Warning: This shit is fucked up and will make you cry.

Takara

From atop of her giant wooden hawk, Takara stared into the eyes of the corrupted kyuubi with her eternal mangekyou sharingan.

She found herself standing in a cavernous space. Writhing fleshy forms hung from the ceiling, barely discernable in the dim light that emanated from the enormous cage in front of her. Inside was the Kyuubi, its original orange form, tangled in the unknowable growth, held with its top half in the air in what must have been an uncomfortable position. Its chest rose and fell, but its eyes remained closed.

She felt sorry for the kyuubi, actually. Once, the villages had used the Bijuu as weapons but after finally coming to an understanding, the shinobi and the bijuu had made peace and they were slaves no longer. After the hero, Naruto, had died, the Kyuubi had chosen to leave human society and return to nature. But now it was a slave once again.

She would free it then. Or if that wasn't possible, she would take control herself. No way she could let the corruption have the kyuubi.

Takara approached the cage.

The Kyuubi's eyelids slammed open. Its eyes shined with a necrotic green light.

Then behind the cage, dwarfing this space like the universe dwarfed the Earth, two eyes opened and Takara was thrown out of the Kyuubi's mind.

Sweat was dripping down her face. She panted a bit. Those eyes. She'd been in many life or death battles, but she'd never encountered anything like that. Had she been staring into the core of the corruption? It was like a bottomless pit of evil. She shuddered.

She tried to clear her mind. Genjutsu wasn't an option here. She could reflect on what exactly had happened later.

The kyuubi prepared a bijuudama.

Takara held out her hand and released her Destruction Wave. Her black energy bathed in an ominous purple glow flowed through the air like water. The two attacks collided, annihilating each other, no explosion. Destruction simply erased. Normally it erased and kept going but the bijuudama was just on another level.

They exchanged attacks like this for a bit. She was getting worn out, while this thing… it was the bottomless pool of chakra it was known for.

"I'm sorry, but I can't think of any way to save you. All I can do is end your suffering," she said, her head drooping a bit. Normally, a Bijuu couldn't be permanently destroyed, but Destruction Chakra Mode didn't just kill, it removed its target from existence.

Normally, she'd enter sage mode and use one of her most powerful wood jutsu. But considering that the environment around her was the corruption, drawing in natural chakra would be a bad idea… which also made Okimi's cursed seal additionally worrying now that she thought about it.

She made some hand signs and three giant wooden gates emerged, entrapping the Kyuubi. She held the sign with one hand as she began forming a massive sphere of destruction with the other.

The Kyuubi began glowing green and the gates sank into its body. It let out a monstrous roar.

What the hell? The Kyuubi shouldn't be capable of that. What exactly had it become?

It began forming a bijuudama. She wasn't going to just let it prepare its attack this time though.

"Hakai," she said, and hurled the destruction at the kyuubi.

She heard the explosion just before the Hakai collided. Had it exploded the Bijuudama right in front of its own face?

The Hakai left a huge crater… however. She saw a few black tails scattered about the crater. They dispersed into a black cloud and then to nothing. She'd defeated the kyuubi, but she had failed to erase every part of it.

The ground began cracking. A huge fissure was forming.

What the hell was this? Had it somehow survived.

A blue scaled hand gripped the edge of the fissure. Maguro pulled himself up and stared up at Takara with a look She'd never seen before. In addition to changing from orange to blue, the scales had spread, forming a sort of finned "helmet" over his head. She thought she'd be relieved once she found him but…

"Takara. You couldn't stay at home could you? You had to come rescue weak useless Maguro, didn't you? Well, guess what? I don't need rescuing."

The wooden hawk dripped lower, then she leapt from it landing fifteen twenty feet away from Maguro. "What are you talking about, Maguro. What happened to you?"

"I may never be remembered as a hero, but I'm going to make damn sure I'm remembered. Look around, Takara. My friends are here."

From out of the forest and along the rim of the mountains, corruption beasts of every size had gathered. Masses of tentacles ending in eyeballs, blobs of deformed limbs and hundreds of tortured human faces, and centipede-shaped skinless bleeding abominations looked down upon them.

"The corruption has driven you mad." Her head slumped and her eyes began to well up with tears.

"Oh no, Takara. You were the one who drove me to this. You were always laughing at me behind my back. Don't think I didn't know. You sent me back to the academy to humiliate me, then gave me a sensei who made my life hell and taught me nothing."

"Is that. Is that really what you believe, Maguro? I wanted to help you become stronger. I went out of my way to help you so many times!" Tears were running down her face now.

"I don't remember asking for your pity, Takara. Nothing I could have done would have been enough for you. You would have always found some way to downplay my accomplishments so that you can fit me into your box. I'll always be just a weak idiot who needs protecting to you. You and your savior complex. You act selfless, but you're just satisfying your own need to be the hero."

She collapsed to her knees. No, it wasn't true. She was…

"Now I'm going to give you the ultimate humiliation. You're going to be killed by such a worthless ninja as me." Takara's heart sank, but not for the reason Maguro probably thought.

"You're not worthless, Maguro. I never wanted to be hokage. I never wanted the burden of protecting you, protecting everyone. But I did it because I believed you were worth it, and because I was the only one who could." She looked up at Maguro, tears still streaming down her eyes.

Maguro held out his "fish hand," as he called it. Fish hand… She wanted to say that she didn't measure the worth of others by their power, but even now her thoughts about him were dipped in sarcasm and smugness. How had she missed this? She could see it now. No, she could always see it, but… there were so many times. Why hadn't she taken his suffering seriously? She really had driven him to this.

On his palm a bass mouth opened and a black sludge poured out, amorphous and squirming towards Takara.

She sent a Destruction Wave towards it. It dissipated, but Maguro kept pumping out more of the ooze, until. Until it wrapped around her Destruction and soaked in.

Whereas before her Destruction was a black energy, ominous enough in itself, what she saw floating in the air, the mass of… it was beyond words. It made no sense the way it looked like nothing and everything at once. It almost gave her a headache just thinking about it.

"I'm not just corrupted, Takara, I am the Avatar of the Corruption. I command it all and I can corrupt anything. If I can corrupt your destruction, I can corrupt anything."

Maguro's hand mouth sucked up this corrupted destruction.

She was low on chakra. She couldn't afford to do any big attacks. But this was just Maguro. She could just walk over and kick his ass with taijutsu.

No. For once in her life, she would respect him as her opponent. She would give him nothing less than her full power.

She felt a power welling in her eyes as they changed from eternal mangekyou to rinnegan. She stood completely still as natural chakra filled her body.

Painful sharp gnarled bones grew out of her skeleton all over her, piercing her flesh and opening numerous wounds. She was corrupted and bleeding profusely now. Normally, she would easily regenerate from something like this. Her body was similar to the first hokage's afterall. But the corruption in her body was somehow interfering with that.

Takara made a series of hand signs and four colossal walls of Destruction formed around this area and a few other surrounding areas of the corruption. Dissecting the mountain range and completely blocking off the path to the forest her students had gone into. All of the corruption monsters were now trapped in here with her.

"You can corrupt anything? Corrupt this." Takara continued with another long chain of hand signs and an enormous shadow fell over not on this area, but the surrounding mountains as well. This was one of the most destructive jutsu ever created in its own right, but while in her Destruction Chakra Mode, the destructive potential of all of her attacks were further increased as was the size of her attack.

Above them, the clouds dissipated as a colossal meteor plummeted towards them. It occurred to her that she could just stand there, and it would be the end of her as well. She just couldn't stand to see another person she cared for die, to take his life herself and keep on living. But she had other people who needed her. She had to make sure Okimi, Kurotenshi, and Miu made it out of the corruption.

Maguro looked up. Then towards Takara. He had a look in his eyes. He wasn't worried at all. Didn't he see he was about to die!

Before the meteor connected, Takara ran towards Maguro, grabbed his shirt and surrounded them both in a shell of Hakai, then surrounded that with Susanoo. The titanic explosion went off all around them.

For a moment, she couldn't see anything beyond her Susanoo but dust and blinding light. Cracks formed in her Susanoo and in another split-second the impact explosion obliterated it and her Hakai was caught in it as well.

It held, but not for long. She held tight to Maguro as they were hurled through the air. Most of the force had dissipated by now. She formed another wooded hawk beneath them and after a bit of struggle, it was able to right itself in the air as things calmed down.

They were high above the corruption now. She saw the Destruction Barrier she'd created around the area was destroyed. Dust raced into the other areas, but the vast majority of the meteors power had been contained to this area. If it hadn't, the forest she was looking at wouldn't still be standing.

Nothing that had been within her destruction barrier remained. Of the corruption monsters, there was not even ashes, nor the mountains they'd stood on. Far down below in the deep hole she carved in the Earth, she could see magma.

She'd saved him. Against her better judgment, she'd saved him. Then, she would have to go all the way. She would put her life on the line to save Maguro. She turned to him and smiled despite the tears running down her face, hoping against hope that he'd now come to his senses.

Maguro's fish hand lunged at Takara. It was fast. Even with the rinnegan, she could barely follow it. She grabbed his wrist.

Maguro slammed his skull into Takara's. It was surprisingly painful coming from Maguro. Blood trickled down their foreheads, which were still pressed together.

Then Maguro pressed on with his fish hand. She couldn't hold him. There was nowhere to dodge with her destruction behind her. She could still use destruction. She could annihilate him here. She had to.

No. She'd had enough. She wouldn't allow even one more person she cared about to die. If she ended up dying here… well, her students didn't have far to go and she'd gotten rid of the monsters. They'd make it back. All three of them were well on their way to becoming excellent shinobi. The awful burden she'd carried for so long, she would entrust it to them.

"I've always hated you," Maguro said as he thrust his fish hand into her chest, wrapping his fingers around her heart.

Takara coughed up some blood and then said, "I've always loved you."

She could feel his hand trembling with hesitation. There was a flicker of surprise and fear in his eyes. He couldn't kill her either, then. Good, her gambit had paid off then. No one would die today. Now she would bring Maguro back into the light.

Without thinking, she smiled knowingly.

And suddenly, Maguro's face was full of fury.

Maguro closed his hand.

Takara was trying to think through the question the proctors for the chunin exams had given them, but her teammate Maguro was being his usual loud and obnoxious self. He kept bragging about his latest exploits, trying to one-up everyone in the room. And now he had used that perverted jutsu. Takara couldn't take it anymore, and she decided to play a little prank on him.

With a smirk on her face, Takara activated her Creation: Chakra Mode, then gave Maguro a pat on the back. In an instant, his body began to change, his muscles shrinking and his features softening. When the transformation was complete, Takara couldn't help but laugh. Maguro was now a girl! He looked the same as his sexy jutsu form, but she'd given him modest clothing.

Maguro looked down at himself, confused and embarrassed. "What did you do?!" he shouted at Takara.

"Well, it seemed like you enjoyed turning into a girl," Takara said, still giggling. "I thought you might appreciate a little help."

Maguro grumbled, clearly not appreciating the humor in the situation. But Takara was having too much fun to care. She watched as Maguro awkwardly tried to adjust to his new form, stumbling around the room and nearly tripping over his own feet, glancing with a mixture of embarrassment and fear at the hungry expressions of the other guys.

Eventually, Takara released her jutsu, and Maguro returned to his normal self. He was still grumbling, but Takara could tell he was secretly a little bit amused. It was just a bit of fun.

Or she'd thought so at the time…

Takashi and Rina were standing in the doorway, a bright light behind them. A stray thought crossed Takara's mind that this wasn't how it had happened.

"It's time to go," Takashi said.

Takara took a few steps toward them, then turned her head back towards Maguro.

Maguro crossed his arms and turned his back to her. "Yeah, just give me a minute."

"We'll be waiting," Takara said, and stepped into the light.