A tremendous, seismic rumble beset the endless void of the Kamui dimension, emanating from the throat of a very disgruntled ape left to stew in his molten agitation.
"To think, I merely exchanged one prison for another," Son Goku bitterly lamented, drawing circles on the surface of the strange cube they sat on with his titanic finger.
"You get used to it," grumbled his three-tailed brother in resignation from within his shell. Isobu had long been past the point of anger about their situation. He hadn't known freedom for longer than a few minutes for many decades at this point, and the unusual environment of his new prison intrigued him just enough for boredom to primarily settle in over fury.
"It could be worse," the final member of their trio, Matatabi, piped up with a joyful flavor to her voice. "We haven't been together like this in generations. Captivity or not, I'm happy to see you all again."
"Likewise, I suppose," Isobu sighed. "I would have preferred a reunion under better circumstances, though."
"As would I, but beggars can't be choosers, so I'll take what I can get," Matatabi shrugged.
Something between a resigned sigh and an amused snort shot out of Son Goku sitting off to the side. "You always did have enough optimism to spare for the nine of us, Mata."
"Because Kurama's a fucking stick in the mud, so at least one of us had to counterbalance," Isobu huffed, only to be lightly whipped across the shell by a fiery tail.
"Be nice, Isobu," Matatabi half-heartedly scolded. "Kurama took Father's death the hardest of us all. He truly wanted to believe in the goodness of humanity, at least for a little while. It's why he's so attached to his newest jinchuriki."
Isobu quirked a curious eyebrow at her. "You've spoken to him recently?"
She twisted her paw in a so-so motion. "Once or twice in the last few hundred years. Not as much as I would have liked. His container and mine had occasionally consorted when they encountered each other, often upon discovering him alongside Gyuki's vessel after escaping the village."
"Huh," Isobu commented in wonder, his gaze trailing to the vast expanse of floating cubes in rumination. "My memory of my time with my last vessel is still muddy because of the genjutsu we were under-"
His gaze suddenly snapped back to Matatabi as something occurred to him, and looking her over once more, he finally took in the unusual, black flames mingling with her bright blue and fashioned into a tiara sitting regally atop her head. "What is that? On your head?"
The cobalt flames of her coat brightened at the inquiry, and she gently tilted her head to better display the tiara. "Oh, this? They're the flames of Amaterasu that appeared not long ago. Neither of you would have been able to touch them, so I figured I wouldn't let them go to waste. Do you like it?"
"I do. It looks nice on you."
Meanwhile, Son Goku's attention had settled onto a space a little further into the void. Every so often, a portion of a human body would momentarily phase into the realm before vanishing just as quickly. It didn't happen on any particular schedule nor did it seem to have any rhyme or reason, but different body parts always appeared in quick bursts whenever it happened.
"Hey," he called to his two siblings without prying his gaze from the spot. "Have you two noticed how human limbs just randomly appear sometimes?"
"Hm?" Isobu responded before the question caught up to him, and his expression darkened. "Yes. An arm or a torso will spawn in mid-air for a second or two before vanishing. I'm quite certain it's that bastard partially popping in and out."
"He's always too fast for us when he appears fully…" Matatabi lamented.
Son Goku hummed, watching as a cloaked torso phased in, followed by the complete top half of the masked Uchiha's body, and as expected, he was gone again as quickly as he arrived. Then, Son Goku turned to his fellow Biju with a contemplative expression.
"…Do you think his parts are tangible when they show up, or does his whole body need to be here?" he posed to them, and both took a long moment to really consider the unspoken idea he was floating to them.
"Well, there's only one way to find out," Isobu shrugged.
Patience was a virtue. Any shinobi worth their salt was well aware of that. Danzo's patience, however, was not infinite. Flanked by Sai and Fu Yamanaka, Danzo waited at the agreed-upon rendezvous point on a bridge in the outer bounds of Tetsu. The mercenaries of Tsuki no Me were supposed to have been there half an hour ago, and the grace he was silently granting them for agreeing to aid him in killing the Hokage was quickly running thin. While it was common knowledge that every powerful shinobi had a particular quirk about them to stave off the insanity (not counting those who simply welcomed the insanity with open arms), he wasn't aware that Tsuki no Me had adopted Kakashi Hatake's proclivities towards tardiness.
"Lord Danzo," Fu spoke up, drawing Danzo out of his internal grumbling as he kept a keen eye on the distance beyond the bridge. "A group approaches."
"How many?" Danzo questioned.
"Five," Fu responded, and then his gaze narrowed. "One is a sensor. A powerful one. They detected me."
A curious hum escaped Danzo. He was not expecting a collective of that size; Tsuki no Me generally operated in pairs. "Is there anyone you may recognize among the group?"
He could see Fu tense as he focused harder, and the steel in his expression further fueled Danzo's curiosity.
"Two of them," he confirmed. "Yukimaru and Sasuke Uchiha."
That not only made Danzo open his unbandaged eye, but it stilled Sai, as well. Now, Danzo's undivided attention was focused on the direction Fu was glaring in. He could now detect the presences closing in on their location. He wasn't the sensor that Fu was, so he wasn't able to parse them in any particular detail, but he was able to get a feel for a few very potent chakra signatures on their way toward them.
"So, Sasuke Uchiha returns," Danzo mused, and moments later, five blurs garbed in the black cloaks of Tsuki no Me came to a halt in the center of the bridge just a few yards in front of them.
Just as Fu declared, Sasuke Uchiha's hateful Sharingan burned straight through him. Just as well, Yukimaru flanked him on his right, and a white-haired teenager that Danzo recognized to be the Hozuki child Orochimaru kept in a tank flanked his left. He did not recognize the taller one nor the girl simply from appearance, but it was ultimately irrelevant.
"When I requested Tsuki no Me's services, I was not expecting to encounter you again, Sasuke," Danzo remarked, regarding him carefully. Sasuke's body language was far too reminiscent of a coiled snake preparing to strike for his comfort.
"Frankly, I would have been content never seeing you again," Sasuke coldly replied, his glare unwavering. "But that was before I learned the truth, so here I am to make you face retribution for your crimes against my clan."
Fu and Sai were already tense, but that statement drew their blades. Danzo merely grunted in displeased resignation, letting his cane clatter on the stone of the bridge as he removed his bandaged arm from his robe. "So, you know..."
He began unfastening the three golden braces that sealed away the chakra on his refurbished arm as the rest of Sasuke's group eyed them like starving hyenas. "I don't know who revealed it to you, but it doesn't matter. I'm going to take your Sharingan and add them to my collection."
"Collection…?" the Hozuki questioned as the bracers fell to the ground one by one, perplexedly looking between him and Sasuke.
"His right arm," the girl among them pointed out from the back of their formation as she discarded her own bandages to reveal fish mutations dominating her body.
"I knew he was faking the crippled act," Yukimaru muttered, his gaze narrowing in disgust at Danzo's exposed arm. "I should've expected something like this. He and Orochimaru were way too similar."
"Orochimaru…" Sasuke growled, his Sharingan spinning in fury. "That's who made that arm for you, right? So you could use those Sharingan you pilfered from the corpses you were responsible for?"
Danzo sighed, the bandages on his arm fully discarded. "Well, in various ways, it's a long story, one that you have already deduced the cliff notes of."
With a single motion of his hand, Sai and Fu struck. A pack of ink beats barreled down the bridge toward Sasuke with Fu charging in behind them, but Yukimaru and the Hozuki sprang into action and cut those leading the pack down with a katana and the Kabutowari, respectively, while the other two leaped into the fray to batter the remaining beasts and charge Fu and Sai directly.
Sasuke, meanwhile, did not move a muscle, maintaining his glare with nothing but hatred pouring from his crimson gaze. "Did Itachi slaughter the Uchiha Clan under orders given to him by you and the other Konoha elders?"
"What difference does it make at this point?" was all Danzo said before he darted forward, closing the distance between them in moments to punch Sasuke with all the strength his enhanced arm could muster.
His fist met no flesh, however, only a purple wall of chakra that proceeded to snatch him into an iron grip. Forcefully raised off the ground, he gazed down at the ethereal torso of the Susanoo developing around Sasuke. Staring into the bleeding eyes of the Uchiha, the pattern he saw was no longer the standard pinwheel, but an unusual elliptical pattern…
So, Sasuke possessed the Mangekyo Sharingan. It was truly a blessing that Orochimaru's collection of Sharingan was as plentiful as his own, as this was going to be a long day.
"Fuckin' hate the snow," Tayuya grumbled as she and Karin trudged through the offending precipitate blanketing the ground. "Why does this place have to be up in the fucking mountains? Have samurai never heard of settling in river valleys or some shit?"
"Easier to defend," Karin shrugged, stretching her senses to keep a watch for any large or peculiar chakra signatures. "No one wants to go to the trouble of trekking through the mountains to invade. It's also pretty isolated, so there's less worry about shinobi villages encroaching on their way of life. They can be samurai in peace."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Tayuya huffed. It wasn't like she didn't already know all of that. "Fuck this snow, though."
"Honestly," Karin surprisingly snorted in agreement. "Wanna canvas the foothills? Naruto and Lord Pain should be able to sense anything out of the ordinary within the Three Wolves mountains anyway."
"Hell yeah," she acquiesced, unwilling to pass up a change of scenery.
With that, Karin created a few shadow clones to scatter about the area before she and Tayuya bolted down the steadily inclining terrain.
"I wonder what's going on at the Summit right now…" Karin idly mused as they went about their new trek.
Tayuya shrugged. "Bunch of boring politics, probably."
"I'm not so sure," Karin hummed. "They gathered to discuss Lord Pain wiping out a world power, and I highly doubt they expect Lord Pain to show up uninvited. Can't be that boring, all things considered."
Tayuya shrugged in concession to the point, inwardly smiling at the declining snowfall. "I still think that's gonna end in a fight. No way it doesn't."
"With who?" Karin asked, quirking a curious eyebrow at her. "Who would be dumb enough to fight Lord Pain after he took down an entire hidden village himself?"
"Pride is a motherfucker," Tayuya answered frankly. "Someone who thinks they're hot shit will talk themselves into the worst kinds of ass whoopings."
"Speaking from experience?" Karin sniped with a smirk.
"Damn right," she nodded. "Hell, you remember how eager I was to punch the shithead in his dumbass face when we sparred for the first time, right? I was so sure that even if I couldn't genjutsu him, I'd just go Stage 2 and put him on his ass. Maybe I wouldn't win, but it's the principle: I ain't no bitch."
Karin blinked, eying her with a questioning gaze. "So, when Naruto put you on your ass and then planted your face into the mud, that was…"
"A reality check," she begrudgingly confirmed to her partner. "Happens a lot. When I was one of Orochimaru's elite guards, there were at least four people around to remind us of the pecking order if our nuts became too big for our pants. Kept us in line, but most importantly, it kept us grounded."
She paused, lingering on that thought a little longer. "…Mostly."
She quickly shook her head. "Anyway, fuckwits like the Raikage don't have that. They are the bar, so they won't respond well when someone else comes in and establishes a new pecking order. He can use the excuse that it's bad optics for a rogue group of mercs to go around eliminating Kage, and it is, but the truth of it all is that it's just a matter of his pride more than anything else."
Karin hummed in consideration, skipping along the rocky, less snowy terrain as they neared the foothills of the Three Wolves. "Valid point. How would you go about diplomacy then?"
Tayuya hummed in kind. "Some people only respond to getting violated from here to Uzu."
"Which circles back to your initial point about this all ending in a fight," Karin surmised.
"Bingo," Tayuya smirked. "We know Mei, and it's safe to assume that the Kazekage and Hokage are with the program, but a hothead like the Raikage is still the unknown variable. If Tsuki no Me doesn't show up, don't be surprised if the Raikage feels froggy and ends up getting smacked around a little."
Karin snorted. "Fair, I guess."
Then, she inexplicably paused, drawing a raised eyebrow from Tayuya. "There's a fight going on further down. Two of them, I think. One of them has a guy spreading his chakra all over the place."
She frowned. "I think I recognize him, actually. He was with Orochimaru when we fought them at their hideout."
That got Tayuya's full attention. "Yukimaru? Who else is with him?"
Karin squinted in concentration. "There's a guy who feels completely like living water. There's a woman who feels more fish than human. There's another guy whose chakra is scarily similar to yours when you activate your cursed seal…"
Tayuya's eyes narrowed in equal parts confusion and suspicion. "Suigetsu, Jugo, and Isaribi. The fuck are they doing out here?"
Karin quickly caught on to where her thoughts were headed. "You think it involves Orochimaru cheating death again?"
"Or Kabuto," she grimly floated the possibility, and the scowl Karin developed was instantaneous. It seemed that was still a sore spot for her, and it was confirmed when she turned to Tayuya with a gleam behind her glasses.
"Wanna check it out?" she asked.
"Abso-fucking-lutely," was all Tayuya had to say before the two took off toward the action.
The snow grew thinner and thinner as they bounded down the foothills of the mountains, eventually breaching much more temperate conditions. Once the snow was behind them, they found themselves bounding through the woods scattered about the terrain. Every so often, Tayuya would glance over at her partner, and she noticed that the further they traveled, the deeper Karin's frown became.
"He sensed me," Karin eventually spoke up, landing on a branch and stopping her pursuit. "He knows we're in the area."
Tayuya landed on a nearby branch and faced her. "Who?"
"Yukimaru," she answered. "I guess he's a sensor-"
Her gaze suddenly snapped to the left, and Tayuya's followed. She knew Karin sensed the approaching cataclysm before either of them heard the destruction and maniacal laughter headed toward them, so when Karin produced a kunai with an explosive tag attached from her sleeve, Tayuya needed no prompting to leap away from the fray as a gray, hulking monster in a Tsuki no Me cloak blasted through the trees into an explosion. As expected, though, the monster in question emerged from the blast no worse for wear, and Tayuya was once again face-to-face with the unhinged grin of a rampaging Jugo.
"Who's next?!" Jugo bellowed with crazed glee, hefting two halves of a bifurcated human by their ankles above his head. "Who's next to DIEEEE?!"
Tayuya cringed at the sight. Whatever poor sap ran afoul of them must've been overwhelmed by Jugo's berserker state, and it ended up with orange hair stained red with the blood pouring down from their exposed guts. Glancing back at Karin, she gestured to let her handle it before unsheathing her flute from her sleeve.
Conveniently, Suigetsu (who was also decked out in a Tsuki no Me cloak) landed on-scene right as she placed her flute to her mouth, and unlike Jugo, his gaze landed on them immediately.
"Tayuya?" a startled Suigetsu asked. "I figured you died with those three other bastards."
Only then did Jugo's attention snap to them, but it was too late. With a cruel smirk, Tayuya played her flute, coiling her chakra around Jugo and ensnaring him in a nasty auditory genjutsu. The two halves of a human in his grasp dropped to the ground with wet thuds, and he stumbled as delirium took over. He pawed at his head with his gigantic claws as incoherent rambling stuttered out of his maw, and then his head shot up and started frantically looking around before his frenzied gaze settled on Suigetsu.
"You…" he growled, his manic grin returning. "You're next!"
"Oh, fuck that," Suigetsu chuckled and raised the big ass axe he was carrying.
However, the vents on Jugo's back roared to life, and he blasted off toward Suigetsu nearly faster than he could react, only allowing him enough time to flip the axe's broadside to block the incoming hit. The impact echoed throughout the area and sent Suigetsu careening into a tree, meanwhile, Jugo's hysterical laughter serenaded his vicious assault.
"TIME TO DIE!" he roared, blasting off again to pounce on Suigetsu who was prepared to hack him to pieces this time. Unfortunately, a pale, green blur zipped into his path and caught Jugo's fists with a deafening thwack. Closer inspection revealed Isaribi in full fish mode holding Jugo back as best as she could.
"Calm down, big guy!" Isaribi shouted as she struggled to match his monstrous strength. "He's a friend, not a foe!"
"He's in a genjutsu," Suigetsu muttered, shooting a wary glance at an amused Tayuya.
The Akatsuki duo did not spend this time sitting idly, though. As Suigetsu reached to dispel the illusion on Jugo, golden chains sprouted from the ground and ensnared the three of them. They attempted to muscle the chains off, but it was to no avail. Then, Suigetsu smugly tried to liquefy out of the bindings, but nothing happened, and the panic that lanced across his face was too delicious for Tayuya to pass up savoring.
"Your chakra's sealed, dumbass," she mocked as she and Karin strolled over to them, and three clones of Karin popped up from the ground beneath them with victorious smirks of their own.
"LET ME OUT SO I CAN RIP YOU APART!" Jugo hollered, thrashing against his restraints to little effect.
"Let's start here," Tayuya began, eyeing the group with heavy scrutiny. "How the hell did you three wind up running with Tsuki fucking no Me? Kabuto drag you idiots along or something?"
She noted the confusion drawn from the mention of Kabuto on the faces of the two lucid ones among them.
"…Didn't Kabuto die with Orochimaru??" Suigetsu was the one to ask.
Tayuya blinked. "He's not with you?"
"No," Isaribi succinctly denied, carefully eyeing the two redheads.
Tayuya and Karin met eyes in their periphery. So, neither Orochimaru nor Kabuto were with them. That was comforting… somewhat.
"You two are Akatsuki," Isaribi spoke up again in an unreadable tone. "Yukimaru isn't really a fan."
"A lot of that to go around these days," Karin replied in just as guarded a tone before her attention shifted to their right.
Karin's chains reacted to the incoming storm of shuriken faster than even Tayuya could clutch her flute, batting the bulk of them away before they could reach the Akatsuki duo. A few still met their mark, slamming into the temples of the clones and dispersing the chains that held the group in place, and in the confusion, Yukimaru flickered into Karin's guard and clashed his katana against her chains.
"Akatsuki…" Yukimaru growled with hatred so palpable that everyone in the clearing could taste it.
Tayuya instinctively put her flute to her mouth to stop all of them in their tracks with a paralysis genjutsu, but a scaly fist slammed into her face and rocketed her into a nearby tree, knocking the wind out of her. Even still, she drudged up the energy to see the Wave Surge Jutsu crashing toward her from the mouth of Isaribi, and she met it with a hasty but powerful Fireball Jutsu that blanketed the area with steam once the two jutsu collided. Capitalizing on the sudden cover, she backtracked up the tree and crouched on a high enough branch to get a solid overview of the battlefield. Away from the steam, she caught sight of Yukimaru blitzing through a lightning-fast barrage of slashes that were met at every turn by violent chain lashes.
Eventually, the two broke away, and Yukimaru glared hatefully at Karin before his gaze flickered to Tayuya in the tree. The steam cleared, unveiling a freed Jugo flanked by Suigetsu and Isaribi stalking the tree as Yukimaru began streaming chakra through his katana.
"Hear me, Akatsuki," Yukimaru belled, his blade further sharpened with a coating of wind chakra. "I am going to kill every last one of you."
It was unusual for Naruto to go out of his way to fade into the background. It wasn't that he particularly desired attention, but he wasn't one to make himself invisible outside of a mission setting. Standing in the summit room surrounded by the leaders of the most powerful nations on the continent, Naruto and Konan did just that because all attention was on Pain, and rightfully so. Pain was the reason everyone was here in the first place, and they all wanted to hear what he had to say… for the most part, at least. The Raikage was making it very clear that he wasn't too keen on hearing Pain out, nor was he hiding the quick but pointed glances he was sending Naruto's way.
The unnerved stares he was receiving from the Raikage's blonde guard were one thing; he was clearly a sensor and felt Naruto spreading his senses far and wide to be on the lookout for the masked Uchiha or any other Tsuki no Me activity. The looks from the Raikage, however, were very different. Every so often, his gaze would pry itself from Pain and flicker over to him, and the simmering fury that was present would take a momentary backseat to cautious intrigue as he analytically looked him up and down.
"I think he recognizes you, or rather who you hail from."
Naruto internally snorted. 'I'm not surprised. He could never catch me those times I was with Bee.'
"Was he more concerned with you or his idiot brother?"
'Doesn't matter. Evading his attacks had to have been a slight to his pride, one he isn't likely to forget.'
And if the nasty glare that lanced through him was any indication, the Raikage certainly hadn't-
"Naruto…"
'Yeah, I know,' he darkly mused, looking up at the ceiling. 'I sense it, too.'
And right where he was staring was a two-toned creature he'd truly come to loathe. Protruding from the ceiling was Zetsu's head, a singular, fully yellow eye pinning him to the floor with more hatred and malice than even Kurama had felt in generations. The black half was emanating so much negativity that it drowned out the toothy grin from the white half and nearly obfuscated the presence emerging beside him.
Almost.
"He's here," Naruto whispered to Konan as he closed his eyes and focused. The continued discussion between the Kage and whatever the Raikage eventually started yelling about went ignored. He remained perfectly still, gathering natural energy and weaving it into his chakra to create the senjutsu chakra he was certain he'd need. Sage Mode finally came over him, and with it came the sudden expansion of his senses, extending his range from within the building and beyond to the far reaches of Tetsu in an instant.
The shuddered gasp from the blonde Kumo sensor reminded Naruto he was even there, but he continued tuning everything out as new signatures became apparent to him. Far off, beyond the snow, there was a pair of Sharingan-
No, two pairs of Sharingan… or was that three?
Why was he picking up on ten Sharingan signatures in one vessel-
Scratch that, why was he picking up nine Sharingan in one vessel? And that wasn't even to mention the far stronger, much angrier chakra facing off with them, presumably more Sharingan since they felt similar enough to Itachi.
Feeling past them, he identified the signatures he recognized: Tayuya was surrounded by a few considerable chakra signatures, one strangely similar to her own, while Karin was facing off against an even larger one with a peculiar signature hanging off to the side-
His eyes snapped open and landed on the masked Uchiha on the rafters. Zetsu was gone, and this was a shadow clone.
"Son of a bitch!" he growled after snapping toward the direction of the real Uchiha out in the wild.
"Go," came Pain's command. "We'll handle things here."
He was out of the room through a brand-new entrance in an instant. If Pain wasn't already aware that this was a clone, he'd figure it out in a few moments, and then Nagato would spring into action alongside him. Until then, Naruto zoomed through the snow in the direction of his partners. If Fraudara thought for even a solitary second that he was going to take either one of them hostage, he'd swiftly find his head buried snugly up his ass and missing his precious Sharingan along the way.
"Watch yourself, brat. This is not a battle you can charge into recklessly."
An amused yet ruminant smirk ghosted across his face at his tenant's vocalness. 'Glad to see that you're awake and alert for this one, partner.'
An equally amused chuckle rumbled through the mindscape. "And let your dumbass get captured again? Not a chance."
The mood experienced immediate whiplash upon Kurama's low, menacing growl thundering through Naruto's mind. "Especially not with what I'm sensing. I know you sense it, too."
Naruto blinked in slight confusion, the terrain steadily becoming less snowy the further he traversed, and then it hit him all at once and just about made him grind to a clumsy halt. He felt all the same signatures in the distance as before, only they were much closer and the baker's dozen-pack of Sharingan was dwindling even faster. That wasn't all he felt, though. He looked down at the snow-dusted grass and trepidatiously took it all in with Sage Mode.
Miles beneath the surface was an unfathomable quantity of chakra slinking through the dirt, chakra he had become aggressively familiar with to recognize as Zetsu.
There were a lot of Zetsu.
There were a lot of Zetsu.
"Holy hell," he finally exhaled. The amount of Zetsu he could sense underground dwarfed what he felt during his fight with Tobi at the border by a considerable degree. "How and why the hell are there so many?!"
"I thought I was pretty clear about my ability to amass an army, though I suppose you darted off before my clone could get to that part," a new voice dripping in sardonic mirth emerged from behind him like a blip on a radar, but Naruto was already spinning on a dime with a Rasengan in hand. "Shame-"
Fraudara reflexively stopped talking as the Rasengan phased through his mask, and then he stepped out of the path of the jutsu and snatched Naruto's wrist. However, a sudden burst of fire exploded from Naruto's arm, forcing him to backpedal and create considerable distance between them while he quickly regained himself. Naruto simply sent a vindictive smirk his way, ignoring the ruined sleeve of his cloak that exposed the glowing storage seal grafted to his forearm. He could feel the incredulous glare pinning him from behind the mask's eyehole, and it made his smirk grow that much more.
"Did… did you seal a Fireball Jutsu onto your arm??" the frazzled Uchiha balked in a mixture of disbelief and clearly begrudging intrigue. The radical change in his voice from the menacing baritone he used in the Summit room did not go unnoticed.
"Maybe," Naruto noncommittally teased, inwardly cackling at the many jutsu storage seals grafted all over his body. "Ain't fuinjutsu just the best?"
The long, blank stare he received nearly brought his cackles out, especially since Naruto could practically hear the gears turning in the Uchiha's head.
"…I should have snapped your little, infant neck," he remarked in a tone dryer than the Demon Desert.
"You really should have," Naruto haphazardly shrugged. "You won't live to regret it much longer, though."
"On the contrary," he began again, his deep masquerade of a voice returning as he stretched his arms, "I think I'll be just fine."
Right as the last word left his mouth, missiles phased through him like sonic death from behind, and Naruto cleared the area before they detonated on impact with the ground. Earth and snow were blasted every which way, and when the dust settled, the newly formed crater was empty. Fraudara, meanwhile, sat cross-legged on a nearby boulder and surveyed the scene with an exaggerated show of leisure.
"Well, hello there, Nagato," he greeted with a lazy wave as the Rinnegan-wielder in question finally emerged on the scene. "I knew it was only a matter of time before you joined the party."
"Indeed," Nagato just as lazily greeted back, contrasting the hardness of his rippled gaze planted on the Uchiha. "You had to know this was how all of this would end when you arrived, right?"
He simply shrugged. "On some level, I suppose. I maintain that I'm not here for a fight, though, and I'm frankly a little perplexed at your insistence on pushing the issue."
Nagato just quirked an unimpressed eyebrow at that. "Why else would you have come all the way to Tetsu and stage an attack on a Kage Summit if not for the Rinnegan?"
A cold, foreboding chuckle began emanating from behind the mask; at the same time, Naruto sensed the Zetsu underground shift, and a long way off in the direction of the summit building with the Kage, a horde of them sprouted from the ground to run interference. The slight narrowing of Nagato's Rinnegan and the tightening of his frown indicated that Pain was also caught up in it.
"You still believe I need your Rinnegan," Fraudara condescendingly uttered. "Ever the narcissist, I see. Like I said earlier, I'm simply ensuring my investment. I don't need your eyes, Nagato. Project Tsuki no Me will succeed with or without them. You are not special."
The crimson glow within his eyehole narrowed dangerously, and his tone took a much more dangerous edge. "However, if you insist on handing them to me on a golden platter like this, far be it from me to not finally rid myself of a long-standing headache."
Nagato was waiting for this, though. With just a few hand signs, seven puffs of smoke emerged above them, and down came the Six Paths of Pain as well as Konan. Without missing a beat, Naruto was in front of the Uchiha in the blink of an eye with his arm wrapped in chains and crackling with lightning. However, rather than phase through the Lightning Cleaver as Naruto expected, he met it with a just-as-quickly-appearing chakra rod, attempting to physically halt and deflect the attack. That was a mistake, which was evident through the surprise and flickers of panic in his widening Sharingan when the receiver very quickly snapped, and it was only his quick decision to become intangible again that spared him from decapitation.
Strangely enough, as Naruto was running through the intangible Uchiha, he noticed him jerk his head out of the way of something unseen. Rather than linger on it, though, he bounded forward to clear the way for Pain and Konan to viciously converge on him. Creating a bit of space to prepare, he turned back to the action and noticed another peculiarity. Despite the brutal extent to which Konan and Nagato were going at him, Fraudara was not phasing through any of their offense; he caught a fist from the Preta Path and backhanded the Human Path away, but it left him vulnerable to the Shinra Tensei that slammed into him and sent him airborne. Then, rather than become intangible when Konan swarmed him with paper blades, he produced another chakra rod and went wild, deflecting the blades by hand on his way down until he physically twisted out of the path of the Asura Path that rose to meet him with an arm-saw.
Naruto watched in intrigue as he snatched the Asura Path's arm, tore it clean off its body, and punched through its head with it in the blink of an eye, still not going intangible a single time. Naruto had a theory, and he knew just the way to test it. Reaching inward and molding two separate natures together, he performed a brief sequence before inhaling right as Fraudara reached the ground.
"Sage Art, Boil Style: Scalding Poison!" he spat, exhaling a bright purple cloud of toxic gas that quite literally carved a trail in the swiftly melting snow toward him. Fraudara's first instinct was to jump out of the way of the corrosive, mauve gas, but a half-ram seal from Naruto commanded the gas cloud to suddenly expand, engulfing the area and leaving nowhere for him to evade.
Fraudara surprised Naruto again, though, as he slammed his hands into a snake seal and summoned forth massive roots from beneath him to coil into a protective cocoon around him.
"Wood, huh?" Naruto mused aloud, idly noting the King of Hell sprouting outside of the cloud in his periphery to revive the Asura Path while deep, ferocious growling echoed through his mind.
"An Uchiha with that blasted power… Two disgusting kekkei genkai in one. Truly an abomination."
"No kidding," Naruto muttered, his nearly pitch-black gaze narrowing at the dirt beneath the wooden cocoon where he sensed the Uchiha tunneling underground. He could feel him making a beeline out of the range of the gas cloud with the aid of Zetsu, so Naruto pinpointed where they would re-emerge and quickly directed a senjutsu-powered Swamp of the Underworld directly in his vicinity. As expected, he surfaced from the dirt, but he couldn't rise past his shoulders due to the mud holding him in place like the mother of all cement.
"Sage Art, Boil Style: Swamp Gas," he intoned after a few more seals, and the chakra within the mud activated, expelling another toxic cloud from the ground like a volcanic vent.
Fraudara's annoyed growling grew into pained grunting, which quickly developed into genuine wailing as the gas indiscriminately ate away at his cloak, mask, and skin. He glared up at Naruto, but all he got was a smarmy peace sign in response as a barrage of missiles from the revived Asura Path interspersed with a shower of lit explosive tags sailed over Naruto's head and arced straight for him.
The ensuing explosion was magnificent. Not only did the poison cloud of the Swamp Gas Jutsu ignite, but the remaining gas cloud from earlier did as well, resulting in a titanic inferno that burned brightly over the horizon for miles. The surrounding snow evaporated in moments, leaving behind a scorched scar on the terrain as black as the soul of man. The blast even drove away some of the Zetsu underground—those that weren't also caught in the Swamp of the Underworld trap at least.
A long exhale escaped Naruto's lips as he took a few light steps back, and with that exhale came a dull ache slowly creeping throughout his body from the use of Salamander senjutsu. He was as close to mastering Sage Mode as he ever had been, so close that he wasn't at risk of the natural energy necrotizing his organs. A little more time and experience maintaining the senjutsu was all he needed at this point, but he could contemplate that later. As the Paths converged around him and Konan hovered overhead, his amphibious gaze landed on a rippling distortion in the air, and out dropped a haggard Uchiha swatting what looked like small flecks of lava off his tattered cloak. Damaged alongside his cloak was his mask, as only the bottom half remained at all, displaying his absolutely livid Sharingan to the world.
"Zetsu!" he practically growled, and a flytrap emerged from the ground beside him at his call, opening to reveal the two-toned creature that owned more real estate in Naruto's thoughts than he'd care to admit.
"Yes?" White Zetsu questioned in an all-too-bright tone.
"Kill those two girls," he icily growled while staring directly at Naruto, making him go deathly still.
"With pleasure," Black Zetsu darkly remarked before they retreated into the ground.
It was only a brief moment, a single flicker in time where the entire world was silent, and all the stimuli Naruto experienced was a crescendoing ringing in his ears backed by the dull thrum of his heartbeat.
That moment passed, and then came the fire.
"Like fucking hell!" Naruto growled, a malevolent tambour entering his voice as blooming fury drew on the Kyubi's chakra.
The clearing's other occupants barely had a moment to take in the carmine seeping into the black pools of his eyes before he was gone with a sonic boom.
This was a long day indeed for Danzo. As his battle with Sasuke wound down, he found himself down an arm and desperately hobbling across the bridge with a bleeding hole in his chest to complement his nearly spent chakra reserves. Sasuke, meanwhile simply strolled at his leisure toward his haggard foe like a victorious boogeyman, his walking pace easily catching up with Danzo's gait. Eventually, and predictably, Danzo stumbled to the ground, and Sasuke relished having him at his mercy.
"You came all this way to kill the Hokage so you can take over Konoha," Sasuke mocked, shoving Danzo back down with his foot when he tried to rush back to his feet. "For whatever it's worth, I'll take care of that for you, only I'm going to destroy Konoha when I'm done here today."
"You are not leaving here today," Danzo heaved with venom, exposing his chest and activating the Reverse Tetragram Seal.
The kanji of the seal exploded outward on a black sphere around him, sucking in everything in its reach. Sasuke fortunately got out of dodge just in the nick of time, giving him a front-row seat to Danzo's total implosion, figuratively and literally. The implosion was so great, in fact, that it carved a massive, bowl-shaped hole into the bridge where his mangled corpse lay pathetically within. Standing at the edge of the crater, he took one final gander at the man who ordered the slaughter of his family before turning around and facing the other edge of the bridge. As he did so, a few big impacts in the woods ahead sent tremors through the area.
"Shouldn't be taking them this long to take down Sai of all people," Sasuke mused.
Figuring that whoever showed up was worth the effort, Sasuke reactivated his Sharingan, made his way across the rest of the bridge, and dashed into the trees. It did not take him long at all to find the source of those tremors in the form of a huge, brown salamander battling back a tsunami with a fortress of elaborate Mud Walls. Memories of the battle at the hideout immediately rushed back to Sasuke, and he scowled. A harder look at the figure standing atop the salamander confirmed that it was an Akatsuki most likely fighting Yukimaru, as he was the only person who could and would liberally throw around a water jutsu of that size.
Meanwhile, on top of said salamander, Karin was doing her best to focus, flying through a long sequence before slamming her hands into the snake seal. "Earth Dragon Horde!"
Each of the Mud Walls constructed by the best damn Earth specialist in Kuromizu, Iwabe, shuttered for a moment before a stone dragon emerged from each as the name implied. The horde of dragons roared and unleashed hell on the submerged battlefield in the form of a practical meteor shower to flatten Yukimaru riding on his perch on a crest at the back of this titanic wave. While they were busy with that, Karin turned around to address the new arrival she felt wandering onto the scene, a chakra signature so dark and frigid that it initially startled her when she detected it.
However, right as she did so, a long spear made of lightning lanced through Iwabe's abdomen, eliciting a surprised hack from him before he vanished back to Kuromizu and dropped Karin three stories to the ground. Fortunately, quick thinking drove her to fire chains into the ground to break her fall. Unfortunately, the blade of lightning pierced through the Mud Walls holding back the wave, allowing water to spill through the resulting hole and quickly bust a much larger hole into the structure via the pressure. Karin was barely afforded enough time to regain her bearings before she was washed away by the wave, but she was eventually able to reach the surface and climb back into fresh air.
Of course, she was immediately faced with Sasuke Uchiha rushing her with a Chidori, as one does. She reflexively fired back with a cloud of Poison Mist straight from her mouth, forcing him to pivot on a dime and backtrack lest he wound up a convulsing cadaver floating in an artificial pond. Pressing her advantage, Karin slammed her hand into the tiger seal for the Water Fang Bullet, summoning a multitude of man-sized drills of water to attack Sasuke. Each one only narrowly missed him by a hair as he pushed his Sharingan to the max in order to stay alive, eventually forcing him to fight back directly with a Phoenix Flower Jutsu to destroy the offending drills.
He received a brief reprieve when Karin had to dodge a wind blade that sliced through the water from behind, though. Yukimaru had made it past the Earth Dragons' assault and begun spinning in the air, firing a spatter of wind blades at her with the Vacuum Wave Jutsu. She was forced away from Sasuke, bouncing across the surface of the waning tsunami as wind blades crashed and sliced through the water. When one blade looked like it was coming way too close for comfort, a shadow clone popped into existence and boosted her into the air and out of its path, taking the deadly hit for her. Unfortunately, Sasuke was right there to capitalize, firing Chidori Senbon at her while she was airborne. Rather than simply deflect them with her chains, she chose to wrap herself in a protective chain cocoon and plummet right into the water.
Totally submerged, she unfurled the cocoon and focused, converting her chakra into a particular kind of Salamander poison before seeping it through her mouth into the water, slowly transforming the remnants of the wave into a toxic hellhole. Then, to ensure her plan worked, she pulled up her sleeve and exposed a jutsu storage scroll inscribed on her right forearm. After channeling chakra through it, the heat of an overloaded Fireball Jutsu emerged and quickly spread, boiling the surrounding water and causing the poisons within to bubble and expel as toxic gas at the measly price of an uncomfortable hot spring dip.
She waited a moment for the gasses to work their magic, but when there were neither any bodies collapsing into the water nor any activity on the surface, she surfaced from the water up to the bridge of her nose to see what was going on. Staring back down at her from the back of a Hawk summoning high above the water were Sasuke and Yukimaru. She cursed, narrowing her glare at them in frustration that was met in full by the angry glow of Sasuke's Sharingan.
Wet footsteps behind her snagged her attention, and she whipped around to see Naruto sidling up to her with a smile and an extended hand. Blinking in surprise at his arrival, she reached out and took his hand, climbing to her feet and standing on the water. The wave had died down considerably by now, and they had made their way out of the woods and closer to a nearby bridge. She turned to him in curiosity, but he didn't speak, instead continuing to gaze at her with an uncanny smile. Suddenly, he thrust a kunai into her gut, and Karin scowled, biting her lip to dispel the genjutsu she was under just in time to see Yukimaru about to cut her down with his sword. Brandishing her other forearm, she activated another jutsu storage scroll and unleashed an Electromagnetic Murder Jutsu on Yukimaru at point-blank range. His agonized screaming did not distract her from Sasuke appearing on her other side with his sword, and this time, she did deflect his slashes with her chains.
They entered into a vicious struggle of sword and chain that Karin was steadily getting the better of by overwhelming Sasuke, but a recovered Yukimaru joining the fray complicated matters and put her on the back foot. Their movements were fast, aggressive, and dangerously in sync to produce a deadly kenjutsu duo that even she was hard-pressed to combat. She was never afforded a moment to breathe let alone to produce a clone to lighten the load. Instead, she was steadily pushed back toward the bridge while doing her best to lash out at any available opening, but nearly every opening on one of them was simply bait for the other to strike.
Things were not shaping up well until a thunderous crash accompanying a wave of ferocious chakra shocked the three still. Sasuke and Yukimaru turned back in the direction of the trees to see a gargantuan plume of debris and many of said trees being knocked down in a path directed toward them, but what emerged was simply a blur that cut right between them and snatched Karin out of their range, eventually coming to a stop on top of the torii gate at the other end of the bridge. It was a blur to all but Sasuke who saw perfectly just who interrupted the battle.
"You again," Sasuke bitterly muttered, his Sharingan spinning into his Mangekyo at the sight of Naruto Uzumaki standing atop the torii gate, glaring down at them with a red, slitted gaze brimming with the purest of malice.
Karin, now held tightly against Naruto in a princess carry, looked up at her master, partner, and best friend, but the fiery enmity in his expression stilled any warmth developing in her cheeks. "Hey, uh, thanks for the save, but I wasn't in danger…"
"Not from them," Naruto muttered, eyeing a spot away from the bridge in his periphery where Zetsu had emerged with a sinister grin.
A shadow clone poofed to life beside him, and he handed Karin to the clone. "Get Tayuya and leave."
"Naruto?" Karin hesitantly asked, the rest of her question going unspoken.
"No survivors," was all he responded with. "Tsuki no Me ends today."
With that, the clone flickered away with Karin in tow, and Zetsu kept his gaze on Naruto while the white half began munching on Sai's severed head. Sasuke and Yukimaru, meanwhile, readied themselves for what they knew would be a far more arduous battle. It was then that Suigetsu, Jugo, and Isaribi arrived looking shell-shocked beyond belief. Suigetsu in particular had large, cauterized wounds across his face that just barely missed his eyes, and he damn near shivered staring up at Naruto.
"You, Uzumaki, Kyubi jinchuriki," Sasuke barked, the hatred him his Mangekyo burning as brightly as Naruto's. "You're exactly the kind of person these eyes were made to dispose of: an unfeeling mercenary willing to cut down anyone at the whims of your demagogue. You're no different than Itachi!"
"We'll put you down and hand you over to Madara, and then I will personally hunt down those other two and mount their heads right on either side of that gate you're standing on," Yukimaru added, fueling his furious bloodlust as his katana was sheathed in wind chakra.
Naruto simply stared them down in silence, his blood-red glare unyielding as he sized up the five of them. In the blink of an eye, he was gone, and only Sasuke was prepared for him to appear behind him right in Yukimaru's face.
"Take your best shot," Naruto coldly responded, snatching his sword by the blade and shattering it with his grip alone.
A chain lashed out of his back to deflect Sasuke's slash as he shoved Yukimaru off of the bridge and out of the way, wrapping his right arm in chains as he blitzed past the other two and buried his fist into a startled Jugo's gut, rocketing him away like a potato out of a cannon. Spinning back around, he met Sasuke's assault head-on and lashed back at any and every slash with a chain lash of his own. Unlike with Karin, Sasuke quickly found that he could not hope to keep this up, as while Karin was able to overwhelm his Sharingan with a high quantity of chains, Naruto had quantity on top of efficient ruthlessness. He coated every single one of his chains with wind chakra, effectively making fighting him in a kenjutsu battle akin to charging headfirst through a bladed wind tunnel.
Sasuke had to disengage and reassess, but the moment he did, Suigetsu and Isaribi foolishly tagged in with a tandem strike. Isaribi put all her strength behind a haymaker, the impact of which reverberated through the terrain when Naruto casually caught it with his unchained left hand as Suigetsu appeared on his right to hack him with the Kabutowari. At least, that was the attempt, as Naruto caught that, too, snatching the axe with his chained hand. It would have left him open to be split open once Suigetsu used the mallet half, but he nipped that in the bud by yanking Isaribi off her feet and battering Suigetsu with her faster than he could liquefy.
It was at this point that Yukimaru reemerged from under the bridge with his hands in a dog seal, firing a Vacuum Bomb Jutsu at him. Simultaneously, Sasuke had a tiger seal and blew a Fierce Dragon Flame Jutsu, combining his flames with Yukimaru's wind to create a titanic inferno that was closing in on Naruto.
"Water Style: Water Wall," he muttered, spitting a jet of water at the ground that splashed into a giant barrier of water circling Naruto, dousing the collaborative firestorm before it could reach him.
The steam created from the clash put Sasuke and Yukimaru on edge, and they looked around, expecting him to use the cover to move to a new vantage point. However, when the steam cleared, Naruto was still standing there.
"My turn," Naruto sinisterly intoned, sliding his fingers into the horse seal. "Fire Style: Majestic Destroyer Flame!"
The unfathomable quantity of fire that shot out of Naruto's mouth became a towering inferno that engulfed the bridge in a glowing, orange ocean. The heat shook the cobwebs out of Isaribi and Suigetsu, and a thunderous boom serenaded by maniacal laughter denoted Jugo's return. Powered by chakra jets, Jugo zoomed toward Naruto to return the favor, but Naruto was ready, cutting the flames and turning to meet his charge with wind coursing through the chains still wrapped around his arm. He coiled to evade the big, meaty fist and punched a hole straight through Jugo's abdomen, much to the shock of the other two. Coursing the wind chakra even harder, he fashioned his arm into a makeshift chainsaw and yanked it straight up, shredding everything from his digestive tract to the top of his cranium.
"Jugo!" Isaribi shouted as Jugo's newly Y-shaped body limply fell to the ground, and her shock transformed into a rage that carried her into a wild charge toward Naruto.
It was at this point that the fire died down, and Naruto idly noticed the Susanoo surrounding Sasuke and Yukimaru while sidestepping her charge and snatching her by the throat. He kicked her legs out from under her before slamming her to the ground hard enough to crater the stone underfoot. An earth-shattering stomp to the sternum for good measure kept her down for the count right as the Kabutowari came down once more, clashing with defensive chains that sprouted from Naruto's back. Suigetsu, now with a comically jacked arm thanks to his kekkei genkai, prepared to swing the mallet down to cleave Naruto in two, but two arms sprouted from beneath him and pulled him by his ankles underground via the Headhunter Jutsu. Buried up to his neck with a clone spooning him from behind for some reason, Suigetsu attempted to liquefy to escape, but the clone beat him to the punch and dispersed into lightning, frying him in his extra conductive liquid state.
Now, the real Naruto's attention was returned in full to the Uchiha. Said Uchiha, Armored Susanoo wrapped around them, glared bloody murder at Naruto—quite literally, in fact, as blood streamed down Sasuke's left eye, and the flames of Amaterasu flared to life on Naruto. Naruto stared down at the mythical flames for a mere moment before the thick, translucent cloak of crimson that was the Kyubi's chakra bubbled around him, three tails swinging in agitation as the black fire was lifted off of his person and promptly deposited to the ground beside him. Sasuke was thrown for a nebula of loops at yet another casual display of Amaterasu being defeated, but Naruto didn't remain idle, flashing in front of the Susanoo with a full-power Rasengan and slamming it into the purple chakra construct. It ground against the Susanoo and somewhat pushed Sasuke back, but it ultimately did not penetrate.
Disengaging, Naruto leaped backward and reassessed the situation. The Susanoo protected them from both the heat of the Majestic Destroyer Flame and the impact of the Rasengan, and this seemed to help Yukimaru regain some of his nerve.
"Good luck piercing through the Susanoo," he remarked with a shit-eating grin, all the while, the Susanoo raised a bow and drew back an arrow.
"Impenetrable, huh…" Naruto muttered, throwing his hands into the cross sign and performing the Multi Shadow Clone Jutsu.
Naruto slipped into the dirt just before Sasuke fired the arrow into the crowd of clones, cleaving a path down the middle as they swarmed to attack. The Susanoo made short work of the clones, and both Sasuke and Yukimaru knew that it was simply a diversion to regroup somewhere. Cutting down each clone with a swipe of the Susanoo's saber was simple enough, but hunting the real one down was another matter entirely.
"Up there!" Yukimaru shouted, pointing to the real Naruto standing still atop the stony hill on the other end of the bridge. Sasuke swung around to regard him, and He locked eyes with Naruto again, his angry, slitted gaze still regarding them with such cold impassivity.
Sasuke's furious Mangekyo bled once more. Drawing back another arrow, Sasuke ignited the tip with Amaterasu for good measure. Meanwhile, on said hill, black pigmentation developed around Naruto's eyes as he fell back into Sage Mode, only the influence from the Kyubi's chakra remained, leaving a bright red slit in the center of his dilated pupils. Sasuke finally shot the arrow, and it slammed into the hill in the blink of an eye, but Naruto was already gone from the spot and back in front of them on the bridge faster than even Sasuke's eyes could perceive. Before either could even think, Naruto's arm smashed through the Susanoo, shattering it like glass as he snatched Sasuke by his face and yanked him out of his ultimate defense.
"Sasuk-!" Yukimaru began before he was violently whipped in the face by a chakra chain and sent careening across the bridge like a rag doll.
Unfortunately for him, Naruto did not believe in mercy, chasing Yukimaru down and kicking him back into the ruins of the woods. Before he could follow, he sidestepped a Water Bullet from Isaribi right into the path of a shot from the Water Gun Jutsu via Suigetsu that ordinarily produced bullets that could cut through stone. So, naturally, it harmlessly clanged right off Naruto's head, causing Suigetsu's skin to somehow grow even paler. Barely sparing them a glance, a few quick seals from Naruto resulted in the ground below them erupting in dense spikes that skewered Isaribi and left her a sputtering, bleeding stone-pin cushion.
Suigetsu only survived the Stone Column Spears Jutsu by liquefying in the nick of time and melting through the spikes, but Naruto was right in front of him once he solidified and snatched the Kabutowari before Suigetsu could think of picking it back up. Suigetsu was quick enough to liquefy his torso when the axe-half swiped through him, but he was not fast enough to liquefy his head when Naruto followed through with the mallet, resulting in a second beheading that day.
He turned once more to finish off Yukimaru, and he was yet again interrupted by a Chidori Spear lancing down the bridge to stab him, but Naruto surprised Sasuke again by catching the lightning blade in his Raikiri-coated hand. In a rage-filled stupor, Sasuke ignited Amaterasu on Naruto once again, but Naruto didn't even entertain the thought before pulsing his chakra in a thick, senjutsu-powered wave that not only blasted the jet-black flames off of him but also unintentionally discharged all of the jutsu storage seals inscribed on his body. The wave of chakra was followed by a deluge of lightning, wind, water, and fire going every which way, saturating the air with even more of his chakra.
Sasuke, completely bereft of options and running low on chakra, went back to the Susanoo well, but a shooting pain in his head brought him to his knees and deactivated his Sharingan. When he looked back up at Naruto, his vision was substantially blurrier than it ever had been. Naruto, meanwhile, smelled blood in the water and proceeded to pounce, beginning a light, menacing stroll down the bridge toward him. Yukimaru stumbled through the edge of the woods to help his comrade, but a chain shot out of Naruto's back and wrapped around his neck, yanking him off his feet and dragging him along as he walked. Naruto ambled toward an increasingly frantic Sasuke like a predator on the hunt, the same way Sasuke stalked Danzo in his final moments.
The same way Itachi had done so to Sasuke when he had him cornered.
For a brief, frantic moment, half of Sasuke's vision became clearer than ever, and it felt as though an entire ocean's worth of power flickered within him in a flash, but it was gone again just as quickly. So, he put it out of his mind for the moment because there were far more pressing matters afoot.
Naruto noticed it, though, and he didn't like what he sensed. There was something all too familiar about what just flickered in Sasuke's eye, and some of the vague nonsense that the masked man had been spouting was beginning to become a bit more clear. Naruto's gaze grew even harder as he stared down Sasuke, and then he nodded to himself.
"No survivors," he muttered to himself, throwing Yukimaru at Sasuke and watching them tumble to the other end of the bridge.
Leaping back up, he used the torii gate as a springboard to land on a nearby, decently tall tree. Feeling for his chakra saturating the air and grabbing a hold of it, he began a long string of hand seals ending in the bird seal.
"Wind Style," he intoned, the sky above darkening into a foreboding grey and the wind quickly picking up around them. "Bladed Cyclone."
The wind roared to life, developing into a dark, howling monstrosity in a matter of moments. The localized storm system spun over the area like a stationary, homicidal wind chamber, unleashing wind blades so powerful that they cleanly cut through the bridge's supports, bringing it crashing down to a watery grave. Whatever trees hadn't been brought down by the earlier Exploding Water Shockwave or Naruto flooring it to the battlefield were summarily cut down and blown away, as were whole chunks of stone that were violently eroded from their mounds. Anything and everything outside of the bounds of the eye that protected Naruto was shredded and pulverized beyond recognition, and Naruto sealed the deal by pulsing his chakra once again, bringing down a few tornadoes to cap off the jutsu with a bang.
The storm raged for a few more seconds before it began to wane, eventually petering out to make way for an eerily clear sky as if nothing had just occurred on a meteorological scale. The same could not be said for the ground, however. There was no longer a bridge, nor a fresh Danzo corpse on that bridge, and the scattered woods that stretched into the foothills of the Three Wolves had a considerable chunk missing from them.
Naruto exhaled, letting both Sage Mode and Kurama's chakra fade away. In doing so, the fatigue rolled in; he'd been in Sage Mode quite a bit today, and again, while he wasn't in danger of killing himself, senjutsu was still a bitch and a half to maintain. Sighing again, he dropped from the treetop and landed in a massive scar carved into the ground by the wind. Leaping over to the other side where Sasuke and Yukimaru were, Naruto landed in front of a scattered pile of gore. Splayed carelessly along the dirt were the remains of Yukimaru; his head of long, pale green hair was easy to identify even if it had been scalped and blown away in the chaos. However, he was only seeing enough viscera for one human.
"That's quite the frightening jutsu you have," a familiar voice remarked from behind, and he turned to lay his eyes on Fraudara casually leaning against a large chunk of stone, though given the state of his cloak and mask, he was the furthest thing from casual.
"Sasuke isn't here," Naruto remarked, meeting the man's very mismatched eyes; one socket had a Mangekyo, whereas the other was entirely dull and lifeless.
"Ah, about that," he chuckled. "I couldn't just let you kill him. He's important to me, you see."
Naruto hummed. "Yeah, I wouldn't want to lose my spare Rinnegan either."
Fraudara's single eye hardened, and he stepped away from the stone, now regarding Naruto far more seriously. "Y'know, every day you breathe is a reminder of my mistake in allowing you to live past infancy."
"I'm sure you have a lot of regrets right now," Naruto derided. "I wonder what happened to your eye…"
"I simply got careless, and I paid the price," he replied. "Had Zetsu not come to me and informed me that Sasuke was in a real bind, I would have taken your mother's life as reimbursement… again."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't do that," Naruto chuckled, but there was a dark edge to his tone. "For your sake."
"Oh? You really think you can kill me, Naruto Uzumaki?" he pressed. "I'll admit, your Sage Mode is scary, but it's nothing I haven't dealt with before."
"Maybe," Naruto hummed, biting his thumb. "Maybe not. I know someone who could, though."
In the blink of an eye, Naruto slammed his palm to the ground and summoned two coffins, startling the Uchiha and making him take a few wary steps back. Naruto grinned maliciously as the lids to the coffins clattered open, but his grin fell once nothing but a single piece of paper fluttered out of one of them. Blinking in confusion, he peered into the coffins to find both empty beyond that slip of paper, so he picked it up to find a message addressed to him:
Naruto, our son,
Existence is pain. Remaining in the living realm was genuinely excruciating for myself and Kushina, so we needed to find a way to end this jutsu ourselves. We went to the Uzumaki mask storage temple and found what we needed to reverse engineer the Edo Tensei and dispel ourselves, but we had to broker a deal with the Shinigami for it to work. It involved finding a monk who was really an alien and eliminating him for cheating death; it's a whole thing. We'd tell you more about it, but that's a one-shot for another time, so know that we love you, and we are so proud of you. We both wish we could say goodbye in person, but I will lose my last shred of sanity and unleash hell on a random village if I'm undead any longer, so we wish you the best, and don't come to us too soon.
–Mom and Dad
Naruto stared at the paper in his hands. Then, he looked up at Fraudara who was staring at him, then back down at the paper, and then back up at Fraudara.
"I guess they aren't coming," Naruto murmured.
The attack came fast and hard, forcing Naruto off the edge and down to the surface of the water below. The two launched into a quick, brutal taijutsu exchange, but it was clear that Naruto was on the defensive the entire way. He tried his best to match the Uchiha's speed and power, but he simply wasn't there in this state. A missed backhand left him vulnerable to the hand that clamped down on his throat and lifted him off the ground.
"Count your blessings that the Kyubi must be sealed last," he inveighed with a hateful glare through his one good eye.
When Naruto simply snickered back, his eye narrowed. "Is something amusing?"
"You should have just knocked me out and taken me when you had the chance," Naruto rasped, and he was unceremoniously dropped when his opponent dodged the storm of paper shuriken that battered the spot he was just standing.
When Fraudara landed, however, his abdomen went intangible right as Kakashi came barreling through with a Raikiri, and after a sudden jerk, he leaped away from the Giant Flame Bullet that slammed into the water. Naruto sent a devilish smirk as Kakashi slid beside him, giving him a good look at the Mangekyo Sharingan in his left eye socket before Konan, Nagato, Pain, Tsunade with her Byakugo Seal activated, and Jiraiya in Sage Mode landed on the water's surface. Not far behind them were Temari, her siblings, and Mei with Ao and Chojuro arrived to join the fray.
"'Regrets' is the word of the day, ain't it?" Naruto jeered.
"You don't know the half of it," Fraudara grumbled, glaring at the arriving shinobi. "Sorry to disappoint, but none of you are getting a crack at me before this war begins in earnest-"
He caught the chakra rods that were shot at him by Pain (who didn't even bother letting him finish) and phased through the Lightning Cable that would have sliced right through him courtesy of Kakashi and a clone. "Too slow-"
Suddenly, a blue fireball exploded on his back, taking him by surprise and blasting his right arm clean off. The explosion startled almost the entire group, and Fraudara fell to one knee in shock. He had nearly regained his bearings when a lightning-coated arm plunged through his back and emerged from his chest, practically annihilating his heart along the way.
"I thought I was pretty clear about Tsuki no Me dying today," Naruto balefully thrummed, "though I suppose you weren't around for that part. Shame."
Naruto clamped down on his shoulder and wrenched his arm out of his chest with a squelch, forcing him on his hands and knees. Then, he brought his arm up to chop his head off, but he swung back to kill the Zetsu clone that sprang up to attack him. It wasn't just him either, as another wave of Zetsu emerged from the water to attack all of them, a large group focusing particularly on keeping Naruto away from their master. They were all struck down in no time, but the moment Naruto turned his eye back to Fraudara, he was already coated in the inky darkness of Black Zetsu, who sent him a murderous glare as they vanished into the murky depths. Refusing to let them escape, he plunged into the water behind them, but they were already zooming into the nearby stone before he could catch them.
"Son of a fucking whore," he angrily bubbled, rising back to the surface right as the last of the distraction was done away with. "He's gone."
Sighs of frustration were shared amongst the group, but none were louder than Konan's. "We almost had him."
"At least we have a good idea of what we're up against," Jiraiya said before nodding to the two toads on his shoulders as his Sage Mode deactivated. "Thanks, Pa, Ma; you can return to Tenten. We'll handle things from here."
Pa and Ma nodded and vanished back to Myoboku, and with them went his toad-like features. Just as well, the black markings of Tsunade's Byakugo Seal receded, and Kakashi slid his headband back down over his Sharingan. Naruto began to suspect something was missing, but that was swiftly answered when his clone dropped down with a worried Karin and a pissed off Tayuya in tow.
"Naruto!/The fuck is your problem, asshat?!" shouted Karin and Tayuya, respectively, as they appeared before him. Naruto accepted the quick hug from Karin before ducking the left hook from Tayuya.
"The hell do you get off interrupting my fight like that?!" Tayuya fumed. "I had those three dumbasses beat!"
"Yeah, sorry about that," Naruto conceded, sheepishly scratching the back of his head. "Got a little heated back there."
"No shit," Tayuya scowled. "You looked about ready to tear the world apart. Hell, you pretty much did with that jutsu."
"Was that the Bladed Cyclone you've been practicing?" Karin questioned with a galaxy's worth of stars in her eyes. "I knew it would be really powerful, but I didn't think it would be that huge!"
Meanwhile, the others in the group were finally taking in the events of the day. They all felt the cyclone that ravaged the area, and it wasn't hard to figure out who was responsible.
"That kid," Tsunade began, regarding Naruto fondly. "He's so much like Kushina. Complete and utter psychopath."
Jiraiya snorted. "Tell me about it. It's like staring into a time machine."
He watched Naruto shrink as he tried his best to placate Tayuya with Karin giggling beside them, and then he started walking toward them. "There's something I need to ask him, though."
Tsunade sent him a curious glance before shrugging and following along with a wistful Kakashi in tow.
With the Suna delegation, Kankuro was taking in the newly restored ravine with a hint of unease. "I swear there was a bridge here when we came to the Summit…"
"That one," Gaara spoke up, drawing his two siblings' attention while pointing at Naruto. "He's who Pakura-sensei mentioned, the one who's like me."
"Naruto Uzumaki," Temari nodded. "He holds the Kyubi. Definitely shows with the absurd power he's throwing around."
"That guy scares the hell out of me," Kankuro shuddered.
"Eh, I could take him," Temari shrugged, eyeing Naruto intently.
Kankuro quirked an eyebrow at her. "In a fight?"
She did not respond.
"…In a fight, right??"
Over with the Kiri delegation, Chojuro wearily sighed after a long, exhausting battle with the seemingly unending horde of White Zetsu. His sigh earned him a stiff smack to the back, unfortunately.
"Shape up, youngster," Ao scolded, but there was only a bit of heat to his reprimand. "This is the life of a shinobi in war. Back in my day, we fought armies like these for forty days and forty nights, and then we still had to come home and deal with anti-bloodline extremists. Right, Lady Mei?"
When he didn't receive a response, he looked over to where their leader should have been standing to find that she was gone. "Lady Mizukage?"
"Don't wait up, boys," she called, waving back to them as she made her way toward Nagato, Konan, and the Paths of Pain. "I'd like to talk a little more with our newest ally."
Back with Naruto, he was moments away from having to shield his head from Tayuya braining him with her shamisen, but he was rescued by Jiraiya's quick approach. "Hey, Naruto, there's something I want to ask you."
Leaping on the provided distraction, Naruto teleported out of range of Tayuya's wrath. "Yeah, sure, what's up?"
"You're a sage" he stated rather than asked, earning Naruto's undivided attention. "Have you mastered it?"
Naruto did a so-so motion with his hand. "Closer to mastery than not. Why? You want a Sage spar or something?"
"Not for me," he chuckled, piquing Naruto's interest. "My time in the sun is over. However, my student is at Mt. Myoboku right now learning senjutsu. If she winds up better at it than me, I'd like to see exactly where she's at before this war starts if you wouldn't mind."
Naruto blinked, and then he wracked his brain for any students Jiraiya might have been toting around since he last saw him. The only one that came to mind was a girl with her hair in twin buns…
He shrugged. "Sure."
Jiraiya smiled and nodded, and then Naruto turned his attention to Kakashi. "Hey, weird but very important question."
"Hm?" a startled Kakashi responded.
"Your Sharingan," Naruto began, motioning to his tutored headband. "You have the Mangekyo, right?"
"…Yes," Kakashi hesitantly answered, unsure of where this was going but not seeing any particular reason to lie to Naruto.
"May I see it?" Naruto asked. "There's something I want to confirm."
Shrugging, Kakashi lifted his headband to expose his Sharingan, and with a bit of effort, the three tomoe spun and morphed into the bladed pinwheel of his Mangekyo. Naruto frowned and nodded, his suspicions now confirmed.
"How did you get it?" Naruto questioned, and Kakashi mournfully sighed.
"It's a long story…"
This chapter is late as shit, I know. Slander me, I deserve it.
Did my best to wrap up the main plot of this arc, but there were a few jokes I wanted to include that sadly did not make the cut :(. One of them will most certainly be worked in later, though; way too much comedy gold to be mined between these characters to let it slip.
Thanks for reading. I really mean that. I appreciate each and every one of you that just pop in and read, stay and share your thoughts, or even just show up to be really mean lol