Obito-Sensei Chapter 87

Could Bring An End To Everything

As far as Sakura was concerned, the battle was going pretty well until the island-turtle arrived.

She, Naruto, Jiraiya, and several other Rain ninja had cut a swathe through Cloud's fleet, assisted in part by the swarms of ninja from the Hidden Mist. They had mostly stayed out of each other's way: the Mist shinobi seemed content to let Rain fight their own battles, and that had been just fine to Sakura. Fighting alongside unfamiliar allies could be dangerous, especially with a jutsu like hers. Only having to worry about cutting down her enemies was ideal.

Jiraiya drew her attention to the problem as he shook his head with an incredulous look. He was in Sage Mode, guiding them throughout the battlefield with his superhuman senses. "They turned one into a fortress?" he said, his toad-like eyes fixed on the massive creature as ninja swarmed towards it. "Unbelievable. I'd heard-"

"What should we do?" Naruto cut him off, looking out over the battlefield. He'd sent out clones for triage, but his super strength had still been at Sakura's side keeping her safe. "They're retreating."

'He's the perfect bodyguard. The closer you stick to him, the better.'

That thought was too cold for her but perfect for the battlefield, so Sakura didn't question it. And she liked being at Naruto's side: he made her feel safe and warm. The memory of the impulsive kiss was still keeping her up at night, but she didn't know how to act on it. She couldn't dream of being that impulsive again, but she wanted to be: she wanted to stop thinking and just act, no matter how impossible it was.

"Let them run," Jiraiya said. "If the assault has failed, we've done our job here. We can leave it to Mist and their Bijuu to clean up." He glanced back at the towering slug and the corrosive gas it was spewing. "And I definitely don't want to get in that thing's way."

'Three of them are here. If you had them in hand, you'd be a superpower. He's a seal master. He could help accomplish your dream.'

It was true, but Sakura couldn't see any way Jiraiya could be convinced to steal from the Hidden Mist so blatantly. Maybe if the battle had gone worse for them, but right now all the Tailed Beasts were either firmly out of her reach or already sealed in an ally. For now, it couldn't be helped; even if it made her heart burn from the injustice of it, they might have to let Cloud go… for now.

As she watched, the turtle rocked and groaned, lashing out at the water around it. Many of the Cloud ninja had successfully retreated, but the Sanbi had returned and was obviously harrying the huge animal from below, along with everything else lurking in the water: Mist ninja, that rogue Sasuke had met named Kisame, and countless summons. The island-turtle was huge, but that didn't make it invincible, which was probably why it began to sink below the waves at that moment. The water lapped against the invisible barrier surrounding it, failing to actually spill onto the top of the turtle as the ninja fortress started to vanish from sight.

At the same time, Konan swept down from above. No, it wasn't the original Konan, Sakura realized after a moment: the Amekage had split herself into several smaller clones which were now rushing about the sinking fleet and violent waves, giving orders to the spread out Rain ninja. By Sakura's estimate, including her group there were only about twenty left. They'd won, but at the cost of more than half the force.

This would be their final battle in the Land of Frost, and what Konan said only confirmed that.

"Retreat however you can, as quickly as you can," Konan ordered urgently, a hint of fear in her eyes. "Cloud is likely going to target Mist's Bijuu with the Cannon. They planned this from the start."

None of them waited for another word. They just turned west and started sprinting across the rough water into the bloody sun, Naruto speaking with obvious panic to Konan.

"This close to Hakoda?!" he asked, and she grimly nodded. "I thought they wouldn't shoot with an occupied city in the way!"

"They're either confident in its accuracy or they don't care," Konan confirmed. "It's Sasuke's intuition, and the only reason they would try to bait out Mist's forces like this. I've sent Fuu to tell them about the danger; if anyone can survive a close hit, it will be her. But-"

Jiraiya hissed, spinning and looking back as he held one hand up to his head. Sakura watched him, feeling a horrible mix of disinterest, fear, and fatalism.

'This could be very bad.'

"Something big just happened," he said, a rumbling dread filling his voice. "Konan… they fired it."

"How long?!" she snapped, and Jiraiya shook his head.

"Less than a minute." He was already biting his thumb and running through a summoning jutsu, producing a tiny man-eating toad. "Everyone, inside now. He'll dive as deep as he can; it might be our only chance."

As the toad devoured her, Sakura looked back towards the sinking fleet, searching for Sasuke, Fuu, and Nonō. She couldn't find them in the chaos, through the fire and smoke and flames and plumes of white and red water, but she could see the Rokubi rearing up, staring at the sky. Somehow, it knew just as well as Jiraiya did what was coming: it had to be a sensor too.

'Don't die,' she silently prayed as she found herself in the dark guts of the toad, pressed in alongside Naruto, Jiraiya, and Konan. She could feel the pressure around her growing as the summon dove into the ocean, swimming down and away from the coming danger.

'I need you.'

###

Fuu was flying faster than she ever had before

She darted across the waves with such speed that the beating of her wings blew a divot in the water below her, smashing through anything that got in her way. Anywhere she found ninja that somehow hadn't gotten the message, she shouted at them. It was usually the same words.

"Run! Cloud's using their weapon! Get out of here!"

Some people listened; some didn't. Fuu didn't have time to stop to encourage the ones that didn't; Konan's orders to her had been clear and obvious. Save everyone you can, and then get yourself out of the blast zone.

She wasn't worried for herself. She had wings: she could fly faster than almost any ninja could run. And she was tough; the carapace she'd taken from Chomei and covered her own body in could turn aside any blade and blunt any explosion. If worse came to worst, even if the blast that had almost destroyed Amegakure happened right next to her, she was confident she would survive. That might have been a confidence that came from naivete, but she had it nonetheless.

But she was terrified for Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, because none of them were as tough as her. She was terrified of what would happen to Konan, who she trusted more than any adult she'd ever met. Her heart bled for everyone that had died in the battle, all the new names she'd learned that were now drifting in the waves or had left them across Frost in the days before. She'd made so many friends that the fear of losing them made it hard to breathe, and the sound of her heart hammering in her chest was deafening.

Way, way off in the distance, beyond the horizon, she imagined she saw a flash of red. Konan had said the cannon's bomb moved faster than anything she could imagine. When it arrived, she'd probably only have a moment to react. Her friends might die in the blink of an eye.

All that desperation was too much for her to handle: she started shouting inside too.

'Chomei!'

Chomei didn't always answer. Fuu would call her aloof, but it was more that Fuu pestered her all the time and she was sure the ancient demon got tired of her. It didn't hurt her feelings; it wasn't like either of them had decided to be stuck with the other. But when Chomei didn't answer, she called again.

'Chomei! I don't want anyone to die! Is there anything we can do besides running away?!'

This time, there was a response.

'Everyone Is Going To Die Eventually, Fuu. Humans Don't Live For Very Long.'

'But I don't want them to die now!' Fuu said, crashing through a sinking ship without altering course as she scooped up a Mist ninja trapped under a burning steel beam and threw him out to sea towards his comrades. They scooped him up with bewildered looks and continued running as she ranted to the Tailed Beast. 'There has to be something we can do! We can't let Cloud get away with this! They can't just keep killing people!'

Chomei paused, and Fuu paused too, frantically looking around for more people to warn. As far as she could tell, all the ninja were fleeing south or west. Cloud's giant turtle was totally gone, and the Sanbi was nowhere to be seen. But-

'We're Not A Sensor,' Chomei said, obviously seeing through Fuu's eyes. The Rokubi was reared straight up out of the water and staring north, its distended eyes wiggling around at the top of its head in agitation. Chomei heaved a sigh, a sound so human that Fuu couldn't help but giggle. 'But The Rokubi Seems To Have An Idea Of What's Happening. Maybe It Has A Decent Host, Someone Like You. If You Get Close, We Can Ask. Just Don't Get Killed By The Toxic Gas.'

"Okay!" Fuu declared, zipping towards the towering slug. One eye swiveled down towards her in obvious curiosity as Fuu flew up its body towards the head, hovering right in front of its enormous face. She looked it over, trying to figure out how they could talk, and settled on just yelling and waving her arms as hard as she could.

"Hey!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, having already decided that obviously if there was another Jinchuriki in there it was buried under several tons of sludge and chakra. "They fired their cannon! Is there anything you can-!?"

"-do?!" she finished, and then blinked.

She wasn't above the ocean anymore. She was in a space with no ceiling or sky, starless darkness rolling in every direction. Gentle light like that of a fire filled it, casting everything with a warm orange hue.

The Rokubi was still there right in front of her, standing on the not-ground and rearing up to its full tremendous height. But it wasn't alone: there was a slender and pale boy with long dark hair sitting cross-legged in front of it, peering at her with one eye concealed by his thick hair.

Fuu looked back, too confused to speak, and found Chomei behind her. All of Chomei; she'd never seen the Beast's entire form before, and that struck her even dumber. The Nanabi was a tremendous blue beetle with iridescent orange wings and a magnificent horn, so huge and awe inspiring that Fuu couldn't help but smile.

"Chomei!" she said, and Chomei shifted, eight huge glowing eyes peering down at Fuu like the face of some ancient and gorgeous armor. "You're beautiful!"

"That's Not Usually What People Say," Chomei said, her voice washing over Fuu like a tidal wave. It was much more in wherever they were, visions and sounds and feelings all wrapped up together and thrown at her like a ball of yarn that threatened to wrap her up and strangle her. "But Thank You. Now Speak Quickly. This Is Telepathy; It's Faster Than Using Your Mouth Like A Human, But Not Instant.'

"Okay!" Fuu said, before turning back towards the Jinchuriki and the Rokubi. "Hello! My name is Fuu!" She bowed deeply, hands on her knees, and then straightened up and started talking even faster. "I don't really know what's going on, but Chomei told me I should talk to you! Cloud fired their cannon, and it's gonna hit here any second! If that happens, a lot of my friends could die! Is there anything you can do to help us?"

The Rokubi bent down, its massive shadow falling over Fuu, and she stared up at it. It didn't have a face, not really, just its swiveling slug-like eyes and a wide toothless mouth, but she felt like she could read its expression nonetheless. Confusion, curiosity, appraisal. She'd never met another Tailed Beast before, but she hadn't expected its chakra to be so different. It wasn't as big as Chomei, but the feeling it was giving off was like the ocean, or a bottomless pit of mud. Deep, dark, dangerous, and mysterious.

It turned farther down, looking at its Jinchuriki, who still hadn't moved. He was just staring at Fuu with intense, dark eyes. He wasn't old, maybe twenty-ish, but he was like the Beast: intense and dark.

That was, until the Rokubi spoke.

"you said you couldn't do it alone!" it said in the most high-pitched voice Fuu had ever heard. "and here's a solution right in front of you! convenient, utakata, super convenient!"

Fuu blinked again as Chomei fluttered her wings. "Lucky Indeed. So You Have A Worthy Host As Well, Saiken.'

"i've had much worse,' Saiken, the Rokubi said, rearing back up. 'the last one was-"

"Saiken," the Jinchuriki, Utakata, finally spoke, his voice low and calm. "What is this, exactly?"

"tailed beast telepathy! you should be honored! it's been almost one-hundred years since i spoke to anyone like this!" the Rokubi declared. "besides, who cares? your mizukage gave her orders, didn't she? now you won't have to disobey!"

"Orders? What kind of orders?" Fuu said, and Utakata looked up at her with a resigned face.

"It's my duty to defend the village from Cloud's weapon," he said, and Fuu made an understanding noise. That made perfect sense; every village had to have some kinda plan to deal with the cannon, like Nagato in Amegakure. "I know the secrets of Bijuudama; do you know what that is?"

"Uhh…" Fuu remembered through a half-dreamt haze almost blowing up her entire village and wiped the memory away with a smile. "Kinda! But if you know how to do that, why didn't you guys just blow up Cloud's fleet with one?"

"I can only do one a day," Utakata said dourly. "Maybe your seal's made of sterner stuff, but more than that and Saiken's chakra would melt my body."

"sorry!" Saiken said, and Fuu could swear the Beast winked at her. "i'm too hot to handle!"

"So I had to save my Bijuudama for a counter-shot. I have a powerful sensory jutsu: the Mizukage was relying on me to detect the cannon if it fired, and take the shot out of the air." He looked down. "But I can feel it coming now, and it's just too much. I might be able to knock it off course if I was lucky, but I couldn't stop it. No matter what, the village is doomed at this rate. If Cloud finds out our countermeasure has failed, they'll target Kirigakure immediately."

"Can I help?!" Fuu said, relief washing through her burning blood like ice-water. "I can give you more chakra! Or Chomei could give you some! Then-!"

"That Won't Work, Fuu," Chomei said, her voice like a winter wind. "But We're Lucky. This Jinchuriki Is A Sensor, and Compatible With Saiken." The buzzing of her wings intensified, filling the imaginary and infinite space with a storm. "Host Of Saiken, Will Two Bijuudama Be Enough?"

Utakata stood up, staring back and forth between Fuu and Chomei. "You're serious?" he asked, and Fuu nodded urgently, not entirely getting what she was agreeing to. She didn't know how to form a Bijuudama, and Chomei had never offered the secret. Not that it mattered to her: before right this second, blowing up a ton of stuff hadn't been appealing to her. "It might be; it would definitely divert the shot at the very least. If we weren't careful, it could hit Frost."

"We Will Combine Our Chakra. I Will Form The Bijuudama; You Will Guide Fuu's Aim," Chomei said with an air of unmistakable authority. "Saiken, I Assume This Is Agreeable To You."

"sure!" Saiken said cheerfully. "better than exploding, for sure!"

"Good," Chomei declared. "Now Focus. We Will Only Have One Chance."

The space started to meld together, and Fuu was suddenly in two places at once. Here, in the telepathy place, and here, fluttering above the ocean as Chomei's chakra began to coalesce around her, forming into a glowing phantom beetle. Fuu felt her body turn, pushed by the chakra inside and around her, and followed the invisible force, surrendering her body to Chomei's control as her seal burned. More and more Bijuu chakra was pouring out of it, whirling in front of her with ever-increasing energy.

It was just like Team Seven's Rasengan, she realized. She knew how to do something like this, or at least had seen people do something like this and could imagine how it worked. She started trying to nudge the chakra along as well, but Chomei rebuked her, her whole body shaking with sudden negative energy.

"I Said Focus! Connect Your Chakra As Best Humans Can!" Fuu's senses were drawn to Saiken and Utakata below her; she had settled on the Rokubi's head, her feet sinking into the soft slug-like flesh there. "His Eyes Must Be Yours!"

Fuu took that as literally as she did most things, and closed her eyes. She reached out with all of her other senses, trying to feel Utakata's chakra. There were other eyes here, she realized; other sensors watching them from a distance. From Cloud or Mist, it didn't matter: she purged everything from her mind except the yearning to connect with Utakata, to feel what he could feel and see what he could see.

She'd only just met him, but the guy seemed cool. She didn't want him to die either, or for his village to be destroyed. As far as she was concerned, her only enemies were the Hidden Cloud, Kakuzu the Immortal, and Itachi Uchiha; everyone else deserved whatever peace they could manage.

Fuu couldn't have told anyone ever how she did it, but after a moment she perceived a distant string of light, like a beam of sunlight refracted through a single dew-drop. She followed it, reaching out with invisible hands and grasping it close, and the light grew, expanding and intensifying until suddenly she could see everything. It was like she was high above, staring down at the two Tailed Beasts below and barely able to see her own body. High and far away, the cannon shot was coming. It sliced across the sky like a crimson blade that was tearing open the heavens themselves and leaving a bloody wound behind, so huge and heavy and fearsome that Fuu found herself shaking with excitement and dread looking at it.

It was about eighty miles away. Somehow, Utakata knew that meant they had about twenty-three seconds before it hit dead center on the Cloud fleet's previous position, and Utakata knowing it meant Fuu knew it too. Their own Bijuudama would travel only a fraction of their target's speed: Utakata, Chomei, and Saiken were all running calculations that were making Fuu's head spin and hurt, but somehow she kept up.

She fixed her eyes on a terminal point twenty miles away, where if they fired the dual Bijuudama would intercept the cannon's shot. It was a single burning beam, but it was starting to waver and split into eight separate attacks. If their own attacks detonated at that precise point of separation, the attack would be completely destroyed, flung out beyond the atmosphere and far away from anyone.

"Chomei," she said, her voice vibrating from all the chakra pouring through her. "I have it!" The Bijuudama was forming before her and another below, two huge orbs of dark chakra that were so heavy that Fuu could feel herself being drawn towards them.

"FOCUS," Chomei demanded. "HOLD IT."

"We have it," Utakata confirmed, and despite the distance between them Fuu reached out and took his hand. The Mist ninja was shaking, but when she squeezed his hand he stopped, all of his chakra surging and focusing on the same terminal point she had found. "We're ready."

The moment approached, but Fuu's focus didn't waver. She couldn't describe the feeling she was experiencing; like her entire life had been before this moment, and that everything that came after would be separate from what came before. It was like a line had been drawn through everything, cutting open the world and revealing a new one. She'd never felt so powerful, so scared, so sure, so anything. She'd never forget the feeling as long as she lived.

"Alright," Utakata said. He let go of her hand, throwing himself forward. "Let's go."

All four of them released at the same time, throwing their heart and soul into the moment and forgetting everything else. Around them, the air cracked and the ocean blew away.

"BIJUUDAMA!"

The two impossibly heavy chakra-bombs exploded outwards, rotating around one another in a helix as they roared off into the sky. High above, the red light of the cannon was approaching, arcing down into a fatal fall.

Their aim was perfect. Both Bijuudama struck the shot head-on and detonated.

Utakata had believed the explosion would throw the blast off course. Fuu had believed the same, because their souls had been tied together in that moment and she couldn't bring herself to doubt him.

But that wasn't quite what happened.

Instead, the eight beams of peeling light and energy exploded too, and everything went white hot.

###

What's happening right now is a first-time and one-time event. It has never happened before, and will never happen again in all of history.

Bijuudama have collided five times since the Sage died and left the Tailed Beasts his will. Siblings squabble, even if they are hundreds of feet tall and capable of obliterating mountains with their anger. Each time, the scale of destruction was extraordinary, but Tailed Beasts Bombs are not indiscriminate weapons. They carry their wielder's will, and unleash their energy with precision. They can be guided with incredible aim, and seldom directly damage anything beyond the immediate blast radius. They are, more so than anything else in existence, the fantasy of a bomb that destroys only its assigned target.

However, the cannon's bomb was different.

The cannon's bomb was unrestrained, despite how tightly controlled its vector was. It was a mindless weapon fueled by the chakra of the Hachibi and its Jinchuriki, Killer Bee. In a way, it was the perfection of the shinobi ideal that the inheritors of Indra and Asura's will had been clawing towards for thousands of years.

When the chakra of three Tailed Beasts collided eight miles in the air above the Land of Frost, something no one could have predicted happened. The Tailed Beasts were all once parts of a greater whole, and just as Fuu, Utakata, Chomei, and Saiken had merged their chakra, the energy of both Bijuudama and the cannon's shot combined in an astonishing synthesis.

It became greater than the sum of its parts, achieving a quasi-divinity for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Then, without a guiding will, it detonated.

It was, without much exaggeration, an apocalypse.

A distended fireball bloomed in the sky, six miles in diameter. For a full second, there was a rising sun to match the setting one to the west. The heat of the blast instantly incinerated everything within a mile of the fireball, boiled hundreds of billions of gallons of the ocean, and blinded anyone that directly witnessed it without sufficient protection or distance.

This included Deidara, who was both figuratively and literally blinded by the majesty of the detonation. He stared directly up into the apocalypse and cried tears of joy for the entire duration of the explosion, miraculously surviving every calamity it caused. Every other ninja present at the Battle of Hakoda had the good sense to look away, or were shielded by the ocean.

When Sasuke Uchiha looked down and contemplated diving into the ocean to avoid the blast, knowing he would be too slow, he didn't have time to blink before a great white shark hit him like a torpedo from below at a significant fraction of the speed of sound, swallowing him in a single gulp.

The fireball was so huge and so bright that its light could be seen from almost clear across the continent. Climbing out of the darkness of Naka Shrine, Obito and Mikoto Uchiha could see it through the thick trees of the Uchiha estate. It solidified in Obito an unstoppable resolve to end the war that would push him forward for the rest of his life. Sitting atop his tower in Amegakure and keeping watch over his home, Nagato Uzumaki could see it, and more so than almost anyone else on the planet could feel it as well. It drove him to rash action almost immediately: his caution and hesitation chipped, on the edge of shattering.

Somewhere else in Amegakure, Karin Uzumaki started crying.

The sound could not be described. No human would ever hear it and live, but the distant boom of its echo was also felt all around the world.

Nearly every window within eight-hundred miles of the blast, so those within the Lands of Lightning, Frost, Waterfalls, Rivers, Fire, Springs, and Water, broke. Birds fell from the sky, nocturnal animals refused to leave their dens, and a dull rumble carried through the air for minutes afterwards, filling anything that heard it with dread.

A superstorm raged across the Land of Frost, a hurricane, earthquake, and firestorm all rolled into one. Impossibly strong winds crumbled away the summits of mountains while new ones formed as the earth grinded against itself. Towns collapsed into fresh chasms, were crushed by avalanches, or simply fell over as the earth shook beneath them. All of Hakoda's ordinary inhabitants had been killed instantly by fireball and shockwave manifesting a mere twenty miles away, and the city immediately crumbled into the boiling sea just minutes later, erasing the largest mass grave in history. The newly formed bay was massive, but would not be used for years out of superstition of the vengeful dead.

By the end of the cataclysm, twelve percent of the population of the Land of Frost would be dead or severely injured.

A hundred miles away, the court of the Lightning Daimyo shifted on its foundations high in the mountains. This was rightfully seen as a terrible omen (not to mention a structural danger), and so the Daimyo and his court were relocated to a secondary palace even farther from the border, at the edge of the Lightning Peninsula.

It wouldn't save them in the end.

Shinobi near the blast fared the best they could. The Cloud ninja that had successfully baited the trap and escaped aboard the brave island-turtle Shinpi, son of Genbu, were terrified as the ocean boiled around them. However, they were protected from the worst of the blast by the depths of the ocean and the powerful barrier that surrounded them. Their commander was Cee, a brilliant sensor and the Raikage's most trusted lieutenant. He had volunteered for this dangerous mission and had accomplished it to the best of his ability, but he had never imagined the results of the cannon and Bijuudama clashing.

To his sensory abilities, the blast had been a billion times brighter than the flashbang jutsu he had used on so many of Cloud's enemies. It scoured his mind clean and left him in a permanent vegetative state. With their commander mission-killed and their morale shattered, Shinpi and the Cloud force retreated, unwilling to face three Bijuu without the cannon's support.

The Mist forces comported themselves with absolutely admirable discipline. Their numbers had been halved by the defensive action and halved again by the blast, but they reorganized in the face of the brutal casualties, assisting deafened comrades and recapturing the Sanbi after only eighteen minutes. The Bijuu was resealed into its emergency vessel, an enormous clay molding of a weeping baby covered in ancient sealing techniques.

The Rain forces were decimated; of the twenty-two surviving Rain ninja, five were knocked out and drowned, one was permanently placed in a religious ecstasy that left him unable to act, and three more immediately gave up on being shinobi and fled the battlefield. Konan survived, insulated from the shockwave by her paper body, but found afterwards that no matter what she did, the tears would not stop flowing. She organized the surviving Rain ninja and fled west, seeking shelter in the burning wilderness.

In the ocean, Jiraiya's summoned toad was boiled by the ocean and pulped by the shockwave, disgorging its cargo and unable to reverse-summon to Mount Myoboku thanks to the chakra shock. Konan's clone dissipated as Team Seven and Jiraiya were left stunned and drowning in the burning abyssal water, though they only drifted for seconds before a giant shark devoured them all.

Fuu and Utakata, along with their Bijuu, had the strangest and most horrible experience of all.

They were transported high above to the heart of the fireball, and witnessed everything as if they were gods that had wrought the devastation.

But they didn't do so alone.

###

Fuu's surety hadn't disappeared, but it had transformed from wonderful to dreadful. There at the roof of the world, she watched the Land of Frost burn like a floating ghost, suspended at the center of it all.

Everything her chakra swept over, she felt. Everything their chakra swept over, they felt. It was too much for her to bear, but up here, bodiless, she could not fall, cry, or hurt. All she could do was turn towards her companions, who were all watching with the same quiet, infinite horror.

"Why did you do this?" she asked. She wasn't talking to Utakata. There was another man up here, tall and dark-skinned, wearing sunglasses like he'd come prepared to stare into a new sun. There were tears running from under them. "Didn't you know this would happen?"

"I didn't know… yo," he said, staring down at the burning country. "I was just following my bro."

"You're the Hachibi Jinchuriki," Utakata said, similarly transfixed. "Killer Bee."

"Lord Bee, that's me," Bee said. He sank down, and Fuu followed him, feeling everything he was and more. They were all tied together now, like her and Utakata had been, to the point she couldn't tell if the hatred she was feeling towards the Cloud ninja was hers, Utakata's, or his own. "But… I really didn't know it would be like this."

"This is the second time now," Fuu said, feeling more clarity than she ever had before. "You blew up Amekagure, killed thousands. Now you've done it again. How could you not know?"

"I've fought in wars," Bee said, his voice faint as they were buffeted by winds of death. "Killed scores: did it with swords. When you end a guy face to face, it's easy to pretend that that's that, you can keep up the pace. So when I got asked to push a button…" His face twisted, the terror and guilt pouring out of him as if from a mortal wound. "It was a rush, I didn't fuss. Firing the biggest gun ever made is cool, y'know?"

He sank in on himself, clutching at his head. "Fool, ya fool…"

"We're all mass murderers now," Utakata said clearly. "But you're the one that started this. We can't forgive you for that."

Fuu nodded, feeling her own words in Utakata's mouth. After a second, Bee shook his head.

"I can't either," Bee said. He tried to rhyme again, and just as with Utakata Fuu felt the words twist and fall apart in her own mouth. "I'm sorry. I can't make this up: I can't keep up."

"It's just as I feared, Bee," an unfamiliar voice cut in, and Fuu looked back to find three Tailed Beasts towering over them. Chomei, Saiken, and what must have been the Hachibi: it was a huge octopus with the torso and head of a bull, with an unmistakably heartbroken look on its face. "Using our power like this… the Raikage's made a huge mistake. After this, the whole world will want Kumogakure's head. When this link ends, I suggest that we flee."

True to the Hachibi's words, Fuu could feel the ethereal connection fading. The fireball was going out, and their shared chakra was dissipating with it. She could feel her own body again, drifting in the burning ocean below and surrounded by countless dead fish.

"You'll abandon your own village? Your 'bro?'" she asked the Jinchuriki, but he seemed nearly catatonic. The Hachibi spoke in his stead.

"There's no value in mindless loyalty. Would you stand by someone that had set you on this kind of path?" it asked, and Fuu shook her head. "Right. So we won't either. His brother… well, he chose this path, far more than Bee could."

"Where will you go?" she asked, and the Hachibi bent down towards her.

"Will you hunt us?" it asked, and Fuu felt its fear, her fear, and tears in her eyes. "Bee did not deserve this; it is as much my mistake for not stopping him." It closed its eyes. "I have always been used as a weapon, but I knew this technology was something new and dangerous."

"I don't know," Fuu said honestly. "I don't know what to do about any of this. I have friends that have said that what's going on can't be allowed to continue…"

She hadn't felt Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke's deaths below, but that didn't mean anything. Fuu balled her hands into fists, glaring up at the Hachibi. "And they're obviously right. This can't ever be allowed to happen again. If Bee refused to use the cannon, would they put you in another Jinchuriki, Hachibi?"

"It's possible," the Hachibi said after a moment's consideration. The link was on the edge of breaking now, but Fuu's rage was keeping it intact. "The Raikage loves Bee like a brother, but he is being pressured by his government to win this war. It would be an impossible choice for him."

"Then run," Fuu said. "Don't ever let this happen again. If you do that, I won't hunt you." She closed her eyes, trying to wipe away her tears. "I can't speak for anyone else, but I just came here to make friends. I don't want to be that kind of person."

"You came to a war to make friends?" the Hachibi asked, and Utakata echoed it with the same confusion. Bee seemed comatose, staring down at Frost without a reaction to anything the Hachibi had said. "Maybe you two would have been friends in different circumstances. You're certainly a strange one."

"Maybe," Fuu said, feeling the connection on the edge of breaking. "Utakata, you should go back to your village." She tried to smile, and for the first time in her life failed. "We could meet again?"

"We'll see," Utakata said hollowly. "But I hope you stay safe, Fuu. Thanks for saving my village."

Fuu nodded, and then when she next blinked she was alone in the ocean, surrounded by burning ships and floating corpses.

"Chomei," she whispered out loud. "Did we do the wrong thing?"

'We Could Not Have Known,' Chomei said, and Fuu felt her pushing from within for her to get up and keep moving. 'So Now, There Is No Point In Worrying. Go Find Your Friends, And Figure Out What Happens Next.'

So despite feeling thousands of deaths in her heart weighing her down and pulling her towards the ocean's depths, Fuu rose to her feet, sprouted her wings once more, and took off into the air in search of her friends.