was frayed, stained with burn marks and soot, and her thick coat barely clung to her lean frame. Patches of her hair were lost to the fires and dark bruises marred her pale face.
Her knuckles bled, clutching her son close to her body and running with her vision blurred by tears.
As the woman heaved, racing further into the grassland toward Grass Country, her clanmates scattered in all directions, screaming and covering their heads.
Peeking over his mother, Yagura spotted a few Konoha ninjas running out from the village. Tobirama Senju led the charge, wielding a sword made from lightning and his face clean of emotion. Some Konoha shinobi stayed back, a safe distance from the roaring blizzard of fire, and notched arrows onto bows, aiming them at the fleeing Karatachi clan members.
They let them fly, and two sunk into Yagura's mother's back.
Yet the woman didn't dare slow down.
Yagura saw the First Hokage's successor swing his sword, bringing down two Karatachi elders in that single stroke, not for a second faltering in his run as he chased down the others fleeing him.
Yagura's mother brought her son closer to her chest, hiding his face in her bosom and sobbed as she ran, crying as another arrow dug into the right side of her pelvis.
Tobirama stopped giving chase with an impassive scoff. His lightning sword was deactivated and the blood crackled, and dried, on the sharp blade.
The stench of burning flesh permeated the formerly picturesque grassland, and the Karatachi woman entered Grass Country's territory.
Night had fallen and the woman still ran, though her steps were slower and weaker. She stumbled into a Kiri camp, camping a short distance from Zyouki township's walls, and collapsed.
"The hell is this?!" a Kiri ninja shouted, shooting to her feet and grabbing her sheathed sword from the ground, tugging it from its sheath and holding it out to the fallen woman.
The three-man cell of Kiri ninjas saw that the woman had three arrows in her back and her feet were unrecognizably mangled by sticks and stones.
The Kiri ninja that had exclaimed cautiously went around the woman, dipping into the forest she had just escaped from, and another carefully approached the boy.
He didn't need to check her pulse to know that she was gone.
Using his hands, he turned her onto her side, and his expression turned grim at the sight of the child the dead woman was clutching to her chest. The boy's ear was on her heart and his dull face was marred by sweat and the tears that poured from his eyes.
The boy's pink eyes slowly moved to the man, horrifyingly numb to feel, and the man struggled to smile. His serrated teeth peaked from his painfully false expression, and the boy's eyes immediately saw this.
"You're…one of them," the boy soundlessly whispered. His face twisted and a fresh wave of tears trickled from the boy's pupilless pink eyes. He vibrated, as if both afraid and angry.
"You're safe now," Gengetsu Hozuki murmured, reluctantly reaching forward and placing a gentle hand on the boy's head. He spoke into being a simple genjutsu. "Sleep."
All of the tension built up in Yagura's body evaporated and he fell unconscious.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The Present
Yagura opened his eyes.
He was sitting on a tall pillar inside the Uzumaki graveyard, looking out into the distance in the direction of Konoha.
The stars twinkled in the sky and a cool breeze washed through the island, as the sound of earth breaking fractured what little silence hung in the air.
Even from hundreds of kilometres away, Yagura's keen eyesight saw those two gods hovering over the Hidden Leaf village, while the village itself and a large portion of Fire country broke apart bit by bit and were pulled into the sky, clumping together into a growing, spherical mass of debris, rock and earth.
Konoha's seal barrier flickered and hummed, splintering and repairing whenever a large clod of debris broke out from the ground and went up.
Yagura crossed his arm and exhaled when he felt a hesitant presence at his back.
"What is it?"
Chojuro fumbled with the strap of his sword, frowning heavily. He didn't answer for a moment, his glassy, reddened eyes staring hatefully at the back of the Mizukage's head, stifling his tears as he spat. "Mei's dead."
Yagura tapped his chin. "She served her purpose, and so will you."
Chojuro grits his teeth and clenched his hands, his body geared as if to move and attack but the chemicals piled into his brain prevented that.
The true Chojuro—the one trapped inside his brain—bellowed with rage, at his inability to protect his mistress, his failure at preserving her smile, and at Yagura's impassiveness. The true Chojuro recklessly slammed himself against the mental bars of his prison, screaming and wailing inconsolably, thrashing like a wild animal.
In real life, Chojuro vibrated and his face darkened.
The tearful yet mechanically emotionless Kiri ninjas arranged on the other side of the Uzumaki graveyard watched helplessly. On hearing the news of the demise of their Rebel Leader. Their imprisoned mental selves mourned immensely, but they were not strong enough to struggle against the mental prison or the hypnosis they had been drowned in.
Chojuro though was furious, and it showed.
A sheen of chakra burst from his form, frothing like a flame and burning against the hypnotic chemicals piled into his system.
Yagura looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. "Think, boy." The vengeful heat ebbing off the swordsman intensified. Chojuro reached over his shoulder and grabbed the handle of his sword. Yagura rolled his eyes and turned back to the show, now amusedly watching spectating Konoha's downfall. "If you want to meet her so badly, give her my regards."
Tobirama flickered to Chojuro's side, his sword drawn and crackling with lightning.
The arm reaching up to unsling his legendary sword plopped wetly to the ground, and Chojuro's eyes widened manically.
He lunged at Yagura, the hypnosis fully broken, and Tobirama caught the one-armed swordsman by the back of his neck, slamming his face into the ground.
"I'll kill you!" Chojuro screamed hysterically, thrashing uncontrollably. His eyes were red, flailing with blatant disregard for his dismembered arm. Hashirama wordlessly came to Chojuro's other side and joined his brother in subduing the enraged Kiri ninja. "I'll fucking kill you!"
"Mhm." Yagura nodded dismissively, content with the eyeful he was seeing. The planetary body hovering over Konoha was now as large as the hidden village. "Zetsu," Yagura called, holding his left hand out to his side, "the mask."
The Mizukage's shadow, cast to his left, shifted. The soil there curved up, and the plant man seamlessly wriggled out, providing Yagura with what he was looking for with both hands. Zetsu didn't let go though, and Yagura narrowed his eyes.
"If you do this, there's no going back," Zetsu said in a grating voice, uncertain. "This won't end well."
"We're well past the point of no return," Yagura said, frowning. He didn't pull the mask from Zetsu's hand, still levelling the creature with a marginally irritated stare. "I'm merely evening out the playing field."
As if on cue, to contradict the Mizukage, Nagato's planet came down on Konoha, pressing hard against the village's seal barrier. The cracks and snaps of the massive planet pushing down on the barrier sounded across the continent.
It could be seen and heard from far and wide.
Every heart sank.
The futile crackle of the barrier against the planet intensified with a sudden push from above by the two flying gods.
"Listen to reason, Yagura," Hashirama suddenly said, his expression was a mix of frustration and rage. The talisman implanted in his host body served its purpose and weakened him, though not nearly enough for his abilities to be considered weak, only that he couldn't fight against the compulsion of the reincarnation technique. "No good can come from you doing this. Your allies will see your true intentions and band against you, for that I assure you."
"Oh, don't you worry about that," Yagura answered with a shake of his head. "The Raikage and Tsuchikage trust me as much as I trust them. They'll get theirs soon." He raised an eyebrow at Zetsu. "Now…"
"…Fine." Zetsu released the mask and Yagura nodded. Then Zetsu was gone, fleeing Whirlpool country as if his life depended on it.
"Pick him up," the Mizukage said to the First and Second Hokages', looking down at the coal-black mask in his hands; it was rough, with unrecognizable fuinjutsu etched into the edges and two red crosses in place of the eyeholes. Even without activating it, Yagura felt the deathly heartbeat of the Shinigami, beating coolly in his hands.
Hashirama and Tobirama hefted up Chojuro. The blood loss from his severed arm had calmed the teen somewhat, making him lethargic.
Yagura took a moment to look at the fabled Uzumaki mask, inhaling deeply and exhaling through his nose. "Here we go."
He brought the mask to his face.
It smelled of sulphur.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"The radios aren't working," Rin said sullenly, her hands flopping to her sides at the sight before them. "The barrier around Whirlpool is disrupting the signal."
The planet jerked harder against Konoha's barrier, and a hard crack splintered the barrier, forming a deep depression. The backdrop of the peacefully starry night contrasted with the ensuing catastrophe.
Kushina's mouth was covered, horrified.
The surviving Konoha shinobi watched on with a wide range of emotions and expressions, though for the most part, they were all helplessly petrified.
Naruto was seated on a rock, his even purple eyes ever on the planet crushing his village. His face was vacant of expression, sitting with his fingers bridged under his nose.
"Naruto," his sister called, and his eyes flicked to her. "What are we going to do?"
The Hokage didn't answer for a beat, inhaling and shutting his eyes, releasing the breath from his mouth. When he opened his eyes, he realized that everyone was looking at him, waiting for him to decide on their next move.
He expected mutiny.
He expected them to riot.
Blame him for bringing them here, even as they still wouldn't have many alternatives if they were in Konoha.
Though there were some angry faces, they didn't revolt.
"From the looks of it, Konoha's barrier should hold for another minute or two." Naruto bobbed his head, screwing his lips to the side. "Mom, do you have any idea where Whirlpool's barrier is coming from?"
The woman hummed, dipping her eyes and furrowing her brow. She mused aloud, "This barrier doesn't look familiar, it's using nature chakra to power it, but…there's only one place it could be powered from. The Grotto; our oldest forest."
"Good." Naruto's brow then furrowed, looking back at the planet descending on his village. "Wait…Mikoto?"
An orange light streaked across the sky above Konoha.
Naruto didn't have to activate his doujutsu to identify the brightly glowing chakra; he and his sister lived together with the person. Yet, there was a distinct certainty in the flow of the person's chakra, shooting faster and faster on top of what looked like a battle fan. The person piloting the large fan was entirely unseen from their angle, but the siblings and their mother were entirely focused on the youngest Namikaze.
"I don't know how, but she did it," Rin murmured in amazement. She didn't need a sharingan or a byakugan to see what her brother and their mother were seeing.
The inhibitors blocking the Kyuubi's chakra from Mikoto's weren't gone, but rather they were seamlessly tangled.
It was similar to what Naruto had often seen from his mother.
One was the other, but both were different.
Perfect harmony.
Balance.
Naruto smiled slightly, and Kushina's eyes lit up.
Nearing Konoha's western border, the orange light bound off the flying battle fan, and the person piloting the fan speedily turned it around as Mikoto dove.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The bright orange chakra erupted off her form and expanded, manifesting an ethereal nine-tailed beast, sporting all nine tails and a feral snarl. The great beast landed heavily on its hands and feet, enlarging as it ran toward the planet. The beast's form shone orange, like a beacon.
When it got close to Konoha's walls, and it was not nearly level with the base of the planetary body, the nine tails gathered up power from its gut and used the momentum of its run to jump, pivoting its hips and slamming a mighty fist into the celestial body.
A deep fissure fractured the descending planet, and Mikoto didn't relent.
Not in the slightest.
Wildly digging its nine tails and widening the cracks, doing so with animalistic wildness.
Hovering inside Kyuubi's head, Mikoto was just as feral.
The beast growled, hastening up its efforts when the planet slammed harder against Konoha's defences. Then, it suddenly stopped its attempts; the cracks it had been widening were large enough, and the beast opened its maw wide. The beast's nine tails widened the fissure.
Chakra quickly gathered before its mouth, a clear balance between Mikoto's chakra and the Kyuubi's, and it slammed the violently spiralling sphere into the falling planet.
Nine Tails Rasengan!
The Rasengan tunnelled deep into the planet, and the beast used its tails to pull the fissure wider, till the Rasengan struck the planet's core.
All at once and all too suddenly, the planetary body destabilized.
Clods of earth and debris crumpled off, falling messily to Konoha and striking at the weak seal barrier.
Unable to take any more attacks, the barrier visibly and audibly shattered, and the remnants of the celestial body rained on Konoha.
Mikoto, falling from the sky as the nine tails, swung her tails madly, uncaringly smashing away as much debris as she possibly could from Konoha without regard for where the debris would later fall, but there was only so much she could do against the rainfall of doom.
To her relief, Konoha shinobi swarmed out from the woodwork and wind jutsus bellowed, earth jutsus thundered, parting the hail of destruction away from their battered village.
Only a handful of buildings in the village were still standing in the aftermath of the planetary attack. Everything had been eaten up by the pulling force of the planet—the Hokage's tower, houses, office buildings, roads and streets, trees and shrubbery, farms, and large chunks of the earth—, and the Leaf ninjas worked tirelessly to blow away those things from smashing the village, roaring wind jutsu after wind jutsu, earth jutsu after earth jutsu.
In her descent, Mikoto saw an ANBU shinobi manifesting a canopy of trees from the broken ground to cover a section of destroyed homes in the Uchiha compound, protecting whoever was there from the catastrophic rainfall of rock and earth.
Two massive skeletal beings, both ethereal and made entirely of chakra, burst out. One was purple and located in the Aburame compound, and the other was yellow and bellowed deafeningly from where the Hokage's tower used to be; Mikoto saw her Uncle Fugaku inside the purple skeleton and her Aunt Mikoto in the yellow, and both wore expressions of pain and strain, blasting punches to divert the falling rocks.
Mikoto crashed on her hands and feet outside of Konoha, but she didn't destabilize her Kyuubi form, jerking her head to the sky and narrowing her eyes at the two people levitating there.
"You," she spoke with a curse. She didn't recognize them, but she was certain they were behind the destruction. The dark tone of the nine tails echoed, irked that it was once again facing someone with purple-ringed eyes.
One of the two people, the one with ringed purple eyes, frowned deeply. "You."
They didn't know each other, not even in the slightest, but their animosity was deserved.
One wanted Konoha rubbed off the face of the planet, and the other wanted retribution for the destruction of her home.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Zetsu didn't foresee this happening.
This was all supposed to lead to its mistress's glorious return and the absorption of all chakra into its rightful host. There won't be a world anymore for its mistress to claim if that sociopath split the planet to pieces.
Obito was gone.
Nagato and the Akatsuki were puppets.
Madara Uchiha was still silent on the matter.
There was no one Zetsu could prod into doing something.
How could it have known that young Yagura had the seedling of bloodline hatred growing in his heart?
The Mizukage wanted peace and an end to all wars, and he was doing this through global subjugation using chemicals and force, but Konoha wasn't in existence in this future; Yagura would sooner call up calamity from the pits of the Shinigami's stomach than allow Konoha to remain in any way, shape, or form.
Like he was doing now, reincarnating the Third Hokage.
Zetsu needed to do something to keep the Eye of the Moon plan alive.
Its dark eyes sightlessly watched the Kyuubi in the distance, flailing its nine tails about and roaring, exhaling a beam of blistering red chakra to Nagato, who didn't move to dodge the attack. Rather, the man shielded himself and Konan behind a barrier, splitting the stream of chaotic chakra on either side, holding his hands out to keep the barrier corporeal.
Mikoto could overcome a lot of people with her near-bottomless chakra reserves and willpower alone, but Nagato wasn't one of those people.
Especially not when Konan was there.
She was hopelessly outmatched.
That wasn't his concern though; he needed to find a way to subdue Yagura. Better yet, kill him, and with the sort of firepower on the Mizukage's side and still no allies in sight for the Hidden Leaf village, Konoha was just like Mikoto.
Hopelessly outmatched.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Hiruzen Sarutobi felt the Kyuubi sealed in his gut writhe with yearning and impatience, or could that be Hiruzen's apprehension?
"Upset stomach, sorry," he said with a lopsided expression, touching his stomach. He looked to his left, and his dark eyes lit up when he saw his former teacher and his teacher's brother—Tobirama and Hashirama, respectively—, but his gaze dimmed at the simmering looks in their eyes, facing someone at Hiruzen's back.
Steadily, dark orange chakra seeped into the Third Hokage's extremities, rising off his form like the flame of a candle.
"It seems I'm not dead." The man folded his arms and perched his chin on his finger. "And it also seems like the Kyuubi is more than happy to lend me his chakra. How curious." He didn't look or appear phased at the magnitude of energy pulsing from his pores, making the man's visage all the more imposing, more so when he turned around and regarded Yagura with raised eyebrows. "To think all this time, I've been fighting that damned beast inside the Shinigami's stomach."
Yagura peeled off the smoking mask from his face, hiding a wince as the tip of his nose was peeled off with it. He casually discarded the mask, and Madara's eyes flicked down to it, glancing up and meeting Hashirama's hard stare.
The Uchiha smirked.
"No time to waste," Yagura said, nodding to the end of the graveyard. "Make it painful."
Hiruzen exhaled smoke from his nose and his body turned on its own, pelting in the direction Yagura had indicated.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Meanwhile, Naruto and Rin steadily moved toward the bonfire of chakra, in the general direction Kushina had said was the Uzumaki graveyard. Their mother went in another direction, to the Grotto in a bid to deactivate the barrier over Whirlpool country.
What soon happened was a fight for their lives.
A fight where Naruto's mind would break.
Authors note
Note: Mikoto fought Ao in Chapter 12. Ao had a rinnegan eye, stolen from Nagato by Yagura and given to Ao (the other went to Mei). The difference between Nagato and Ao, although obvious, is that Ao had one eye and had partial access to the six paths, Nagato on the other hand is Nagato. He's wildly more proficient with his eyes.
That's that about that.
I'll see you when I see you.