Prologue: Lacrimosa
"Speech"
A note, emphasis on the word, thought, or flashback
The night is dark, and I am but a flicker of light. No matter the outcome, I will continue to fight—not just for survival, but for the hope that still resides in the hearts of those I leave behind. If this is to be my last stand, I hope you remember my resolve. I fought not just out of duty, but out of love—for you, for my friends, for my village, for the future we could build together.
Rokudaime,
Nara Shikamaru
Pain, all he felt was pain in his whole body.
Each pulse of agony felt like fire licking at his skin, consuming him from the inside out. He took a shallow breath, each inhalation a struggle, and winced as a fresh wave of discomfort coursed through him.
Damn, it hurts. The thought barely formed in his foggy mind as he fought to focus through the haze of suffering.
He glanced at his left leg. Bone, jagged and raw, jutted painfully from what remained of his severed limb. The flesh around it was mangled and torn. Each bead of blood glistened like a small, dark gem, glimmering with the promise of finality.
Wasn't it such an irony that he–the weakest among his peers, however crafty he might be–ended up being the one who died the last? His resourcefulness, though understated, proved to be a crucial factor in his survival thus far, not that they served him now.
Even Naruto, the troublesome beacon of light who had grown to be so powerful, the one who had finally won everyone's respect, had died in such a young age after battling Sasuke to erase the latter's so called 'Curse of Hatred', just after they both had teamed up to save the world from annihilation and eternal enslavement, signaling a new era of peace and all the blah-blah-blah that it entailed.
Hah, what a joke.
But still, the rest of them moved on. The dead were cremated and buried. They rebuilt what was left of the village and returned to their mundane lives, scars and all.
The former Fifth Hokage, who had lost her faith amidst grieving for Naruto, had abandoned Konoha and fled into a place that only she knew of, causing a vacuum of power in Konoha. And thus, came the Hokage appointment.
Every great village needed its leader after all, the overworked bureaucrat who will guide everyone into sanity in the aftermath of the almost-apocalypse. Naturally, Kakashi was offered the position—the man refused, believing himself to be a disgrace and unworthy of the title—finally reaching his breaking point with two of his students dead and the remaining one ending her life not long after.
Things continued along those courses for months, until he, for a reason that even he was not sure of (well, yes, he was too tired to argue and extricate himself from the situation), was inaugurated as the Sixth Fire Shadow.
He tried to fulfill Hokage's duty to the best of his ability. The least that he could do to honor the dead was making sure that Konoha was in capable hands. Time did heal, and all of his efforts began to pay out as things shifted steadily on a path of recovery: Konoha was functioning again, and the continent's political climate had a somewhat amiable atmosphere. Betraying his pessimistic nature, he too believed that the everlasting peace which everyone was longing for might not be so far-fetched after all.
But for all of his geniuses, Shikamaru was still a fool. A naive fool.
Peace, after all, was a fragile thing. It was something that was hard to maintain without a literal human nuclear bomb like Naruto keeping other villages in check. Shikamaru could spy on his allies and keep a tight leash on his enemies if he wanted to, but he could not control human greed. He could not control that black bottomless pit that exhausted one's soul in an endless effort to satisfy one's need without ever reaching satisfaction. It was human nature to want more, to desire more, to seek more.
Thus, skirmishes at the borders happened again. A race to create military weapons followed them, resulting in the ever increasing tensions between the great villages.
The inevitable Fifth Shinobi War soon broke out.
Not wanting to be left out, the Daimyōs and their allies who were fed up with the shinobi—accurately believing them to be the source of problems in the Elemental Nation—formed another faction and joined the murder party, causing further chaos and economic collapse.
It was not the first time that Shikamaru thought that madmen à la Uchiha Madara and Obito, despite their extreme methods, were right after all. Man sought peace, yet at the same time yearned for war. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain said peace would cause wars, and in turn hatred would be born to protect love—a perfect, unending cycle of misery and death.
The war went on and on without a definite winner. What's there to win when villages and cities alike were razed to the ground? When everyday consisted of sleep, eat, heal, and fight, fight, fight, as hell reigned on earth and Tailed-Beasts ran amok.
Someone once told him that life flashed before your eyes just before you died. It was a poetic notion, one that seemed to promise a stunning montage of memories and moments, a brief and beautiful recap of a life lived. Not quite so idyllic, he thought. His own experience encompassed minutes of agonizing pain whilst cursing every entity that might be watching, before pain and blood loss softened into lightheadedness and vague coldness.
He felt comforted by the thought of reuniting with his parents and best friends. He envisioned their smiles, their laughter, and the sense of security that had enveloped him during his childhood.
Then… darkness.
Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki's spirit roamed above the place that was once called Elemental Nation, his expression pensive. Hagoromo had thought that one Uzumaki Naruto would finally bring peace into the world, succeeding where others had failed. However, the reality was very far from expectation, as the young Uzumaki was very much dead and the world was in a state of anarchy.
He wondered that if things had been different, would there have been peace in the world? If it could even exist in the first place.
Had his mother always been right after all?
It matters not, he thought, for everything that could possibly go wrong had gone wrong.
His powerful gaze shifted to the specter of the last Hokage, chakra and consciousness barely clinging to his battered body, yearning for the Pure Land.
Hagoromo felt pity for the man. He had given his country his best, and he deserved his final rest. Hagoromo could not let that happen however, not yet. Someone still had to fix the future, and it appeared such a mission could not be entrusted to his descendants, for millennia had passed and their countless reincarnations had walked the earth, only for the personification of his mother's will to intercede and turn everything to naught.
Hagoromo had many things that he regretted in life. He had failed his duty as a father, he had failed his duty as a leader, and he had failed to bring peace that he had promised the world. Hagoromo was already at his wit's end and he believed this man was his best gamble to make things right.
Someone untouched by Indra and Ashura's generational trauma, someone untouched by his mother's manipulation and scheme.
A new blood, so to speak.
Someone nondescript and unassuming. Someone seasoned in managing shinobi affairs from behind the scenes. Someone who could rival that clingy creature who worshiped his mother and manifested her will on earth.
After all, it was only someone who was thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that could thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on.
Shikamaru woke up to an unbearable sense of wrongness.
There was a faint light shining above him. Cold, freezing water pushed him from all sides, pressing him down and down and down. Bubbles escaped through his mouth and nose. He sputtered and reflexively kicked his legs. His lungs were burning, his brain not quite registering how he ended up drowning in a body of water.
He broke through the surface and wheezed. Swimming against the current into the edge of the river, he lay down shivering by the banks and finally took note of his unfamiliar surroundings, registering his intact limbs.
His intact, short limbs.
What in Kami's hell?
Shikamaru whipped back towards the water and stared, flabbergasted by his own reflection.
It was like an imitation of his face, much younger and softer still, but with subtle differences. The Nara-looking child was tall and skinny, with sallow skin and haphazard, wet long hair framing their beady dark eyes, perhaps about twelve years of age. Their hanten was earth colored and practical, the length and sleeves not fitting quite right, revealing its age and second-hand nature. No weapon in sight.
Shikamaru stared blankly at the glimmering surface, his heart pounding in his chest. He gingerly touched his face, the reflection followed. He smacked his own cheek, and the reflection followed. Sharp, burning pain lingered, his cheek throbbed. He grimaced, as did the reflection.
Shikamaru felt faint, his mind spinning.
What is this? Where is he?
Had he not just died?
Compartmentalizing these questions, Shikamaru put his dead-or-not dead situation aside and dried himself with a neat burst of wind chakra.
Eyes darting back and forth through the clearing, Shikamaru tracked possible foot prints by which the body he currently inhabited could possibly come from. He felt naked without his weapons and pre-made traps, thankfully his chakra reserve had remained—too large for a child, though nothing overly suspicious. His sense of balance felt off, used as he was to his longer, adult leg.
He was certain that he had been flung somewhere in the center of the continent, could be anywhere in the vast Land of Fire or its adjacent neighboring countries, or even further up north; though it doesn't quite fit the war-torn images in his memories. Vegetations strangely rose into the sky, ripe and abundant, untouched by human hands and a telltale of civilization.
A herd of Nara deers caught his attention—a majestic, though surely an impossible sight, as their habitat had long been obliterated into extinction by the wars. But he was not senile enough to forget their distinct spots and antlers, considered sacred as they were by his ancestors and family.
Carefully following them from atop the trees, he peered into the far edge of the forest. Rows of humongous trees became sparse, giving way to vibrant grassland with sloping hills, mountain ranges standing tall behind them. The sun had dipped low over the horizon, casting crimson rays like blood over the valley.
There, Shikamaru watched with awe as a dark, dense herd formed from a loose net of wandering groups of deers. From scattering stragglers they became a mass, coalescing so densely that they resembled the swirling pattern formed at the center of a tropical storm. The outer fringe of animals circling at great speed surrounded a core that was barely moving.
Suddenly, the herd rushed down the slope like a massive wave crashing ashore. Hitting the base of the escarpment, they surged forward as a thundering horde, the vibration of their cloven hoof beats echoed through the clearing. Emerging into view atop the hill, taking advantage of the sun's lower position, three herders appeared and lengthened their shadows to form a half moon circle, quickly closing on of the herd, slowing the herd down before they came into a halt near the edge of the forest.
Nara herders.
It was a story passed down from fathers to their children, the history of their clan prior to shinobi villages formation, prior to settling down on a designated piece of land in Konoha. Before they were shinobi, they were herders and herbalists. Even their shadow ninpō was largely used for deer herding. Advanced for their time, they accumulated the most comprehensive encyclopedia of diseases and medicinal plants before the advent of modern medical ninjutsu. Somewhat nomadic, Nara Clan was largely neutral and did trades with every neighboring clan. Militarily weak but savvy and intelligent, the clan had found their own niche and thus produced enough profits to remain mostly removed from conflicts.
But that was then, during the Warring State period.
And now it was…
Actually, Shikamaru did not know anymore. Stranger things had certainly happened: the moon exploding, meteors falling from the skies, Tailed-Beasts cleaving mountains, dead men roaming the earth as indestructible puppets, Konoha being reduced to ashes within seconds, just to name a few.
All evidence pointed that he had somehow traveled through time—or to an alternate reality, or even into an unending purgatory. For what reasons, he knew not. He was no prophesied child, he was but an ordinary man who had the misfortune of living in such an extraordinary lifetime.
For no clear rhyme nor reason he had been blipped into existence inside a particular period in history in which chaos and death reigned supreme that children were taught the art of killing as they learned how to walk. Then wasn't this simply a continuation of his own hellish and war-torn reality? For what entity derived satisfaction from watching the puny human squirm and writhe and decided yes, let's put this dead man in a child's body, because what do you mean why not?
He didn't belong here, inside this body that was not his, weighed by his own wretched memories and emotions, snugly parasitizing upon their unfortunate soul.
Only mere hours ago, he had been a war tactician. Time faded when he was steeped in creating strategies, engulfed in the voices of generals and soldiers. But now, amidst the humid air and the scents of wildflowers mixed with earthy soil, he found himself altogether lost.
Leaves rustled with early evening wind, making faint whispers, as if the forest itself was mocking his plight. The quiet was haunting, a stark contrast to the clangor of battle he had been so accustomed to. He brushed his fingers across his face, hoping to grasp some semblance of his previous identity, comforting himself with the familiarity of his goatee—only to be greeted by a delicate curve, soft and foreign.
Shikamaru heaved a sigh.
Ten years ago, a younger him would have screamed into high heaven, cursing the circumstances which had trapped him into a random bag of skin and flesh out of his own volition. The jarring shock of this transformation would have certainly filled him with rage and despair.
Now he no longer mustered a care. His sense of turmoil had dulled over the years.
For a brief histrionic moment he considered dunking himself into the cold river again, but then he thought that realistically, anything was better than death.
Fond memories brushed against his consciousness: laughter that had echoed across the village market, blossoming romance amidst cherry blossoms, and a heart that had once dreamed of a peaceful, less troublesome life. Each moment flooded him with bitterness, echoing through the marrow of his being.
Yet, he could not linger here in despair. He was Nara Shikamaru, he had faced countless obstacles, each one seemingly insurmountable, yet he had always managed to find a way out, even during times of utmost despair. His body might have been destroyed, but his mind remained sharp and intact, a beacon of clarity amidst chaos.
As Shikamaru took another breath, he felt the familiar sensation of strategy taking root in his mind—a flurry of calculations and plots weaving together, forming a tapestry of possible outcomes. Despair might threaten to take hold, but it would not define him. With each passing moment, the weight of hopelessness began to lift, replaced by the exhilarating possibility of purpose.
Shikamaru was not simply a survivor at the mercy of his circumstances; he shall be a master of his fate. With renewed vigor, Shikamaru stepped forward, feeling a surge of determination flowing through him like the waking tide, ready to confront whatever lay ahead, unwavering in his quest to reclaim not just his freedom, but his very essence.
A/N: Hello everyone, I'm excited to share some news with you today! This story has undergone a significant transformation. I've taken the time to explore new ideas and concepts, and this updated version hopefully reflects the growth I've experienced over time. My hope is that you will find this newer and fresher rendition enjoyable. Happy reading!