Tenten regripped the handle of her bō staff, fiercely redirecting her focus: she could not get lost in the madness of this battlefield, the frightening chaos of fires and projectiles and the writhing, bizarre landscape beneath her feet. She would not get overwhelmed.
She twisted out of the path of a blade slicing down through the air, dually focused not only on her survival but how she was oriented. Rolling over the blood-slick curve of ember-peppered wooden ground, she flipped back onto her feet and took off at a sprinting pace, leaving her Union attackers behind without hesitation. They, nor her many roaring thoughts, would distract her from what she had to do.
First, Tenten asserted in the forefront of her mind, she must reconnect with any surviving members of her squad. That she would accomplish in seeking her second goal; to reach the ground zero of the plan long-discussed and long-trained. But where had she ended up in this chaos of a battlefield?
She ducked beneath a cloud of flame that singed the tips of her hairbuns, catching a glimpse of the moon shining above; one of the only things consistently visible through the stifling thick cloud of smoke and steam permeating the whole of the fight-littered land around her. She struck a thrown kunai from her path with her bō, leaping over a rushing current of water flowing like a stream through the uneven tangles of the wooden ground, her mind racing all the while as she analysed that glimpse in her mind. With it, she could calculate where the agreed-upon rendezvous point must be based on where she'd last known she was.
West. She needed to head west; she'd last been not too far from the plan's ground-zero, and it was there that her lost squadmates as well as the other integral members of this plan would be waiting.
If they still lived. Tenten shook off that thought quickly, glancing up again as she leapt between massive branch curves, still uncertain which way to go through the fog.
The moon shone brightly above her, freed from the clouds in the now starry sky. The slice of light across it was bright along the left of its face, the silver pure, branding into her vision.
Old lessons in survival whispered up from Tenten's memory, still audible to her through the roar of screaming soldiers and shivers of powerful jutsus exchanged in all directions around her. Depending upon the waxing or waning of the moon, between sunset and midnight the bright side of the moon points west. It points east between midnight and sunrise.
It was certainly before midnight. Tenten's heart clenched as she launched herself left, in the direction the moon's bright side shone through the sky.
She had to dodge a whistling spray of arrows as she went, teeth clenched and legs pumping while she dove between soldiers locked in countless battles. She forced herself to keep running as she heard an Allied soldier's shout of pain; kept running as she heard armour plates break and the rushing ashen breath of fire scorching the strange wooden ground. She shook away her fears as she sensed a large group of black-armoured cultists turning her way, pulling a sword from a fellow awash in smoke and blood at their feet. She was gone in a swirl of smoky mist before they could tail her.
She managed to keep going, but the sounds and smells and sights of war around her scarred her heart, overwhelming her with pain seizing tight in her ribcage. Even with the imperative nature of hers and her squads' mission that meant she couldn't help every other Allied soldier around her, Tenten could not help but to hate every facet of this. Her mission… her situation, her duties and her obligations. War was not the honourable, exhilarating show of Allied prowess and usefulness that she and the others had been told it was.
It was sickening. Tenten had to leap over a pile of bodies to keep heading westwards, landing hard on the slippery slope of a blood-slicked branch. She had to grab hold of a sword stuck in the wooden ground to keep aloft, cursing sharply as her boots scrabbled against blood and ash beneath her soles. She heard more fighters around her that she couldn't see through the thick smoke, their rough voices exchanging in shouts and cries, the words barely distinguishable between tones of pain and hatred. Their syllables were made in the sounds of slicing blades and crunching armour crushed beneath every nature of jutsu available to the thousands of shinobi locked in battle everywhere around her.
Sickening, and it was too much; but even with the nausea tight in her gut Tenten pushed forward, determined, the moon that had directed her a sharp silver shine in her dark eyes. There was no room for her to hate the war and how it made her feel. There was no time for her to hate how she had to leave allies behind fighting foes in battles her side might lose. There was only the plan: the essential mission of her personal squad and the glass-spiked special weapons they carried.
It was their duty to accomplish that impossible achievement from months before again; her duty, her vital responsibility to help execute that main plan with success anew. She must, or all of this was over. All still alive in the aftermath of this battle would become slaves to the infinite dream.
That, and if the world became enslaved to Uchiha Madara's Infinite Tsukuyomi… Neji would be forgotten. He would never be properly grieved for years as she intended to do; as he deserved.
She would never allow such a thing.
This above all thoughts is what gave Tenten the strength to persist as four Union soldiers appeared in her way, their shuriken in hand and blades at the ready. Neji was standing in her mind as she raised her bō with a challenging growl for the cultist crazies to get out of her way. He set the fire in her veins as she brought her staff around in a swooping crack-crack-crack across their skulls, sending teeth and blood flying through the smoke-laden air, her roundhouse kick swung in time with her bō that hit hard enough to shatter armour plates and crunch through bones; and it was Neji's praise in the back of her mind as Tenten left her enemies twitching and groaning in pain on the ground, back on her way to where she'd reconnect with her people and finish this war at long last.
His loss was what had the tears blinding her eyes as Tenten landed with a grunt beneath the shadow of a vast Wood-Style branch, her head inclined with respect before where her superiors awaited her. If they saw the drops pattering the ground beneath her, they made no comment on it; they and everyone else knew how deeply she had been mourning his death throughout the past year.
The war continued to rage around her, though the creaking curve of the branch above was shielding and hiding those she'd come to meet where they were crouched. Unnoticed by the messes of battles Tenten had navigated through, they were safe here, in the thinnest sense.
As her commanders cleared their throats in preparation to give further instruction, Tenten let Neji lean against her thoughts a little longer, feeling her heart ache harder as the adrenaline from her treacherous journey here slowly eased. It was her love for her lost teammate that would give her the strength to endure this war that had taken him from her.
Their voices exchanged before her in low, rough murmurs she barely paid attention to through her moment of stifling grief.
"—don't know. Naruto and the others are looking for where he took her."
"They haven't found either of them yet? What about Sasuke?"
"He's smart," he was interrupted by a bout of coughing, and Tenten's features twitched as she suddenly blinked back into the moment, listening more closely as Kakashi and a heavily injured Obito continued in their hushed conversation. She kept her head inclined regardless of her curiosity-driven desire to look at them, waiting to be acknowledged before moving.
"...He's smart, and so he's still been acting as bait, but instead of baiting Madara like we planned before, he's been redirecting the course of battles. Didn't you see?"
"I can't. Not through this smoke and fog."
"Right… you don't have the Sharingan, anymore." Obito grunted with pain as Kakashi glanced over at Tenten; she softened slightly in her own simmering tension as she heard the sheer relief in his voice. "Good, you made it." She shifted over to kneel beside them, knees scraping over blood-spattered bark, keeping her eyes on the ground in her wish to hide her tears. "Yes. My squadmates should find their way here soon. I asked them to check underground before meeting us here. I hope they didn't get lost along the way."
"Have some faith in them," Kakashi nodded grimly, patting Tenten gently on the shoulder. "Our enemy may be strong, but we are stronger."
"At least in numbers," Obito coughed. Kakashi and Tenten watched him with mixed concern while he pitched forward where he leaned, Tenten's gaze widening at the sight of him.
One of his arms was stitched back on in haphazard lines like it had been a rushed fix, and the other was missing, the stump at the end of his shoulder charred black in what must have been another rushed moment of cauterizing the wound to stop him from bleeding out. Obito was drenched in blood from head to toe. His dark robes were torn over his lean frame, and his scarred face was haggard with stress and bitten-back pain. Glancing down, Tenten noticed his similarly poorly-patched reattached leg; and it was oozing still, a small pool of red marking where Obito knelt.
She grimaced, remembering the mess that Allied trap had been. He'd taken it too far, and she struggled with resentment against him for it. It was miraculous Obito still lived at all… he owed Naruto his life.
But it had been part of a plan she knew they'd discussed, not an impromptu threat, and Sakura's life hadn't actually been in danger; no one on the Allied side that mattered truly wanted her dead, including Obito. Beyond that, it wasn't her business to judge her superiors' decisions, so Tenten tried to be a good soldier and bite back the resentment she felt in favour of the concern she had instead. "Are you…?" Tenten tried to voice the question, trailing off when his sharp dark eye lifted to her.
She fell silent, biting her lip: Obito was, even after a long year working with him and even in the battered state he was in, very intimidating. Nothing diminished the dark, unnerving presence he made, not the countless training sessions and squad drills nor Ino's reassurances that he was soft beneath his exterior.
Kakashi was grimacing as Obito shook his head. "I'm fine. I've dealt with worse. We need to discuss our change in plans."
"We were talking about Sasuke," Kakashi reminded him, pushing an ash-smeared gloved hand through his shock of silver hair, his uneasy gaze darting across the smoke-heavy air obscuring everything beyond the alcove the three of them were crouched within. The sounds of fighting clashed in all directions, making each of them more tense with every passing moment; watchful for interruptions, for enemies to appear, for projectiles to fly unexpectedly into their vicinity.
Obito sighed, shoving a dribble of blood from his lips. "Right. Yes. We'll need to clear some of the smoke from where we're hidden here so he can see us. We—" He hissed in pain, pressing a hand over his ribs before continuing with a gruff, ragged exhale. "We'll need to tell him the new plan based on whatever Madara might do next."
"What's Sasuke doing?" Tenten asked, subtly drying off her eyes. She felt doubly intimidated that she was so shaken by her surroundings while the heavily-injured Obito acted barely affected at all.
"Well, he was supposed to be the bait with the Rinnegan leading Madara around to this designated trap spot," Obito growled, his irritated tone making Tenten shift uncomfortably while Kakashi hummed in understanding, "but while Madara's not even in battle, Sasuke's been sidetracking cultist soldiers instead. Running purposely past outnumbered Allied soldiers or anyone else on our side needing relief, distracting cultists that try to go after Sasuke instead as soon as they spot him… he's keeping the Union busy, drawing them away where he can." Obito took in a painful breath through clenched teeth, wiping blood from his single-eyed vision before adjusting the headband slung over his missing other eye. His unsteady exhale flickered the choppy black hair that framed his scarred face. "Without fighting, of course. The eyes he carries… too valuable to risk."
Understanding, Tenten was pale as she hummed, her brows twitching over a troubled expression. "I see. But Sakura…?"
The mention of her name had Kakashi and Obito falling silent. Their dark stares pinned to Tenten, who looked away quickly, swallowing hard. The silence in their little corner within the madness of battles going on around them stretched for a few tense moments before Kakashi finally spoke, his voice slightly cracked over a weary tone. "We don't know where Madara took her or why."
"It's obvious why," Obito scoffed. "He chose her as a psychological play against us, to make those swayed to her words even more hesitant in attacking him. It was nothing more than a manipulation to throw us all off."
While Kakashi said nothing either in agreement or argument, Tenten stared dully out at the swirling smoke beyond where they crouched, her heart sinking through her chest.
It hadn't felt like what Obito described. That moment when Madara had chosen against what all had predicted hadn't felt like just a psychological play to surprise his enemy.
The image of him high in the dark winter sky, glowing eyes red with fury and jagged silhouette cut in bladed silver as he came down upon where Obito held Sakura hostage — she would never be able to forget it. His inhuman roar as he'd torn Sakura back into his grip; that spray of blood—
Tenten shut her eyes, trying to reign in her shallow breaths for a moment. Fear had made her as tense as coiled metal, brittle like she was frozen where she crouched. Perhaps her captains no longer trembled in terror with someone like Uchiha Madara present in this war, but to Tenten he was terrifying. She'd thought the utterly demonic Ten-Tails was the most petrifying sight she'd ever seen when it was briefly free in its massive feral form, sending absurdly powerful bombs through the skies and decimating the landscape with so little effort in its indomitable will. She'd thought it the worst sight imaginable until she'd first seen Madara as he is now.
The legendary, infamous Uchiha Madara, the most evil, powerful, intimidating shinobi to ever live made somehow even worse with that Ten-Tails monster chained within him: he possessed so much power that he had reached such a level as that of the Sage of Six Paths, a literal god. How was Tenten to feel anything other than stricken terror? She had never faced such an enemy in her life. To think of being charged with keeping such a demon on the chase as Sakura had was as frightening as it was surely impossible. It had given Tenten months of nightmares after having to fight Madara earlier in the year, when she'd launched her first glass attacks with hers and the other squads at her side. Successes or not, he inspired traumatic fear in all of them after such a comparatively brief and distanced interaction. Whatever intimidating figure Obito made was nothing compared to Madara.
Sakura. Tenten's heart broke a little further where it had fallen into pained pieces. Poor Sakura. How in the world had she not been intimidated when she'd been repeatedly faced with Uchiha Madara himself, and directly? More than faced with him, she had been told to keep him at bay in her game of revolving clones that had somehow kept him busy for an entire year. She'd given the Allied side so much precious time to recover, heal, and plan until they'd ultimately reached this, the final battle.
More than that… Tenten took in a smoky breath of air, hugging herself in a moment of heart-wrenched inner turmoil. More than that, Sakura had been corrupted, manipulated, ruined by that terrible demon, wherever he'd gone with her off this chaotic battlefield. Some of the evidence of the pair's apparent activities aired out at Sakura's trial had been truly shocking to hear, and Tenten still struggled to believe even half of it, unable to process the concept of her childhood friend doing anything but fighting someone as old and evil as Uchiha Madara. The extent to how much he'd corrupted her had upset Tenten on a deep level.
If their strange bond was corruption, that is. That was what Tenten had been made to believe it was. It was what all the news had been talking about, every rumour, every word between all the villages ever since Sakura's public downfall months previously. It was everyone's obvious conclusion that, now faced with the choice Madara had made in taking her instead of the eye, no longer felt as obvious.
A certain doubt clung to the walls of her stomach as Sakura crossed the threshold of Tenten's mind, meeting her monstrous image of Madara in the back of her head. The glimpse she'd caught from when he'd torn her free lingered there in result; that spray of pink across his arm, the enraged twist across Madara's features so briefly visible before the battles commenced in full madness. That moment, frozen in her mind, had not looked like the bond between tormentor and victim as everyone had been certain — but of something else entirely.
Tenten put her face in her hands, trying to focus through her descending thoughts to pay better attention to her surroundings and repeatedly failing as her thoughts continued to circle her. She tried to look at it from just the facts and what she knew for certain: the war had fully resumed. Every soldier fought their enemies for the sake of their causes, no matter what choice Madara had made, and from what she'd learned here, he was still absent from the battlefield.
What did that mean? Tenten finally looked back over to see Obito and Kakashi exchanging more terse words, lost to her in her thoughts as they continued to boil over. Clearly, Obito believed Madara would return, while Kakashi seemed unsure. Without Madara participating in the war, their previously meticulously-created plans would essentially be made useless. The traps set up underground beneath this place would not get used; and this war simply couldn't be won. All of this conflict revolved around Madara and his Eye of the Moon plan.
Would the Allied side have to retreat? Would they have to wait until Madara's new motivations were clearer and make a new attack a different day? Did his choosing of Sakura mean that he was abandoning this war entirely?
In a sudden lifting in her chest, Tenten fiercely hoped that was true. In a crazy reality where Sakura and her declarations at the trial were somehow right, it would be nothing but good, should Madara abscond with her while losing interest in war entirely. Why wouldn't it be? It would mean no more fighting. No more threat of an enslaving dream; and no more deaths.
Neji. Tenten sucked a breath through her teeth just loudly enough that Obito and Kakashi looked her way.
She waved them off, shaking her head. She was fine. She wasn't fine, really, but for this moment she was fine because she had to be.
Doubt festered deeper through her gut while Tenten coughed up a lungful of smoke, shuffling closer to her superiors. The doubt she felt had lived before Sakura's trial, echoing little thoughts here and there, but Sakura's words had driven it harder into Tenten's heart like nails that couldn't be pried loose. Though she had tried to forget it, she could still hear Sakura now through the madness around her, her voice passionate and strong. It's so easy to objectify your enemy.
Demon. It was the decided descriptor for Uchiha Madara, especially as he was now, as he had been since the start of this war in his first appearances as well as his last. He was the embodiment of the war. He was as fearsome as he was sinister and he was all that Tenten had been taught to hate and fear and blame these last two years.
That hatred and fear shuddered through Tenten now as she thought of her great enemy, almost enough to give her new inspiration to fight — but Sakura's words punched through her again, the knuckles of her harsh words puncturing through whatever labels Tenten threw at her or Madara's way. Not a god. Not a demon.
Sakura's words were a rebuke, and Tenten tried to shake her head of her trial speech that had moved her at the time, the doubt she felt plaguing her. If it was true Madara had abandoned battle to be with Sakura… maybe he wasn't what she'd been led to believe. Maybe Sakura had been right.
"Wait," came Obito's hiss. All three of their heads craned upwards as they felt the whole of the thousands across the battlefield suddenly gnash to a halt, their eyes flicking upwards as the unmistakable ripple of sheer power could be felt reappearing.
There.
The sight of Uchiha Madara slashing down across the night sky was nothing short of terrifying. Energy crackling like the manifestation of his hate and resolve shocked the air around his distant figure as if he was an embodied thundercloud. He was a monochromatic blur of power and heralded death, the moonlight illuminating his serrated outline as he soared above the paused armies.
Tenten cringed back towards the ground, unable to breathe. All of them could feel the responding ripple of tension across the whole of the war-torn landscape. She barely heard Kakashi's words — he's going for Sasuke — as the tension split between all present: the Union cultists rallied by the return of their god in a cacophonous, victorious roar of a thousand voices… and just like Tenten now, the Allied soldiers stricken in a wordless moment of fear.
She was barely aware of the present, the movement and sound resumed in blasting chaos around her, the ringing in her ears circling and painful. Someone had landed beside her, two people, three. Obito barking gruff commands. Kakashi saying her name, his hand on her shoulder. She could smell blood through the smoke. Blood and steel.
Tenten was dizzy, the world spinning around her. They were all going to die, weren't they? The demon in the sky like a bad omen, and there was no pink spray on his shoulder; was she dead now?
Sakura's face through her memories, her laughter, green eyes sparking over scowls or smiles; her friend, her childhood friend. Had she joined Neji in the afterlife as another casualty? How many more of Tenten's loved ones would die tonight? Madara's awful face floated across her mind, twisted in that snarling expression she'd seen as he'd torn Sakura loose, and her stomach knotted again. Not a demon, but she couldn't believe Sakura's words now as Tenten clapped a palm over her mouth to stop herself from throwing up.
There was a hand on her shoulder, voices in her ears (damn general of theirs disabled the underground traps, what's our plan now?) (Should we signal for Sasuke to start the next stage anyway?) She tried again to focus and realised they were all looking at her. Her squadmates had appeared beside her, and someone had asked her a question among their other exchanges. (We saw him chasing Sasuke eastwards as we made our way here.) (We're ready, Captain Obito. The smoke above us has cleared enough for Sasuke to see us.)
"Are you all right?"
"Yes," Tenten managed. She shook her head, cleared her throat, tried to focus once more. It felt like she couldn't get a grip on herself, her insides spinning free in her nausea and doubt. "Yes," she lied again, sitting up taller and forcing a determined look on her face, looking between her squadmates, "Let's do this."
She wasn't all right, but none of them were. This was war.
Kakashi caught Tenten's eye anyway, and while he knew that his voice was almost lost in the roaring of soldiers through the smoke around them, she would understand his kind intent. The smallest efforts to uplift others, he knew from past experiences, could make life-saving differences in times like this.
"You can do this, Tenten. Remember we managed to pull this off before. Breathe…" Kakashi rose to his feet, looking to the skies. "Focus on what we can control rather than what we can't. You remember the plan: it's back to what we've been training for, now. I'm going to signal Sasuke."
"Be careful," came Obito's raspy hiss as Kakashi leapt upwards. He landed on the high curve of the huge branch that had been shadowing where he and the others had been in their brief reconnaissance, his appearance silent with a gait like a cat's.
Kakashi steeled his focus as he glanced around quickly, painfully aware of his surroundings and decisive in his every movement. They had taken enough time debating how to change the plan. Now that Madara had returned to battle, things were made much simpler.
Simpler, but no less dangerous, as Kakashi landed silently upon the slick curve of the branch's crest. He was highly visible now, lit in silver from head to toe where he perched above the smoky steam cloud drifting over the madness of the battlefield.
He held his breath, ignoring his survival instincts roaring for him to get back under cover. Now was not the time to worry for his new vulnerability being visible where he was. Being visible was the point.
From here, Kakashi could see the whole mess of the battlefield, the shape that the land had taken beneath its new face of tangled Wood-Style branches. It had become a sort of uneven, wildly damaged valley easily four times the size of Konoha at its largest. It hosted thousands of warring specks where soldiers fought through the fog like fleas on the back of a vast groaning beast. Lights flashed through smoke; the constant clashing of blades and voices rising high into the night sky cold, where the flecks of embers and fires rising through the steam were flashes of heat through the winter's dark.
Looking back, Kakashi spotted where he'd last seen Yamato; the branches swallowing that far peak were curved like a dome, protecting its inhabitants. Good. He must have gotten the civilian trial attendees to safety at last.
He looked forward once more, crouched instinctively like he was already dodging attacks where he was obvious atop this wooden crest. Looking around again in a hurried glance, he couldn't spot Sakura anywhere. He'd seen Madara launch from somewhere high up, so perhaps like Yamato and the civilians he guarded, Sakura was displaced from the battle.
Kakashi gripped the bark of the branch beneath him hard enough that slivers pushed beneath his nails; he didn't notice the pain. Unable to search for her right now, he hoped fervently that Sakura was all right. He also hoped, likely in vain, that she would not attempt to enter the battle. It would be bad for her own sake should she defend either side right now, and impossible to defend both, as he suspected she would want to try.
Practised from countless battles, Kakashi was well aware of the many struggles taking place nearby in the fog. He could spot several dozen of his own soldiers vaguely through the stifling smoke where they struggled against armoured Union soldiers. He could not, however, get a good sense of how the Allied side was doing versus the Union as a whole: the smoke from half this wooden landscape being set afire and half doused in vaporised Water-Style jutsus continued to create something of an unnatural, thick gray thundercloud that obscured all who fought.
All, but that black streak he'd just spotted across the battlefield. Kakashi tensed where he crouched, his sharp dark eyes following that streak: there, the unmistakable one chasing close behind with a mane of white rippling out behind him as he went. Madara was keeping up far too close after Sasuke, ignoring the battles below just as he did, wholly focused upon capturing one or both Rinnegan eyes. Unnatural power crackled in visible electricity around his presence in a burning glow.
It took everything Kakashi had to stand taller rather than duck back below. He knew he was inviting death as he rose fully to his feet, putting himself in the clear view of any enemies that might have higher ground like he did, emerging out of the smoke clouds.
He saw that black streak redirect in desperate zig-zags — though Sasuke was still faster than Madara, it was only by fractions. He was a swirl of dark robes and sheer speed where he soared over the battlefield, his inhumanly quick pace just enough to keep him from Madara's powerful clutches. Sasuke's chosen pathing was quick-witted enough to avoid him getting cornered or turned around as he refused to allow his powerful enemy to intimidate or redirect him. He was still being as purposeful as before in where he soared, as well; breaking up larger groups of Union soldiers where he darted over them, spiralling free of any and every projectile hurled his way while still keeping Madara on the chase but out of reach. As incredibly targeted and endangered as he was, Sasuke was staying level-headed and focused.
These were brilliant feats, in themselves. The buried part of Kakashi that was Sasuke's sensei felt a stab of pride.
Kakashi stood taller, feeling in a very brief but potent second that he was deeply proud of all three of his favourite students. If he died tonight, it would be with a deeply contented sense of peace that he had gotten to see them each bloom into incredible shinobi.
As soon as Kakashi saw Sasuke pivot in his direction, he knew his unspoken signal in his visible presence had been understood, and he withdrew quickly afterwards: any further gesture would alert Madara or his cultists that Kakashi was putting out a silent message they'd want to intercept. Without a moment's hesitation more he dove back down into the smoke below, knowing that every second he spent so exposed to enemy eyes was seconds spent asking to be attacked.
"He's coming," Kakashi hissed to Obito and Tenten where she squatted with her team members. "Stay hidden until we know exactly where he initiates the standoff."
It took only seconds before they heard an impact upon the earth only a field away. In a silent scramble Tenten and her squad were peeking from beneath a branch with Kakashi and Obito crouched beside them, all observing in tension so tight they were like frozen figures cut in stone.
The smoke swirled and dissipated from where Sasuke had landed hard upon the wooden ground. It spread back to make a wide clearing, the force from his impact enough to disperse the steam and smoke.
Black robes rippled around Sasuke as he immediately rose to his feet, taking a step back. Obsidian hair drifted around his pinched grimace. His knuckles were white over his drawn sword, his stance automatically defensive as he stayed still for the first time since the war had begun anew. His mismatched eyes so much like Madara's shone fiercely through the darkness, contracted with savage focus.
Kakashi had to forcibly ease his fingers from where he was gripping his knees, hard enough to bruise. This was incredibly dangerous, and all he wanted to do was step out to help Sasuke: but it would be a useless effort, and it would render their careful plans inert. All he could do was watch, stay hidden, and observe; for now.
Smoke rippled and billowed outwards in a vast push of air away from where Madara appeared directly across from Sasuke. As if in fear, the cloud that had obscured this part of the battlefield evaporated outwards, trying to escape the ground where he stood. Drenched in darkness but for the jagged silver dripping down his tall frame, Madara stood tall across the clearing, his wild white hair and plated armour settling over his Six-Paths robes.
Mismatched eyes glared down upon mismatched eyes, Sasuke standing his ground. The unnatural glow of their stares was the only illumination besides the cold winter moonlight within the clarity of the clearing.
Silence killed the previous sounds of fighting nearby. Soldiers parted where they were still in fringes of smoke, backing away from the unfolding faceoff. Multiple scattered groups of Allied soldiers recognised Kakashi, Tenten and Obito, and silently drew near them; something Kakashi was quietly glad of. They would be less conspicuous this way.
"Are you finished with your cowardice?"
All the figures standing back in the remnants of fog flinched backwards at the sound of Madara's voice booming across the field. Only Sasuke showed no reaction, his sharp eyes flashing with hatred mirroring Madara's own stare.
He kept his blade readied, his every muscle tensed as he prepared for an attack at any given moment. "You won't goad me," came Sasuke's bitter, quick reply, "let's get this over with."
"Ah; but you have but a single chance left here to get this over with without more bloodshed." Madara's gloved hand grasped through the air into a fist, his unnatural glare glowing calmly through the darkness as he watched Sasuke take another subtle step back. "You have what belongs to me. Return it now, and I will give you one more chance to be spared, kinsman."
"You had your choice earlier," Sasuke spat back. "You chose. Now you live with that decision."
Madara made a rumbling chuckle, shaking his head. His wild white hair shifted over the headband of bone over his forehead, drifting around his bitter smile. "You think I play by your rules. Surely you know better, after all of this time." He eyed Sasuke measuringly, his cold eyes drifting once over him. "Are you so tied up in their puppet-strings that you cannot make choices for yourself? You should give more thought to my offer. It is rare I extend such grace to anyone… and this is twice, now, that I am giving you a chance to change your fate." Madara's pale lips quirked slightly. "If you act correctly, this time, you might not end up so easily defeated with your own sword through your chest."
Sasuke's pinched expression flickered angrily at Madara's reminder of when he had very nearly killed him a year previously. It was one of his worst memories and his worst moments, a moment he had been effortlessly rendered weak: helpless, even.
He was stronger now… but so was Madara, radiating malice and power where he opposed him across the war-torn clearing. Madara's cruel and mocking reminder incited a fresh rage beneath Sasuke's skin that mottled his expression with fury. It was visible in the way he burned with it, ready to cut that malicious grin from his face; and it was in this moment he recalled the two people who had ever dared to directly compare him to the monster before him. Hashirama a year before, and Sakura only just recently, her green eyes deep with something like sorrowful wisdom as she'd turned away.
Sasuke would never understand it, especially while he stared down Madara directly, standing in all his stolen glory with killing intent behind his sinister mismatched eyes and a wicked edge to his mocking tongue. He would never understand: how Hashirama had been wistful and almost forgiving in how he'd spoken of Madara, inanely calling him fundamentally kind; nor how ready Sakura had been to die at her trial, not only for her beliefs, but for Madara's sake as well.
She had spoken out for him as passionately as Naruto had spoken out for Sasuke himself. It confused and incensed him to no end, just as it had when Naruto himself had expressed extensions of doubt towards hating Madara throughout all of this mess.
It was so simple. Madara was beyond corrupt. He was the enemy: the main public enemy that needed to die so that peace could live.
All of these frustrations culminated into the cold rage consuming Sasuke now. Since none of them could see sense or reason otherwise, he would prove it to them in taking down this bastard for good. He had full faith in the Allied side's plan, even with the failed presented trap from before. It didn't matter the complications, and as Sasuke held Madara's treacherous glare from across the clearing, he felt nothing but pure and utter contempt. Tonight he would seek vengeance for all the strife and corruption Madara had spread through those he valued; for the grief and ruin he'd caused, and for all the damage he'd done that could never be undone. Tonight he would prove just how much stronger he had become. He would show this misguided shinobi world the only right path to true peace — starting with Madara's painful, well-deserved death.
"I will never stoop to letting you influence me." Sasuke brandished his blade with a snarl. "You may have managed to manipulate others but it won't work on me. I see you for who you really are, 'kinsman.'" His icy voice rose, the fervent hatred rising through his tone as he challenged Madara without fear. "Our similarities stop past our shared blood. I'll end all of this by spilling yours."
Madara took a threatening step forward. All watching shivered back in response, the frisson of fear tangible in the cold wintry air. Sasuke held his ground yet still; his lips were drawn back over his teeth as matching unnatural eyes clashed with a new chord of hatred.
Both showed no reaction but for the increase of sheer tension in the air as a bolt of bright yellow light suddenly appeared, landing hard into the clearing. Soft gasps rose from those at the fringes of the wide field as Naruto made his appearance, standing protectively next to Sasuke, hands at the ready for an attack.
"You all right, Sasuke?" he said gruffly, never taking his eyes from Madara, who was eyeing them both with suspicion.
Sasuke didn't answer, which was enough for Naruto. He pointed at Madara almost childishly, his shout brash as it rang across the clearing. "What's wrong with you? Why'd you come back to battle?"
Madara made a single taken aback blink as he processed Naruto's demanding question. Naruto was already going on, his angry gestures like yellow blurs as he glowed from head to toe in his empowered jinchūriki form, the light shivering off of his clothing. "I knew you'd choose what you did but why didn't you stick with it? Why did you leave her behind? You called Sasuke a coward, but isn't what you're doing cowardly instead? Or maybe just greedy?"
Beyond their standoff, there were struggles beyond the people watching; Union soldiers taken down as floods more Allied soldiers gravitated nearer. By the time Naruto was shouting at Madara the clearing they stood in was fully surrounded.
Madara was scowling, his powerful presence crackling and thunderous; but before he could reply there was a commanding shout rising from the ranks surrounding the clearing, Tsunade's voice echoing briefly before all the hundred or so soldiers made affirming shouts in return.
Every shinobi around the clearing threw either jutsu or projectile all at once. Their simultaneous attacks created a wild cloud of bladed chaos aimed directly at where Madara stood.
Naruto and Sasuke flipped back out of the way. The passing seconds offered a single glimpse of Madara's mildly annoyed expression. He'd lifted his head, the force of his powerful single Rinnegan creating a ripple through the cold air as it appeared as if all the blades and shuriken thrown had stopped against an invisible wall curved around Madara's immediate vicinity. Multicoloured light flared and died as he blinked, the pupil of his eye absorbing all of it in a single moment.
As perfectly unscathed as he'd been before the volley of attacks, Madara turned his head slightly, his pinched scowl aimed back at Naruto while all the thrown projectiles fell from where he'd frozen them midair. They clattered to the ground around him in a loud metallic mess. "This again," he was saying, before the shout rose from the surrounding ranks once more.
"Again!"
"You will not manage it," Madara's voice could be heard through the new rain of thrown jutsus and projectiles — but this time the volume of attacks were doubled, the call from the squads flooding in from all directions echoed again and again. The clearing was getting completely battered.
Naruto and Sasuke shifted back to avoid getting struck as a rain of jutsus not only from Konoha ranks but from those from all the villages showed up in time to throw everything they had at Madara at once.
Rock thundered down from the skies, slung harder from the powerful winds stirred from Temari and other accompanying Wind-Style users standing with her nearby, their poises honed and deadly. Sand blurred through the air and stabbed through the clearing like iron-sand blades. Water bullets thundered down like a deadly downpour with the force of gunpowder and metal. Fire scorched through the clearing in a wave the size of a building, setting the peppered wood-curved ground afire in flames rising high around where Madara was being utterly pelted by dozens of attacks at once.
Behind the remaining crest of a branch that hid Kakashi, Obito, Tenten and her squad, she was still crouched, her dark eyes never wavering from where Madara stood. Rain after rain of jutsus came down upon Madara, now augmented with attacks thrown by Sasuke and Naruto nearby — Rasengan projectiles, powerful pushes of fire, their ranged attacks thrown lethally without breaks between the onslaughts of attacks.
It was endless. They could barely make out where Madara was standing. They could see him twisting around now, no doubt using his unfairly powerful Rinnegan to absorb and counter and block jutsu and projectile alike; but that wasn't what they were watching for.
"Again!" Tsunade's voice was a hoarse but dominant command rising above the rallied Allied soldiers, a vast mix of shinobi from so many villages. They poured their hatred out in the endless volleys against Madara, holding back nothing as they released an ocean of malevolence upon him. The waves of power flung at where he stood far overshadowed what Tenten and her squad had thrown at him many months previously.
And their numbers were growing: as more groups of Allied soldiers found their way through the smoke to this battle, more of the cultists were driven out, and more attacks were slung in to join the already overt volleys slammed down upon Madara. If she didn't know better, Tenten would be certain he was dead minutes ago. What shinobi could possibly withstand the simultaneous, absurdly powerful attacks of hundreds of strong shinobi all at once?
One with a Rinnegan and Kamui. Tenten hissed through her teeth as she saw it at last: Madara forced to use not only one eye, but both. Projectiles were surging through his limbs harmlessly like he was made of water. He looked like he was almost enjoying himself — not even dodging, and though she was tempted to make her own powerful planned attack to augment the others, Tenten knew Madara was smarter than that. They all knew he'd expect this, and that he'd phase his Kamui use more carefully so that they couldn't predict when its time limit would be up. They'd never be able to recreate that last situation against a shinobi as experienced and viciously intelligent as him no matter their determination.
"Now!" she swerved towards Kakashi and Obito, and she had that instant to see it for herself as they sunk into the swirls of a Kamui portal within a passing second in response to her cue.
Tenten swallowed hard, turning back towards the blinding onslaught before her. She hoped they would survive. It had been her idea that her captains hide in Kamui this whole time, but they'd shot that down: Madara would sense them if they had waited within Obito's dimension any longer than passing seconds. This had to wait until the moment one of them spotted him using Kamui's intangibility.
Tenten blinked a few times at the empty space beside her where Kakashi and Obito had been before beckoning to her squad. They had their special blades already pulled from their packs as they moved up next to her, arms steadied. Tenten glanced over them once: shinobi she barely knew, picked from the Allied ranks to be a special team of her own, specifically formed to make niche powerful weapon attacks against Madara in this war. She had been honoured to be given her own team by her idol Tsunade herself; she was recognised now as the best weapons expert in Konoha, if not all nearby villages. This title had been proven again when she'd pulled off nailing Madara with the first glass-loaded attack this summer.
The comparatively clunky kunai were long gone. What her squad held at the ready now, minted and expensively crafted, were much more lightweight shuriken; they were branded carefully with the hand-cut paper seals fitted to their shapes and utterly loaded with tons of shards of glass and metal alike. The result of months of experimentation, multiple-village funding and plotting, these shuriken would fly through the air much faster than kunai… and they would hit the white demon so much harder.
"On my cue," Tenten growled as they returned to watching the merciless onslaught, her thoughts echoing again as she prepared herself in turn. Waiting for their captains to do their part now, she and her squad watched Madara continue to effortlessly survive the waves of powerful attacks flooding down upon him in the clearing, her previous doubts temporarily forgotten. Demon. She would see him fall, yet.
"We'll hit him as soon as his use of Kamui intangibility makes him phase through here. Should be right there by that wall," Obito growled. He grunted in pain where he was half-standing, half crouched, his leg and arm oozing bright red blood. "We've got this."
"Like old times," Kakashi said as he supported Obito around his shoulders, the both of them crouched and ready within the cold, silent cubic world of the Kamui dimension. They had both accepted their mission and its potential to kill them both, just as they'd accepted that no matter what hell they went through, they were teammates, in the end. They'd both accepted that a long time ago.
"Like old times," Obito agreed with a raspy cough, his single eye burning bright red, his Mangekyo Sharingan at the ready.
Naruto and Sasuke braced themselves at the edge of the onslaught. Naruto was squinting to see through the wild whipping air and soldiers' yelling and the flames and the smoke — but Sasuke could see better, his mismatched eyes widening: "Naruto! Get back!"
Madara's roar rose through the chaos. As if his voice alone commanded power, the onslaught slowed, and his jagged outline was more visible through the fresh smoke and steam and crackling, charged air.
Black flames consumed the whole of his arm. With a furious snarl Madara tore it from his shoulder socket, sending ripped fabric and scorched flesh and armour alike to the smouldering ground in a spray of red while Sasuke shifted towards him.
Madara swerved, tearing off an armour plate still plagued with the black flames as Sasuke's voice rang out through the cold. "Amaterasu!"
It was not in a vocal recognition of what Madara had just scarcely freed himself of, but of a whole new bout of it, his side and leg engulfed in a plume of obsidian fire he hadn't dodged in time as another volley of projectiles rained down upon him.
Another yell from the chaos: another shout from the ranks; another volley of jutsus thrown as Madara was faced with two Amaterasu fires and the force of a hundred newly thrown attacks thundering down upon him, too late to dodge. Kamui intangibility was now too dangerous to use without killing those readied to throw more deadly flames at him from within its dimension. His leg was ablaze with Amaterasu, spreading quickly, Sasuke backing away with his attack made, Naruto joining him as he looked back at Madara with an uncertain look.
Now was the time.
Tenten was frozen where she crouched. Her squad behind her was looking between her and Madara as he was finally, finally made somewhat vulnerable. Now. She needed to make the call.
But Sakura stood within her head, fists full of Tenten's thoughts and green eyes blazing with all the words she'd said at her trial that had fully sunk through her heart.
She knew from that day that no matter how or why, Sakura loved the white demon out on that battlefield; loved him no matter his faults; loved him perhaps in a way like Tenten loved Neji. She had seen it just as everyone else had as Sakura had stood there, facing a thousand judging shinobi staring down at her from their seats, and with all her courage and heart had given them such a dangerous, controversial truth anyway. Love declared, hope alive in her fiery eyes, undying even under the threat of the end of her life.
Could that really have been borne from just psychological plays and manipulations like Tenten had believed along with everyone else?
How?
The doubt she'd suffered earlier had taken her over, and doubt was what stayed her hand as she realised in this suspended moment that now was the time to attack and potentially kill Uchiha Madara where he endured the wrath of countless shinobi that surrounded this clearing.
Manipulations, the explanation for Sakura's passionate love; manipulations, the explanation for Madara's choice in the Allied's presented trap. But that reasoning felt thinner than ever, thin in the daunting realisation that she didn't really believe that anymore. Was hatred and the easy label of lies really the right way?
We can continue in the way Naruto has succeeded in before. Let us progress as a people to a stronger, better way of life. Let love be our weapon now… not fear and hate.
Tenten shut her eyes, Sakura's words melting down into her core.
She had seen the same doubt she felt on Naruto's face just now. She knew it lived among other soldiers behind her, threading between them in the common vein of Sakura's passionate words that lived on through so many. With time giving those words more power to sink in deeply, they were having a tangible effect now, as Tenten hesitated in making the call she'd spent years of her life preparing to make.
Love… but how could Tenten make that a weapon? Of everyone in Konoha, perhaps even in all the villages, she was the most familiar with weapons. She had mastered every one that she knew existed. She could fight with her bō in her sleep. She could hit the bullseye on a target with any shuriken, kunai, arrow, or other projectile blindfolded and with her back to it. And Sakura, her friend, her comrade, a fellow student and kunoichi she'd fought and trained beside, whom she'd laughed over drinks with and shared secrets with… she was strong, too, not with weapons but with her words, her medical skills, and her fists. And — with her love.
Now was the time, but she didn't want to do it.
A memory unrelated to that of the trial rose behind Tenten's eyes as she looked on to the battle, sensing the seconds passing, the moment of truth upcoming. The day Naruto had come back, the day he'd saved Konoha after Pein's attack. The look in his eyes…
It was the same as in Sakura's. Tenten's heart squeezed, and she shook away the blurring around the corners of her vision, unable to afford to let her emotions taint her sight. But she felt everything in this moment, the powerful lingering of Sakura's words at the trial, combined with the mirroring of her sentiments to that of Naruto's, not only on the day he'd saved Konoha but on so many others too; that steadfast, will of fire passionate conviction for peace, founded in an unshakeable belief in love.
With Sakura, that love burned on; one she'd extended to forgive and envelope even Madara, the most hated, feared, and impossibly dangerous shinobi in all of human history. Even still Tenten wanted to dismiss it as a ridiculous idea; but seeing his choice at the presentation of the Allied side's awful trap had shaken her. It was only his return to battle that had let her try to persist through the powerful doubts making her pause as she was in this moment.
If she inflicted her hatred now, releasing this attack to kill Madara, she would be inflicting terrible grief upon Sakura; grief like Tenten herself endured already. She had a chance to hold back and cease that cycle of pain. Perhaps using love as a weapon was done by using it to stop her own hatred. Being the opposite of inflicting pain, it meant to have mercy, to have restraint. For that cycle to end, it had to begin with action, not just words, and Tenten would not wish the agonising grief she felt upon anyone, let alone her friend.
She finally understood.
Tenten drew a sharp breath through her teeth, adjusting how she'd been about to gesture. She turned to speak to her squad, but just as she was about to command that they stand down, the call rose from the ranks behind her anyway, edged and furious to attack.
She swerved, but her squad had moved on instinct. Their hands were empty as they had already thrown their weapons: they were trained their whole lives to attack when commanded by their leaders, and the leader who had made that call had appeared behind Tenten's squad as she'd moved within the ranks, amber eyes piercing as she never looked away from Madara in the clearing. None could look away now, from Tsunade to Tenten to all of the rest, as the already-thrown glass-laden shuriken spiralled through the air and hit their mark.
So many fallen.
Sasaki fell back against the large, bloodied curve of a Wood Style branch, hidden in shadow for the moment. The steam from her next long exhale quickly disappeared in the fog and the smoke that continually swirled around the battlefield, leaving no vision for her to see what was going on; just how many had been taken down. If she dared spare a glance downwards, she could see many of her own among the Allied fallen, and if she let herself listen, she could hear the groans of surviving injured.
She was tired. War was exhausting, and she felt it down to her bones; but Sasaki pushed off of the strange wall with a new breath, ignoring the taste of the blood-tainted, smoky air. It was dangerous to let herself get too fatigued, but with her hand on her sword's handle, she launched herself forward, determined to save more Union lives if she could.
She needed to find Isamu. He and Hayashi created direction for what squads were still surviving, and direction and focus were vital in winning battles. They couldn't let the madness of the battlefield frazzle them. She had spotted Hayashi with a wing of the army earlier, facing off against a mix of Hidden Cloud and Sand village forces; she'd spotted Madara fending off hundreds at once after his return to the battlefield, far across the landscape; though she didn't know where Sakura was now. He must have left her somewhere out of everyone's reach.
Banning any thought of either Madara's exit from the battlefield nor of his return to it, Sasaki grimaced as she ran, frustrated and focused upon whatever was within her control. She would find Isamu, and she would hunt Sasuke. He had the eye, and as ruined as that eye might be, she had all the confidence that Sakura would be able to fix it later on. She hoped.
She could see telltale white slugs the size of cats appearing wherever she ran past, sliding over bodies with soft whispers: Katsuyu, healing Allied injured. Sasaki stared for a lingering second, realising Katsuyu had multiplied by the hundreds, perhaps more, in order to assist her side's fallen. A painful twist in Sasaki's heart for Union dead stabbed her through, and she leapt over a peak to try and get a better view of the mess around her.
Wherever the smoke thinned, were fallen soldiers. Like snow taking gelatinous form, small Katsuyu clones continued to ooze among the bodies. Asserting pained focus to her vision, Sasaki redirected her mind from seeing the bodies everywhere into searching specifically for anyone she knew instead. She couldn't stare at the dead. She had to retain clarity in her actions.
She spotted that dusky hair she knew, matted red.
In moments Sasaki was a streak of blackness slamming down into the ground beside him, turning him over with a sharp hiss of his name. Cracked armour fell away from bloodied black robes, the Union's symbol stained in crimson where it was embroidered in soaked fabric. "Isamu! What the hell—"
Half-lidded eyes blinked at her once, his bloodless face indicating to her he was both dying and in shock. Adjusting Isamu onto his back, Sasaki easily spotted the gaping wound in his chest, blood oozing through his dark robes and half-broken armour.
In addition to his injury he was in an unsafe area. Fires rolled over swathes of this strange wooden landscape, consuming whatever was in their path. Steam rolled out beyond the smoke, tainted with all the blood that had been spilled thus far, and nearly every curved piece of wooden ground was hazardous with projectiles embedded in the bark, from shed kunai and shuriken to abandoned swords and staffs. If Isamu were to roll to his left he'd be impaled by a half-broken tanto blade sticking out of the ground; if he stayed where he was dying, he'd be sooner burned alive before his wounds killed him.
She couldn't leave him here, and she couldn't let him bleed out, either. The shifting of her hands over his chest wound was automatic, and her forced pause was not.
Sasaki grew very still as she realised the terrible choice she must make as she felt Isamu's confused, fading eyes upon her where she hovered over his would-be fatal wound.
She glanced at him, then at his wound; then back to him. Isamu looked both pained and confused, not knowing what she was doing. Though he tried to watch her steadily, his breaths were uneven and raggedy at the edges from his broken ribs puncturing a lung, a painful whistling sound in his breaths making them both wince. He had minutes at most if nothing was done.
Something in Sasaki's wooden expression cracked. "Gods damn it." She shook her head, letting her long dark hair hide her face from him as she looked back down at his wound. Blackness covered the majority of her snow-white features, but Isamu could see through a single part in the curtain of obsidian black. If he strained his eyes and strained harder to stay conscious as he watched her, he thought he could just see it — how her usually dark eyes glowed red now, illuminated through the dark.
She was focused on her hands pressed in over his chest wound. Her palms began to emanate a soft, healing green light, splaying her fingers over the yawning gash.
Upon feeling Isamu's shocked gaze, Sasaki quickly shook more hair down around her face, hiding her eyes from him once more.
There was a brief silence, thin as it was over the constant dull roar of shouting, clashing soldiers in all other directions through the fog and the smoke; the crackling of gradually approaching fires, the hissing of evaporating pools of water unable to handle the heat.
"Why…" he managed, coughing, "why hide your heritage? Would have been… treated with honour. Uchiha Sasaki…"
"Hiding it didn't work well, did it?" Sasaki's voice was quiet and bitter as she mended Isamu's wound, letting the wave of dark hair falling around her face continue to hide her expression. "In case you've been living under a rock," she went on with attempted humour, her hands soaked with his blood as she painstakingly mended his chest wound, "it's very dangerous to be a member of my clan."
"So you're a medic? How many more secrets do you carry?"
"No." Sasaki scoffed, pressing gloved palms aglow in green a little harder against the wound, focusing. "No; have you forgotten the ways in which Sharingan users utilise their visual prowess?"
"Oh," Isamu managed, understanding. He coughed again, spitting blood to the side and collapsing back into the mess of fractured wood and scorched branches he laid back on. "You're saying you copied the technique."
"Yes," Sasaki confirmed, "I'm no fool. Watching our medics — like Kenji, if you recall him — it felt only right to file away such knowledge. I'm not as skilled as they might be, but," they both glanced down to see the wound sealing up, "enough to save your life."
Sasaki shifted back, biting her lip as Isamu regarded her with wide, admiring eyes. He could see it so clearly now in her black hair and fair skin, and now the brief memory of her eyes in red. He found it almost embarrassing how he hadn't recognised her as an Uchiha from the start. But he understood the grave choice she'd just made, and gratefulness warmed his blood-spattered expression as he sat up further with a grunt. "You gave up your secret to save my life."
The way she regarded Isamu now was visibly uncomfortable. She was stiff where she knelt next to him, and she wiped her blood-soaked hands on the ground, looking away. Her eyes were a deep violet again; circles of weariness subtly underlined her stare, aging her typically-wooden expression.
They both heard the roar of Allied shinobi rising above the battlefield, the shouted command given, then the whistling of projectiles. They both froze upon hearing the unmistakable mass shattering of broken glass.
There was a brief heartbeat of silence afterwards. They lifted their heads, sensing the whole host of countless soldiers upon the battlefield pause their breaths and their blades alike. What broke the quiet, broke their stares to rise up.
Sakura's voice-ripping, utterly feral scream resounded out through the skies.
She was just visible upon a high peak, her agonised roar of Madara's name spiralling down to die against the thousands of figures across the stand-still battlefield, frozen in the wake of her cry.
"Go, Sasaki," Isamu was urging as he sat up with a wince, but Sasaki was already gone.