The dry, rocky terrain just outside of the walls of Iwagakure was stained a venomous carmine. Corpses lay scattered along the ground in various states of mutilation, and towards the edge of the carnage laid an Iwa-nin facedown in the soil. He was missing his left arm and both of his shins, but he dragged himself along the ground towards his village, nonetheless, leaving a blood trail in his wake. It was impossible to tell how much blood on the ground was his versus his comrades', but thinking about that would only slow him down. He dug his fingers into the ground and heaved his body forward with all his might to continue inching his way to salvation.
Unfortunately, salvation was not in his future. A cold, lifeless hand snatched him by the back of the head and hoisted him into the air with unnatural strength, and before he could pray for the safety of his family and friends back in the village, a black chakra receiver shot through the back of his skull and out of his face right between his eyes. The lifelessness of the hand clutching him spread to the ninja's eyes, and his newly slumped body was tossed away like discarded trash.
The Deva Path dispassionately looked upon the massacre before setting his gaze on the village ahead. Soon, the other Paths, Konan, and the final hooded man arrived beside him. The pinprick pupils of the Deva Path's Rinnegan then grew, expanding to the first circle like a black hole as he meticulously spread his senses across the entirety of the village, both above and below. He clearly picked up on the sensory barrier surrounding the village's exterior, he felt the chakra signatures of hundreds of thousands, and he spied the biggest of them all in the Tsuchikage's Tower. However, it was not as large as Naruto's, meaning it was most likely Ohnoki's. Pain hummed in agitation as he kept searching, but no matter where he felt, there was no sign of Naruto's chakra anywhere. It was odd, distressing, and infuriating.
"Do you sense him?" Konan asked.
"No," Pain responded. "However, he is here. The hidden chameleon followed Ohnoki to the council meeting he held upon his return, and he was all too happy to confirm the capture of the son of the Yellow Flash with the elder council. I can even sense the sealing room they're prepping for the host transfer. He's being held somewhere that my senses cannot breach."
"So, Plan B, then?" Konan asked, a dark edge to her tone.
"Plan B," Pain nodded, his Rinnegan narrowing at the village. "We go about this the old-fashioned way."
He slightly turned his head to glance at her from his periphery (despite the fact that he could already see her from six other angles). "Do not worry about them going scorched earth upon discovery; Ohnoki won't kill him. It's a point of pride for him, pride that will be his undoing."
"And if he does?" Konan prodded.
"Then I shall use Rinne Rebirth to restore him," Pain answered without hesitation. "He will outlive us."
No more words were exchanged as the Asura Path kneeled to allow the Animal Path to step into his grasp, and once he had, the Animal Path was launched into the air high above the village. Upon reaching a zenith and starting his descent, it was time to get the show on the road.
"Summoning Jutsu!"
Slamming a palm onto the roof of the building he crashed into, the others appeared surrounding him and leaped into action. The diversion team of the Asura, Animal, and Preta Paths immediately went to work picking their spots and unleashing their unique brands of mass destruction, meanwhile, the others went on the hunt. That included the hooded man who, as the Human Path went toward the largest concentration of sensors in the village and the Deva Path made his way toward the Tsuchikage's Tower, accompanied Konan through a series of alleys while giant creatures emerged from the ether and the Asura Path unleashed a devastating blast in the background.
"Are you going to be able to manage all of them at once, Nagato?" Konan asked, her concern for him pouring out of her tone. "This is the first time you've left Ame since your body was restored."
Nagato removed the hood of his cloak, exposing his crimson hair and smoldering Rinnegan to the world. "Don't worry about me. I've long prepared for this day."
She nodded, albeit reluctantly, and dispersed into strips of paper before flying away to begin her part of the hunt. Nagato watched her leave before his Rinnegan shifted to the fast approach of Iwa-nin leaping across the buildings to combat the calamity befalling their home. As the group began passing over the alley without noticing him, Nagato extended an arm in their direction.
"Bansho Ten'in," he growled.
One of the jonin of the group was suddenly yoinked right out of the air, much to the surprise of the others who paused to investigate what was happening. They dropped into the alley just in time to see their comrade quite literally fly throat-first directly into Nagato's iron grip.
"Tell me where Naruto Uzumaki is being held," Nagato lowly commanded.
"Who the fuck?!" the jonin gurgled, but his sputtered gasping was cut short by Nagato crushing his throat like an empty can, spraying Nagato's face with small spatters of blood.
The other Iwa-nin didn't remain idle, each firing one of several earth jutsu at him. Any spikes shooting from the ground, stone walls closing around him, or shower of stony projectiles were instantly met with a False Darkness Jutsu that split off into several branches, lancing right through and nullifying the incoming earth attacks right before their very eyes. The shock that came over them would be their undoing, as Nagato fired a barrage of chakra rods right at the group, piercing through each and every one of them without fail and practically freezing them in place.
With the group now at his mercy and the receivers giving him a direct link into their chakra networks, Nagato tried once more. "I'll ask one more time. Your Tsuchikage kidnapped a jinchuriki named Naruto Uzumaki. Where is he?"
His tone was as deadly as a jutsu directly from the Tsuchikage, and it sent a tundra's worth of shivers up their spines. However, the responses he got were some variations of them not knowing, refusing to tell him anything, or insisting that he go fuck his mother. Through the rods, their chakras told him that they weren't lying and just simply weren't going to be cooperative in any event.
An angry sigh left him, and he ruled this group as a lost cause and decided to move on. A single tiger seal was all that was needed for him to spit an immense Dragon Flame Bomb at them, the draconic construct swirling around them in an ever-expanding, fiery vortex. When it finally descended on them, it detonated in a luminous explosion that engulfed not only them but the surrounding buildings, as well.
The Iwa-nin were not granted the gift of a swift incineration; Nagato made sure of that.
A giant centipede barreled through the populated buildings of the village with reckless abandon, scuttling about a bit too fast for many of the ninjutsu being fired at it to be a hindrance until a group of jonin attempted a large-scale Bedrock Coffin Jutsu. Two gargantuan slabs of stone rose from the ground and attempted to pancake the titanic arthropod, but the centipede quickly burrowed underground and out of danger.
"Where the hell did it-" one frantic Iwa-nin began before the ground beneath him shattered, and the centipede reemerged, swallowing him whole.
Nearby, the thunderous roars bellowing from a giant, multi-headed dog were heard village-wide as the creature shrugged off most attacks that were launched at it like harmless flies. These included ninjutsu of all kinds, a swarm of bees courtesy of the Kamizuru Clan, and even a boar summon that was unceremoniously batted away by the dog's tail.
Then, a collaborative Mud Wall shot out of the ground below the rampaging beast and hoisted it into the air, digging into the dog's underbelly as it thrashed against the attack from the struggling Iwa-nin. Unfortunately for them, they weren't even able to take a breather, as the dog split into two separate multi-headed canines and fell to either side of the wall, resuming its rampage on the frazzled village twofold.
Among the chaos and pandemonium caused by giant creatures flattening buildings, ninja, and civilian alike, the Preta Path held an older chunin by his throat against a wall, siphoning his chakra as he was powerless to pry the large corpse's meaty paws off of him. Even when more chunin emerged to rescue him and fired a collection of fire and earth jutsu at him, Pain's grip did not waver. Instead, he simply held out his other hand to meet the incoming jutsu, and like magic, the attacks were absorbed through a barrier projected from his palm.
The other ninjas were flabbergasted, and Pain capitalized by slamming the chunin's head against the wall hard enough to crack the stone. The chunin bonelessly slid to the ground and left a trail of blood on the wall while Pain rushed in like lightning, impaling the closest one through the heart and yanking his bottom jaw into his grasp when he predictably opened his mouth in shock. The horror continued when Pain palmed the man's forehead with his free hand and ripped the poor man's jaw right off to the tune of horrified shouting from the others. Pain tossed the jaw and backhanded one of the others in one swift motion, pulverizing his nose while the two remaining Iwa-nin, who were just fresh genin, ran away in fear.
Since the Preta Path was part of the distraction team and not the hunting team, he didn't really need to chase after them and press them for information. Instead, he was just there to wreak havoc and vent some of Nagato's fury. The opportunity presented itself in the chunin clutching his pouring face and writhing in agony on the ground at Pain's feet.
Pain yanked the man back to his feet by his ponytail and clutched onto his head, palming his cranium with one hand and his chin with the other before squeezing. His hands were pressing down on either side of his head like a vice as the chunin fought his hardest to escape, hitting and grabbing at Pain with all his might, but it simply wasn't enough. His pained, muffled grunts of agony became prolonged, throaty screeching through forcefully gritted teeth as snaps could be heard and blood started pouring from every orifice. With a final heave, Pain popped his head like a grape between his hands, painting them, his cloak, and some of the surrounding area in blood.
Letting the body of the chunin hit the ground with an unceremonious thud, Pain simply walked away from his handiwork to continue the Preta Path's designated mission.
Missiles rained hell upon the village, indiscriminately attacking whatever moved, whatever could move, and whatever housed something that could move. The market district was peppered with exploding death, the Iwa shinobi academy was ravaged and laid to waste, and even the residential districts were not spared. A missile sent from the Asura Path with love slammed into the foundation of a civilian apartment building, toppling it entirely and dooming anyone who couldn't yet evacuate to one of the many bunkers to an unfortunate death in their collapsed homes.
The fact that the invasion was so sudden and aggressive meant that the village was caught with their pants down, so very few civilians even had the opportunity to make it to one in the first place. This was the scene one teenaged Iwa chunin found herself in as she bounded over blood-stained rubble and the corpses painting them, an injured child on her back. She had found him inconsolable and covered in gore after his father had an unfortunate run-in with a missile and his mother was decapitated by a sheet of metal. She had to choke down her own turmoil upon seeing the lifeless eyes of her parents in the wreckage of their home mere minutes prior, and she hoisted the crying boy onto her back and darted for the nearest bunker.
She dodged explosions, tumbling buildings, and falling debris along the way, her back stained with both tears and blood all the while. She even skirted around a man in Akatsuki robes—the Tsuchikage had already warned the ninja population about them—choking two jonin while some ugly, demonic head statue ripped their tongues right out of their mouths. One of them was her former sensei.
She couldn't think about that. She needed to get to the bunker.
Picking up the space, she sped through the pandemonium and did her level best to block out the anguish coming from every which way. She couldn't ignore the scarily frequent rumbling approaching her, though, and a massive crab burst onto the scene like an impromptu rave, sending even more dangerous debris in all directions that she just barely avoided. Skidding along the ground but keeping an iron hold on the crying child, she found herself cornered as the voracious crustacean raised his big, meaty claws in preparation to squash her like lowly plankton.
However, the claw never reached her, as it was caught by a newly appearing mountain of a man. His muscles strained beyond belief as he held back the claw with his brute strength, and she recognized that strained war cry to match the pale blue markings under his eyes.
"Monga?!" she asked in a mixture of surprise and relief.
"Go!" he shouted at her, straining even harder to keep the claw from advancing any further. "We'll handle this thing!"
The mention of "we" only momentarily took her aback, as not a second later, Akatsuchi arrived with a massive Stone Golem to combat the crab. Not having to be told twice, she sent him a thankful nod and hurried past the preoccupied crustacean just before it blasted a Wild Bubble Wave at the golem. She kept on running with singleminded determination to reach this little boy's salvation, and her heart began to rise when she saw the bunker was in sight.
It promptly fell when everything to her left was violently detonated by a sudden chakra laser coming from the direction of the earlier missiles. She only had a split-second to jump out of the way, so she chose to throw the child into the air ahead of her to keep him out of dodge while she twisted her body enough to dodge as much of the beam as she could. As the laser cleaved through the area, she torpedoed back to the ground with a sickening crash, her whole left side below the neck horribly burned and her left foot gone completely. Tumbling uselessly into nearby rubble, she gritted her teeth and peeled her eyes open to check on the boy.
Just up ahead, the boy was fortunately okay, though he was beyond traumatized by the day's events. She could understand that. At least the entrance to the bunker was in sight, and the lack of ninja or civilians funneling into it was a horrible sign of how the attack was progressing. Still, she dragged herself to her knees and crawled through the ruined street toward him. She didn't care how many buildings were leaning and threatening to topple on either side of them. She was going to get him to safety.
She was going to get him to safety.
The awful rumble of one of said buildings finally giving way alerted her to a collapsing chunk of wall, and her gaze zeroed in on the many exposed rebars protruding from it. As their awful fortune that day would have it, the injured, traumatized, and seriously in shock child was right in the path of tumbling, concrete death.
Her body moved on its own. The pain that cascaded over her went ignored. The lack of a left foot was inconsequential. The only thing in her vision was this crying child that desperately needed protection. She shielded him with her body just in time for three pieces of rebar to pierce right through her chest and abdomen and the concrete to slam into her already injured back, but she remained firm, holding up the weight of the wall with her body with every bit of chakra she could pour through herself.
She met his petrified gaze and gave him her best, most reassuring smile. "Go. Please."
Her voice was weak, almost at a whisper, but the message got through. Despite shaking like a leaf and barely cognizant of what was going on anymore, he gave her a weak nod and struggled to his feet. A soft nudge from her sent him on his way toward the entrance of the bunker where he would hopefully survive.
A wet cough painted the ground beneath her with blood that hadn't already trickled down the rebar, and the weight of the wall slowly became too much to bear as her strength progressively left her. It wouldn't be long before she finally gave out and was crushed under its weight.
At least she was able to do some good in the end.
Blood painted the walls of an alley in a largely deserted portion of the village. Bodies lay strewn about the dirt without their heads, the lower half of a man was hanging upside down by his ankles that were stabbed through the wall by paper blades, and beside that pair of legs was a man that was beaten and hanged with a noose fashioned from the other man's lower intestine.
Towards the end of the alley was a man crucified to the wall via paper kunai. Blood, sweat, and defiant tears trickled down his bruised visage. He weakly brought his head up to face the devilish sight before him: a woman with wings made of paper hovering menacingly above him like an angel of death.
"I will ask you again," Konan said, her impassive tone juxtaposing the pure, unfettered hatred in her gaze as she lowered herself and drew close to his face. "Naruto Uzumaki, the Kyubi jinchuriki. We know the Tsuchikage left with a squad to capture him, and we know he's being held prisoner here. You can tell me where he is, or you can join your comrades."
The Iwa-nin glared hatefully back at her before spitting in her face, marring her skin with saliva, sweat, and blood. While her expression did not change, something snapped in her gaze, and the paper kunai pinning him to the wall were suddenly ripped out of him. However, before he could hit the ground, he was wrapped up in hundreds of strips of paper. Closer inspection revealed them to be explosive tags, but he wasn't even given the chance to panic before even more tags piled onto his face, practically smothering him until he was a mummified bomb. Konan flew out of the alley and over the buildings, keeping the struggling mummy close behind her.
She set her amber gaze onto the Tsuchikage's Tower, and then it landed on her dogged prisoner. Without a second thought, she launched the suicide bombing mummy across the village straight for the tower, watching in satisfaction as it crashed into the building and detonated into a humongous explosion. If they hadn't already demanded Ohnoki's attention with this sudden attack on their village, they would definitely have it now.
Kurotsuchi wasn't a superstitious girl. She didn't believe in fate, she didn't believe in jinxes, and she certainly didn't believe in bad omens that predicted the future. However, when she emerged from the depths of the ANBU prison, for a brief moment, the thought crossed her mind that perhaps she should have. The village, her village, was in shambles. Giant summons were wreaking havoc with her countrymen doing their best to combat them, explosions raged as far as the eye could see, and the feeling of death permeated the entire village. Her mind could only travel back to her grandpa telling Naruto that no one was coming to save him.
Well, someone apparently did, and they weren't fucking around.
Then, the chilling response Naruto gave him couldn't help but cross her mind, as well.
"For your sake, you'd better pray that's the case."
Not if she had a goddamn thing to say about it.
Leaping off right into the fray, she spotted a giant rhino storming through the village halted by two giant slabs of stone slamming into it on either side, sandwiching it between them. Recognizing her father's jutsu, she decided that was where she would go first, but she had to change course to avoid a spatter of missiles aimed at the roof she was on. Leaping onto a nearby building, she was prepared for the Asura Path to launch right out of the smoke at her. She met his charge with a stone-covered fist in an attempt to smash right through him, but she found that he was far stronger than he looked (and he looked pretty strong to start with), batting her Stone Fist away and snatching her by the throat.
Thinking quickly as she was hoisted into the air by his iron grip, she performed a few seals before slamming her hands together, and a deluge of earth spikes shot out of the ground and pierced the base of the building they were on, shaking its already rocked foundation even more and disrupting Pain just enough to allow her to wiggle out of his clutches. The millisecond she did, she kicked off of the building and into the air, readying another set of seals before blasting a full-power Water Trumpet at him. The jet of water was so powerful that it practically carved through the building entirely, finally bringing it down but not her opponent with it, unfortunately.
The Asura Path, slippery as he was, got out of dodge with only his cloak as a casualty and landed back on the ground in a hunch, fully exposing his completely mechanized body with six arms, three faces, and a long, flexible, serrated saw blade acting as a tail jutting from his lower back.
"Holy hell…" she muttered in a combination of disgust and fascination.
Pain resumed the battle by extending all six arms and firing his fists at her like deadly homing missiles, to which she responded by spitting several globs of quicklime back at him. Some hit their mark while some didn't, and she was forced to backpedal and evade the explosive fists as they slammed into the ground, detonating and creating more and more of an obstructive cloud. She saw right through the plan, however, and she quickly stomped on the ground to erect a dome around her for cover.
Right as she did so, Pain emerged from the smoke and stabbed the dome with his tail, sawing right through it and crumbling the top of the dome away. She was gone, though, having escaped underground with Subterranean Voyage, but before the Asura Path could follow, the other two faces spotted even more Iwa-nin coming out of the woodwork to attack him.
Underground, Kurotsuchi dug a good distance away from the dome to create a big enough gap for what she needed to complete the last stage of her plan. It was a good thing she sensed the cavalry coming to her aid when she did, as she really needed that distraction to make this work perfectly. Hopefully, she was fast enough to resurface before any harm could come to them.
Deciding this was far enough, she shot upwards and emerged from the dirt, but what she saw struck her to her core: Pain, in the few seconds she was underground, had torn apart just about every ninja that came to her aid, the most glaring example being her former classmate impaled through the chest on his monstrous tail. It was only the last remaining shinobi rushing him in hysterical fury that shook her from her horrified stupor, and she pulled her legs from the dirt before preparing the duo of seals she needed for the Ash Stone Sealing Jutsu. When Pain discarded of her classmate by flicking him off his tail in the same motion that lobbed the other attacking ninja's head off, she spewed a thick cloud of ash from her mouth right at him. The ash quickly wrapped around Pain and hardened as she focused her chakra, binding him in a tough, almost rubbery substance that was different than the cement her Quicklime Jutsu functioned as.
Unfortunately, it was different in both the best and worst way, as it was stronger than the quicklime and activated immediately without the need for water to set it, but it also required far more chakra and concentration to constantly maintain and simply did not have the range of the quicklime. With that in mind, she quickly formed a giant, stone gauntlet on her fist and rushed in to pulverize Pain's exposed head while she still had him trapped. Unfortunately, Pain had other ideas, opening his cranium and charging up a powerful blast. Kurotsuchi tried to get to him before he could launch the attack, but he was just a little bit faster, detonating the chakra cannon in a monstrous explosion that blasted her away like a rag doll.
The force of the blast slammed her through a nearby building and torpedoed her to the ground like a rock skipped along the surface of a pond. When she came to a skidding stop, she had seen much better days. Her flak jacket was one of the only things that made it out of the blast in one piece, as the rest of her uniform was torn in many places, exposing the burns that littered her body and the broken right arm that lay uselessly across her chest. Miraculously, though, she mostly held onto consciousness, though with bleary vision and a deafening ring of her ears, it took her some time to regain even a sliver of her bearings. The large pair of hands nudging her awake somewhat helped in that regard.
"-tsuchi! Kurotsuchi!" said a vaguely familiar voice leaning over her as the ringing began to subside.
She turned her head to gaze up at him, blinking as she could make out images. "A-Akatsuchi?"
"Oh, thank Ishikawa," he sighed, a mountain of tension leaving his body. "I thought you were a goner after that spill. I watch Monga get crushed in between the claws of a giant crab. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, too."
Kurotsuchi maybe followed half of that, but she was really happy to see her friend regardless. She could half-listen to him babble on and on for as long as it took her to get her legs back. Or, at least, that was the plan until another flash of black with red clouds emerged behind him while he was fretting over her, and she shoved Akatsuchi out of the way with her good arm right as the Human Path struck. His palm landed on her cranium rather than Akatsuchi's, holding her still.
"Move, and she dies," Pain warned him, stopping Akatsuchi's attack before it could even happen.
Kurotsuchi, meanwhile, was frozen in place, a strange, invasive tug at her soul lancing through her body. She could do nothing as the Human Path sifted through her memories in seconds before he smiled.
"Found you," he said, and then he lifted his hand from her head.
The tug that Kurotsuchi felt did not leave. Instead, it became a firm clutch, coiling around her very being and hoisting it away from her. Her body, mind, and spirit went numb as her soul was wrenched out of her. She heard nothing. She felt nothing. She was filled with the overwhelming presence of the Rinnegan throughout her body before that, too, vanished.
The last thing she saw was the chuckling grin of the Shinigami before oblivion took her.
When the invasion began in earnest, the Deva Path had a single destination in mind. He did not hurry, as it was unnecessary. He did not waste time fraternizing with the masses of Iwa-nin that attacked him, simply blasting them into various states of aliveness with Shinra Tensei whenever they showed up. He didn't even bother moving away from the chaos the Animal Path and Asura Path were causing, electing to walk through it like a demon traversing the fires of hell with the kind of familiarity only a homeowner could develop. He remained on a leisurely stroll, knowing that his destination and target were not going anywhere anytime soon.
The Tsuchikage Tower was his destination, and Ohnoki was his target. He had been stoking the flames of war for far too long, and he had just committed the ultimate sin of fucking with Nagato's family. It was time for him to know true pain.
Then, he paused, something happening across the continent that captured his attention. Through the eyes and ears of the hidden chameleon in the Mizukage's office, he was let in on the conversation happening between Aoimori and the others, namely the news that the salamander brought back from Kuromizu.
"A void?" Pain mused, fascinated by the thought. "Are such seals even possible? Was that why I could not sense him?"
He decided to explore this thread another time. Regaining Naruto was the top priority, and he was certain that Naruto would enjoy breaking down highly experimental fuinjutsu from Uzu, so the two could research this intriguing concept together.
Suddenly, a man covered from head to toe in explosive tags soared through the air and crashed into the tower, exploding in a brilliant blast that shook the building to its foundation. He couldn't help the fond smirk that developed at what was no doubt a gesture from Konan. Whether it be to flush Ohnoki out or her simply venting her fury, he didn't know, but it didn't really matter. It had succeeded either way, as Ohnoki hovered out of the new hole in the tower with a smoldering expression.
"Good, now I don't have to hunt you down," Pain said to the floating senior citizen.
Ohnoki narrowed his already furious gaze at him. "You've got some nerve attacking Iwa on our very own soil, boy."
"Let's skip the pretenses, you know why I'm here," Pain cut to the heart of it. "Naruto Uzumaki. You have him. We want him back."
"You dare come into my village and make demands of me?" Ohnoki scoffed. "You impudent brats are getting way too big for your britches. It's high time someone spanked some respect into you."
"Tell me where he is," Pain spoke again, his voice growing darker. "This is your final warning."
Ohnoki simply sneered at him. "That's the problem with Akatsuki. You ignorant fools believe that you can snatch power from other nations and then muscle your way onto the big stage. You've deluded yourself into believing you're a major player just because you have a few jinchuriki. You're nothing more than a petulant upstart that will be squashed under a proper village's might."
"So, you're not going to tell me where Naruto Uzumaki is," Pain sighed, though he was fully expecting this.
Rather than respond, Ohnoki blasted off toward him like a rocket, taking full advantage of his mastery over the Lightened Boulder Jutsu to fly at him at top speed while readying his Stone Fist to punch a hole right through him. Pain simply raised his palm and fired a Shinra Tensei at him just before he reached him, violently propelling Ohnoki away and sending him crashing into the tower like a missile. The old man was not down and out by a long shot, though, as the translucent makings of the Atomic Dismantling Jutsu presented themselves shortly thereafter.
The giant cube of atomic disassembly fired at Pain from the tower, which he quickly dodged and watched as it reduced the surrounding buildings to dust. Moments later, though, Iwa-nin came out of the woodwork to assist their Kage, throwing themselves at Pain with ninjutsu, kunai, swords, hammers, their fists, and even a kitchen sink ready to batter him. Another Shinra Tensei was all that was necessary to clear the crowd, but one of them that was waiting in the wings used the immediate aftermath to strike, leaping into the fray to blast a Great Breakthrough at him. What the attacker did not foresee was the Preta Path emerging from the ether to absorb the attack wholesale, but he was given no time to contemplate that before the Deva Path launched a chakra rod into his brain.
Then, the ground beneath them sank, lowering a large swath of land into the depths to form a deep, square chasm around Pain. Ohnoki, having used the distraction to momentarily trap them with the Mobile Core Jutsu, appeared over the opening of the hole with a victorious smirk. He formed another Atomic Dismantling Jutsu, this one a cube large enough to fit snugly within the chasm to ensure there was no escape for Pain.
"A pitiful end for Akatsuki, just as you deserved," Ohnoki mocked, unleashing his jutsu upon them.
In the hole, the Preta Path was quick to act once again, stepping forward and projecting the chakra absorption barrier around both Paths and pushing it to its limit. The cube, rather than reduce Pain to nothingness, was quickly absorbed into the barrier as Ohnoki believed it activated, leaving a slightly widened hole with both Paths standing completely unharmed within.
"What in blazes…" Ohnoki balked, gobsmacked that they were still there.
He didn't dwell on it, though, as the giant, drill-beaked bird that attempted to plow right into him was far more pressing. He flew out of the path of the bird, but the charge of the giant rhino that came at him from the other side was harder to dodge, so he braced himself and clutched onto the horn, successfully evading becoming a donut.
"Lightened Boulder Jutsu!" he bellowed, reducing the gravity on the rhino and making it much, much lighter. It was so light, in fact, that Ohnoki hefted it by the horn despite the screaming pain it caused his back, spinning in place until he built up enough acceleration to launch the rhino across the village like a skyscraper-sized discus.
Just then, the Animal Path appeared on the roof of the Tsuchikage Tower, summoning a giant panda to continue the onslaught as the multi-headed dog and centipede pincered the battlefield. Ohnoki flew out of the way of a vicious swipe from the panda, readying another Atomic Dismantling Jutsu to do away with it, but the centipede pounced before he could, striking with intent to swallow him whole like it had done to so many others that day. Ohnoki was just fast enough to evade it, redirecting his jutsu so that the cube now encompassed the centipede. The arthropod nearly burrowed into the ground to escape, but two surprise slabs of rock emerged from either side and sandwiched it, momentarily trapping it in place. Simultaneously, a massive Mud Wall appeared in front of the dog just before it could charge, slowing it down just enough for the earth to rise into what looked like a mini volcano and swallow up the lower half of the dog.
Ohnoki capitalized, vaporizing the centipede just in time to be swatted out of the air like a fly by the panda. Fortunately, he was caught before he could slam into the ground by Kitsuchi, who had arrived with an overkill squad of jonin to assist their Kage.
"Father, are you alright?" Kitsuchi asked once they landed on solid ground.
"Of course I am," he scoffed, removing himself from his son's grasp. "I'm not that old, damnit."
While this was all going down, the Deva Path watched the developing fracas from beside the earlier hole. The summons were keeping Ohnoki busy, and the arrival of the cavalry would be annoying but not too much of a concern. With that in mind, his focus was largely elsewhere from the battle, and for good reason.
They had located Naruto.
Naruto would have been lying if he said that his curiosity wasn't getting the better of him. Not since the first explosion rocked the village had the ruckus stopped. Something big was happening on the surface, and he wished he could see it. He knew Aoimori had at least told Pain and Konan that he had been captured, but he left before Zetsu handed him over to Iwa, so they could have still been under the impression that Tsuki no Me captured him.
On the other hand, he knew Pain had eyes in every village, so it was also possible that he figured out what had actually happened by observing the Tsuchikage's activities when he returned to the village. It was tough to say in any event. All he knew was that something or someone was attacking the village above him.
Well, fuck 'em. They've had it coming for a while.
Then, footsteps emerged from the hall in a rush, and Naruto assumed it was just a frantic Kurotsuchi coming back for whatever reason. Then, he picked up on a second set following closely behind the first, indicating that it was at least two people… or perhaps one person with four legs? Were there Minotaur summons around? Was that a thing? Questions for later.
"Naruto!" a shockingly familiar voice called from the bars, and Naruto's head snapped to look at the new arrival and ensure that he wasn't hallucinating.
"…Mom??" he whispered, and lo and behold, Konan stood right there, her hands gripping the bars like a vice and joyous tears pouring down her cheeks.
"My sunshine…" she whispered in return, all of the love and longing stemming from years of separation pouring out of her voice and wrapping Naruto in a warm blanket that permeated through his bindings and nestled into his soul.
Beside her, Nagato inspected the seal tags coating the bars and the inscriptions lining the walls. "So, this is the void…"
"The void?" Naruto questioned.
"Long story," Nagato shook his head, activating the Preta Path to siphon the chakra from the tags.
"Right now, we're getting you back home," Konan assured as Nagato worked.
They watched as Nagato removed the tags of the chakra maintaining the sealing matrix, rendering them inert and breaching a hole in the so-called void. That allowed Konan to pry the bars apart far enough for her to rush in, grabbing and collecting Naruto when she did so. The duo then freed him of his restraints before Nagato siphoned and broke the suppression seals scrawled on him with the Preta Path.
The rush of energy that burst through him at the freedom of his chakra invigorated Naruto, compelling him to jump in place like an excited child being told to get dressed to go to an amusement park. Then, he felt inward, and he called out to his lifelong companion.
'Kurama! You there?!'
"Huh?"
The deep rumble in his mind was followed by shuffling and the distinct sound of a button being pressed on a remote.
"Oh, sorry, I was watching TV. What did I miss?"
There was a lengthy silence in the mindscape as Naruto had absolutely no idea how to reply to that… or even what to make of it.
'…What do you mean you were watching TV?'
"Well, I was cut off from you, so I had nothing better to do."
There was another silence, but this one was far shorter, and mercifully so because Konan was not doing a good job at stifling her giggling at the interaction she knew was happening.
'…Fair enough.'
Naruto then turned his attention back to the cell. "Before we go…"
He pulled up the sleeve of his cloak and exposed an emergency storage seal on his bicep, popping out a special scroll. He unrolled it, revealing a small matrix before stepping into the cell and placing the scroll facedown on the floor. Flaring his chakra to activate the scroll, the matrix expanded off of the parchment before latching into all of the seals inscribed within the cell, pulling them into itself and compressing them in the scroll alongside it.
"I need to study these seals," Naruto spoke before stashing the scroll. "They're far too dangerous to leave lying around."
Turning back to his mother and uncle, he gave them the warmest, most thankful smile he could muster. "Alright, let's go home."
The forces of Iwagakure were not having a good time. The summons were far harder to deal with than they anticipated, even with their increased numbers. On top of that, they had to contend with an unending shower of missiles peppering the battlefield, whittling their numbers down at a steady rate. Then, more and more Paths began emerging to join the battle until all six stood against them, wielding powers none of them had ever encountered before today.
Pain, on the other hand, was having a fantastic time. Naruto was recovered, which meant that the one man they needed alive for information, Ohnoki, was no longer of any use to them. That meant that Pain could finally cut loose.
And cut loose he did, starting with Kitsuchi's attempt to blitz him with a Stone Fist earning a massive Shinra Tensei that blasted the area. It not only rocketed him away, but it also smashed into the present Iwa-nin and sent them tumbling into the wreckage that already surrounded them. The Asura Path quickly followed up with guided missiles for each and every one of them, making sure they were in no position to dodge or defend from certain death. Meanwhile, Ohnoki had braced himself with the Super Weighted Boulder Jutsu, but the consequence of making himself much heavier was that it left him vulnerable to a surprise attack from the Preta Path. He wasn't quite fast enough to avoid being snatched by the face and having his chakra drained, effectively nulling the effects of the jutsu.
Ohnoki tried to fight back, kicking Pain off with the dregs of the jutsu left in his feet before forming another Atomic Dismantling Jutsu in his hands, but the Asura Path appeared beside him just as quickly, literally rocketing into him with a shoulder tackle to disrupt the jutsu. He then snatched Ohnoki from tumbling away by the arm and yanked with all of his might, ripping Ohnoki's arm right off in a bloody display. The screams of the aged Tsuchikage were heard far and wide, but they were squashed by the Preta Path clamping down on his neck and crushing his throat, forcing even more blood out of him.
Ohnoki's agonized wails brought his son to his rescue like a moth to a flame, but he was intercepted by the Naraka Path tackling him and slamming him face-first into the ground. The Deva Path then extended his hand, calling for Bansho Ten'in to pull Kitsuchi toward him. Unfortunately for Kitsuchi, he cut the pull early to allow the Asura Path to slide right in Kitsuchi's path, and Kitsuchi's momentum carried him right into the saw blade of the Asura Path, stabbing straight through his abdomen like a hot knife through butter.
It was his turn to hack up a glob of blood, and his wide, black eyes stared into the disdain of the Rinnegan as the Deva Path meandered toward him. Another palm and a muttered, "Shinra Tensei," later, Kitsuchi was violently blasted off of the serrated tail and into oblivion to join his daughter.
Meanwhile, the other Paths had taken the liberty of stabbing chakra rods into Ohnoki, pinning the bloody mess to the ground on his stomach. When the Deva and Asura Paths approached, the Asura Path followed suit and stabbed a rod directly through his lower back, all but ensuring he would not be walking out of this if he managed to survive the day by some miracle. The Deva Path, however, simply took a knee and grabbed Ohnoki by the hair, forcing his head up to look him in the eye.
"Oh, Ohnoki," Pain sardonically drawled. "How did it ever come to this?"
A bitter hack was all the answer he received. Pain nodded nonetheless, treating the bloody, defiant cough as an insightful retort.
"You do everything in your power to protect your village," Pain began, his Rinnegan boring right into Ohnoki's eyes. "I can empathize with that, as I do the same. However, you go above and beyond in doing what you believe is best for your village at the expense of the world around you. Of all five Kage, you, Ohnoki, have undoubtedly done the most to profit from pain, suffering, and war, and for the longest time, as well."
More throaty sputtering that sounded suspiciously like, "Kiss my wrinkly ass," came from Ohnoki.
Undeterred, Pain continued. "Iwagakure has participated in every major war to date, and Iwagakure was categorically defeated in each one. Of course, I don't need to remind you of that, as you lived through each of them. The only victories you can claim are the expansionist attacks on smaller nations and hidden villages in your country's history that allowed you to exert your influence over the region."
Pain yanked Ohnoki's head, eliciting a pained growl from both the gesture and the angle at which his body was being bent against the rods impaling him. "Here's the thing, though, Ohnoki; Amegakure is not a puppet like Ishigakure, and Akatsuki will not simply roll over for you or any of the Great Five. It's just as you said earlier: you ignorant fools believe that you can snatch power from other nations and then muscle your way onto the big stage. You've deluded yourself into believing that simply because you're a world power, you can steamroll those smaller than you at your behest. It worked for a long time, but over the years, your empire became a house of cards threatening to topple, and you knew that better than anyone. Perhaps it may have even survived a little while longer had you not made one crucial mistake."
The hateful glare in his Rinnegan transcended the fact that Ohnoki was staring into the illusory eyes of a walking, talking corpse.
"You fucked with my family."
A chakra rod emerged from Pain's other hand as he continued to hold Ohnoki's head up. "So, vaunted Fence-Sitter, you've experienced enough war to know very well that war is less about who strikes first and more about who strikes best. Therein lies the difference between us. When I strike, I don't miss."
With that, Pain drove the chakra rod through Ohnoki's cranium, piercing his brain before stabbing through the roof of his mouth and out of his jaw. It finally came to a stop when it planted into the ground, pinning Ohnoki's upright head to the dirt. The light left his drooping eyes, and his pinned body practically melted into the dirt like the lifeless husk he was. The Tsuchikage was dead.
A beat of silence passed over the scene before the other five Paths vanished in puffs of smoke, summoned to Nagato, Konan, and Naruto's location outside of the village.
"Now, to eliminate the stains of your bloodline," Pain muttered, lifting off the ground and levitating into the air. He slowly traversed toward the sky, rising higher and higher above Iwagakure until the entirety of the ravaged village was well below him. The full scope of their attack was painfully clear with the ruins the once sprawling town made of stone had become. Any survivors lying amongst the decimation were mere ants to him, both in this life and the next.
"Shinra Tensei."
Alright, so I should probably clear something up from the last two chapters that a few have pointed out in case others are also confused:
I'm well aware that only an Uzumaki can hold the Kyubi without dying. Zetsu is too, which was the whole point of handing Naruto over to Iwa. Black Zetsu knew that no one there would be able to contain it (he said as much in chapter 21), and he knew that the Kyubi would just flatten the village and kill everyone there when the sealing inevitably failed (again, he said as much in chapter 21). It was a petty get-back for the perceived slight against Kaguya that, from Zetsu's perspective, was not going to backfire on him no matter which way it went.
Ohnoki, on the other hand, did not know any of that, and why would he? Theres no reason at all he'd have the information that only an Uzumaki's vitality can contend with the Kyubi's presence, so there's no reason for him to think that it was any different than sealing the Hachibi, or even the Gobi and Yonbi for that matter. In his old, arrogant mind, an emergency vessel with a strong enough constitution to handle the wear and tear that a biju would levy onto their chakra system (like Kurotsuchi) would have been sufficient.
It's a bit of dramatic irony. Again, just wanted to clear up the confusion.
Wolves in 7 against the Mavs and the Celtics btw. Ant FMVP.
Thanks for reading.