Obito-Sensei Chapter 95
Has To Win No Matter The Odds
They started running, and it wasn't with an immediate destination in mind. Sasuke just knew that it was time to move. Things had gone wrong immediately, which was to be expected given what they were up against. It was a relief, to be honest; the plan couldn't go wrong again, because everything but the fundamentals were already smashed.
"Bad news," Sakura said, tapping at her headset. "I can't connect to Mikoto or Itachi; the Fortress must block it somehow." Just one more thing going wrong, but it barely mattered at this point. They were all running alongside one another, climbing the second wall and eyeing the third. The Cannon loomed above like a spider staring at the cloudy sky, but more concerning for Sasuke was that he could see distant shapes scurrying over the opposite walls. Other shinobi were assaulting the Summit.
"People are already after them," Hinata said, sounding nervous but keeping it together. Sasuke squeezed her hand, and she elaborated. "Obito's fighting half the Kage; Nagato's on the roof; the other Kage and their guards are spreading out throughout the Fortress to intercept intruders and defend the prison."
"If Nagato's there, we can't go for the Cannon first," Naruto noted, and to Sasuke's relief Sakura nodded. Her intensity could be blinding, but she wasn't deluded; freeing the Jinchuriki would have to come first. "Which villages are patrolling?"
"Stone and Sand," Hinata said after a moment. "And two of the minor ones. Plus all the samurai."
Speaking of samurai, a half dozen had leapt forward to intercept them as they approached the third wall, skating on the slush that covered the muddy ground. They were impressive, Sasuke thought, completely covered in their thick metal armor, with intimidating horned helms and masterfully made blades humming with energy. One had drawn a bow, the string composed of raw chakra; it reminded him of Sasori.
"Halt!" one of them shouted, his voice heavily distorted by his helmet. Radio system, Sasuke immediately noted. "No quarter will be-!"
Team Seven and Hinata hit the samurai squad like a lightning bolt and scattered them in seconds. Naruto backhanded one and punted a second, sending them tumbling hundreds of feet away through the mud; Sakura slammed into another feet-first, shattering his armor and leaving the man prone and vomiting; Hinata ducked a slice, the chakra of the sword firing off like a beam that left a rift in the ground, and her Juken pierced the man's armpit, eight strikes in a half-second, paralyzing his right side and sending him stumbling to the ground; and Sasuke leapt onto the archer, sending his arrow wide as he ripped the man's helmet off and forced him eye-to-eye, shoving a command into his brain.
FALL.
The samurai collapsed into bottomless vertigo, and the last man standing was frozen, trapped between an overwhelming instinct to run and his admirable training telling him to stand and fight. Sakura made the decision for him, breaking his ankle with a running slide-tackle and slamming his head into the ground hard enough for his helmet to crack in half.
Brutal, Sasuke noted. But then, like the samurai had been about to say, this wasn't the time to give quarter or hold back. They'd not killed the men, but that was the most they could afford. He flipped around the helmet he'd stolen, peering inside, and found what he was looking for.
"Sakura," he said, yanking out a tangle of wires and batteries, a microphone, and a headset from the lining of the helmet. She saw what he was doing and did the same, followed shortly by Hinata and Naruto; the injured samurai groaned and squirmed as they were looted. "It won't help with communicating, but we can at least listen in."
He held the headset up to his ear, scrolling through channels with a small button attached to the wires; on the intact helmets, it would be on the side of the chin. An ingenious design, he had to admit.
"More intruders on the south side-!"
"Squad twelve is down-!"
"It's the Hidden Mist-!"
"No, the Hidden Stone-!"
"Two of them, they're after the prisoners-!"
His family had been found out, and no one was quite sure who the rest of the intruders were. He wasn't either, but the opportunity they provided couldn't be ignored. Sasuke secured the headset, looking over at Hinata, unsure if she had heard the same. She nodded.
"The Kage have changed directions," she confirmed. "They're headed after Mikoto and Itachi."
"Then we have to stop them," Sakura said, like it was as simple as that. Sasuke laughed, shaking his head, and Sakura gave him a smile. "We've got to keep your mother and brother safe, Sasuke. They need to reach Kushina." She reached down, scooping two swords from the ground and tying them to her waist: they immediately lit with her chakra, vibrating and glowing green. "Hinata, are they together or apart?"
"Apart," Hinata said, swallowing and pointing rapidly. "The Kazekage are descending the south side: the Tsuchikage the north. They both have others with them."
"Alright," Sakura said, making another snap decision. Sasuke couldn't decide if she was just that alert, or if her confidence was a mask for a complete lack of thought. So far, it was impossible to tell. "We need to draw them off. The Kazekage despises me: I'll bait him. Naruto, I bet you can do the same to the Tsuchikage. Sasuke, the Jinchuriki-"
"I'm going with you," Sasuke said, and Sakura narrowed her eyes. "Naruto, you can take care of yourself, right?"
"And I can't?" Sakura asked, and Sasuke shook his head.
"Not what I'm saying. You're just not a medic, Sakura. Naruto can fix himself up. Hinata-"
"Neither," Hinata said, scanning the Summit. "There's ninja coming from everywhere… They seem like they're from every village. I see Sand, Mist, Stone, and Cloud… not Leaf or Rain, though," she said, chewing her lip. "Rin and Gai-sensei are fighting some of them; I'll get to them and explain what's happening. They might not fight on our side, but I could keep them out of our way."
Sasuke nodded, impressed at her quick thinking. "Anything would help," he said, looking around. Splitting up was a horrible idea, but there were too many angles to cover; the opposition was overwhelming, but they only had to be slowed down, not defeated. "Let's go."
As they turned to run in separate directions, Naruto made a move that surprised them all: he grabbed Sakura's hand, stopping her. When she turned to look at him, he planted a kiss on her lips.
"Be careful," he said, redder than a tomato, and Sakura smiled, looking entirely like herself.
"You too," she said, and then she was off, not waiting for Sasuke to follow. Incredibly, he found himself watching Hinata; she caught his eye, wide-eyed and blushing, and the both of them froze.
"Good luck!" she squeaked, running off, and Sasuke couldn't help but laugh as he threw himself after Sakura.
"You too!" he called, and then they were over the third wall and entering the halls of the Fortress.
The first set of winding corridors they found themselves in were cramped and dark. Sasuke and Sakura raced through them without slowing down as squads of samurai thundered in from side-passages. They weren't the only intruders; Sasuke saw two ninja with Hidden Cloud headbands engage a squad of samurai that had missed cutting them off by just a few seconds, bursting through the wall and flinging Lightning Dragons at the defenders. The battle was behind them in a heartbeat, but it left him baffled: why would the Hidden Cloud so blatantly attack the Summit, knowing so well the threat the Cannon presented? It didn't make any sense.
The passages widened, a vast honeycomb that extended throughout the Fortress becoming obvious, and Sakura slowed down, cocking her ear. They'd emerged into a large room that stretched on for more than a hundred feet in every direction, the ceiling more than forty feet up; it was a central chamber that connected several different levels and routes throughout the fort.
By luck or fate, their quarry arrived at near the same time.
The Kazekage, his children, and an old woman Sasuke didn't recognize barrelled into the chamber from an entrance on the other side, pursuing a woman dressed in the garb of the Hidden Stone. Before Sasuke could catalog anything about her, the rogue ninja was snatched up in a cloud of gold and shredded, turned to glittering crimson mist by the Kazekage's technique. Following behind the Kazekage came another man Sasuke recognized: one of the Elders of the Hidden Waterfall, Eiji. If he'd brought a bodyguard to the Summit, they were nowhere to be seen.
All of the ninja stopped, watching each other from across the room with obvious surprise: all but Sakura, who may well have seen the future from how calmly she regarded the man who had every reason to want her dead.
"Ah," Rasa said after a moment. "So it's the whole rotten team. Of course." He gestured to his children, both of whom were stunned by Sakura and Sasuke's sudden appearance. "Keep going deeper; I'm sure Namikaze is one of the other intruders, after his mother. Stop him."
Snapped out of their stupor by orders, Temari and Kankuro both wordlessly obeyed, rushing towards one of the exit staircases that led deeper into the Fortress. The old woman following them, perhaps their grandmother, followed after, shooting Sasuke and Sakura a curious look.
As they left, Sakura started walking forward.
"Sakura," Sasuke hissed. "We just need to draw them off."
"They're going after your mother," Sakura said back, quietly and calmly. "You need to chase those three; go help Mikoto. I can handle this."
A Kage and another village leader? Sasuke would have laughed, but he didn't want to be cruel. They'd all come a long way, but none of them had gone that far. As if to prove the point, Elder Eiji stepped out in front of Rasa, striding forward as he unsheathed both his swords.
"Gone rogue again?" he called out, and Sakura smirked. "Did you think the third time would be the charm, you little bitch?"
"Turn around and walk away, Eiji," Sakura said with far too much familiarity. Hadn't she fought him before, Sasuke thought? From what he'd heard of that first mission for Rain, a lifetime ago, Sakura hadn't exactly won that fight. "I'm not interested in you."
"Nor I you." Waterfall's leader sneered. "But here you are nonetheless, making a mess of things. Don't tell me you came here for Fuu?"
He and Sakura kept approaching each other, Rasa watching with quiet amusement the whole time. Of course, Sasuke could see that he would leap into action the second Sasuke himself did; they were in a silent stalemate as their allies drew closer and closer.
When Sakura didn't answer, Eiji kept talking. "It's incredibly flattering, you know, the Amekage stealing my ideas," he said with a smug look. "It turned out I was so far ahead of the curve that no one else could recognize it. Getting rid of the Jinchuriki was always the solution: they only ever bring trouble." He shook his head mockingly, whirling both his blades. "If we'd disposed of worthless things like Fuu from the start, we could have avoided all this trouble."
Sasuke felt a sneer twist across his face, and he started to step forward. But before he could, Sakura shook her head, finally grabbing one of her stolen swords.
"Sasuke," she said clearly. "Look ahead."
Her tone struck him, so dissonantly confident and peaceful that Sasuke had no choice but to listen. Even though it was a waste of his eye, his Mangekyo activated: the Nakisawame unspooled the future.
He saw the next ten seconds.
Sasuke stopped, turned, and started running, chasing after the shinobi that had descended to hunt his mother and brother.
He saw everything that followed in his mind's eye.
Eiji laughed. "Left to die so quickly!" he chuckled, and then he was moving. Mockery done, he made a series of one-handed signs and charged directly at Sakura, firing a shotgun blast of fireballs shaped like screaming skulls as he brandished his sword, lighting it with burning chakra. He was a supremely powerful ninja; physically strong, incredibly skilled in ninjutsu, able to perform multiple jutsu at once with one hand, and deadly fast on top of that. A weak man wouldn't be kept as Waterfall's leader, regardless of his other deficiencies.
Sakura's sword flashed out with such speed that even Sasuke could only follow the blade, his Sharingan's prediction and reality overlayed. The Flowing Hail Blade manifested without a sound and cut through every fireball, and then lashed out at Eiji. He blocked one, two, three blows, explosions of steam bursting into the air with every parry as he continued his charge and diminished Sakura's blade with his own flaming sword.
Eiji grinned, sure of his victory as Sakura danced back and thrust out with an apparently final lunge, her blade extending into a rigid spear. Eiji swung down to cut through the blade and overcome Sakura's defenses: in a heartbeat he would be on top of her, and she'd be cut down in an instant by his brutal swordsmanship that made defense and attack the same strike.
But Sakura's spear didn't shatter. Instead…
It went soft.
It was a feat of chakra control that Sasuke wouldn't call possible. Even Naruto's medical techniques made more sense to him. It made the Rasengan look like a baby rattle.
Sakura's spear went soft, and Eiji's flaming sword passed through it without shattering its core, vaporizing the center but leaving the wings of the water blade intact.
Then Sakura's eyes flashed: the spear was solid once more, and it lunged forward like a striking snake with two heads.
Eiji was fast, faster than sound. Eiji was experienced, more experienced than Sakura twice over. Eiji tried to spin out of the way, to remove himself from the spear's path.
Eiji wasn't fast enough. The double-spear cut straight through his throat as he rotated, carving out everything below his chin and revealing his spine. His hand came up, clutching at the explosion of gore as he gagged and choked on his own blood. He threw himself forward, swinging down in a desperate attempt to kill Sakura before he died.
Sakura slid right past him, shifting a fraction to the side like she was politely stepping around someone in a doorway. Elder Eiji swung, missed, stumbled past her, and collapsed. The flame around his sword guttered out.
The rest, Sasuke could only hear as he raced deeper into the Fortress. But he could imagine it with astounding clarity.
Rasa, with a look somewhere between surprise and cruel amusement, said, "This murder will reflect poorly on Konoha." His voice was as dry as the desert he was named for.
Sakura smiled.
"A shinobi can't be murdered. Right, Kazekage?"
Then they were both out of sight, though not out of mind, and Sasuke threw himself fully after Kankuro, Temari, and the old woman. Sakura could handle herself; he knew that now. His mother had been right.
Among them all, Sakura was the most dangerous.
###
Obito should have been terrified, but he'd never been more thrilled in his life.
Nine versus one; those were odds he'd fought and won before, but never like this. Obito had never dreamed he would be faced with three Kage, a Toad Sage, two leaders of minor villages, and their Honor Guard. People picked specifically to defend their superiors at the greatest gathering of strength in the world. It was horrifying. On any other day in any other place, any one of these opponents would have been a challenging fight, the kind he wouldn't pick without great care.
But today wasn't any other day, and this wasn't any other place. He'd declared war on the world, and now his body was shaking itself apart with excitement.
They came all at once, ceaselessly attacking. Most hadn't fought together before, but their coordination was still superb; they were the best, after all. Obito should have been torn apart in seconds.
Instead, he fought back.
Stepping through a jet of acid, kicking off the ground, flinging out a flaming eagle, ducking a knife, tripping a charging man, jumping, kicking, falling, slipping through a gap that gave him less than a centimeter on either side-
In the frantic tempo of the battle that raged across the meeting room, shattering pillars and punching holes in the walls, the floor, and the roof, there was a pause, a missed beat where the constant attacks stuttered and overstepped, leaving Obito slightly less than a second to act unimpeded. Darui was before him, stepping into a backswing, Black Lightning spilling from his mouth like dark blood.
Obito gently took hold of the new Raikage's right arm and snapped it in half over his knee.
The compound fracture took the man out of the fight for another second, and Obito used that extra time to punch him in the throat and collapse his windpipe. Not a fatal blow, but a disabling one. It was lucky Rin had been sent away, that no one here was a medic. Otherwise, there would have been no point in fighting, restrained as he was by his impulsive promise.
But even if his opponents were coordinated, they didn't trust one another, which opened opportunities like the one he'd just taken.
As Darui fell back, Omoi leapt in between him and Obito to block any follow-ups with her own body, and the melee resumed. It couldn't be followed by a sane mind; once more he was attacked from every direction, pursued relentlessly by Minato and Yahiko, fighting side by side for the first and only time, as well as Karui and Chojuro; pestered from a distance by Mei and Namazu's ninjutsu and Jinmeiyo's genjutsu.
Obito struck and spun and fought, slipping through every attack he couldn't physically dodge. His sensei was lightning, sweeping in on every other heartbeat with fatal attacks aimed for his head or heart. Obito couldn't blame him; he was the one who'd gone traitor, after all. He struck back at Minato with just as much seriousness, aiming counterattacks for his vital organs in the hope of slowing his teacher down for even a second. But he had to be conservative: Yahiko was just as aggressive, and tough as he was in Sage Mode, Obito didn't have much hope of taking him down with his bare hands.
Nonetheless, the moment came, the moment when he cartwheeled through Yahiko and leapt up, landing with one hand balancing on Yahiko's head and the other catching Chojuro's legendary Sword of the Mist by the handle mid-swing, stopping him in his tracks. The Kamui revved up, deafeningly loud from how much energy Obito was pouring into it, and the Sword was ripped out of Chojuro's hands and infinitely beyond his reach before he could pull back. Minato came in from behind, shielded by another stream of Mei's lava-
And Obito pushed up, flipped around, clearing the lava by inches as he felt blisters form in a neat line down his back, and kicked his teacher in the face.
Minato teleported away the instant the blow landed, before it could dig fully in and break his nose, but the impact still made Obito smile. He started laughing, and fear and anger spread through everyone around him like a deadly plague. Yahiko lashed up at him, and Karui charged in with a stone-cleaving slice from her sword. Obito fell through Yahiko's attack, sneering at the blind man.
"All at once now!" he shouted, landing and catching Karui's overhead swing between both hands. He twisted, power exploding through him, and snapped the blade in half. As Karui gaped, he flung the top of the sword into the Cloud ninja's side; she fell back with a hiss, blood matting her hip and covering her leg. "It's the only chance you have!"
Obito spun on Yahiko, a Rasengan bursting into existence in his hands. The keening sound of the jutsu filled the room as he made to attack, but it was a feint: Minato passed through him again, death dodged by a breath, and an auditory genjutsu failed to find purchase as Jinmeiyo weaved yet more signs. Yahiko tumbled forward, invisible Sage Mode attacks bursting out, but Obito let go.
He'd already let go of a lot of things. Doubts, fears, pride, hopes for the future. But at that moment he let go of the Rasengan.
Plucked away by the thoughtless speed of his Kamui, Obito watched and laughed as the Rasengan exploded in Yahiko's face, sending the man pinwheeling across the room and opening up miniscule cuts on his temple despite his Sage Mode enhancements. He slammed through a stone wall and was out of sight for just two seconds, time which Obito spent well.
He rolled under another one of his sensei's attacks, coming to his feet in the middle of a cloud of Mei's acid. Three swift steps and he was clear of the hazard and before the Mizukage herself, her eyes wide; she'd misjudged his speed, even now, and isolated herself and the other backliners from the rest with her own jutsu. Namazu bravely hurled himself into the fight, a knife in either hand, but he was slow compared to the likes of Minato; Obito plucked each knife away like someone would cutlery from a child, his Sharingan shining as he twisted clear of another charge from his sensei, and rammed them through Namazu's palms, pinning his hands to his shoulders like a grotesque butterfly.
Mei fled, flying up to the ceiling and across the room with incredible speed as Obito was assaulted from every side by Jinmeiyo, Chojuro, Omoi, and a determined Darui, his fractured arm bound to his side. In just a single second Obito caught Chojuro's water-blade, a mirror of Sakura's, and kicked him through a pillar, knocking him out; he made four hand signs and turned Jinmeiyo's own genjutsu back against her, slapping the sound of her beads out of the air and replacing them with the glare of his Eternal eyes; he caught Omoi by the arm and leg, sending his sword skittering, and slammed him down on Darui like a human hammer, flattening them both.
Obito's laughter escalated, getting louder and more manic. He didn't know if it was an act. Mei began firing more jutsu at him from across the room, even more aggressive than before. Minato attacked with a similarly raised tempo, and Yahiko had returned twice as furious, bloody teeth bared. Those that were left were fighting with less and less restraint as the field of battle narrowed, the slower and weaker shinobi dragged away by their own self-preservation or terrified samurai.
Obito could feel the same fury rolling through him; fury that it had come to this, that the world would try to take the ones he loved again, that for now he was alone against some of the most dangerous ninja in the world, even his sensei. His heartbeat matched the tempo of the battle, beating harder as his breathing sped up, the whole world pulsing to unseen hammering.
He was hemmed in by Minato and Yahiko at once, his laughter choking off as they attacked constantly. Mei cut off every angle of escape, short of Obito flinging himself into the Kamui and running. But doing that would be a surrender, and letting the Kage act freely would leave his team exposed.
All this, and he still had to deal with Nagato.
For the first time that day, Obito felt a flicker of doubt.
The barrage of attacks lasted just ten seconds, but it was the longest ten seconds of Obito's life. He was forced to the wall of the chamber, fearlessly striking back at all his opponents all the while, but unable to land a decisive blow. Minato nearly impaled his brain and heart countless times, even leaving shallow cuts where the Kamui had drawn him away with milliseconds to spare; Mei almost melted him a half-dozen times, lava and acid and more exotic liquids screaming from her mouth and filling the room; Yahiko was just trying to tear him apart with his bare hands.
Obito knew he should have been getting tired. He would have collapsed before, when he had just one Eternal eye. But his energy felt endless, his body thrumming with unknown power, barely able to contain it. He was overwhelmed by phantom sensations, joy, dread, disbelief. His doubt started to fade, driven away by the same feeling of infinite possibility he'd felt facing Nagato in the Land of Lightning.
But this time, he tempered it. He crushed it down into himself, alloyed it with experience, and pulled a peerless blazing sword of ambition from the crucible of his heart.
A hand clapped down on both of his shoulders. One smaller, crackling with blinding lightning; the other, familiar, gentle, boundlessly strong and kind.
Go on. Obito would swear on pain of death he heard two voices, saying the same words.
Show them who you are.
"Enough!" Obito roared, and the Susano'o erupted out of him. Bones, muscles, flesh, armor: the ancient guardian manifested with tremendous force, blowing Yahiko away as it reared up, a grim skull-like helmet falling into place over its head. Obito himself nearly lifted into the air, thrown up by the force of his own chakra, and the whole room trembled, fractures racing through the remaining pillars, wall, and ceiling and Obito's anger shook the meeting chamber apart.
Minato, Yahiko, and Mei were some of the finest ninja in the world, so even the revelation of the Susano'o did not give them pause. Obito hadn't expected it to. Before his guardian was fully settled, they were attacking again; Minato trying to hammer through one side with a Rasengan bigger than himself, Yahiko striking at the other with building-shattering kicks, and Mei unleashing a jet of corrosive mist that melted away the front of the Susano'o's ornate armor. Obito shuddered, feeling every blow like they were against his own body, but the laughter was starting to bubble up inside him again.
He grinned, wild-eyed and manic, and struck out at Yahiko; the Amekage took the blow head-on, catching the fist and being driven to his knees. Obito aimed another punch at his sensei, but Minato teleported out of the way, the fist swinging through nothing but air.
Just as Obito had expected.
Both his eyes spun into overdrive, ripping open twin holes in reality. The first was at the end of his Susano'o's fist, swallowing everything above the wrist: the other was right before the Mizukage.
Mei leapt aside, eyes wide with surprise, but she was a hair's breadth too slow. Obito's punch emerged across the room, slamming into her midsection and sending her spinning away; the Mizukage crashed through one of the weakened walls with a tremendous crack and, for the moment, was gone.
There was a pause. By now, the room had emptied of all the samurai and other ninja. Konan had retreated, dragging Karin and Jiraiya with her; the rest had fled, been carried away in various states of consciousness, or simply vanished. Obito looked around, breathing heavily as Yahiko pushed away the Susano'o, sending both Obito and the construct stumbling away. Minato reappeared, crouched on the ceiling and looking down with flat eyes.
Obito grinned up at him, ignoring Yahiko as the Amekage circled like a hungry shark. "C'mon, sensei," he said. "If you're gonna help me with Nagato, now's the time."
Very, very deliberately, Minato shook his head, looking between Yahiko and Obito. "I won't risk it, Obito," he said, not rising from his inverted crouch. "Not when there's so much at stake. It's a miracle you haven't doomed the village already. I can only be grateful that Nagato is being so measured."
"Grateful indeed," Yahiko spat; Obito noted with interest as more Sage Chakra rushed into him from a distant source. It was gonna be quite a while before he ran out at this rate. "Good to see you're still so wise, Minato."
"Make no mistake, Yahiko," Minato said, his voice as flat as his eyes. "When this is over, I'm killing you next."
Obito laughed, shrugging: the Susano'o followed his movements, putting both its hands up helplessly. "Fine!" he declared. "If that's the way you want to play it, Minato! I'll beat you both senseless, and save your wife for you!"
Somehow, Minato managed a wry smile. He and Yahiko coiled, ready to pounce.
"Well," the Hokage said.
"Good luck with that."
And then the dance began again, each of them looking for an opening against the other.
###
"Here's the problem, though!" Fuu insisted, leaping to her feet. Kushina had been trying to keep them both sitting, to keep the conversation calm, but Fuu was out of control; she finally had an inkling of how people had felt dealing with her when she was young. "None of us deserve to die!"
"It's not a matter of deserving or not," Kushina said, keeping her voice quiet despite the stubbornness she could feel building in her chest. "Right now, we've all been given responsibility by our villages." She looked around, gauging the mood; the conversation had been going for several minutes now, and most of the other Jinchuriki seemed to agree with her. There was a sense of resigned resentment among them; after all, it wasn't a surprise to any of them that they might end up on the chopping block one day. "Regardless of what we feel-"
"Fuck that," Fuu said, emphatic in the way only a teenager could be, and Kushina couldn't help but laugh. "This is all wrong, and fearful, and stupid. I didn't want to think so 'cause I thought the adults in charge of everything knew what they were doing, but they never did." She was pacing, looking around the room and trying to meet everyone's eyes. "Nagato's brought us all together, and the Kage too, all the strongest people in the world, and he's hoping that we'll all be so scared for the things we care about that we'll just sit back and let him kill us. But he'll have to let us out of this seal to do that; there will be a second where he'll have no choice but to do that. And when that happens, we've gotta fight back."
"The strongest in the world," Yugito Nii noted, "bar Nagato himself." She had been in the middle, Kushina thought, humiliated by her capture and enraged by her village's destruction. "I remember fighting him even if you don't, Fuu. None of us would stand a chance against him."
"Your village is already gone," Fuu said, unexpectedly brutally. "Your Daimyo and his government too. What's left for you to lose?"
To that, Yugito did not have a response. Fuu huffed, looking back to Kushina; the electric feeling that had passed between them when they'd bumped fists refused to fade. "And Kushina, you just keep saying the same thing, talking about duty and the village and everything," she said, "but it's not what you really feel. And we both know it too, so I don't get why you're lying to yourself."
"I'm not as fortunate as you, Fuu," Kushina said, letting some bite into her voice. "I have people I can't let die."
"That's just it!" Fuu said, stamping her foot. "You're the lucky one, more than any of the rest of us, and you just don't get it." She gestured at all the Jinchuriki, naming them one by one. "Gaara's got a family, but they treated him like a rusty knife, and now look at him!" The boy didn't even look up at Fuu at his name, and Kushina couldn't lie to herself; even if the boy had done terrible things, she'd dreamed of giving him just a glimpse of kindness once upon a time, and seeing him so hopeless now broke her heart.
"Yugito didn't have anyone, and Killer Bee's own brother made him commit mass murder!" Yugito looked ready to protest, but Fuu's fierce look somehow quieted her. "Utakata's a good guy, but the Mizukage still dragged him here to die, even though he did everything she asked of him! He almost died protecting the village from Cloud's Cannon! I mean, he probably would have, if I hadn't been there! And Han and Rōshi-!" Fuu faltered, looking at the two stoic Stone ninja, who had remained kneeling and quiet. "Actually I don't know anything about you guys."
"Neither of us have been blessed with children," Han rumbled, and Rōshi nodded with a contemplative look.
"This is the first time I've been in a room with more than five people that wasn't a battlefield in three decades," he mused, and Fuu shook her head with a laugh.
"See? That's awful! But Kushina, you have everything people like us could want! You got married, had a kid, were a real person! Not just stuck in a room all day, staring at the stars, or sent out to kill people who you didn't even know! You should be trying to live harder than all the rest of us combined, but instead you're trying to convince me I should be ready to die?!" Fuu said, even more energetic than before. "It's too messed up to believe! The Kyuubi's the strongest, right? If you help out, we can smash our way out of here! I'm sure of it!"
"Delightful words," Rōshi said, Kushina finding herself too overwhelmed to immediately respond. "But they betray your naivety. None of them address the problem of our villages and the Cannon." He shifted, rising to his feet and looming over Fuu. "You do not feel loyalty to Waterfall; understandable, given how little was done to bind you to it. But all shinobi are trained to put their lives below that of their clan, or their village, or their mission. Jinchuriki are no different in that regard. Placing an individual life before any of those is selfish, childish. You have also forgotten the danger of our existence; you and the Rokubi Jinchuriki may have saved yourself from the Cannon, but you nearly wiped out a country in the bargain."
Fuu flinched, and Roshi continued. "I will forgive you given our circumstances, but do not think of yourself as having discovered some great secret."
"I took the blame for that, at first," Fuu said after a second. "But I was wrong to."
"Intent does not affect consequence," Han said sonorously from behind Roshi, and Fuu nodded.
"It wasn't that," she said. "What Utakata and I did…" The Jinchuriki from Mist shifted as Fuu spoke, her voice thick with emotion. "It should have worked. We both knew it should have, and Chomei and Saiken did too. The problem was the Cannon. However it works, it's… wrong."
"You know their names?" Rōshi asked with a raised eyebrow, ignoring Fuu's apparent excuse for the Calamity in Frost. "Another example of your childishness, then."
"It's not childish to know the name of someone that lives inside you," Fuu growled back. "You're just a bitter old fuck."
"Both are true," Rōshi said, unimpressed. "Every child dreams that they have seen the truth that the adults are too blind to find, unearthed the names buried by history. But everyone sees that truth; no man or woman, shinobi or not, goes through life without recognizing the unfairness of their circumstances, the cruelty of chance and fate, the flaws of any system they inhabit or witness." He huffed. "None of us deserve to die, Fuu of the Hidden Waterfall, but that is our role here nonetheless. To resist will put those we are loyal to at the mercy of Rain and their Cannon, and they have already shown just how far that 'mercy' extends."
He glanced at Yugito and Bee, his meaning clear. "When the time comes, you may fight. I hope you fight well, if only so you may feel that you tried your best. But do not expect assistance. None here will raise a hand in your defense, not while the Cannon exists. Especially if it is wrong, as you say. If that is true, then attempting to stop it could result in yet another Calamity, one that would claim every life here bar Nagato's. A poor trade, to be sure."
Fuu didn't move; she and Rōshi stared at one another for a long time, long enough that Kushina was sure they would have come to blows if not for the seal restraining them all. Finally, Fuu spoke.
"It's okay to put one person over everything else," she said, and Rōshi rolled his eyes. Fuu ignored the disrespect, articulating every word carefully.
"That's how it works for everyone; everyone has someone or something they would give up everything for. If they don't, I dunno if I could call them a real person, a human being. If we're really in a world that doesn't see any value in us except where and how we can die, and what the place we were born in can buy with our death, I don't think there's anything wrong with that one person, for once, even if it's just for a day, being yourself."
"And if that something is the village?" Rōshi asked. Fuu shook her head.
"Then I guess I could respect that," she said. "But I don't think that goes for anyone here. Not you and Han, for sure. You're not talking like people who believe in Stone; you just don't believe in yourself."
Rōshi blinked, and didn't respond.
To her horror, Kushina found herself agreeing.
She'd come here to die for Naruto and Minato. They were the people she would give everything and then some for. She'd already decided to do so once, and she'd do it again.
But she couldn't lie to herself anymore.
The fantasy that Fuu was talking about, the chance to take their lives into their own hands, to throw everything away and only care about their own desires, was overwhelmingly addictive. It was a terrible idea, a delusion that could spawn infinite tragedies.
But doing everything as shinobi were supposed to had done just the same. The world was overflowing with suffering, and being sane and rational and calm and collected and trading lives for time and peace like they were supposed to had done nothing to stem it. In fact, it had only made it worse.
Kushina stared down at the mats, feeling the Kyuubi writhe within her. She was doomed no matter what, and she had let that guide her more than anything. Kurama wouldn't cooperate; she was a dead woman walking.
But just because she was, that didn't mean everyone here deserved the same.
Silently, guiltily, fearfully, Kushina decided that she could try to live a little longer.