"Weak or strong, carry on,
Show no mercy to them all,
We are in the jungle,
Like an animal we crave,
Like a human that no one can save,"
Jingo Jungle, AmaLee
"So, is that orange-haired fucker still alive, or what?"
I spun to face him, walking backwards across the river. "What happened to killing everyone?"
Hidan didn't glance my way. "I only wanted to know if I had to perform two sacrifices or three," he answered lazily. He waved me off. "Don't misunderstand me. You should count yourself lucky that I don't just slaughter you here and now."
I hummed. "Did that work to make the people in Yugakure afraid of you?"
"Shut up," he said. His scythe dragged behind him through the water. His eyes skimmed past me, to Naga's back. "Why the hell are you so calm about this, red-head?"
"I heard it when you called me by my name before," Naga said without turning around.
Hidan pretended not to hear him. "She's completely batshit, I get that, but why the fuck aren't you batting an eye at me being immortal?"
"Sometimes it feels like my entire life is not knowing that something was possible, then finding out it is," he answered after a few seconds. "If a dojutsu can make dimensions, a jutsu that makes it so you can't die doesn't sound like something that can't happen."
"First, it's not a jutsu, you blasphemous asshole. Second, what."
"I guess I'm used to it," Naga mused.
"Which fucking dojutsu can do that?"
"The sharingan," I answered, stepping off water and onto gravel.
Hidan paused, eyes narrowing. "The Uchiha clan, right? From Konohagakure?"
"You've met them?"
Hidan made a vague, denying noise. "A few of them are in the bingo book."
"Bingo book?"
Hidan stared at me. "Eat shit and die."
"We met an Uchiha before," Naga intervened. "not-Madara. He was able to pull Oka into his dimension with his sharingan."
Hidan looked at me for an explanation.
I crossed my arms. "Eat shit and die."
His eyes drifted skyward. "And why are you telling me this shit?"
"If you're coming back with us, you need to know about him," Naga answered.
He didn't look down. "You heard what I said to Oka, right?"
"I did, but it doesn't match your actions. If all you wanted was to kill, you don't need to come to Amegakure. There are multiple towns and villages between here and there that don't know who or what Jashin is, either."
"It doesn't fucking matter if you or they know about Lord Jashin. A philosophy of Jashinism is to kill for the sake of killing, to cause chaos because I can, and it's about shitty people and how they fear death—" he stopped, scrubbing a hand through his hair, and I thought he looked suddenly tired.
He dropped his hand and it was gone. "You know that I will kill people in Amegakure, yeah? Not that it would stop me if I didn't have to, but I've got this whole 'give and take' thing going with Lord Jashin. I sacrifice people in His name a few times a week and I stay immortal. You understand, don't you?"
"So, it's like a contract?" Naga asked.
Hidan only chuckled. "One more word comparing Jashinism to anything mortal and I'm going to shove my scythe up your blasphemous ass."
Naga didn't turn around, but he didn't speak, either.
"There are people for you to kill in Amegakure," I said.
He grinned, all sharp edges. "And what happened to all that bullshit about peace?"
"You can ask Konan."
His expression didn't change. "You think Lord Jashin will just accept any old nobody as a worthy sacrifice? They're worthless if they just lay down and die."
"They won't," I said. "A lot of shinobi in Amegakure don't like that we killed Hanzo. And when they see you with us, they'll attack you, too. They don't go down without a fight."
He shook his head. "Better, but how the hell are you just going to drop a bomb like that on me? You killed Hanzo the Salamander and expect me to believe that shit?"
"Yahiko did."
He blinked once. "You're serious?"
"I don't have a reason to lie."
"So, what, he leads Amegakure now? That has to be a joke," Hidan said.
"With my brother," I told him.
Hidan looked past me, but Naga's attention was somewhere to my right. "Civilians," he said in the silence. "Bandits, most likely, waiting for travelers turned away from the village."
I followed his stare, but the canyon looked empty.
"Why the hell is he called not-Madara?"
"Because he pretends to be Madara Uchiha, but isn't," I answered. "And we don't know his name."
Hidan blinked again. "And how the fuck would I know, or give a shit, who Madara Uchiha is?"
古い
I stood on a wide branch and stared at the open area below me.
Orange, yellow, and red leaves were all over the ground. It looked the same as any other patch of land in Fire Country, but it felt familiar.
"I can see how Minato didn't know," Naga mused, and my eyes widened.
An earth user to hide the wagon tracks, the footprints left in the dirt, the blood. Someone else to make the bodies, the kunai, and the crushed husks disappear. A jutsu to bury the giant tree or move it somewhere else.
It was like the battle never happened.
Hidan stood on a branch behind Naga, looking incredulously at him. "I must've misheard you just now, because if you're telling me you know Minato Namikaze, the Yellow fucking Flash, I might just shit myself. On principle."
I glanced away from the clearing. "Do you have another pair of pants?"
He dragged a hand down his face, but I saw his smile through his fingers. "Well fuck me," he said. "Look, I don't give a damn about whatever you've got going on with the Uchiha Clan, but to call the Yellow Flash casually by his first name? You've gotta tell me that story."
友人
The grass turned taller, denser, the closer we got to the border between Fire, Grass and Rain.
"Why the hell do you still not wear sandals?" Hidan asked, scythe against his shoulder. He didn't look at me as he spoke.
The trees were still the widest I'd ever seen, with only sprinkles of orange sunlight making it through the canopy.
I looked down at his bare, equally dirty feet. "You're not wearing them."
"I tossed them because I didn't want to make it easy for those lukewarm bastards to follow me. I'm still a shinobi," he dismissed. "But I really must've pissed off an enemy of Lord Jashin because, seriously? I can't get over that it was you two that found me first."
"Enemies of Jashin?" Naga asked, ahead of us.
"Other gods, you dumb piece of shit. And it's Lord Jashin to you."
"You used to think believing in gods was dumb," I remembered.
"Yeah, well, I grew up. So, you gonna answer the question or—"
Naga stopped suddenly, sucking in, eyes darting up to—
"Hello again, Oka," not-Madara said, sitting on a branch above us. His mask was different, pale yellow with black, curving lines.
It was white before.
"What do you want?" Naga asked, kunai in hand. He squeezed the handle, but didn't leap at him like when we met before.
It felt like the second time we met. Being taken by surprise, being reminded of what Yahiko said about him coming to us not being a coincidence.
"Always so hostile when I only want to help," not-Madara said, shaking his head in mock disappointment. "No matter. I came to hear Oka's answer to my offer. Not as master and student, not as equals, but a simple exchange. You may not have sought me out, but you've still barely scratched the surface of what the Rinnegan is capable of. If you allow me to teach you how to access that power and be strong enough to stand against those who threaten your cherished people, all I ask is that, when I call on you, you help me bring the system this world reveres to its knees."
Naga stiffened in surprise, because I never told him about not-Madara's offer of power.
Hanzo had been more important. Why tell him about an offer I never would've accepted?
Why tell him of an offer I thought once, twice, about accepting, because I wanted, needed more power, enough kill the man who beat the sanin?
But I couldn't help the quiet laugh, because not-Madara was always too late.
He'd been watching us somehow, listening to us, but he wasn't in my head.
How could he know that I'd given up on peace?
not-Madara came as a show of power or an attempt at trust, giving away a secret that Yahiko suspected after the first time we met. He was trying, trying, trying in the same way Hanako had.
Another person who didn't understand me at all.
Hidan took a step forward. "So, you're not-Madara, huh?" he asked lazily, then his mouth curved into a slow grin and he spun his scythe to point at him. "Give me a good fight, alright?"
"Wait," Naga started. "He has the ability to—"
Hidan already jumped.
"May the great god Jashin—" his scythe passed through not-Madara, and the blades gouged deep in the tree bark beneath him. He paused beside not-Madara, glancing between him and his scythe.
not-Madara didn't react and didn't speak, waiting for my answer.
"Where's Zetsu?" I asked instead.
Hidan left the scythe and turned to us. "Hey, is this part of that eye bullshit dimension thing?" he shouted down at us.
"I don't know," Naga answered, but didn't yell or take his eyes off not-Madara. "We don't know how any of his abilities work."
"There," not-Madara answered, ignoring them both. He tilted his head slightly and I glanced to the right, where Zetsu's head and chest poked out of the ground next to the big root of a tree, half-hidden in its shadow.
It wasn't solid black and half-deformed like before, but split black and white down the middle. The white half waved, smiling, but the black half didn't, stretching its face oddly.
"Could you quit whatever blasphemous shit this is so I can kill you already?" Hidan asked, bored sounding. He sat next to not-Madara, legs crossed, chin propped on his palm as he poked through his arm repeatedly with a kunai. He hadn't moved the scythe.
"Why would I want that?" I finally asked.
not-Madara paused. "In a world like this where those outside the world of ninja benefit the most from that system, any effort to create true peace through reformation would only be met with the backlash of cowardly Daimyo clinging all the harder to it. To end the cycle of hatred for good—"
"I don't want peace," I interrupted him, and not-Madara went quiet for a few seconds.
He leaned forward. "You, born from a nation trampled on, its citizens treated as less than trash, its village used as a battleground. You don't believe in peace?" not-Madara asked incredulously. His red eye blazed. "What do you believe in then? Destroying this decaying world entirely?
"Nope."
not-Madara fell silent. He leaned back and turned to stare at Hidan, who hadn't stopped trying to stab him.
Hidan paused, grin turning wider, meaner. "Have you heard of the Way of Jashin, asshole?"
not-Madara pulled himself into his eye and vanished.
Naga looked at Zetsu, only its head still visible, but it didn't leave.
Hidan laughed and laughed as he stood. "Two minutes and thirteen seconds. I can outlast his bullshit for that long. Easy—"
He jerked forward as an arm burst through his chest from behind, not-Madara's fist clenched around his still-beating heart.
"You would be complicit in the system that killed your precious people, watch the fragile, temporary peace of this fake world inevitably crumble and do nothing to stop it? You would trample all over the ideals of the Sage of Six Paths?" not-Madara asked, looming behind Hidan. He sounded furious.
Hidan vomited blood and I watched his heart stutter and struggle to beat around not-Madara's iron grip. It was still connected to his chest.
"Maybe," I said, and watched his eye narrow.
Hidan coughed, blood splattering down his chin. "You blasphemous bitch—"
not-Madara squeezed his heart until it was a pulpy mess in his palm and Hidan's expression twisted up in pain. His head drooped and I remembered, I remembered—
Kota had her heart crushed, too.
"What would it take for you to act, I wonder? The death of a friend, perhaps, or a threat aimed at the others you care for might be sufficient motivation—"
Hidan threw his head back, laughing hysterically, and not-Madara faltered. "The hell? You think we're friends?"
not-Madara jerked his hand out of Hidan's chest and stepped back.
"I wish I could've seen the look on your face," Hidan cackled, clutching his chest as he turned around. "You stupid, heathen fucker. Did you really think that would work? That I was some basic bitch that would be taken down by that?"
He laughed harder, choked, and vomited blood again.
And I wondered if the world was shaking, or if it was just me. "Did you kill Kota?"
How often did not-Madara do that for it to be his first move?
Naga froze, turning to me, but I didn't look at him.
not-Madara didn't hear me. He hadn't moved, rattled, raising his hand to look at his red-soaked palm.
Hidan dropped to his knees. "That hurt you fucking asshole," he spat, blood dripping rapidly off the branch. He reached for the handle of his scythe and his fingers slid off, grip too slippery to pull it up. It only made him burst out laughing again. "Lord Jashin will be pleased when I sacrifice you. I'll take my time making you suffer."
not-Madara's fist clenched. He responded with the tiger sign, drawing back as he sucked in air, and Naga spun back, eyes wide.
I touched my cheek and my fingers were wet when I pulled them away.
When was the last time I cried?
He was right here. The one who killed you was right here the whole time.
Spiraling flames burst from not-Madara's mouth and Hidan cackled again, on his hands and knees, arms shaking as he tried to force his body back up.
"You deaf bastard. What did I just say—"
A stream of water smothered the flames, phased through not-Madara, and knocked Hidan off the branch, separating them.
"Move," I warned Naga. If I couldn't touch not-Madara, I'd find something that could.
I pressed my left foot more firmly against the ground, my heel and toes sinking into the dirt, and a giant summoning circle appeared under me. I stood at its center.
I didn't think.
I only raised my arm as smoke burst around me and swept over the area. I stared at the twine around my wrist. It'd been so long it was in tatters.
You were right, masked man.
I was born in a terrible, cruel place, and it made me terrible and cruel.
If he goes somewhere else, even somewhere you can't reach, find him.
I dropped my arm as the ear-splitting screech of a bird answered my thoughts. It felt like the air around me was shaking.
I felt my chakra being sucked up into the seal and gladly let it.
I didn't move as a giant bird twirled around me as it spiraled up into the air.
not-Madara stared at it. His head disappeared into a vortex in front of him as the bird screeched and spun, faster than my brother in Sage Mode as it cut down to him, opening its mouth wide.
not-Madara's arms vanished in the next second, then his middle, his waist, and the bird's mouth snapped shut around the space where his left leg was.
Then it vanished, too.
An arm caught me as my knees buckled and my vision blurred and dimmed.
When I managed to blink the spots away I was on Naga's back, blue lines fading from his face as he leapt into the trees.
"Sage Mode?" I asked sleepily, leaning into his shoulder.
"You summoned a bird on top of me," he said, an admonishment without any real heat.
Hidan was tucked under his arm, limp, soaking Naga's side in his blood.
"He'd hate that."
"He'll hate it more that I knocked him out," Naga said back.
I smiled and closed my eyes. "What happened to Zetsu?"
"I don't know, but it has two different chakra signatures," Naga mentioned. "It stopped letting me feel it when I picked up Hidan."
"Hope it killed him," I murmured.
Naga paused. "I hope so too," he sighed.
I wrapped my arms around his neck.
間奏
Obito landed hard on his side, shock rippling through him, the sledgehammer of pain a distant afterthought.
Blood splashed on top of the cube; his left leg was severed at the knee.
What just happened—
He turned fast when he heard a screech that seemed to shake the cubes around him and the bird, her bird, hovered above him, his blood on its beak. It was completely vertical, but still twisted its head unnaturally to peer at him, a mirror image of the Rinnegan in its eye.
It was in his dimension.
How did she...? When did she...?
His head erupted in agony, lightning bouncing around in his skull. He hissed, throwing off his mask to shove a hand over his right eye, where it hurt the most.
He felt blood.
The summon was able to catch him before he finished using Kamui, to touch him before he could completely disappear, forcing a connection between itself and his dimension.
It didn't give him time to process this further, tucking its wings in as it twisted its body without moving its head and barreled down at him, faster than he could perform a jutsu.
Obito stared at it through his fingers, making eye contact, and shoved his will at it. Be my puppet.
The summon swerved up suddenly, cutting through the air above him, his cloak flapping wildly in the wind. It did loops through the air, seemingly confused, shuddering as it eventually shook off his attempt to control it.
It was a test of the Rinnegan's strength (even if this was some fake copy, some mirror creation of her design), how well it resisted genjutsu, a trial run of what might happen should he use the mangekyou on the holder of the dojutsu more vital to the Eye of the Moon plan than she cared to realize.
Snake. Ram. Hare. Dog. Snake.
Lying flat on his back, Obito took a breath and quickly focused his chakra.
Wood Style: Wood Dragon Jutsu.
A dragon burst from his mouth, roaring back at the summon as it raced up to it. The summon opened its wings, slowing itself, gliding until the dragon tried to coil around it.
Obito watched the summon abruptly tuck its wings in, slip through the gaps, and spin down at him like a drill, opening its mouth wide. He stared at it, but its pupils darted around, looking anywhere but at him.
How does it know to avoid eye contact with me?
He made himself intangible as the bird broke straight through the cube he was on, and its beak clamped shut around his body.
He couldn't help the surprised shout, eyes wide as he twisted in its grip, fighting to free himself. He grimaced, the pressure alone enough to send waves of hell through his caught arm and middle.
What—? Why isn't—?
He could feel its slimy, disgusting tongue. And then it closed its mouth further, plainly intending to crush him, to give him no time to retaliate, and he thought that this, this wasn't where he died.
But no matter how hard he willed it, Kamui didn't work.
Obito cried out as the summon crushed him in its beak, as he felt his ribcage crack and cave, as his artificial arm was crushed and the summon tilted its head back to swallow him whole—
And then that version of reality ceased to exist.
Obito appeared above the summon. His right eye, his master's eye, went dark. The summon was still falling, surrounded by the shattered remains of the cube, and the wood dragon surged down past him.
The summon made a sound of alarm, no doubt confused by the disappearance of its prey. Its wings flapped urgently, its head swiveling around, and the wood dragon crashed into it from behind, coiling tight around it as it tried to fly, absorbing its chakra on contact.
"If only you could tell me how you negated Kamui. Pity," Obito said as he fell.
He concentrated chakra in his artificial arm and wood spikes emerged from his skin, but the summon vanished in a puff of smoke right before he could impale it.
Obito landed on the back of his dragon and pushed off as it started to fall apart. He landed sideways on a cube.
"How much of that was her doing?" he thought aloud, staring at where it'd been. "Or was it the sentience you appeared to have, I wonder?"
.
.
.
"This isn't working," Black Zetsu said suddenly.
Obito stopped, far from where he met Oka hours ago, deep in the heart of the Land of Fire.
"What do you mean?" White Zetsu asked.
A contradiction of expressions greeted him when he looked back. White Zetsu was smiling, perpetually amused, while Black Zetsu looked... unhappy.
"What will you do now?" it asked. "This isn't how any of this was supposed to happen."
"She's not vital for now," Obito answered. He leaned back against a tree and crossed his arms. "There are many aspects of the Eye of the Moon Plan that can be done without her. The capture of the jinchūriki, namely."
"But the Gedo Statue—"
"It's quite a bind," Obito cut him off, tapping a finger on his arm. "I can't retrieve the Rinnegan until it's reached its full, unrealized potential. She's, at best, resistant to the genjutsu of the mangekyou. She would keep this fake world as is and is happy to do so."
"And she saw you in a dream," White Zetsu added helpfully.
"Her stubbornness isn't fun anymore," Black Zetsu said.
Ah yes, the genjutsu. The most Obito knew about the Rinnegan came from what his master taught him, but even he was unaware of the full capabilities of such a powerful dojutsu in the right hands.
His master had run out of time shortly after he managed to open only two of the supposed six outer paths, after all.
Who was to say the dojutsu of the Sage of Six Paths couldn't see glimpses of the future?
Especially in the hands of an Uzumaki.
The only way Obito would know for sure was to ask the legendary man himself and, well, that wasn't possible, now was it?
"Lord Madara chose wrong, didn't he?" White Zetsu asked curiously, but without concern.
Even if the Sage of Six Paths had been able to glimpse what was to come, it wouldn't have mattered when his mortal body wouldn't let him live long enough to see it. Hence why he entrusted the future to his sons, like the fool he was.
Hence why his mater entrusted the Rinnegan to a directionless little girl like the—
"Regardless," Obito said, pushing away from the tree. "There's nothing to be done about that for now. And we wouldn't want to be late for our appointment with the Yellow Flash, now would we?"
A/N: 古い - Old, 友人 - Friends, 古い - Old, 敵 - Enemies, 間奏 - Interlude
axis!Hidan is not taller than axis!Yahiko. This is a public service announcement.
Obito - 16.
Reminder that the second canon!Obito started taking canon!Konan seriously, he promptly stabbed her in the back (and also him having an extra left eye all along is very canon. in the same fight in fact).
Oka was never supposed to use the Animal Path this early. I have no idea what happened with this chapter.