The Awakened Soul (Naruto SI)

[Welydora]

Having received the method to get into the Ryuchi Cave from Orochimaru, by using a reverse summoning technique with some of his chakra, I found myself standing on solid ground, surrounded on all sides by thick fog.

The world of snakes was not exactly a welcoming place. Case in point: the fog itself was saturated with chakra designed to induce genjutsu that would disorient anyone who stumbled in here.

Orochimaru had told me that anyone who ended up here had to pass three trials, plus one more from the local boss, the White Snake Sage. Pass everything, and the great serpent would teach you her snake senjutsu. Fail, and you get eaten. Simple as that.

The first trial was supposed to go like this: I'd wander through the fog, get tired, get hungry, and eventually one of the Sage's attendant snakes would appear before me and offer food. The trick was to resist the temptation. Give in, and that same attendant would lunge at me for a quick meal. After that, assuming you survived, you'd be escorted further in.

That, however, didn't apply to me.

For snakes, strength comes first. But… they weren't exactly in a position to compete with me.

So instead of wandering around, I said screw the whole trial system, flashed a cross seal, and spawned over a thousand Shadow Clones.

We all sat down and went perfectly still.

At the edge of my awareness, I caught a flicker of someone's surprise. The fog was steeped in the Sage's chakra, and she had clearly sensed my technique. She was watching me now. Meanwhile, my clones and I, planted right in the spot where snake natural energy was densest, began absorbing it at full throttle.

Just a few minutes… and the clones, literally dissolving into the air, snapped back into me in a second, flooding me with chakra and knowledge. Then I got to my feet, and beneath my eyes sat purple markings. Snake Sage Mode.

"This energy feels different… Cold. Slippery," the thought drifted through my head. I slid a long tongue out and ran it across my lips. "Yeah, there's something to this…"

At that moment, the fog began to warp, churning and shuddering. Through the chakra, I started feeling someone's emotions of total holy sh— Surprise!

The reaction was even more over the top than Fukasaku's had been when I'd picked up toad natural energy at ridiculous speed.

With a quiet smirk, I tore open a rift in space through sheer will and stepped through into a large, dimly lit chamber.

Before me rose an enormous throne with a single armrest, upon which sat… reclined? Simply a ginormous white snake! Her scales were clearly visible, each one overlapping the next, every single scale roughly my size. Only a couple of coils of her body rested on the throne itself, leaning against that one armrest like a spool, while the bulk of her tail stretched behind it, wrapping around the columns. Her total length was well over a hundred meters. On her head sat a turban with two sharp points, a red sphere on top, and next to it an orange… wig? Snakes don't grow hair, do they? But the most remarkable thing about her right now was her jaw, hanging wide open in pure shock, and a pipe lying at the foot of the throne with a cigarette still smoldering.

"Ahem." I turned away, my face showing nothing.

And the snake, to my satisfaction, recovered quickly. In my spherical vision I caught the tip of her tail shooting out to knock the pipe, then she caught it neatly in her mouth and composed herself.

"Greetings to the Snake Sage," I began diplomatically, keeping my expression even as I turned back to face her. "May I consider the trials passed?"

"Sss-sss!" She took a long, deep drag, then, thoroughly demolishing whatever was left of her grand and imposing image, choked on it. "Kha-kh… Greetings… You may— kha-kha!"

Choking on the smoke a second time, the snake just spat the pipe out entirely. It sailed past me and clattered against the floor somewhere behind my back.

"Excellent," my humble self gave a measured nod. "I want to learn everything you know. Is passing the trials sufficient for that, or do I need to do something else?"

The snake went still. Her eyes glinted with thought and a kind of greed mixed with wariness.

"The trials are designed to prepare one for using senjutsu… Spirit, body. But you… taught yourself. In four minutes. Why would you need more? I doubt I could teach a being that seems born for natural energy…"

Wrestling with her greed, she managed to hold herself back and started trying to talk me out of it.

"It'll be faster this way," I shrugged by way of explanation. "You might have techniques I'd never think of on my own. Of course, I could get them from Orochimaru. He doesn't use senjutsu himself, but he's studied it. Including the senjutsu of the Jugo clan, which originated from here. But I'd rather learn from a more experienced practitioner."

A passing thought crossed my mind to also brag that this body of mine hadn't even been optimized for natural energy absorption yet. But I decided not to pull the conversation off track.

"Orochimaru… He brought renown to the Snake people on Earth," the Sage acknowledged with a nod. "However, my techniques…"

She sank into deep thought.

"…are worth considerably more. Bring me a thousand living sacrifices. Humans. And I will teach you everything you wish to know."

I let out a short laugh and crossed my arms.

"Bold ask. A thousand living humans would come in handy for me too, honestly. Any chance you'd take a different form of payment?"

"Mhm." She shifted on her throne. "Your blood…"

"No. Snake natural energy eases genomic absorption, as far as I know. My genome is worth far more than that. As for the price… isn't strength above all else in your culture?"

The Sage gave a careful nod, and I broke into a warm smile.

"Amaterasu…" The word left my lips as my eyes ignited with the crimson of the Mangekyo, and the world was swallowed by dark flame in two curving rams!

The fire encircled us without touching, filling the chamber with the crackling and hissing of stone floor burning away. But the snake recoiled from it, pressing deep into the throne with jaw agape in horror. Already white, the snake went even whiter and paler. She clearly knew exactly what this technique was.

"Then here's my proposal. You teach me everything you know. And I don't burn you alive. Deal?"


A few days later, patting myself on the back for my diplomatic skills, I had wrung every drop of knowledge from the head snake and, naturally, the rest of her snakes too.

Now, in the main hall of my laboratory, I was laying out massive fuinjutsu arrays across the floor while carrying on a conversation with Orochimaru, who was strapped down in the center of the room. Now my gift from Hiruzen.

"And what were you badmouthing them for? Sweetest creatures ever."

"Just for their help in attacking the Leaf, they demanded over two thousand sacrifices…" the Sannin replied, strapped to a surgical table and rolling his eyes. "They are the most awful summon contract. Other clans rarely ask for payment at all."

"You just don't know how to negotiate."

For a couple of hours we traded barbs while my test subject talked himself hoarse. He understood this was the end, and here's why:

"Well then, ready?" I retrieved Shisui's eye from a seal. "Soon you'll be a new Orochimaru. And after that, I'll put a new, special Cursed Seal on you. Ironic, isn't it?"

"I used to think life was like a millstone… But now I understand: life is a boomerang," he turned his eyes to me. "It's deeply unfortunate that the real me won't be around to watch you end up in my place."

"Yeah," I shrugged with complete sincerity. "Now say goodbye to your naz— Actually, never mind. Just… bye."

With that, I channeled a massive amount of chakra into Shisui's Mangekyo and got to work on Orochimaru's mind. Before long, he was my absolute slave. His entire personality had been rebuilt with me at its center. He'd sooner become a vegetable than dare betray me.

As a second line of defense, I slapped a Juin on him, one far more powerful than anything Orochimaru himself could produce. And more reliable too, built on the principles of the constructs of Hagoromo's children, meaning this Juin wouldn't fade and wouldn't let the snake act outside his parameters even if I died. Well, provided Orochimaru didn't leave Earth for too long after my death, but those were just details.

After that, I ran an enhancement procedure on my pet lab monkey, not only healing him completely but elevating him from a merely very useful subordinate into my right hand. A hand capable of killing even the strongest Kage, if I willed it.

Hiruzen had asked me to take care of his student. But he'd also asked me not to kill him. Well. Wish granted.

In the near future, I'd extract all of the Snake's knowledge: his understanding of senjutsu, Juin, genomes, and biology in general. After that, I'd find a use for him.

But today, the snake was dealt with. Leaving him sitting in the lab, I headed out in the evening to search for another person who'd be useful to me.

Before long, in a small town, my eyes landed on a mid-sized tavern-slash-gambling den. In I went.

A drunk nearly crashed into me in the doorway, but my agility was more than enough, so I easily sidestepped the man and slipped inside.

Turning into the section of the building where small booths were sectioned off by three walls with tables and couches across from them, I stopped in front of the person I was looking for.

Known in certain circles as the Legendary Sucker for her passionate dedication to gambling and her almost supernatural ability to lose at it, winning maybe once a year if she was lucky. Her other defining trait was alcoholism, which she could justify as: "Gotta spend the money fast, 'cause it sure as hell won't be there later."

But in general, her name was Senju Tsunade. A blonde in a gray tunic with a massive neckline for equally massive tits. Right now, in a clearly tipsy state, she was sprawled face-down on the table, one hand still clutching a half-finished bottle of sake.

Across from her sat a girl with straight black hair to her shoulders, in a dark blue kimono with white trim, and right beside her, a smallish pig in a red vest and beads.

"Greetings," I said, as all three turned their heads toward me. "Tsunade-san, I have a small request."

My calm tone made Shizune, the girl in the kimono, flinch, her eyes going wide. Tsunade, for her part, had barely lifted her head off the table, and her face scrunched up in baffled irritation.

"The hell you want, kid?"

My face twitched at that… Still, I showed no other reaction. The people of this world were rarely acquainted with high culture.

"Lady Tsunade, this is that Uzumaki Naruto, the one who—" Shizune launched into a rapid-fire explanation, getting nothing in return from her sensei but "yeah right," "quit pulling my leg," and "oh wait, I think I heard something about that…"

A minute later they were done, and while I graced them with my slightly irritated look, they were scanning me with something between suspicious and surprised. The pig just looked curious.

"Alright, say all those rumors are true. I'll repeat the question syllable by syllable: what. did. you. come. here. for?" she asked, now sitting upright.

"The slug summoning scroll," I answered, and without waiting for an invitation, sat myself down on the couch next to Shizune.

Confusion crossed Tsunade's face. Not at the gesture, but at the request.

"Word is you're the Toad Sannin. What do you need it for? A shinobi can't master two types of natural energy."

"Your information is wrong," I answered simply, then absorbed a small amount of natural energy in a second.

Markings immediately bloomed across my face, spreading out from around my eyes, mostly along the sides, all the way to my ears, with slightly less going downward. On my forehead appeared a ring with a dot in its center, a mark somewhat resembling the urna, the Buddhist symbol of enlightenment, the third eye. All of this was in a very, extremely recognizable style for Tsunade.

After that, I felt not only the usual boost from natural energy, but also enhanced regeneration, Mokuton amplification, and… a boost to light techniques.

Tsunade's mouth fell open. Shizune's too. Not as wide as the head snake's, of course. But still pretty good.

A thoroughly satisfied grin spread across my mug.

"Should've learned senjutsu sooner. This art has one hell of a reputation," I noted internally, then addressed the woman across from me. "Your grandfather entrusted his legacy to me. The world is changing. I'm the one changing it. And for that, I need even more power."

"This can't be…" She stared at me in disbelief, hands already moving through seals. "Kai!.. This can't be…"

"Nothing is impossible. Will you help me?" I asked, then without ceremony reached across the table, grabbed some of the sliced chicken breast sitting there, dipped it in sauce, and started chewing.

Staring blankly at me, Tsunade couldn't get a word out.

"No… you don't get it, this changes nothing!" she snapped to her senses, voice rising sharply. "My grandfather… he was incredibly powerful, but all he did was lay down his life for his dream! You'll just repeat his fate!"

I raised an eyebrow and swallowed my food.

"You're worried about me?"

"Hmph!" She sharply dropped her intensity, sweeping me with a displeased look. "I couldn't care less about you. But I know perfectly well that thousands of people put their faith in people like you. They believe, they share the dream… All so that people like you can die and leave behind nothing but pain! Get out. I have no interest in talking to a dead man walking."

Silence hung between us.

"So she's got some kind of old trauma?" the thought ran through my mind, as I had zero intention of moving from where I sat. I still hadn't gotten what I came for. "You know, a long time ago, when I could still walk under this table on foot," I slapped the table, "I read and heard a lot about you. The greatest medic. Even with all my talents, you were the one they held up as an example for me. But your grandfather entrusted the future of this world to me. Not you."

Her face stayed displeased through my whole speech. But when the last sentence hit, her eyes started darting between me and the bottle. Her face screamed that she couldn't decide whether to shove the bottle down my throat or smash it over my skull.

"He'd probably be disappointed in you if he knew what you've sunk to. A gambling drunk burning through her life for nothing…"

The last word was barely out before Shizune next to me flinched. She was torn between three impulses: smack me for talking to Tsunade like that, try to shield her from me, or grab the pig and bolt before her lady destroyed everything around them.

The Sannin's jaw locked up. But she managed to keep her composure.

"A brat like you doesn't get to lecture me about life," she bit out, folding her arms under her chest, as if deliberately putting them somewhere far from my neck.

I raised an eyebrow.

"I do. The scroll."

A vein popped on her forehead.

"You are absolutely infuriating… Let's take this outside, huh?"

"Fine by me," I shrugged, unsurprised. After all, my words had been a deliberate provocation to get her out of here and change her mind.

Shortly after, so as not to wreck someone else's property, we moved to a wide, empty alley.

Soon enough, standing like a pair of cowboys, Tsunade and I faced each other while Shizune stood off to the side between us, pig in arms.

"Calling me a brat, you were addressing me like a child. Isn't it beneath you to pick a fight with that same child?" I asked, deadpan.

"Lady Tsunade… maybe we don't have to do this? How about you just calmly talk it through one more time?" Shizune was the voice of reason.

"I'm just going to teach him a lesson," Tsunade said, ignoring me and addressing her student instead.

"Says the one who isn't in Sage Mode right now," I smirked.

"You can't trust rumors until you verify them yourself. Even if some of them are true, I doubt most of the credit goes to you and not your tailed beast," she said with an air of supreme condescension. "And the markings on your face are probably just skillful props."

"You want irrefutable proof? Fine. Go ahead. You start."

"No. You start. I'll be nice. Young blood. I'll give you a head start."

"Don't need one. And you're not exactly young yourself. Fine, I'll be gracious about it."

"…"

"…"

About five seconds passed. Neither of us moved.

Shizune's looks cycled from wary to just plain confused.

"Ah, screw it!" Tsunade broke first and, planting her feet wide, strode toward me to wind up a punch…

BOOM!

After the deliberately slow strike, one that even a not-too-nimble genin could've dodged, the ground literally exploded beneath us, cracks spiderwebbing in every direction.

In my hand, to her look of surprise, was Tsunade's fist.

"Not bad. For a gambling drunk." My head turned to Shizune. "Don't worry. I'll have her back soon."

And before either of them could do anything, I took the Slug Princess through a teleport, landing in a small clearing deep in a forest, far from any settlement.

Only for a monstrous pressure to erupt from me right then and there! A shockwave blasted outward, ripping trees from their roots within a ten-meter radius. Tsunade wasn't blown away only because I was holding her with my chakra, and she kept her footing.

But it only got worse when two more sources of natural energy surged into me, piling their weight onto the world around us.

The earth beneath us cracked and visibly sagged, dropping us half a meter. My free hand grabbed Tsunade's shoulder and pushed her to her knees, her eyes going wide. The Sannin looked like she'd lost her connection to reality, that was how hard what she was feeling hit her.

"Your grandfather did what generations of shinobi before him couldn't," I spoke, and my voice cut through the rising storm, still reaching her clearly. "Hashirama did what generations before him couldn't. I will finish what he started, in a way he no longer can. I will become the new God of Shinobi. You are already living in my era."

"Wh-what do you want?" Tsunade finally came to her senses and, with effort, raised her head to meet my eyes.

In that moment, my face bore no Sage markings. Just a few black lines around the eyes, showing that even for me, holding three conflicting natural energies in balance with my own chakra was tough. But that only made the picture more terrifying.

"From you? Just the favor I mentioned. And proper respect. If you'd tried to kill me, you'd have shared Orochimaru's fate…" My cold eyes met hers. But warmth and life quickly started returning to them, and in the same instant my mouth curved into a smirk. My palm rested against her cheek. "But you can also come back. I think Hiruzen would be glad to see you. And that shaggy pervert is hanging around Konoha right now."

With those last words, the pressure began to slowly ease.

"I think you'll find your inner world full of color again when you return. And for me, as the future ruler of the whole world, it'll be a pleasure to see you among those who push us all toward something better."

My face settled back into its usual irresistibly handsome default. Tsunade, with the pressure gone, stood and stepped back a few paces. Hugging her own shoulders, she alternated between throwing hard-to-read glances my way and staring at the ground.

"I'm not rushing you to a conclusion," I told her. Then my hands came together in a seal, the ground trembled underfoot, and in the distance trees began rising straight from the soil before our eyes.

Before long, we were surrounded by roughly the same forest we'd arrived in. Even the ground was restored to how it had been.

"I… don't even know what to say," Tsunade said, watching in fascination. "After so many of my close ones dying, I convinced myself all shinobi share one path… into the grave. There are things that follow the rules of this world. That's impossible to change. But then, could someone like you even exist? An anomaly of this world… Like the word 'impossible' come to life."

"What you need to say is that you'll give me the scroll. And that you'll return to Konoha. Get back to work in your field. And of course quit drinking, quit gambling, and start promoting a healthy lifestyle."

"Oh come on…" She tried to sound indignant, but it didn't quite come off. "Anyway… I'll think about it. The scroll I'll give you tomorrow."

"Excellent."

We agreed to meet at the same tavern where we'd first met and set a time. Then I teleported Tsunade back to a surely-already-anxious Shizune. I had warned the latter that I'd return her dear lady, but that probably hadn't calmed her entirely.

The next morning, right on time, I watched a trio approaching the agreed building: two women and a pig.

Tsunade, face revealing nothing, a big scroll tucked under her arm, walked up looking like a dad carrying a roll of toilet paper.

"Here," I got what I wanted. "Return it to Katsuyu later. She'll sort it out."

The old dismissiveness was gone from her voice, which I found satisfactory. It wasn't exactly deep bows and ballads praising the great me, but it'd do.

"Have you thought it over?" I asked about her returning to Konoha.

"I'm… still thinking…"

"Good. Just don't go on a bender," I advised, watching with a smile as her cheek twitched.

"I don't even drink that much…" she tried to defend herself.

I didn't actually know enough to say that for sure. But someone nearby promptly confirmed it.

"Lady Tsunade…" Shizune said, in a tone that made everything perfectly clear.

"Hey! Whose side are you on?!"

"I could set up an aversion treatment," I said to the dark-haired girl, covering my face from Tsunade's side with my hand, as if she couldn't hear. "I have some… knowledge of medicine. I could modify the taste perception on her tongue so alcohol would taste like piss."

"That won't be necessary!" Tsunade blurted, stumbling over her words and not daring to raise her voice too much at me. "I'll seriously think about it."

On that note, our meeting was over. Saying my goodbyes without much delay, I teleported home and quickly studied the scroll. Having gotten the path I needed, I set out for a place I'd never been to before.

The Forest of Damp Bones. The Shikkotsu Forest.

---

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[Welydora]

The moment I shifted into Shikkotsu Forest, I felt damp soil beneath my feet as a faint acidic scent hit my nose. Looking around, I was greeted by arches and curved obelisks filling the space, bone-like structures overgrown with fluorescent moss. All of it in a dim setting, as though it were evening outside.

Unusual, I noted. Though I suppose that's how it should be in another world?

The Forest of Damp Bones. A very fitting name.

Originally, I'd come here to study senchakra, but I decided to explore my surroundings first. Approaching one of the bone-trees, I ran my hand over the cool, damp moss.

So it's not actually bone after all, the thought crossed my mind. Just calcium deposits from slug secretions. How many years have they lived here to build all this?

Hopping onto a large bone, I surveyed the forest stretching for kilometers beyond the horizon.

My exploration didn't last long, though. My hearing picked up movement just over a kilometer away…

A blink, and I found myself before a fairly large slug, roughly my size, resting on a rib that hung suspended above the ground. And it… differed from the Katsuyu I remembered: the body of the slug before me was simply translucent.

"Hello," I greeted in a friendly tone, and a pair of eyestalks slowly turned toward me without so much as a flinch, the creature's eyes resting at their tips.

"Greetings, Uzumaki-san…" came a very soft, and what seemed to me, shy female voice. "Katsuyu was expecting you closer. We are far from the Heart."

"Oh, so Tsunade actually bothered to give a heads-up about me, rather than just handing over the scroll. Nice."

"I know little. Tsunade-san spoke with the main consciousness. But for those like us, it's difficult to receive much information… It's troublesome."

"Those like you?" I clarified.

"I don't think it would be useful for you to hear about the life of simple slugs," the little slug deflected with apparent embarrassment, steering away from the topic. "You need to go that way." She turned, indicating a direction with one eyestalk. "You won't miss the right place; it… stands out. But if you stray from the path, just wait. Those like me will find you and show the way. Also… don't approach the transparent lakes. The acid there is incredibly strong. Even the fumes will kill you… Good luck on your journey…"

Modestly finishing her instructions, she continued watching me with the same expression.

I told her something along the lines of, okay, I won't force you to talk if you don't want to, and hopped off in the indicated direction. Just like a regular shinobi, only way stronger, so my leaps carried me hundreds of meters at a time. Along the way, I did encounter the mentioned lakes, which I gave a wide berth.

After covering twenty kilometers, I was met with the sight of a massive, simply colossal ribcage belonging to some unknown creature, over seven hundred meters in height alone. In the mild gloom, the glowing moss that covered these "bones," just as it covered everything else around, looked especially enchanting.

Soon, I approached the entrance of this enormous structure, right up to large, wide-open gates that appeared to be made of bone. Around it were huge thoroughfares crafted from the same material, and in the distance, many smaller buildings. There were also a lot of slugs moving in every direction, though most of them looked the way I remembered: white with three blue stripes running the length of their bodies.

One of the latter, about four times my height, smoothly slid up to me.

"Uzumaki-san," I heard a voice slightly different from the other slug's. Still soft, but less timid, maybe? "I've been waiting for you. Call me Katsuyu."

"A pleasure to meet you. Life's really bustling around here, huh?" I said, smoothly taking another look around.

"Shikkotsu Forest requires constant supervision… so that anomalies don't occur. We take care to ensure this world is safe for both us and our guests. But let's move to the main body."

I agreed, and we headed inside. This "Heart" wasn't the kind of structure familiar to humans, not like the toads' buildings. It was far more natural and unified with nature, its interior completely filled with greenery.

After walking about half a kilometer, we entered a massive hall. On a small green pedestal sat a low, black basin, and inside it was a slug body with the exact same coloring as my guide… Only the size! She was enormous!

I'd previously thought the toad bosses were big, but this Katsuyu's body was about four times larger! Her head towered hundreds of meters high, making me look really, really small next to her.

The basin itself was much larger, and the ceiling even higher, so this slug could comfortably fit here even if she were several times bigger.

Walking up, I craned my neck back and waved to her in greeting.

"So, I came to learn the Slug Sage Mode. Will you teach me?"

"Tsunade-san said you would come with this request, Uzumaki-san…" the same voice came from the larger version of Katsuyu. Now, however, worry had crept into her timbre. "But I see you've already mastered three types of senchakra… Each natural energy seeks to transform the vessel in its own image. A-are you sure you can resist?"

"Quite."

Instead of verbal proof, I gave a visual demonstration. Black lines, like cracks, instantly surfaced across my face as three types of senchakra invaded my body simultaneously.

"This is remarkable…" my conversant above seemed to whisper. "Usually, you humans evoke feelings of interest and affection in me… So warlike, yet so fragile. Only a handful among you are even capable of touching natural energy. Only to die a terrible death…"

"You could say I've spurned weakness," I replied, spreading my hands, then exited Sage Mode. "I'm all ears, Katsuyu-san."

"Very well. I will fulfill Tsunade-san's wishes," she said, and began her explanation.

Since ancient times, Shikkotsu Forest had been the summoning contract of the Senju clan. Having gone through so much with that family, Katsuyu held deep loyalty to the last Senju, Tsunade.

Slug senjutsu didn't have a specific human-oriented style. The shinobi who could have developed one were simply too few, and even those struggled terribly with the natural energy itself, spending all their focus just trying not to die. Inventing a style and techniques was a long way off for them. The slugs themselves weren't a warlike race, but rather a utilitarian one. Or rather, Katsuyu herself was…

The primary ability of slug senjutsu, which unfortunately only worked fully on the slugs themselves, was division. In fact, almost all the slugs were one being: Katsuyu! She had simply divided herself. But she could gather back together, reaching a size roughly ten times that of a toad boss.

When divided, each part of Katsuyu maintained an incredibly strong and broad connection with her. This was another ability of slug senjutsu. Through this connection, they could transmit chakra and communicate directly, and all of it worked across any distance on an Earth-like planet, as well as between dimensions.

Naturally, there was also the fact that slugs, and by extension their senchakra, had a massive predisposition for regeneration. In seconds, Katsuyu could split into thousands of slugs, then reassemble just as quickly.

As for combat, the slugs basically only had acid. Very corrosive, by the way, and they could shoot it in a wide or concentrated stream. But that was it.

Having told me about the peculiarities of her senchakra, Katsuyu suggested I head to the Silent Cavities. That was what they called the caves in this world where senchakra condensed. In some of them, though, alongside the senchakra, there were densely placed acid lakes. Humans were better off not wandering this world on their own; it was dangerous. But they'd take me to a safe spot.

However, I decided to propose a simpler route: have Katsuyu separate a small slug from herself and personally transmit a bit of senchakra through it to me.

That's what we tried, and with her full assistance, it took me only about ten seconds, even without clones, to grasp how to absorb yet another type of senchakra.

A new sensation again, a kind of slickness this time, as if my body had been slathered in top-grade lubricant. Felt like if I wanted, I could squeeze through the narrowest of openings.

"Now let's try all of them…" I wanted to absorb every type of senchakra, and soon enough I… succeeded, with mixed results. "Whoa. Now I look like some kind of poisonous dart frog…"

I commented on the pigmentation that had bloomed across my face from all four natural energies, covering it entirely in markings. Not by my choice. Four types of senchakra were simply too much even for me right now, and my body had taken on somewhat bestial traits.

My skin became genuinely slimy, and I could feel my canines growing in, along with an acidic tang in my mouth.

"Ptui." I spat out the accumulated saliva, and where it hit, a small patch of grass inside the Heart began hissing, as though melting everything beneath it. But it stopped soon after.

"Are you alright, Uzumaki-san?" Katsuyu asked with concern.

"More or less…"

Those weren't the only changes. My fingernails had grown out, sharpening to points, and my body had become just slightly, toad-like in its mass. The last one was only visible from the slight thickening of my limbs.

Not exactly some eldritch abomination; my human features still substantially predominated. But the absorbed power thrummed through my entire being. Like shouldering a heavy mace. But if you got a good swing going, the impact would be devastating.

Studying the changes in myself, I extended my hand out in front of me… And then my palm, along with part of my wrist, simply dropped onto the grass.

Seeing this, Katsuyu rippled with alarm.

"Everything's fine," I preempted her reaction. "Turns out the slugs' division ability works better than expected."

Meanwhile, my hand in the grass pushed itself up on its fingers, as if it were still part of me. Wiggling them, it attempted some clumsy little dance, then quickly scrambled up my pant leg and reattached to its original spot with a hiss.

"See?" I showed the slug that my hand was perfectly fine.

"This… is more than previous human sages could demonstrate."

"Thanks for the praise. And… hmm. I feel like with practice, I'll be able to adapt and hold all four types of senchakra just fine. I think my limit is six. Do you happen to know of any other sage animals besides toads and snakes?"

Katsuyu silently lowered her eye-antennae. That alone was more than enough to convey her emotions. "…No."

"A pity. Then, will you tell me more about this place?"

She agreed, glad for the chance to move away from what she'd just witnessed.

Katsuyu didn't know if there were other slugs out there besides her. Sentient ones, that is. She had been born over a thousand years ago as the renewed consciousness of an older slug just like herself. When Katsuyu eventually aged, which wouldn't be anytime soon since her lifespan spanned several millennia, she would sort of cocoon, and from the old slug's body a new one would emerge, with a different personality.

Theoretically, every part currently connected to Katsuyu could be reborn as a different slug.

Long ago, when she first reincarnated… this world had been different. Much more aggressive, completely flooded with acid, with only remnants of life remaining. Katsuyu suspected that perhaps there had been many slugs before her, but her predecessor had simply devoured them all. And then, having lived in an empty world for some time, decided to pass on herself.

Because of that, Katsuyu found motivation to live differently. The world she was born into was unpleasant to her, and the world itself was hostile right back. So, to avoid ending her existence just as meaninglessly, Katsuyu became the architect of this world.

Year after year, being colossally huge from birth and capable of using the local senchakra, she used her smaller clones to physically move the acid, pooling it into large lakes, thereby freeing up most of the space for vegetation. She also meditated, filtering the senchakra of the entire world, which had been too aggressive for the world to recover quickly on its own.

And so, year after year, this world transformed.

Later, after a couple of millennia, several humans managed to get here. A few sentient beings, deciding to bind themselves with chakra for safety, rushed into a reverse summoning and ended up in this world.

Katsuyu was curious about other creatures. Until then, she had seen nothing but plants in this world, no one sentient.

Sending out a small clone, she discovered that the newcomers were quite friendly, and their temperaments meshed well with hers.

Allocating a space for the new residents, the slug coexisted with them for hundreds of years. And over time, she noted, those who could come to this world became increasingly warlike… Not toward Katsuyu, just in general.

Not too long ago, about a hundred and some years back, the Senju begged the slug to occasionally help them in battles in their world. And Katsuyu, having grown quite attached to them by then, almost like pets… didn't refuse.

However, not much came of it. Katsuyu's clones couldn't significantly help in battle, and very few could summon her massive form. And even sheer size wasn't that useful; more the opposite, actually.

Generally, Katsuyu was always summoned in parts. Tsunade, for instance, could summon a tenth of her, which was about the size of a toad boss. But summoning all of Katsuyu was inadvisable: it wouldn't significantly boost her combat power, while her mobility would drop substantially. Plus, as long as the main part of the slug remained in her world, she was immortal and could regenerate. The optimal size, right around a toad boss, let her produce enough acid for damage while maintaining mobility and immortality. Though with her regeneration and ability to divide, killing Katsuyu was extremely difficult regardless.

But the Senju wanted to make the slug stronger. That was how the different slug variants came to be. Previously, Katsuyu hadn't created new varieties of herself since she saw no particular need. Later, humans filled her desire for communication. But eventually, the slug allowed them to experiment on her small parts.

The Senju tried grafting parts of other animals onto the slugs, artificially inducing mutations through chakra exposure, and doing other selective breeding. But they achieved very little.

Most of the variants simply died, which made Katsuyu sad. Those that survived were often very weak and either soon met the same fate, or simply lived out incomplete existences.

In the end, after years, only a handful of more or less successful variants remained today. But even those were fundamentally flawed, incapable of surviving outside Shikkotsu Forest.

There was the Sayu variant, the translucent sensor slugs, like the first one I'd met in this world. Although their sensory abilities weren't all that impressive. Besides them, there were many with various bone-like growths; some of them literally looked like mobile basins, and those were handy for transporting acid. Others had additional front limbs with hard claws, similar to a lizard's. And this whole menagerie could fluctuate in size fairly well.

As it turned out, the modified slugs could only survive in this world if they retained at least some sufficient connection to Katsuyu. They were dependent on her; without her chakra, they'd die. And they were also quite similar to her in temperament.

These slugs connected to her, but not her clones, Katsuyu could reproduce, gradually increase or decrease in size, and give commands to. In practice, Katsuyu held absolute power here, because even if someone rebelled, nothing would come of it. And "rebellions" almost never happened here, considering that all the slugs shared their leader's calm temperament, and on top of that were completely dependent on her.

Ultimately, a full-fledged settlement had formed here. Somewhat similar to an ant colony, but even more devoted to its purpose.

When Katsuyu finished her story and received my thanks, she gave me a clone to show me the way to one more place.

This was the Hall of Contracts, or as the slugs more practically called it, the Bone Rotunda. A large, dome-shaped building of interwoven bones. Stepping inside and seeing the interior, I was surprised to note it was far more human-like. The floor was level, still bone, but without vegetation. Inside were various rooms, the most notable being the Senju library, where they'd mostly left records on slug breeding, and the summoning hall that shared the building's name. The latter was a round room in the center of the building, with a seal on the floor and a small raised platform in the middle. This mechanism facilitated summoning in both directions, and logically, if I had signed the contract with the slugs and properly used the summoning technique, I would've appeared right here. But my great intellect preferred to simply figure out where this world was from the scroll and tear a portal open at random.

With that, my journey to the slug world was over. I returned home and spent a couple of days mulling over the data I'd gathered, while also constantly bugging Orochimaru to share his.

And when I got a little tired of that, just a tiny bit, I switched gears.

Namely, I relaunched cycles of trials on test subjects, this time to address the problem of soul mortality.

Katsuyu had an immortal body; I'd studied that at some point out of curiosity. But her soul still aged over time; I'd tracked that through her emanations as well. Sure, thousands of years was way better than a human's hundred, but I wanted much greater limits for my loved ones.

Except it didn't work right away. The hole problem remained. To strengthen the soul's core, I needed to reach it, boring holes with my energy. But life with those holes was impossible.

I needed to find a way to either force the soul to regenerate… or shove the necessary energy in without damaging it. And the first, as it turned out, I could pull off.

There's a rule in this world: don't know how to do something, throw more juice at it. With care, of course, and accounting for a whole bunch of other factors. But in general terms, that's it. So, by pumping a literal kiloton of my soul energy into one test subject on my lab's surgical table, pouring in nearly all my knowledge of healing, I managed to get some kind of result after about a week. But, unfortunately, it was highly questionable.

Fortunately, the parallel development of the second stage of body enhancement was going better. Though even there, the result was only just starting to come together into a complete picture.

---

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[Welydora]

A month and a half had passed since the attack on Konoha. And during that time, aside from my excursions to the worlds of beasts capable of senjutsu, a few other things had happened.

Beyond the routine outings, sometimes alone, sometimes with the girls, just to breathe and not go insane from the grind, my clones and I had accomplished a colossal amount of work: the experiments with souls had passed a critical stage, and the refinement of the second stage of body enhancement was complete.

With souls, it was the same as always: the deeper you dig, the more you wish the universe came with an instruction manual. But it doesn't.

The soul is a fragile thing. Especially someone else's. Not poetically, but literally. A mistake of a fraction of a percent, and you're watching it writhe in agony...

The path that led me to a method for regenerating another person's soul turned out to be unconventional for me, but quite ordinary for science. Animals. People are harder and noisier to procure, while rats and macaques don't ask questions. The clones handled the dirty, monotonous work: systematically damaging the outer shell of souls in whatever they could get their hands on and watching how they healed. Cruel? Undoubtedly. But it no longer bothered me.

Ultimately, after pouring in kilotons of energy, we found that the aura's outer shell could be regenerated at an accelerated rate by channeling energy with the right complex of properties into it... but only through my own soul energy. It wasn't quite on par with chakra in terms of raw power yet, but it already packed a damn good punch, and on top of that it remained far more "neutral": it had fewer distinct properties, making it easier to fine-tune. The experiments themselves were necessary precisely to obtain the data for that fine-tuning.

But when I went deeper, to the core... all hell broke loose.

It was as if souls had an extremely paranoid antivirus built into them: touch the wrong thing, and the system starts screaming, biting back, and destroying itself. When I tried to regenerate someone else's core using the same principle as the aura, the test subjects howled even under anesthesia. Grooves literally spread across the outer core, as if worms were crawling inside, leaving behind dozens of bumpy scar-lines all over the surface.

Technically, the regeneration did work: the outer core really did restore itself. Except this "restoration" broke the person. Waking up with a worn, scarred core, the subjects would immediately start whimpering from constant pain. They couldn't sleep without heavy-duty drugs and gradually went insane.

I reached a point where I could "program" my soul energy well enough: making it nutritious, making it absorb on its own. But it still had to be delivered through a probe that punched a hole in the core. And that hole needed to heal. And even after healing, the bumps didn't go away, and the patients still felt just as fucked.

And they didn't give a damn that their soul had grown stronger, or that their potential for energy control had increased along with it. No, after the enhancement, the regeneration actually caused slightly more damage than without it.

In the end, I had found a way to strengthen the soul... but it was janky. It was easier to kill a person than to put them through that. It wasn't suitable for my girls.

There were two paths to solving this problem. I either needed to become many times, possibly an order of magnitude, stronger so I could bend reality better and make everything work the way I wanted. Or I needed more data, and instead of bashing my head against a metal door, I needed to find where the damn handle was. The first path required time, possibly a lot of it. But it didn't interfere with the second. So that's what I focused on.

Therefore, the experiments in this area continued. And this particular kind of research, learning to heal hypersensitive human soul cores, required specifically human souls.

Fortunately, material was in ample supply.

Having the former, albeit severely weakened, head of Root under my command was a certain kind of power. Having Orochimaru nearby was even greater power. For the Snake, cooperating with Danzo was no problem: combining data, utilizing the latter's people and their connections, they brought me not just animals, but several thousand hardened criminals. That many punks with numbers tattooed on their foreheads... yeah, I was pleased. I still felt neither hatred nor pleasure toward them. They simply became a resource.

I was also delighted by the knowledge of my brainy snake. Exploiting him to the fullest, putting him to work helping me with the second stage, I sometimes only regretted that I still had some morals left and hadn't enslaved Tsunade for the exact same purpose. The Slug Princess still hadn't shown up in Konoha... Apparently, my negotiating skills aren't quite as high as I think. Or she just went on a bender and got lost.

The second stage of body enhancement was something I'd actually managed to complete during this month and a half. I needed a body more powerful than my current one. Even denser, more resilient, capable of withstanding far more senchakra. Because this time, I was building it specifically for that.

In this body, four types of senchakra were fully unleashed. The base for all senchakra is the same: across-the-board enhancement, a radical boost to techniques via natural energy, sensory abilities, survivability. But each source still had its own quirks.

Toad: close combat through an aura that extends past the skin. A strike doesn't necessarily have to land with the fist; hitting with "intent" and natural energy is enough. And the stability it provides is massive: you stand like a pillar, and it's everyone around you who has to account for that, not you.

Snake gave plasticity and regeneration. Plasticity even in grafting foreign genomes onto yourself. Right off the bat, it gave access to body transformation: bending at impossible angles, fluid dodges, tying yourself into a sailor's knot, all of that was just a shadow of what was truly possible. In my hands, this senchakra provided even more transformation advantages than the Jugo clan. And on top of that, the same applied to whatever you infused with your senchakra. For instance, by irradiating a pile of stones with energy, you could practically breathe life into them, turning them into, say, a snake. Very fine control over both internal and external matter.

Slugs: my favorite abomination. A powerful connection to everything carrying my chakra. To separated body parts, for instance, with the ability to control them at a distance. Though the ability to split myself into a bunch of little people never did appear. But rapid regeneration remained and synergized well with the snake regeneration and the next senchakra. And then there was the acid, which could be manifested from any bodily secretion. Saliva, sweat, urine, or, if the user is a special kind of pervert, Water Release techniques.

And standing apart from this bunch was Hashirama's Sage Mode.

I used to think it was connected to the forest and all that. But the user of this senchakra himself told me otherwise, and it actually made even more sense.

The elder Senju, in his youth, would sometimes escape the endless clan wars by retreating into the forest and just walking around. And one day he stumbled upon a half-ruined temple. Inside it lived an old man, a monk, bald as a cue ball. They struck up a conversation, and that's when the old man told the boy about an art whose purpose wasn't to kill, but to unite...

When Hashirama told me this, I was pretty damn floored. Because it turns out he was taught a badass ancient technique nobody knew about by some random old sensei he just happened to bump into... Like something straight out of a Chinese cultivation novel.

Anyway, the monk taught him to breathe. To sit. To listen. First to himself, then to the world.

Hashirama spoke of it so soulfully, as if he'd found one of the cornerstones of the meaning of life: "Chakra connects people. But natural energy connects all existence."

It didn't evoke the same reaction in me, though. After his rambling explanations and lamentations that words are empty, that you just have to feel it, I asked him to skip the enlightenment and just hand over a piece of his senchakra. He passed it over, and that, essentially, was how I mastered his mode.

His senchakra felt... bright. Not kind, exactly, just bright. It worked best for healing and strengthening living things: trees, tissues, the body itself. And also for "binding." Restraining, pinning down, holding back, not letting "evil" unfold. Not because the world is divided into black and white, but because everything here is held together by the polarities of Yin and Yang, and sometimes you just need to press down on one side so the whole structure doesn't blow its top. Creating harmony, so to speak.

Turns out his senchakra originated from monks. Not surprising. He had an Urna on his forehead, a third eye, like Buddha... And his signature technique, "Sage Art: True Several Thousand Hands," is literally a religious statue of compassion from that same tradition. And the Torii gates he used to suppress the Ten-Tails in the original story are tied to that religion too. A lot of things, really. Before this, I'd also suspected he was connected to slugs. After all, his granddaughter Tsunade summoned them, and there aren't that many worlds capable of teaching senjutsu. But no, no connection.

Modern monks who used fairly similar techniques, by the way, looked paled in comparison to Hashirama.

Not because of a lack of knowledge... As I found out during one brief excursion, as well as from intel gathered by Orochimaru, Danzo, and Hiruzen's son Asuma, who had ties to the monks. Because of the body. They simply lacked the physical durability to hold that kind of energy the way Hashirama did.

Once I'd studied all of this inside and out, added my own contributions and Orochimaru's, I was once again lying in the large laboratory hall, unconscious inside a chamber, while clones managed the changes in me through fuinjutsu.

And then I opened my eyes. Thankfully, everything went faster this time. There were fewer changes than last time, and I had more test subjects, as well as more personal computational power and knowledge. But there were changes. And I felt them immediately.

Small differences jumped out right away. I was now permanently in a weakened Sage Mode. My new body and chakra were sturdy enough to barely feel the burden, dipping only slightly in energy generation, while delivering partially synergistic benefits of all four types of senchakra. Properly combined, I should add. For instance, the toad senchakra in its passive state clung to my skin, making me far tougher, but without interfering with touch or preventing me from feeling the world through contact.

I raised my hands and froze for a second. My arms were bigger, my shoulders wider, the muscles not just "athletic teenager" anymore but proper, adult ones. And the thing that really sent me into ecstasy: they quietly hummed with contained power! Very quietly. As if whispering: come on, use us. And crush this world!!!

Before, I'd looked about fourteen at almost thirteen chronologically. Now my body had crossed the threshold into adulthood, and my brain... seemed to exhale. I'd died at eighteen in my past life, then lived here for another thirteen years. Only now did I realize that the child's body had been a slight but constant weight on me all this time. An invisible burden, unnoticed until it was finally lifted.

I stepped out of the chamber, set my feet on the floor, and habitually distributed my multi-ton body weight across the surface using chakra. Straightened up. My height had grown by a full head. Exactly one meter eighty.

I liked the result.

Soon I was supposed to head to Kiri. To start implementing the plan for world domination. Or rather, conduct a trial takeover of just one country, as preparation.

My recent experience with Tsunade had made one thing simple and clear: even if loud rumors circulate about you, people might, if only occasionally, not take you seriously if you don't look... serious. Like a child, for example. And an "overlord" who isn't taken seriously can be disobeyed. His orders can be ignored. And I needed power. Obedience! I needed people to do what was necessary, not march collectively toward self-destruction and call it freedom, as they usually did.

This was one of the main reasons I'd decided to age up my body's appearance.

Running a satisfied hand over my abs, I got dressed and headed to one of Root's bases.

Only a week remained before Jiraiya and I were due to arrive in the Mist. And before we stuck our noses in, my subordinates had gathered all available intel on the country and its people.

My body appeared in an underground room with a desk neatly stacked with papers.

Everything completed on schedule. Well done. My consciousness immediately plunged into the information.

Just one thought surfaced unexpectedly.

"Interesting... will I achieve my goal?"

I chuckled, catching a strange sensation, like a faint chill beneath my skin.

"Maybe it's just nerves... It's unlikely I'll even need to test this body to half its strength in the Mist."


Some Time Ago. Interlude. Momochi Zabuza

A black-haired, well-built man stood on the deck of a moderately large boat with a roof and a hold.

The shinobi, who had packed on a fair number of kilos during his stay in Konoha, was enjoying the blue sea breeze. His massive cleaver, Kubikiribocho, hung on his back, which only made him happier.

"The sea again... Feels like hardly any time passed. But how long it's been since I last saw it."

The Hidden Leaf... the prison... Zabuza didn't even notice his mind drifting back to the beginning of that delightful little vacation...

From the moment that underage monster knocked him out, the man woke up in a dark room feeling pumped full of something psychotropic. His thoughts were shrouded in fog... Black silhouettes flickered around him, and then the pain! The only thing he could feel. An unceasing, ever-growing agony in his head.

They tortured him for hours... or so Momochi had thought.

But then, when he woke up again, this time in some cell, a blond Konoha chunin simply walked up and apologized.

Apparently, when the Yamanaka clan was sifting through his memories, the solution meant to keep the swordsman unconscious had been improperly mixed by a pharmacy intern. Because of that, he had accidentally "woken up for about twenty seconds"...

The feelings Zabuza experienced upon hearing this were hard to put into words, but his facial expression at the time had conveyed them perfectly.

Then Momochi learned yet another fact:

"He apologized! To me! Because they extracted information from me the 'wrong way'! That's like an executioner apologizing to the prisoner after torture for making it too painful! What the fuck?!" The dilemmas blazed inside Zabuza's head.

And then it got worse.

Sitting in solitary confinement, they brought him quality food every single day!

Three times a day!

And on top of that, a day later they put Haku in the cell directly across from his.

"So you won't be bored," the Konoha slug-jailer had said when he brought me food yet again.

Ever since childhood, Zabuza had despised hypocrites. The kind of people who inflict pain and then smile at you like nothing happened.

Momochi was convinced: the entire world consists of those who manipulate and those who are manipulated. Everything is built on that! Spinning sweet words, "kind-looking" people make the truly pure-hearted commit the vilest atrocities. And the pure-hearted don't even suspect they're doing something terrible. They blindly follow whoever leads them.

But Zabuza had honor! That's exactly why, when he was leading the revolution, he never played the hypocrite. All his subordinates knew they were his pawns. He told them straight that he'd sacrifice them if necessary.

And people, sensing his sincerity, followed him anyway. It was something new, something unusual, and, as many believed, something that had a real chance of succeeding.

But then Zabuza himself had fallen into a den of hypocrisy...

Some time later, after the interrogation and information-extraction sessions were over, he was led into a room draped in dark crimson fabrics.

Sitting at the desk was what appeared to be an ordinary old man, yet a chill ran down Momochi's spine the second he laid eyes on him.

Logically, the swordsman should have been far more tense around the pair of ANBU who had brought him here, but before him sat the God of Shinobi. He might not have been in his prime, but Zabuza decided right then not to test his temper unnecessarily.

"Momochi Zabuza," the Third Hokage began. "Do you want to live?"

Obviously, he did. His revolutionary cause wasn't finished yet; raising funds for it was the whole reason he'd agreed to work for Gato.

Hiruzen then explained that everything Momochi could offer the Leaf had already been extracted. If he wanted to walk free with his companion, he just had to agree to a job he'd probably enjoy anyway.

Zabuza was tasked with helping the revolution in Kiri. Very soon. And simply not getting in Konoha's way afterward.

Essentially, he was being sent as a gift... But since this aligned perfectly with Zabuza's own goals, he didn't object.

He was also given one small additional task:

"You will travel with Konoha's first delegation. It is in your best interest to make sure none of them come to harm. An Uzumaki spatial marker has been placed inside your body. If I learn of anything that displeases me, you'll be returned to the Leaf. But this time, permanently."

"..." When the Hokage mentioned that monster, Zabuza shuddered.

The swordsman had no idea whether this was true or the Leaf's Kage was bluffing. But he had absolutely no desire to test it... That brat, who looked like just a kid, had turned out to be way too terrifying. And this old man, too... Momochi had heard he was one of the kindest rulers in the world. Apparently, that didn't extend to outsiders who'd once been enemies.

Returning to the present.

It was morning. Zabuza was sailing back to his homeland.

Having stared his fill over the railing, he turned to the deck, where not far away a Leaf shinobi sat at a small table, lazily scribbling something into a scroll.

"Another boy in a green vest. Just as two-faced a bastard as everyone else in Konoha," Zabuza thought with displeasure.

That one was listed as the leader here. Nara Sora was the kid's name. And Zabuza didn't give a damn that the guy was technically about five years his senior; he still called him that, both in his head and out loud. Because there wasn't a shred of real shinobi in him.

Momochi was convinced that if a person hadn't stood on death's edge so many times that it stopped bothering them, they weren't a damn shinobi. Just a person in a uniform, not a perfected tool.

Zabuza had, in fact, only just woken up and come out for some fresh air.

They'd been sailing all night. And they could've reached shore in a couple of hours, honestly!

All because of this "polite boy" who, instead of heading straight for land, had sent a letter to the current leader of the revolution saying, hey, we've arrived, come meet us.

Now the whole delegation was waiting for a reply, bobbing around somewhere in the waters between the Kanzoku Sea and the Kanashi Ocean, to the south. They'd originally set sail from the Land of Noodles, where a small fleet belonging to the Land of Fire was stationed, including this very boat.

Zabuza could go on characterizing the Konoha crowd at length. But it all boiled down to their hypocrisy, naturally. Though, to Momochi's surprise, one normal person in this dump had actually turned up. Or rather, turned up female.

When he was introduced to this delegation of theirs, besides the boy in the little hood, from the Aburame clan or whatever they're called, and the boy in the little black jumpsuit, some relative of Hiruzen's, there was an actual woman. And a proper man's woman at that. Yase Ai, her name was.

Zabuza, though they'd never crossed paths before, remembered her well. She was in the Bingo Book, and he knew she'd already survived two world wars. As far as Momochi was concerned, there were only three actual shinobi on this ship: himself, Haku, and her.

Chestnut hair down to her waist, height somewhere around two meters. She was taller than Zabuza himself. Her face was admittedly a bit "rocky," as if roughly chiseled from stone. But that was fine. And the fact that she wore the standard Leaf uniform, same as Nara, that was normal too. Because she radiated the aura of a genuine killer! She alone had more guts than all the other Konoha shinobi combined!

Aside from the two of them and Nara, the deck was empty. Having had his fill of the ocean view and the steady rocking of the ship, Momochi headed for the bathroom.

"These shell-less slugs infected me with their... what's it called... cleanliness," Zabuza shook his head. "And it all started with Haku, damn it. So obsessed with his appearance... The second those green seafood rejects showed him the bathtub, he started spending hours in there. And when those ichthyofaunal abortions let him bring some kind of clay into the cells, it got even worse. Haku started walking around half the day painted up like a carnival float."

And that was only the beginning... Because Haku, the little bastard, started trying to make Momochi smear the stuff on himself too.

"Zabuza-san, your skin isn't young anymore. This clay is excellent for removing wrinkles, cleansing pores, giving the skin a nice matte finish..."

And plenty more of that crap, which made the swordsman want to spit.

He recalled with horror how, day after day, they broke him down.

Not the Konoha interrogators. Haku... and in the end, Zabuza had caved. Now he was used to regular showers.

"Whatever. Once I get home, the battlefield will beat this crap out of me in no time. For now, I just need to go brush my shark teeth..."

Zabuza strolled casually to the bathroom and yanked the door open...

He really shouldn't have.

Because what he saw... would haunt his nightmares for a long time to come.

It was a woman! No, not naked... Just Ai, standing with a machete in hand, sleeves and pant legs rolled up. But her legs, unlike her apparently shaved arms, were absolutely covered in hair! And there was genuine stubble on her face!!!

"Holy fuck!!!" He slammed the door shut.

"I have less hair on my entire body than she has on one leg..." Momochi thought, deeply impressed.

From that day on, he promised himself he would always knock.


Interlude. Sora Nara

Sitting at the table on the gently rocking vessel, he habitually ran through his negotiation plan in his head. Thanks to the calm weather, the unrolled scrolls weren't blowing away, making working with them a pleasure.

The picture of the people he was about to forge an alliance with was shaping up colorful and, frankly, "problematic." Trusted contacts had compiled a report stating that while the situation in Kiri had changed since the last revolution, there was still absolutely no sense of unity.

For now, they were held together by a fairly strong kunoichi who ran the uprising with an iron fist. But the retinue gathered around her still resembled a jar full of spiders, each playing their own game, not yet daring to bite the mistress...

Thinking about this, Sora sighed more than once, cursing the day he'd decided to work as Konoha's envoy. The Leaf certainly wasn't without its own sins, but at home things were at least simpler and more predictable, thanks to familiarity.

The layout was as follows. The revolutionaries had Mei, who had personal scores to settle with the Mizukage. There were "ideological avengers," in the form of an illegitimate son of the Hoshigaki clan, ready to burn everything down for his own vendetta against the Mizukage. There were pragmatists and paranoids, like Ao, a dangerous veteran with a Byakugan who was equally formidable as a fighter, tactician, and scout. And there were "dark horses." A certain leader of the remnants of the Hozuki clan, whose motives were hidden and impossible to figure out, and, lastly, some guy named Mittei.

Mittei had a history of mercenary work, and on paper everything seemed fine with him... as fine as things can be for a leader of sabotage operations. But Nara's profile of him was bugging him for some reason. His intuition whispered that something was off about the man, but couldn't clearly explain what.

Here, Sora could only regret that the Leaf's spy hadn't managed to penetrate the upper echelons, so figuring out which of these "revolutionary leaders" would betray them first was something he'd have to do on the ground.

His back stiffened from the light brainstorming session.

Sora stretched with pleasure and shifted his gaze to the deck, where Momochi Zabuza had just appeared.

Rough, arrogant, but predictable. Unlike certain politicians, he knew his place and, surprisingly for a missing-nin, almost never lied.

Nara had heard plenty from his sempai Shikaku about how hard it was sometimes to work with the "hypocritical bastards" on the civilian council. How they'd show up in Konoha every few months and mumble something incoherent. So the Leaf's tokubetsu-jonin figured that at least in one thing he'd gotten lucky: working with someone like Zabuza was much simpler.

Zabuza's companion, Haku, interested him very little. The kid was a shadow, loyal to his master, and just another piece of political cargo they could dump on the revolutionaries as a gift, then leverage for better terms for the Village.

His thoughts flowed smoothly to his own squad. And here he couldn't help but grimace.

Yase Ai. Their main striking force and, simultaneously, their biggest headache. A woman with a massive frame, enormous chakra reserves, and a complete absence of hangups. Loved to drink, laughed too loudly, and, most terrifyingly, was "actively looking." Once, Sora had even prayed that she wouldn't start hitting on the Mist swordsman or the diplomats; an international scandal over sexual harassment was the last thing they needed.

Nara felt much calmer about the other two. Sarutobi Kenji and Aburame Kiyoshi were veterans of the Third World War who had long passed the age most shinobi never reached. As shinobi overall, they weren't exactly outstanding, but each excelled in something. Sarutobi was a summoning specialist, capable of yanking the whole team out of any mess in seconds with a special reverse summoning technique. Aburame was a sensor; his bugs were bred specifically for detecting chakra through dense fog and were an invaluable asset in Kiri territory.

When he thought about it, the Hokage had really prepared them well. The delegation to Kiri was a well-assembled team: "eyes" for the mist, an "escape route" in case of failure, a "battering ram" in Ai if they needed to buy time for that escape, and even a trophy Mist Swordsman for legitimacy and leverage.

The odds of returning to the Leaf alive, and with good spoils, were definitely above zero.

"Ki-i-i!"

Sora reflexively turned his head toward the sound. A mail hawk was descending, wings slicing through the air.

Rising from the table, the man stepped into the open part of the deck, squinting in the bright sunlight. The bird, flapping its wings, settled heavily onto his forearm.

But the idyll of the moment, the sound of waves and the proud profile of the feathered predator, was shattered by a muffled but utterly genuine scream of horror from below, where the bathroom was located:

"Holy fuck!!!"

Sora froze with his hand still extended toward the hawk.

The bird proudly looked away, pretending it had nothing to do with this circus.

"Ahem," he coughed awkwardly into the silence, understanding perfectly well that Zabuza had just gotten acquainted with the "feminine" side of their Ai. "Well... this was bound to happen sooner or later."

Finally reading the message, Nara gave a satisfied nod to himself... then his lips twitched.

"Gotta remember those flowers Uzumaki-san asked for."

The initial meeting with the revolutionaries was set to take place very soon.

---

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[Welydora]

Interlude. Nara Sora

After several hours, the delegation's vessel nosed into the marshy shore and came to a halt. They had arrived at the Land of Water's closest island to the mainland.

A narrow strip of viscous "beach" immediately gave way to a more or less flat clearing that stretched a couple hundred meters inland. Beyond it sprawled a murky green forest of thin trees, unfamiliar to Leaf shinobi.

The Konoha team, along with the swordsman and his partner, gathered on deck. One small leap, and they stood on solid ground.

A group of shinobi immediately moved to meet them. A typical Kiri squad from the revolutionary era: swamp-toned clothing, darker armor layered on top, striped leg warmers, arm guards.

When about ten meters remained between them, two figures stepped forward from the revolutionary ranks. The first appeared ordinary enough: tall, solid build, chestnut hair pulled back, sharp black eyes. The second looked alien by comparison: nearly two meters tall, broad, muscular, bluish skin, gills beneath his eyes. He wore no armor, just a dark blue sleeveless bodysuit that clung to his frame, somewhat reminiscent of Sarutobi's gear but more exposed. Two swords were strapped to his back, each one a two-handed weapon for any normal person, their blades curved toward the tips.

Sora stepped forward. Ai moved in sync beside him, along with… Zabuza.

The pineapple-haired shinobi wanted to sigh.

Did Momochi even understand what kind of status he'd just demonstrated with that move? Well, too late now.

"Greetings, shinobi of Kiri," Sora began, adhering to protocol. "Nara Sora, head of the delegation, representative of the Hidden Leaf Village and the Great Third Hokage." A formality, but there was no getting around it.

"Pleased to welcome you in return," the chestnut-haired man responded, taking a few more steps forward. His friendly smile looked… too alive to be entirely fake.

While Sora spoke, Zabuza and the second swordsman exchanged brief nods.

So they know each other. That must be the Hoshigaki clan bastard, Sora noted mentally.

"Call me Iwamoto Natsuo. I handle diplomacy for our humble coalition," he said with a slightly wider smile. "Remarkable to see that the previous leader of our struggle for justice has arrived with you. Welcome, Zabuza-sama!"

Momochi gave a curt nod but remained silent.

Sora didn't know all the details, but he was glad they had convinced the swordsman back in the Leaf to keep his mouth shut and not interfere with his work.

"Thank you for agreeing to this meeting," Sora continued. "We come with good intentions. Konoha seeks peace across the entire world. To that end, we offer you our assistance."

Natsuo paused for a second, then gave a warm nod.

"That's wonderful. We'd be happy to discuss it. Let me take you to the rest of the Liberation's leaders. They've gathered not far from here."

"Of course," Sora waved, beckoning the rest of the delegation. Haku took his place beside Zabuza, and they moved toward the revolutionary shinobi.

"How was the journey?" Natsuo asked the most obvious question imaginable once the distance between the groups shrank to a couple of steps.

"Comfortable," Sora nodded. "Thank you for asking. While we walk, let me introduce my team…"

After a brief exchange of names and titles on both sides, they broke into a run and plunged into the forest. The first contact inspired cautious optimism. They'd been received rather warmly, which would have been hard to expect from the Kiri shinobi Sora had read about in reports from fifteen years ago. Back then, peaceful negotiations were out of the question. Now they were calmly following their hosts to a place where negotiations would take place… if this wasn't a trap, of course.

But an ambush would have made far more sense right on the shore, where there was more water and the shinobi of Water would have had the advantage. Counting on guests from Konoha letting their guard down along the way would have been too naive. They weren't genin, after all.

With each passing minute, the sense of immediate danger receded. But dropping one's guard was not an option. After twenty minutes of easy shinobi-pace running, they reached their destination.


A short while earlier. Same location

In the middle of the foggy forest, a fairly spacious clearing had been carved out. A large tent stood at the center, with several smaller ones nearby, almost hidden by the trees.

Shadows of shinobi flickered along the perimeter, nearly blending into the surrounding gray-green mass.

A bit further out, a second ring spread in a loose chain, a squad with no identifying marks. They'd been entrusted with the outer perimeter. Their task was simple: let through only those who were supposed to be here.

These were some of the revolution's best. Most had already survived more than one wave of uprisings. And today, maybe, as they so desperately wanted to believe, a new wave would gather enough force to become a tsunami that would wash away Yagura's bloody regime. Flush the blood that had soaked into the fog.

Hope had flared and faded before, more than once. In the shinobi world, darkness stubbornly crawled from every crack. Maybe they were paying for their ancestors' karma. But those who had survived to this day clung fiercely to one simple thought: the darkest hour is just before the dawn. The only question was whether they'd live to see it.

Two guards stood by the entrance to the main tent. Against the grim focus of everyone else, they were chatting almost casually, though they wore the same Kiri-revolutionary standard: swamp tones, armor, headbands.

"Hey, Kaito," the chestnut-haired one with a short sword on his back turned to his partner.

"What?" answered the black-haired one with two massive shuriken strapped across his shoulders.

"What do you think they're like? The Konoha people."

"Normal. People are people. Maybe wearing brighter rags," Kaito shrugged.

"I'd love to see other countries…"

"I'm fine right here."

"Boring. Just imagine: a village in the Land of Fire, all covered in green leaves…"

"Where you'll be digging latrines for the locals if you don't shut your mouth," a rough voice came from inside the tent.

The guards flinched and straightened up almost in unison. A tall, middle-aged man in a blue-green kimono with beige trim stepped through the flap. Light blue hair was swept upward, and large earrings shaped like paper fuin-talismans dangled from his ears. Swollen veins crossed the right side of his face, and beneath his forehead protector, a black patch was tied over his right eye. Under it: a Byakugan.

Ao squinted for a second, staring through the trees.

"Hmm. So he's here too," he muttered under his breath. "Delegates will be here in seven minutes. While the negotiations are underway, I don't want to hear a sound from you."

Nod.

Nod.

Without further explanation, Ao peered into the distance for another moment, then ducked back inside. A narrow passage led him into a slightly dim space with a large oval table. A detailed map of the Land of Water was spread across it. Like the rest of the "furniture set," the table had been brought in using spatial fuin-seals. Nobody had been stupid enough to haul it all on their backs.

"Ao-sama, are they coming soon?" an anxious voice pulled his attention.

A teenager with a short crop of blue hair stood before the table. Straight-rimmed goggles sat on his head, protective earmuffs over his ears. A blue, form-fitting uniform, camo pants. But the main thing was this: on his chest, in the form of a black flak vest, sat a harness system for one of the seven legendary Swords of the Mist. Behind his back, wrapped in bandages, the twin blades of Hiramekarei curved toward their shared hilt.

"Chojuro, show some restraint," Ao grumbled, walking to his chair. "You're a man."

"Um…" The swordsman's hands dropped helplessly.

"In my day, someone with your personality wouldn't have survived. Real men should be tough and decisive, not—"

"Ao, don't start. My ears are wilting from your lectures," another man drawled lazily from three chairs to the right.

He was wrapped in dark, loose clothing: a black cloak with camouflage inserts, a high collar, dark pants to match. Black hair reached his shoulders. His gray, washed-out eyes stared into nothing, pupils nearly merging with the irises.

"Mittei, don't interrupt the educational process," Ao waved him off, tying the patch back over his Byakugan.

"Educational process," the man named Mittei snorted. "What would you know about teaching anyone? You're always going on about how your teachers beat the hell out of you your whole childhood."

"Hey! Don't make it sound dirty."

"Right, right, there are children present." The corners of his mouth stretched into a smile far too wide for those dead eyes. In the shadow of his face, it looked… unsettling.

Chojuro still stood there, looking sullen, until the sound of the tent flap being thrown open made him turn.

"Lady Mei," he breathed with reverence.

A woman entered, tall for this world, slender. Her long dark auburn hair cascaded to mid-thigh; part of it was gathered into a tall vertical bun on top. Several lush strands framed her face in front and converged above her impressive bust; one strand covered an eye the color of glaze. A blue dress with a high slit revealed black shorts and dark stockings, and the bodice featured a deep neckline.

Mei pressed a finger with a blue nail to her painted lips and tilted her head slightly.

"Did I interrupt something?"

"No, we just finished," Ao answered curtly.

"Hmm," she surveyed those present. "I heard they're getting close. Shall we go meet them at the entrance?"

"But, Mei-sama," Ao's voice remained firm. "We have already shown them sufficient honor. By sending Natsuo and Josame to meet them, we demonstrated respect. For you, as the future Mizukage, it would be beneath your dignity to personally greet ordinary shinobi. It would look as though we're groveling before Konoha."

For a moment, heavy silence hung in the tent. Mei's face twitched almost imperceptibly. For a second, something dark and predatory seemed to radiate from her, then vanished just as quickly.

"This meeting could prove very important for Kiri," her voice went cold.

"It could. But you must not appear beneath them."

Mei knew protocol no worse than Ao. She had learned all those rules in her clan, back when it still existed… And formally, she was right: a Kage was indeed not supposed to greet a foreign delegation all the way at the entrance, but simply stepping outside was fine. However… these negotiations were secret, and while the Kage title wasn't officially hers yet… she decided not to create unnecessary conflict within their ranks.

Still, even though Konoha was a massive player and had to be treated with extreme caution, Mei remembered who she had to rely on first and foremost. And if her inner circle was calmer, the chances of them making a scene during negotiations would drop too.

"Fine. Have it your way," the woman walked to her chair in the center, facing the entrance.

A few minutes later, Natsuo's voice came from outside as he exchanged a few words with the guards, and the tent flap was thrown open again.

"Please, come in."


Continuation. Nara Sora's Interlude

Sora entered first, followed by the rest of the Konoha shinobi, then Zabuza and Haku. Josame came in after them, Natsuo last.

Natsuo turned around, ready to open the official proceedings, but was cut off by the high, slightly cracking voice of the teenager who had jumped to his feet.

"Zabuza-sama?!"

Every pair of eyes in the tent locked onto Chojuro. The displeasure in them was obvious.

"Sorry," the swordsman sank back guiltily.

In truth, most of them didn't really care about the boy's outburst. They were all here for something else entirely. Only Ao's face showed real irritation, and Sora's seemed to turn to stone for a second before smoothing back to calm.

Well then. If Kiri's shinobi want to speak first that badly, be my guest, Sora noted mentally.

Everything that happened here would go into his report. And it would influence the future deal. Five and eight are different numbers, right? Or maybe go straight to ten?

"Do I know you?" Zabuza spoke for the first time in a long while. And with that, he pushed the start back even further, while also showing disrespect to both the potential partners and the revolutionaries themselves, which made Mei's face twitch.

"He's my student, Chojuro," Josame answered for him as he walked past and sat down next to the boy. "Talented kid. More talented than either of us."

He nodded at an empty seat, and Zabuza, with a grunt, sat down beside his student. Haku took the seat on the other side.

Iwamoto held his gaze on Ao for a moment and grimaced almost imperceptibly. He was nearly certain whose initiative it had been to meet the Konoha delegation here rather than at the entrance, and how this looked right now. His eyes flashed with anger in Ao's direction, then he took a deep breath, pushing the displeasure out with the air, and put the friendly smile back on his face.

"Dear guests, please, have a seat," Natsuo hurried to take his own place and, once they had all settled in, continued. "Before such an important event begins, I would consider it an honor to introduce the rest of the revolution's leaders. To my left, Lady Terumi Mei, commander of our army and future Fifth Mizukage. To her left, Ao, head of intelligence and future advisor. Between Josame-san and Zabuza-san sits one of the Swordsmen of the new Mist, Chojuro, wielder of the legendary twin blades Hiramekarei. And finally, to my right, Mittei, head of sabotage operations."

He caught his breath, surveying them. Ai listened with open interest. The rest of the Konoha faces were blank. The Aburame scratched his nose under his hood, and that was about it.

"In turn," Natsuo gave a slight bow, "allow me to introduce our guests…"

After another brief exchange of names and titles, the floor passed back to Sora.

"As stated, I represent the Great Third Hokage and the Village Hidden in the Leaves. Konoha has long pursued the ideal of peace. We abhor Yagura's brutal regime, and we sincerely grieve for what your country is going through. I'm glad to see we are not alone in our opposition. In our world, humanity has become too precious a luxury. No matter how strong we may be, none of us can achieve a truly worthy goal alone. Therefore, we offer you our assistance. And we hope for future cooperation."

Thus spoke Nara, a master of political ass-kissing. Though by the standards of a certain other world, this was still tame.

"We are pleased to host a representative of the honorable Hiruzen and his companions," Mei took the floor, continuing in the same tone. "Sarutobi-sama is known as a wise leader. We greatly value your desire to help us achieve peace. We fight for justice and freedom. Unfortunately, the Fourth Mizukage has forgotten what those words mean. But let us clarify," her lips curved into a soft smile, "your offer of assistance doesn't contradict our goals?"

"No," Sora replied. "We seek an equal partnership."

At the word "partnership," her expression shifted almost imperceptibly. Something painful, something deeply personal twitched inside her, but she forced herself to return from it to the real world. Sora noted it at the edge of his awareness but continued:

"Allow me to explain how we see this. We know about the primary threat: Karatachi Yagura. And we are proposing our assistance in his elimination."

Natsuo's and Ao's eyes widened. Chojuro's mouth also fell open. The rest kept their composure, though the internal reaction bled through in barely perceptible movements.

"We are prepared to send you two shinobi worthy of being Kage," Sora continued. "One of them is known to you, at least by reputation: one of the Legendary Sannin, Jiraiya. The second is one of the last living representatives of the Uzumaki clan. He is… an exceptional and highly influential individual among us. Believe me, there's no reason to doubt his prowess."

At the brief mention of the Leaf's loosely known jinchuriki, Zabuza's shoulders twitched, which didn't escape the other revolutionaries' notice. They weighed the implications, nodded. And, having no doubts about the named shinobi, moved on to the main questions:

"What exactly," Ao began dryly, "do you value your services at?"

"And do you understand all the risks involved?" Mei clarified, earning a disapproving look from Ao but an approving one from Natsuo. Their reactions perfectly illustrated their attitudes toward revealing what the woman was leading to.

Sora turned his head toward her.

"Is there something we should know beyond the fact that Yagura is the Three-Tails' jinchuriki and an extremely powerful shinobi?"

"…The revolution once attempted to secure support. For his elimination. But that organization refused us."

Hearing this, Sora's eyebrows rose. So the revolutionaries, at least their leader, knowing about certain nuances, had chosen not to use the Leaf blindly. He appreciated that. He gave an authoritative nod. After all, he knew far more about the topic at hand than anyone else present.

"You're referring to the Akatsuki?" he clarified, prompting a wave of surprise from the revolutionaries. "According to our intelligence, they have a hidden leader. And it's precisely this leader who made Yagura what he is."

A few sentences, and a storm of shock swept through the tent. Thanks to Ao's Byakugan, they knew their Mizukage was being controlled. But they'd never known where the roots grew from.

Sora deliberately didn't reveal that Konoha had a spy inside the organization, nor that this hidden leader was an Uchiha, meaning, most likely, a former Leaf shinobi. Revealing that could both compromise the spy and slam the door on further negotiations.

"Does that mean they might interfere?" Mei asked anxiously, voicing the most critical concern.

"There's that possibility…" he drawled with a hint of hesitation, as if trying to reassure them. "But the Akatsuki's goal, as far as we know, is the collection of all the tailed beasts…"

What followed was a rapid-fire Q&A about the Akatsuki, which ultimately strengthened the bond between the two sides. It turned out both would be opposing this organization of elite mercenaries. So things weren't so bad after all…

And only later, having reached a mutual understanding, did they all circle back to the question of price.

"Come now," Sora smiled for the first time since the negotiations began. Judging by the revolutionaries' faces, the smile inspired nothing but suspicion. "How could we demand payment from future allies? But, like any friends, in return for our gift, we would be delighted to receive yours."

The revolutionaries looked at him as though he'd just said the word "hypocrisy" out loud.

Sora pulled a small scroll from his vest, unsealed several larger ones from it, then formed the seals for Shadow Clone on objects. A moment later, each of the leaders had their own identical set before them.

"So as not to waste time reading aloud," he explained, "we've prepared a rough list of what we'd like to receive. For the next ten years: sixty percent of the tariffs from the trade route between the Land of Noodles and the Land of Water. Plus a list of plants from your climate zone that are rare for us, corals and marine plants, as well as important minerals and ores. Details are in the corresponding sections. Long-term, we are also interested in fish supplies, particularly from the eastern coast."

Ao opened the first scroll, skimmed the lines, snapped it shut, and fixed Sora with his one exposed eye.

"Are you trying to rob us?" he asked with restraint. His tone made it painfully clear that his first impulse had been not to "ask" but to scream.

"Don't rush to conclusions," Sora replied, his tone unchanged. "Everything is negotiable. We're entirely willing to adjust the terms to satisfy both sides."

Natsuo's eyes raced across the text. The document was long, packed with petty, unpleasant details. But those were exactly the kinds of details diplomats fought over.

"You're talking about ten years," Mei said thoughtfully, closing her copy. "You do understand that will only become possible after we restore order?"

"Of course. We believe in answering a gift with a gift. Someone has to start the cycle. Incidentally, as far as I know, Kiri still has strong fuinjutsu specialists? Your swords," Sora nodded at Zabuza's Kubikiribocho, making the swordsman's eyebrow twitch, "turned out to be quite fascinating. We're willing to replace some of our requests with an exchange of corresponding knowledge."

"How do you view the Three-Tails question?" Mittei's voice came from Sora's right.

He turned his head, and for a split second flinched internally. A cheerful, almost boyish smile radiating genuine enthusiasm. And gray eyes… completely dead. Two empty voids. He had to admit: an unsettling combination.

Sora returned to a neutral expression.

"Pessimistically," he answered honestly. "Our analysts doubt we can take Yagura alive. And I don't have the authority to decide such an important question on my own. But if we reach an agreement, Jiraiya-sama will arrive in approximately two to three months. He's a fuinjutsu master. The second shinobi we're sending is a respected member of the Uzumaki clan, also a master. I'm confident that if you prepare a worthy 'present' for them, they'll find the time to address this issue following your personal negotiations."

"Dear friends," Natsuo interjected, accidentally cracking a joke, "I regret to inform you that some of the plants on your list have already disappeared from Kiri's territories. But the good news is, we can offer other, equally interesting species in exchange."

"Well then," Sora straightened up in his chair even more. "As I said, we're open to dialogue."

Then the real bargaining began. For five hours, shinobi played tug-of-war, haggling over every single point, every percentage, deadline, guarantee, and phrasing.

The negotiations resulted in the following: instead of ten years, Kiri agreed to eight and a half. The start of supplies was pushed forward by a year and a half. Most of the clauses had to be rewritten practically from scratch, and this was only the first stage. The revolutionaries currently lacked a full picture of their own resources, meaning more of these councils awaited them.

Kiri, for its part, managed to secure food supplies for the coming year, not for free, of course, but disguised as a "reciprocal gift" in exchange for additional resources and chakra-related intelligence.

Everyone was thoroughly drained. But they were all especially grateful for one thing: the soft chairs. It was terrifying to imagine what would have happened to their asses after sitting that long without them.

When everyone finally rose from the table, dusk was already noticeably settling outside.

"Thank you for the warm reception," Sora said, turning to the assembled revolutionaries with only a faint shadow of sarcasm in his voice. Practically everyone looked ready to faceplant into the nearest cot. He looked at Mei, standing at the front. "I hope it won't take more than a couple more rounds of negotiations before we're addressing you as 'Mizukage-sama.'"

"Of course. We couldn't have done otherwise for such valued allies," Mei forced out a smile.

She wasn't just dead on her feet from the multi-hour tug-of-war between Sora and Natsuo. Deep inside, she was also gnawed by a sense of shame over how it had all started. One absurd "greeting"… What would it have cost them to go outside and meet the delegation properly? But yeah, yeah, revolutionary solidarity…

And then anger piled onto that murky cocktail. That careless banter between Josame and Zabuza at the very start, as if everything around them, both revolutionaries and Konoha shinobi alike, was nothing. This despite the fact that he'd been brought here as a gift! Terumi was convinced he thought far too highly of himself. Those two and their manners. For the sake of team cohesion, the kunoichi absolutely had to put them in their place…

During the previous wave, Josame hadn't been big on respect during negotiations either. But one fight, his pride drowned in magma, and for the past year he'd called her nothing but "Lady Mei." Time to refresh his memory. And the new swordsman needed to be properly introduced to the circle and put in his place.

Meanwhile, Sora felt a slight movement at his shoulder. The Aburame, who'd been practically silent until now, stepped closer and quietly whispered something in his ear.

"Are you absolutely certain?" Sora couldn't stop himself from asking.

The Aburame simply nodded.

"Mei-sama, forgive me if my words seem harsh," Sora's fatigue vanished in an instant. "My colleague has detected the familiar chakra of a Stone shinobi. He encountered him eleven years ago…"

He pointed at an unremarkable bush nearby. The instant his finger locked on, the bush jerked, and a shadow burst from it, bolting into the forest in the opposite direction.

Without wasting a second, Mittei launched from his spot, vanishing in a blurred Body Flicker. Almost immediately, other previously hidden shinobi emerged from behind tree trunks and rushed after the spy.

"…Thank you, Aburame-san, Nara-dono," Mei's smile became painfully strained. A spy who'd wormed his way into their trusted circle, right when Konoha had requested complete secrecy. Another blow to the revolution's pride.

"Happy to help," Sora nodded. "And… I have to say one last thing. The shinobi who'll be arriving later might not be as… understanding as our delegation," he spread his hands, indicating those standing behind him. "So next time, please, prepare better."

"Of course," Mei's voice dropped even colder. Sora could almost physically feel her rope of patience stretching to its limit, but it hadn't snapped yet.

"Then we must take our leave," he gave a slight bow of the head.

"I'll escort you," Natsuo volunteered immediately. More nervously than usual. As if he wasn't just being hospitable, but suddenly felt a strong urge to be as far from here as possible.

"We'd be grateful," Sora nodded and cast one final glance at Mei. She simply watched them in silence. Together with Iwamoto, they moved off, first at a walk, then picking up speed.

For a full minute, the revolutionary shinobi kept staring at the spot where Konoha's shadows had flickered one last time between the trees. The forest around them seemed to thicken, saturated with something anticipatory and ominous.

The silence was broken by a cough. Zabuza cleared his throat and lazily turned toward Mei.

The swordsman looked relaxed, but clear displeasure was written across his face.

Everyone in the large clearing sensed it: this was heading somewhere bad…

---

If you enjoyed my work, feel free to check out my Patreon. There you can read up to 20 chapters ahead and get early access to any new stuff that I publish

 

[Welydora]

"Mei, is it?" Zabuza's bass rang out, tinged with mockery and way too loud for the exhausted camp. "Now that those hypocrites from Konoha have cleared out, let's have a proper talk about the revolution. Just so you know, I categorically did not like what just went down. Right now I want to take your head off for pissing away what belongs to Water!" He cut himself off for a moment, choking back a surge of rage. "But first, report. Who are you and what exactly do you do? Then, who's this ninja in black, Mittei. Then, about Natsuo. The rest I already know."

He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her expectantly. Somewhere off to the side, Chojuro audibly gulped. The premonition of disaster that had been gnawing at him all this time suddenly became almost tangible.

Mei's delicate-looking body slowly turned.

"Re... port..." She separated each syllable with deliberate precision. "You think I should be answering to you?"

An instant, and suffocating killing intent crashed down on the clearing. The world darkened for a second. From the woman's body surged a thick, almost viscous wave of chakra, colored deep purple.

Zabuza merely raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had his grievances with her, sure, but he hadn't expected she'd have any with him.

"You think because thousands of people in the east of Water won't starve to death, we 'don't owe anyone anything'?" Her voice cut through the air. "We're not bandits who choose war over dialogue!"

Josame didn't hesitate for a single second. Grabbing Chojuro by the scruff, he bolted toward the forest. Ao, freezing for only a moment, shot off in the opposite direction, leaving a smeared trail in the grass. The shinobi hidden in the thicket scattered in all directions.

Only one young shinobi in a mask remained beside Mei and Zabuza. He stood firm, though his trembling fingers betrayed just how hard it was to stay upright under the weight of her aura.

"You're a nobody who ran the second Yagura ground your pawns to dust." Terumi was really on a roll now, her eyes glowing with excess chakra.

Zabuza's hand moved almost reflexively to his sword's hilt.

"And after that, you come here. You dare disrespect my guests. You address me like I'm your pathetic subordinate."

With each word, the dark aura around her grew denser, heavier.

"A stray mutt who doesn't know what honor means, trash..." She took a step forward, and even the swordsman was taken aback. "I'll show you where you belong."

The earth under her foot shuddered. The next instant, Mei launched herself forward.

Close combat? Against a swordsman? Momochi let out a contemptuous snort. From him erupted an equally terrifying aura of a killer whose victims were beyond counting. Like a massive colossus, he didn't budge from his spot, aiming to cleave the overconfident kunoichi in two with a single swing of his blade.

Mei flashed past like a shadow, but just a couple of meters before Zabuza she jerked sharply to the side, dodging the rising sword. Spinning on her heel, she immediately exhaled a roaring torrent of superheated steam at him.

Momochi hadn't expected that attack trajectory.

"So she wasn't going for taijutsu from the start?"

He couldn't pull back the heavy blade in time, so he simply released the hilt and poured everything into a leap, throwing himself out of the kill zone. His instincts were screaming danger.

Landing on a thick branch several dozen meters away, Zabuza looked back. The massive cloud of steam was slowly dissipating, and through it he could make out the silhouette of a woman. The air around her trembled with heat, but it didn't seem to touch her. Steam still billowed from her body.

She leaned down and unhurriedly picked up the blade from the ground. The metal hissed, sending fresh clouds of steam into the air.

"Kubikiribōchō... shame." Lifting the giant sword one-handed with a slight strain, she seemed to weigh it. "That I can't do to it what I did to Josame's paired blades."

In her grip, the sword began rapidly heating up. The edge turned red, gray smoke drifted off the blade. Now Momochi wouldn't be able to use it for some time.

"A swordsman without a sword." The corners of her lips lifted. "What a joke."

Hearing those words, Zabuza grimaced as if he'd been kicked full speed in the crotch. The memories were still fresh of how, briefly, he'd been turned into a laughingstock... and now it was happening again.

Haku, just like his master, had leapt away. Having barely stayed on his feet under the crushing pressure of Terumi's aura, unable to find the right moment to act, he finally let out a focused exhale.

A cold halo of chakra erupted from his body. Ice senbon instantly formed in his hands. He launched a full fan of them at the future Mizukage and vanished into the forest in the same instant.

A casual swing of the superheated blade, and the senbon, touching the steel, exploded into hissing spray. The water fell to the ground in boiling drops.

Another moment, and the white haze on the clearing began to rapidly thicken.

While the games with the sword distracted his opponent, Zabuza flew through a familiar sequence of hand seals. Cold mist crept from his feet, filling the space faster and faster.

"Naive," Mei's voice came from somewhere inside the white veil. "I've mastered our country's signature jutsu too."

Enclosed in the impenetrable haze, the combatants became incredibly dynamic! The smaller shinobi silhouette, having hidden off to the side earlier, immediately moved toward the woman, weaving hand seals on the run. A second later, he tried to impale his opponent on a barrage of ice spears that shot up before him. But the kunoichi, simply planting the sword in the ground, wove her seals even faster, and a flood of lava burst from her mouth! It reached the ice just as it was forming, then blew the whole thing to hell. The ice ninja immediately fell back.

At the same time, moving silently, Zabuza tried to reach Mei. But the woman, continuing her technique, snapped her head toward the new target, forcing the man to immediately pull back. Lava flooded dozens of meters ahead, turning the battlefield into a nightmare to cross.

Meanwhile, Yuki had already regrouped. Pulling out ordinary metal senbon, he returned to the fight, launching the projectiles. But Terumi, cutting off the lava, deflected them with a single sharp, curved sweep of a drawn kunai. Then she immediately moved toward the weaker target.

The woman again feigned trying to force a close-quarters fight. This time it even looked far more convincing; the fragile Haku was a target well within her reach. And she gave a satisfied smirk when Zabuza, understanding this perfectly, abandoned the idea of going for his sword and dealing with things through Suiton, and instead bolted after her at full speed.

A fresh volley of senbon flew toward Mei, which she deflected without trouble. As she closed in, she, to Yuki's surprised look, instead of engaging, took a deep breath and made a powerful leap forward and upward, ending up in the air upside down.

From her mouth, aimed right at where Zabuza and Haku stood nearly side by side, burst a massive, wide stream of lava!

But before it could land, the viscous liquid splashed against a dome of ice that materialized right then and there.

"You think we'd fall for the same trick twice?" Zabuza said from inside. Yuki, straining, fought to hold the defense while lava streamed down its surface, blocking their view.

"She can't hear you, Zabuza-sama," the boy pointed out, just in case. The swordsman without a sword, realizing it, grimaced at his own blunder.

Thu-u-u-m, the sound rolled through the air as Haku tensed up, wincing from a large blast of scalding steam that washed over his dome.

"Trapped," Momochi noted with displeasure. Then a vicious snarl settled across his face beneath the bandages. "But that bastard from Konoha taught me a thing or two... Hold on a bit longer, Haku. I'll lead her away."

After that, Zabuza formed a seal, concentrated, then used the Substitution Jutsu on his own sword! Inside the dome came the clang of the superheated Kubikiribōchō hitting the ground, while Momochi himself, back in the impenetrable mist, advanced on Terumi.

But both were masters of the haze. So when Mei sensed her opponent appear, she immediately left two clones to continue her work. Turning around, she unleashed a wide stream of steam from her mouth, instantly boiling the mist over a huge area and forcing the swordsman to retreat.

Crack, the sound came from the dome as the kunoichi's two clones sealed it with superheated lava from both sides. And just before the molten rock tore inward and burned the occupant alive, the dome exploded at the last second, scattering lava in all directions and blowing away the mist, after which Haku's figure darted away.

The clones, instead of pursuing their target, instantly swapped places with their creator. Mei herself went after Haku, while her doubles held back Momochi.

And soon Terumi caught her prey. Running through the misty forest, she overtook Yuki and immediately exhaled steam, a technique that came much easier in these conditions. Haku immediately had to change his trajectory, leaping to the side. But through the steam he didn't notice a trio of kunai flying toward his already-turned back, burying themselves in him.

After that it was just a matter of technique. Terumi quickly caught up to the exhausted, wounded shinobi and, closing in for hand-to-hand, swiftly disarmed him of his drawn kunai, then finished it with a particularly tricky combination of sweeps and a powerful kick to the head.

The ice ninja was sent flying like a broken doll.

But the fight wasn't over yet. Having dealt with the clones, swordless as he was, Zabuza was already charging at the woman who'd dared to take out his "tool." His face wore an expression far more vicious than usual.

Mei immediately had to dodge, weaving through the forest herself while she prepared another technique.

Terumi was undoubtedly a strong kunoichi physically too. But not strong enough to match Momochi in that department.

Chasing his opponent, after a few seconds Zabuza's face stretched into a contemptuous grin beneath his bandages. They were running back toward the clearing where the kunoichi had used her kekkei genkai the first time, where the cooling lava still covered a large area.

"Running into a dead end? Apparently she doesn't navigate the mist as well as I thought."

The kunoichi could resist the heat of steam and hot objects, sure, but everything had its limits. A sea of lava would be a barrier for her too.

Zabuza accelerated, trying to catch Terumi before she realized where she was heading and veered off.

But when the woman was mere steps from the lava and Momochi had almost caught her, she slammed her hands into a seal and vanished in a puff of smoke!

"A Substitution?!" Zabuza understood instantly, skidding to a halt at the edge of the scorching earth.

And of course, they were on revolutionary territory! The rebels would have prepared the field in case of a fight with the Konoha shinobi. But... perhaps a rage, greater than he'd care to admit, at Haku being brutally knocked out of the fight, combined with the thrill of chasing near-dead prey, had made Momochi forget that for a second.

Now it was time to pay for his mistake.

Mei, not above getting dirty, literally burst out of the ground behind him, where a prepared setup for her technique had been waiting. In the second she'd bought herself, she wove the seals and unleashed a wide wall of steam from her mouth.

Zabuza, caught between the lava and the advancing wall, could only click his tongue, then, forming his own hand seal, encase himself in a sphere of water.

But, alas. For the swordsman, this was no way out.

The sphere immediately began vibrating, hissing and releasing an even denser stream of steam. Inside, it became unbearable in an instant; the swordsman's skin turned red. The tightly wound bandages on his face grew soggy and slipped, baring a grimace of agony.

Concentrating her technique and approaching, Mei began boiling her opponent alive, like he was a bag of dumplings.

The mist, no longer maintained by anyone and evaporated by the steam, began to clear, revealing only the single, unrelenting stream of steam from the woman's mouth.

Finally the sphere collapsed, and with it the stream of steam ceased. The water, bubbling, spilled onto the ground.

Zabuza, red as a boiled lobster, had been hunched over but now straightened up, barely staying on his feet.

"...I underestimated you," he rasped, gasping for air. "Haaa..."

"Don't humiliate yourself... more than necessary. You showed something too," Mei, covered in dirt, began breathing heavily, showing this fight hadn't come easy for her either. She pointed at the ground in front of her, at the damp earth. "You'll debase yourself only on my command. Get on your knees. I want to see your submission."

"Ha... haaa..." Breaking into heavy breaths every other word, Momochi grinned, baring his shark teeth. "You said... I don't know... what honor is..."

"Leading the last revolution, did you even understand what path you were on?" Mei moved closer, not dropping her gaze. "A leader, even more than a subordinate, must understand his mistakes. Correct them. Bear responsibility for them. What did you do? Condemning people to death, you brushed them off like tools that lost their usefulness. What honor are you even talking about?!"

"Ha-ha..." Zabuza chuckled quietly, gradually building into unhinged laughter. "That's exactly... what I did. And I don't regret a thing!" One look at that was enough for Mei's face to twist. "That's how the shinobi world works! We're divided into those who use and those who are used! I wanted to be on top, to change it! The shortest path to power is the bloodiest slaughter! To save as many lives as possible, you have to start the bloodiest war! In the end... everything could have been different..."

"Could have," Mei agreed firmly, then shook her head. "But how unlikely that was."

She looked at him and saw not the legendary Demon of the Mist, but a cornered animal. That same boy from the academy ten years ago, who'd thrown himself at his peers with a kunai. She'd been a bit younger, but she was at the academy and remembered the person in front of her perfectly well, along with the stories about him...

Rows of children, the smell of blood, screams and groaning. A boy throwing himself at everything that moved, as if in the faces of his classmates he saw those he despised and feared the most.

"Know who I see in front of me right now?" she said quietly. "That same one. The boy from the academy. You staged another massacre. Because that's the only thing you're actually good at."

The chakra around her trembled as killing intent surged from her again. The crushing aura crashed down once more on the barely standing swordsman, forcing his head down. The air literally hummed with tension.

"Your past is horrific. And as much as I'd love to kill you right now, for the revolution's sake I have to say this. Either you forget who you were and completely submit to the rebellion. Or..."

Zabuza's head felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. Crimson scenes, drenched in blood, flashed before his eyes. Only they didn't belong to him.

He tried to straighten up. Failed. His consciousness was unraveling, thoughts turning sluggish, but he still found enough strength to answer:

"Go... fuck... yourself."

Mei's face twitched. This time she didn't hesitate.

An instant lunge, and a kick to the chest drove Zabuza flat on his back into the ground. Forming a concentration seal, she stared down. The soil beneath his body, just like the ground nearby, swelled, turned viscous and crimson with heat.

Then a scream pierced the forest.

"AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

The man convulsed, weakly, as much as he could now, thrashing against the foot pinning him down, but achieved nothing. His voice slowly faded to a rasp. Magma burned through skin, flesh, seeped into bone.

Mei, lost within herself, stopped hearing the sound. Before her eyes, scenes from the past flashed again.

She is a nine-year-old girl, with shaking hands driving a tantō to the hilt into the chest of a slightly older girl. Eyes full of horror cling to the blade. Trembling fingers grab the hilt, try to pull it out. But they can't. And before death, she lets out that same, desperate wail that drowns out everything else.

Mei didn't even notice the moment Zabuza's screaming actually stopped.

But right then, from behind the trees, staggering, a young ninja emerged. The mask on his face was shattered, showing a blood-smeared chin and a visible eye, with the beautiful, even in this state, half of his face. Almost like a girl's...

He dragged his legs, spending his last strength to reach the body lying in the magma.

Three meters from his target, he collapsed onto the scorched ground. But still stretched a hand forward.

"Za... bu... za... sa... ma..." The words barely passed through the blood filling his mouth. Breathing hard, he strained to turn his head toward Mei. A trail of tears ran down the visible, dirt-smeared part of his face. "Please... don't..."

Mei's heart clenched. As if something snapped both inside and outside. In his eyes she saw not so much Haku as her first victim.

Her nails dug into her palms. Inside her, hatred for who Zabuza was and remained tore against pity for those who followed him.

After a few seconds, the scales tipped one way.

She stepped back. Then with a kick, Mei sent Zabuza's body sliding across the charred earth until it stopped side by side with Haku, face to face.

"You know what happens for disobedience," she said quietly.

Then, turning, Mei vanished beyond the already-visible treetops in a single leap.

Those left behind couldn't move for almost a full minute. All Haku could do was place his palm on Zabuza's burned cheek.

A couple of minutes later, rustling sounded over the clearing again.

First one shinobi landed, then several more.

Nearby, the sounds of water techniques immediately erupted. The lava was slowly setting the surrounding forest on fire, and the blaze needed to be put out before it reached the tent with documents on the clearing.

The first to approach was wrapped in a familiar black cloak.

"Hah, kid, you two are some damn lucky bastards," Mittei drawled cheerfully, peering at the bodies. "Looks like Mei-sama was in a real bad mood. But you're alive, heh-heh..."

He crouched down, studying the two mangled bodies. Haku struggled to look up at him. Wanting to show off, Mittei dramatically thrust out his left hand. In it he held the severed head of a man with coarse features.

"This Stone shinobi had it way worse! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

The ninja who approached next flinched at the unhinged laughter.

"Leader... I need to work."

"Huh?" Mittei swiveled toward him and immediately stood up. "Yeah, yeah, go ahead. They'll croak at this rate."

The medic-nin dropped to his knees between Zabuza and Haku. His palms lit up with a soft green glow.

The smaller shinobi wasn't too bad. But the swordsman would have to walk around wrapped head to toe in bandages for a while, looking like a parody of the late Tsuchikage Mu.

Well, nothing terrible. At least the revolution in Kiri had its roles clearly sorted again, and everyone knew their place.

A certain swordsman with paired blades, of course, still had his reckoning coming. But Terumi had the procedure down pat by now. So the revolution could hold out peacefully until support from Konoha arrived.

---

I'm happy to announce that this fanfic is now complete (Prologue + 83 Chapters + Epilogue). You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

Some time later.

In the residence of a fairly large city, not a tent, a woman with long red hair sat at a sturdy table. Twirling a lock of hair around her finger, she read through reports, calculating the forces the revolution had at its disposal.

The Land of Water was a vast archipelago. Its humid climate blessed a significant portion of the land with incredibly rich nature, while the polar regions were starkly different. Eternal cold reigned in the north, and the south was practically a desert.

The revolution controlled the western lands, roughly one-tenth of the country's total territory. Far more importantly, it maintained and fed approximately a quarter of all Water shinobi: those who had defected to the new banners.

This objectively indicated that the revolution's governance was far superior to the part of the country ruled by Yagura and the Daimyo, who supposedly also had some say in things.

But this wasn't solely due to Karatachi's policies. The entire system of the country was to blame.

The Land of Water operated on a rigid three-caste system. The first caste consisted of pureblooded Mist shinobi and citizens; only they had the right to rule. The second caste comprised the clan families that had fought for Kiri even before its founding. The third caste was made up of those who had been captured and subjugated. The lowest caste wasn't treated like outright garbage, but they were kept at arm's length, burdened with dirty work, valued less, and sent on the most dangerous missions first.

In theory, this policy was meant to control the number of potential malcontents, but in practice, it achieved the exact opposite.

Another first-caste policy also worked in the revolution's favor: the deeply ingrained fear and hatred of Kekkei Genkai users. They were considered too dangerous and too "different." This paranoia intensified after the Kaguya clan, shinobi whose genome let them manipulate bone tissue, attacked the Bloody Mist. In the aftermath, several minor clans with enhanced genomes, such as the ice-wielding Yuki clan, were wiped out, and those who hadn't been eliminated yet were hunted down.

The Hozuki clan was similarly driven to near-extinction. Only remnants survived under the leadership of a certain Umisio, who joined the revolution... with all his eccentricities.

Mei, as the supreme leader, or simply the head, genuinely disliked thinking about that particular revolutionary leader. He was too willful, too dangerous. He had excellent stealth skills for infiltrating enemy positions, but also a volatile enough temperament that Terumi, instead of bringing him to the negotiations with the Konoha delegates, shipped him off on a distant mission with his squad.

But the most painful thing for Mei was remembering her own history.

The Terumi clan had it far worse. In the past, despite belonging to the third caste, they stood apart from others like them, due to their strength. Those in power didn't dare treat them with disdain. But the clan couldn't escape some of the country's traditions. Its members were forced into the bloodiest missions more often, and the Academy graduation exam remained just as brutal for them as for any other third-caste child. Meaning those who wanted to graduate and become shinobi had to kill a classmate.

Despite having been subjugated generations ago, the Terumi remained patriots who believed in a brighter future. They devoted themselves to protecting the people, but... they were a bit naive and slow to act.

After the Kaguya attack was repelled, the hunt turned on them.

The elderly but still formidable clan head and the elders bore the brunt of the assault from the jinchuriki, the liquidators from the Hoshigaki clan, and other, less notable ninja. The Terumi didn't retreat; they put up a worthy fight. That was exactly why so few shinobi from the clan remained: most had fallen in battle. And although the Mizukage withdrew, the remnants of the clan no longer represented a significant force, so they decided to flee and join the revolution, which had only recently quieted down.

Of the truly significant Terumi, only Mei remained, a powerful kunoichi who, on the day Yagura and his hunter-nin came for them, awakened two Kekkei Genkai at once: Lava and Boil Release.

Before that, having never shown any special powers, she inherited Lava Release through her father's bloodline, while Boil Release came from her grandfather, a clan elder. She took this "awakening" as a second chance.

The once kind and diplomatic woman, who hadn't broken even under the weight of a bloody childhood and a brutal life in general, transformed into what the surviving Terumi family members quietly called "a revenge-obsessed woman you're better off not arguing with."

That characterization wasn't entirely accurate, but it wasn't far from the truth.

Over the past year, she had thrown herself into intense training, evolving from a strong kunoichi of elite jonin rank into a formidable Kage-level powerhouse.

But life among the revolutionaries, where she wasn't singled out or targeted for elimination first, softened her a bit. She rose to lead the uprising because of her strength, and also because she'd managed to reclaim some of her former warmth.

Her rise to power, however, wasn't without incident.

Her past had left deep triggers. She had a fierce hatred for people who treated their subordinates with disdain and recklessness, who would throw them to their deaths over something seemingly insignificant. Just like Yagura did with members of her clan...

The leader of the revolution, who had taken charge of the remnants after Zabuza's failed coup attempt, was exactly that kind of shinobi. And he was unlucky enough to cross paths with a kunoichi who'd joined barely a month ago. First, he was extremely disrespectful to her. Then he tried, right in front of her, to send a squad to a position where their job was to fight until they died.

It wasn't that the leader was bad at tactics or especially spiteful toward his subordinates. His cruel move was supposed to yield an advantage by drawing enemies away from another position while they killed the revolutionaries, allowing other rebel squads to take out several enemy positions. If things went according to plan, casualties might have even been lower overall.

But misunderstanding and prejudice did their work.

This led to a "clash of views" between Mei and the leader, which ended with the latter being burned alive in lava.

Mei, surrounded by revolutionaries who were mostly from the third caste and shared her principles, not only went unpunished but eventually earned their trust and took command of the revolution. Cold calculation was overthrown by empathy and understanding. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as it boosted morale within the movement, and therefore its combat effectiveness, somewhat reducing casualties in the process.

But yes, Terumi didn't get her position by being perfect.

Over time, reflecting on her path, she made her goal to make the Land of Water worthy of those who had died.

Yet her thirst for revenge hadn't vanished. Not just against Yagura, but against many members of the first caste who had helped him. And, as she'd recently discovered, against the Akatsuki organization.

Mei returned to the reports, and soon, releasing the lock of hair she'd been twirling, set the papers aside with a satisfied expression.

"Good boy," she noted mentally, seeing that the now-healed Zabuza had completed his third mission for her. Without objections. Exactly as required. This pleased Terumi, as the revolution was becoming more unified and stronger.

In a good mood, she was about to move on to the next papers when the door to her office swung open sharply, and Ao strode in.

"Urgent report on the Leaf!" he announced, then dropped a whole stack of bound scrolls onto her desk. These were reports from various spies and ordinary observers.

Naturally, the revolutionaries had spies in the Leaf. Even though they were supposedly trying to build an alliance, you always had to keep a finger on the pulse. And besides... the Leaf probably had spies here, too.

"Mm..." Picking a scroll at random and unrolling it, Terumi landed on a report about some cleanup near the walls of Konoha, and the shinobi leading it. "Uh... why is he dressed like that? This is Jiraiya, right?"

Peering over the scroll, Ao saw the updated image of the famous shinobi and gave an uncertain nod.

"I couldn't say. But the main thing is something else," her advisor continued. "It looks like we're going to have more obligations toward Konoha..."

Hearing her subordinate's words, Mei froze.

"Obligations?" The thought looped in her head.

"Their strength turned out to be far greater than expected," he continued. "We may have to make additional concessions, given this. As for... this man..."

"Man?" The word flickered through the woman's mind. "Is he saying I'm obligated to find a man?"

The air around Terumi grew thick.

"Perhaps this is some act of intimidation against enemies?" the Byakugan user continued uncertainly. But noticing his superior's darkened face, he choked on his words.

"Shut up. Or I'll kill you," she said coldly, sending chills down Ao's spine.

Mei had other sore spots too. Sometimes she'd latch onto words she herself ripped out of context and projected onto herself. The taboo subjects were her age, men, obligations, and relationships.

According to her family members (because absolutely nobody was suicidal enough to ask the woman herself), Mei had dreamed of having a relationship since childhood. But she was always too busy with clan duties, with training, with missions, and ended up alone. The Bloody Mist's betrayal, followed by her personality shift and growth in power, pushed her far from everyone else in this delicate area of human relations. She was undoubtedly respected and loved for many reasons, but as a leader. Because she truly cared about her subordinates. But to tie your life to such a... sometimes unstable and explosive person, no fool had been found yet. And this ate at Terumi.

While Ao did his best to impersonate a piece of furniture, Mei picked up the remaining scrolls and began reading them intently.

"This... really does need to be factored in. Ao, make sure Umisio is here a full week before the Leaf shinobi arrive."

"...Why?" the man asked uncertainly. He was used to their revolution leader occasionally threatening him with violence. But her mood swings still seemed too sharp. Just a few seconds ago she'd been about to kill him, and now a simply serious kunoichi sat before him.

"To have a disciplinary talk."

Shuddering again, the man nodded, indicating he'd handle it.

"Thank you for your work, Ao. Tomorrow we'll convene the council. You're free for the day."

When the shinobi left the office, the woman let out a heavy sigh. Then she spread out the scrolls featuring two very noteworthy shinobi in front of her.

"And why does he have to be so young?" she sighed mentally, tracing her fingers across one of the scrolls. Then, having looked her fill, she turned to the second. "No... I'm not that desperate."

Then, done with her moment of weakness, she clasped her hands behind her head and fell into thought.

"The Leaf can resurrect the First and Second Hokage... And they also have a shinobi equal to Hashirama, and he's coming here soon."

Pulling the necessary supplies from her desk, she began drafting a decree. Increase the intelligence budget on the Toad Sage Jiraiya and the Kyuubi jinchuriki Uzumaki Naruto by ten times. Also notify current and future operatives that the mission was being upgraded from "Secret" to "Top Secret," so they'd exercise maximum caution.

"Now the revolution must build an alliance with them. Everything has to be perfect, because the stakes are too high."


Over a month later.

It was afternoon, edging into evening.

The revolution's leaders, present in full force and headed by Mei, stood at the pier of a large paved port, watching the approaching ship.

After several exchanges of messages, both sides had agreed to make this meeting public. Of course, not without reason.

This time, no one objected to greeting the guests with full honors. Even Ao didn't grumble, while Umisio, a slender young man of about twenty with white hair, had been convinced to behave himself.

He might hate more than anything that the revolution wasn't handling things on its own and was turning to other countries. But the burn sites where the bandages had only recently come off still ached enough to keep him in check.

Finally, the vessel came to a stop. On deck, besides the already familiar Nara delegates, a grotesque woman, an Aburame, and a Sarutobi, one more person appeared. At least this one was dressed normally... relative to his previous outfit, of course.

Deciding not to wait for the gangway to be set up, he made a long leap and landed in front of the revolutionaries.

They were stunned.

But the ninja was only getting started...

"Listen and heed who stands before you!" Stepping back, he started striking bizarre poses, watched by all present with blank expressions. "Everyone in this world knows of the bravest of ninja!"

Spreading his arms wide and shifting his feet forward and back, he flowed into another pose.

"He who embodies the words 'courage' and 'fearlessness'!" He made a sharp sweep of his arms to the side, as if pushing off a wave.

The man didn't hold back his voice at all, bellowing for the whole street to hear. People in the distance started turning. The revolutionaries had cordoned off the port for the meeting, of course, but fifty meters behind them was a warehouse full of workers who'd been minding their own business.

"The shinobi from whose valor enemies can only run! The Sage of Mount Myoboku!" Quickly biting his finger, he blazed through hand seals and slammed his hand on the stone pier. A boom went off, and white smoke engulfed him. "Ji-ra-i-ya-a-a!!!"

Having finished his bellowing, this individual froze before the revolutionaries atop a toad in his "cool" pose: one leg in a forward lunge, the other in a squat, one hand thrust forward, the other clenched in a fist behind his back above his head.

"..." The greeting party had nothing to say.

"Well, we're here too," Sora simply noted, seeing that all ceremony and formality had perished in terrible agony, as the rest of the ninja landed behind Jiraiya. "Greetings."

The Sannin, not getting the desired reaction, was starting to get nervous, like a clown who'd failed to make the crowd laugh. But finally his eyes landed on a teenager with a bandaged sword on his back, with two handles.

"That's... so cool!" the teen exclaimed.

"Yeah! That's me!" Jiraiya shot him a finger-gun and underscored his point. Then he hopped off the toad and turned to Mei. "My lady, your beauty is more blinding than the midday sun!"

At that moment, nearly all the revolutionaries whipped their heads toward Jiraiya, then to their leader. But seeing that she was still in a daze and apparently hadn't heard the words that could be taken as a come-on, they exhaled.

"Where can we stay until we arrive in full?" the "Sage" asked.

"Huh?" The woman finally snapped out of it. Then, without acknowledging the scene, she greeted everyone in an official tone. And only afterward asked, "May I ask why Uzumaki-dono is delayed?"

"The little bra— I mean, our shinobi is delayed because he wanted to show up later. When the sun is a bit lower."

Mei wasn't sure whether to take these words literally or if they hid something deeper, but she simply nodded.

Soon, the guests were given the best rooms in the best hotel, assigned several guides in case they wanted to see the city, and left alone.

Jiraiya, meanwhile, behaved normally. And, oh gods, to the enormous relief of the Nara and a certain old man in Konoha, he kept himself in check and didn't make another move on the revolution's leader. Though this wasn't surprising. Said old man, having personally discussed the upcoming affair with his student, had promised to make all open hot springs closed if a scandal broke out because of him. Literally, with an impenetrable dome. The student himself, horrified to the depths of his soul, swore to be on his best behavior.

Terumi, meanwhile, sitting in her office, mulled over the fact that nothing was going as expected. She couldn't understand why the Konoha shinobi, who had previously behaved properly, were pulling this kind of stuff. If her etiquette teacher were here, he'd have gone after them with a kunai!

But she was not destined to learn the truth.

So, while she waited, the woman soon gathered all the revolution's leaders and decided to hold preliminary negotiations among themselves, to discuss what they'd seen and plan how they'd proceed.

But, of course, nothing could end well!

First, everyone felt faint vibrations. Then, very soon, the floor began to tremble faintly, and through the building's windows came a light ringing... As if somewhere in the distance, something pompously religious was being sung... A choir?

Nobody managed to go out and look before a young shinobi burst into the room.

"T-t-t-t-t..." he started stammering, pointing toward the wall with no window.

"Silence! Get yourself together right now! Then speak!" Ao shouted, seeing the newcomer couldn't get a word out.

"The s-sea split open! And between it, a temple is coming toward us!"

"What kind of nonsense is this?!" Ao erupted, but quickly fell silent when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Continue," Mei said, her expression hard to read.

"What's there to continue?!" the shinobi squeaked nervously. "A giant thing is heading straight at us! This is the end of the world!!!"

The revolutionaries exchanged glances. They would've loved to just send the newcomer off to the nuthouse, but the tremors they could feel and the echoes of the choir made them think there were grains of reality in his words.

"Let's go look," Mei said, raising her eyebrows in surprise as she rose to her feet.

To save time, she opened the window and went out through it, while the other shinobi followed her path.

Once outside, that is, on the roof of the four-story building they'd been in, the revolutionaries saw everything and were duly "enlightened"...

Staring mutely into the distance, they sent the messenger to fetch the Konoha shinobi if they hadn't come out themselves, while the council moved toward the coastline, where the water had already receded...

Between the parted waters, like a mountain, a majestic white temple rose. Its foundation pushed upward, raising the structure above the blue surface. Marble columns soared dozens of meters high, supporting a colossal roof.

The sun, shining directly behind the temple, blinded the onlookers, making the structure look like a dark silhouette against the bright light. When the titanic construction came to a halt, towering over the shore, an athletic, vaguely human figure stepped onto the tall, broad balcony at the front, approaching a pedestal. It was a stranger with sharply defined muscles, his body covered by nothing more than a cloth around his hips.

He stood so that his head eclipsed the sun. The blinding halo made it hard to make out his features, but a golden laurel wreath distinctly sparkled in his hair.

The crowd on the shore erupted in murmurs as the choir slowly faded.

People exchanged glances, not believing their eyes, debating whether what they were seeing was real.

Mei, who had already arrived, shot a stunned look at Jiraiya. But after receiving a heavy nod from the Sennin, meaning "yes, that's Uzumaki," she froze with an expression of utter shock.

But... a moment, and the noise died.

"!"

A suffocating, majestic pressure of chakra crashed down on everyone below. As if an invisible hand squeezed their hearts. Chills ran down the spines of the onlookers, making them fall silent and lock their eyes on the figure at the pedestal.

"In time, I shall erect a Great Empire." The clear voice carried over the crowd, making everyone shudder.

"Upon the ashes of empty ideologies and bloody paths... Reason shall triumph over the endless cycle of vengeance. Extinguish the flames of hatred for one another! Renounce the madness of wars! No warlord, no Kage, shall ever tear this world apart again!"

The voice was full of emotion, commanding grace, and terrifying theatricality.

"The nations shall unite, and the heart of the world shall beat here." He raised his hand and sharply clenched his fist. "Under My hand!.. All former beliefs are mere ash."

He relaxed one hand, then swept the other:

"Cast them aside! Become part of true greatness! Embrace the new, the only Path!"

Spreading his arms in a gesture of might, he fell silent. But at that very moment, the world answered!

The water on both sides surged upward, giant waves casting the temple into shadow. But not just near the structure; literally the entire horizon of water slowly rose! The sky beyond the clouds darkened, and only the sun remained exposed. In the gloom it blazed, it seemed, even fiercer, its rays outlining the shadowed figure. The light became like a halo behind his head, allowing only a silhouette to be seen: windswept light hair and a gleaming wreath.

His pressure grew even stronger, crashing down as an overwhelming avalanche, making the blood in the veins of those below seem to boil in response.

At last, the speaker reached the crescendo of his speech:

"I am the Emperor! I am your Father! I am your God! Do not worship Me, obey! Do not dare doubt My might! I bring Absolute Unity! And I know: I am right!!!"

With his final echoing word, the world seemed to roar in triumph. The masses of water behind him churned, towering crests looming behind the temple like an honor guard of the elements themselves. Lightning tore through the clouds, as if streaming from the halo of light, to descend as deafening claps of thunder. The earth shook harder still, as though it could barely bear the mere presence of a being of that level.

Then everything slowly began to subside. The water started dropping, forming smooth walls stretching into the distance once more. The sky began to clear, making the world and the temple beneath it brighter.

The young man above, like a living statue of a god, relaxed, turned, and descended from the pedestal by the stairs, then stepped forward and leaned against the massive railing.

"Rise." His cold command snapped everyone out of their trance, making them jolt. "I have come at your call. Revolution leaders, we will speak inside."

And without waiting, he turned and disappeared into the depths of the structure.

Mei, breathing sharply, pressed her palm to her chest where the heart is. The grip was gone, leaving only phantom sensations.

Casting another look full of astonishment at Jiraiya, she noticed that he himself had only just closed his mouth, which had been hanging wide open. Then, scanning the revolution's leaders, who were themselves starting to slowly recover, she shuddered.

"What the fuck was that..." Mei rarely allowed herself strong language even in her thoughts, but what she'd seen left her no choice.

"Maybe we should... run?" Natsuo suggested, raising his hand.

"Coward..." Josame noted.

The white-haired Hozuki leader, meanwhile, was nervously looking around, clearly calculating how to do exactly what his comrade had suggested.

"Better not. He'll get offended and come after you," Jiraiya explained stoically.

"Is he always like this?" Terumi asked the Sennin anxiously.

"Well, he usually doesn't show up quite so colorfully," Jiraiya dropped his shoulders.

Compared to the appearance of this... Emperor, the Sannin looked not just like some worthless babbling child. No, more like dirt under a fingernail. An insignificant microbe. Not even a virus, just, like, two atoms and a stick between them.

Meanwhile, having found his place in the pecking order, Jiraiya continued:

"Also, he seems to be in a bad mood right now. Don't know why. But you can still negotiate with him, if you're tactful."

Shifting her shoulders, Mei exchanged one more look with the revolution's leaders, then gave a nervous nod. They would go to this... manifested god.

Because not going would be far worse...

---

Author's Note: Just to be perfectly clear: this isn't a joke or a gag. Naruto isn't going to dispel the temple, pop out of a smoke cloud, and yell "Just a prank!" like he would have back at the Academy. Nope. Following the motivations established earlier, he has officially begun his campaign to subjugate the world. The stakes of this story have permanently risen. The exact reasons why the reincarnated protagonist is doing this will be explored further in the upcoming plot.

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

The revolution's leaders, along with Jiraiya, who had somehow wedged himself into their ranks, climbed onto the designated balcony and were now making their way, almost humbly, through a long marble hall.

The surroundings weren't the suffocating part. That was the owner of this temple. His chakra, vast and oceanic in volume, saturated everything around them. It didn't press down; it simply existed here. But the recent events had left their mark on the shinobi, and none of them could quite manage to square their shoulders with any relaxed confidence.

Between the soaring columns, breathtaking murals carved directly into the stone flickered in and out of view. They walked along a carved path leading toward their destination.

Soon, the group stepped nervously into a grand hall. At the far end sat a wide, low rectangular dais. On it rested two pieces of furniture that resembled red beds, each with a soft armrest curving up into a headrest. Two figures reclined upon them.

On one lay a blond man, watching the newcomers with cold, unhurried eyes.

On the other rested a beautiful girl with a remarkably well-proportioned figure and pink hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore white, loose garments as well, though hers were decidedly more modern, baring her midriff and allowing free movement. She watched the arrivals with mild, almost lazy interest, slowly eating grapes from a low table nearby.

"..." The blond said nothing. He merely shifted his gaze between the guests with an air of utter indifference. The guests, for their part, stared right back.

Jozame, standing there gawking like an idiot, felt a terrible cold creeping through him. For him, as a swordsman, the sight of an unarmed... shinobi? Right now it brought not calm, but only deeper alarm. The man before him radiated an absolute certainty that he simply had no need for any equipment, not even if every single person in the room came at him at once.

Mei was no less on edge, and she still couldn't figure out how to open the conversation. Just getting here had taken her through a full emotional gauntlet, from total, jaw-dropping disbelief at the start to a very strong desire to kill her spies right now. The first was understandable enough, but the second... How, how had they managed to hand her a photo of one of Konoha's key figures at an age far younger than he actually appeared? Their entire approach to potential allies had been built on that intel, among other things!

But what sent an even bigger shock through her system was how catastrophically they'd underestimated this "highly talented shinobi at roughly the level of Senju Hashirama." Not that Terumi had a perfect picture of the Second God of Shinobi's true strength, but then how had he not conquered the world long ago, and how had he managed to die, if his power was even remotely comparable to THIS? Had this Uzumaki acquired this power yesterday? Impossible! Someone should have been able to track that!

As they stepped inside, the presence of yet another figure connected to the delegation barely registered with Mei.

"At least they didn't miss everything," she noted upon entering, that her subordinates had been sharp enough to catch the obvious differences in appearance between two specific individuals. Digging slightly deeper, they'd firmly linked the two not only as academy classmates and former teammates but as something closer to a teacher-and-student bond, and probably something else just as deep...

At that point, Terumi's train of thought derailed, courtesy of certain... personality traits of hers. But the woman quickly seized control of herself and managed to resume the analytical thread:

"And yet... Haruno also looks older. That's less surprising, of course, given the previous intelligence failures. Still, her presence here. Is she here to show that he already has people who serve him willingly? Or is there some other reason?"

The chakra saturating the room still carried none of the crushing weight from his earlier appearance, which at least allowed the newcomers some capacity to gather their thoughts.

But one among them turned out to be a little too impressionable, and the silence didn't last.

Thud. Natsuo dropped to his knees, then, trembling, pressed his forehead to the floor.

The man was, technically, a shinobi like everyone else here. But he leaned far more toward being a diplomat and a merchant. His rank was only tokubetsu jonin.

"I told you not to bow to me," the voice finally rolled through the hall, and Iwamoto froze. It was the Uzumaki, though his tone had shifted, simpler, more direct. As though he'd partially removed the mask he'd worn earlier. "But fine. Let it be."

He waved his hand, then turned his gaze to the red-haired woman.

"Terumi Mei, correct?"

"Y-yes," she confirmed, still visibly tense. "Uzumaki-dono..."

"Emperor. Father. God," he cut her off just as she was about to clarify something. "Address me by one of those. Whichever you prefer."

The kunoichi's smile grew noticeably more strained as she gave a careful nod, and the speaker continued:

"Before you start peppering me with questions, and before we get to business, I'll lay out a few things. My policy. From this moment on, I am your lord. And don't worry, I have no intention of sorting people into castes. Not by birth, not by clan, not by country. I care only about qualities. Ability, character, willingness to work. This world has already spilled enough blood over someone else's surnames and titles."

The assembled guests exchanged glances, looking like they'd been dunked in ice water. They'd come hoping for something resembling a dialogue, but instead they were being handed facts, while their own role seemed to be... quietly agreeing?

And yet, beyond all that, in speaking without preamble, the Triple-Named had gone straight for the heart of the revolutionaries.

They understood that the appearance of the being before them had been a turning point for their entire country and possibly the world. It was natural to build the most terrifying theories about what awaited them. Now, without so much as a warm-up, this Emperor was drawing the lines of his vision, telling them what would be and how. And what he was saying was that yes, he would be their ruler, but nothing like the one they hated. Mei's own clan, like the families of many in this room, hadn't been burned for anything they'd done. They'd been burned for their genome. Virtually every life represented here had been shaped by the division between us and them. The promise that such a thing would no longer exist sent a jarring, dissonant tremor through them all.

They were bracing for the worst, but were handed a golden opportunity instead.

Natsuo, having finally found a scrap of composure, lifted his head. Seeing that nothing was actually being demanded of him, no further prostrations, he awkwardly climbed back to his feet.

But not everyone was so meek.

Hozuki, having finally pulled himself fully together, twitched. His clan, unlike, say, the Terumi, came from the first caste. Their ancestor had been a Mizukage himself, something they'd never stopped being proud of. They'd enjoyed certain privileges and intended to secure those privileges in the future as well. But right now, even trembling with fear, his hand moved involuntarily toward the pouch with his kunai. Then it froze, caught by Mei's look. The kind of glare that screamed at maximum volume: "Have I been hitting you in the head too hard?! Are you trying to get us all killed?! Get your hand down and stand at attention before I kill you myself!"

Reading their commander's reaction, the rest of the revolutionaries snapped to attention that much straighter, dutifully continuing to process the words of the being before them.

The Emperor, meanwhile, spoke on, paying not the slightest attention to these "childish" squabbles.

"I am immortal. I am not human. Do not compare me to yourselves or to others. I have no plans to start new wars. Quite the opposite. My interest is in a stable world where technology, medicine, fuinjutsu, and nations can develop rather than grinding people into meat. I will be living in this world for a very, very long time. It is not in my interest for it to burn every decade."

Listening to that and letting it sink in, the revolutionaries' faces took on a shade of skepticism. But then they recalled what they'd seen less than five minutes ago, and took a close look at the man speaking, and conceded that yes, the reports about this particular Uzumaki altering his own body did carry at least some truth. Given his power, immortality, and the different mode of thinking that came with it, didn't seem all that impossible.

And then, arriving at that thought, the revolutionaries took yet another gut punch. Because everything he was describing mapped so cleanly onto the aspirations of most people in this room. Every single one of them had waded through an ocean of blood. The very core of their struggle was to end the bloodshed on their own land.

"You are doing the right work. You have already begun to break the old, rotten system. That is worthy of praise. I have not come to take credit from you. I have come to ensure that what you have built does not collapse in five years under slogans disconnected from reality and under the rule of some new butcher. I will help you seize power, but in return, I ask one thing: that this power be integrated into a new order. I need your obedience."

And again... Had those gathered ever heard of Christianity, the image of the tempter serpent would have surfaced readily in their minds, so honeyed were the Emperor's words. Even despite his introduction, he hadn't opened with "I am a god here, and you are my insignificant slaves. Go stand in the corner while I handle everything." On the contrary, he'd acknowledged the revolution's contribution and invited them to become part of a larger project... Well, exactly like his speech from the platform, really.

Still, the concept of being subordinate to someone didn't sit comfortably with revolutionaries.

"Hashirama and Hiruzen wanted peace and prosperity. Both were stopped by time, by the limitations of their nature, and by the ambitions of others. I have inherited their ideals. But unlike them, I am not bound by age or convention. I will see it through."

Silence settled over the hall. Those present, gears grinding, worked to process what they'd heard.

The picture of the being before them, from the moment of their first encounter, had started coming into focus. This was no longer some impossible, unreachable deity from legend; it was more like... well, still a deity apparently, but one with goals that were more comprehensible and consistent. A being who didn't seem hostile toward them, and whose ideas didn't seem to contradict the revolution's goal of a decent life for the Land of Water. And yet something still itched. Like it was all too good. Like someone was lining them up to be royally fucked somewhere down the line.

"Now. Your questions."

With those calm words drifting through the hall again, the revolutionaries exchanged glances. Sakura on the dais continued eating her grapes with perfect serenity. Jiraiya, doing his best impression of a man with thoughts, felt distinctly out of place and clearly superfluous. His only comfort was that they hadn't thrown him out.

What followed was a rapid-fire quiz of pent-up questions, to which the blond on his lounger responded with methodical patience. He understood he was dealing with people, so he wasn't remotely surprised to find himself repeating the same points two or three times before they landed.

Natsuo, having recovered even further, asked what would happen to ordinary people. He got the predictable answer: nothing, really. The world would see fairly significant change, but they'd have good conditions to find their footing in the new social order. Especially given that, soon enough, personal strength would no longer be quite so paramount.

Jozame, whose clan sat atop the current Mist's hierarchy and who had been cast aside with Yagura's blessing, asked the obvious question about what would happen to criminals. By which, clearly, he meant Yagura and his own clan. He received a not entirely satisfying answer: in a long war, there were no "clean" sides. In the context of all the world's conflicts, even less so. No one here was clean, the Emperor included. So there would be no "perfect tribunal." Those who continued killing for the sake of fear or pleasure would be stopped, harshly. Those willing to stop and work for the good of the world would be given a chance. Not amnesty, but an opportunity to atone through action. The Emperor believed in usefulness. If a person could be useful, they'd get their shot. If not, well, too bad.

After that, it was Ao's turn. A man of sufficient pragmatism, iron nerve, and some genuine levelheadedness, he asked the pointed question: beyond simply existing in peace, what was the Emperor's actual incentive to be Emperor? He received a remarkably grounded answer: the Emperor might be powerful, but he couldn't match the combined productive output of billions of people. As Emperor, he stood to gain an enormous amount... while at the same time not condemning humanity to suffering. Because, however bad it sounded, a happy person whose basic needs were met, things like safety, food, shelter and the like, was far more effective when working on higher-order things. Art, medicine, economics. Simply because they had the time. By drawing on the fruits of a well-fed, content humanity, the Emperor himself would grow considerably stronger. And growing stronger was a necessity because of a possible future threat. He then outlined a theory he'd apparently presented before, with evidence, that while people here were busy scrambling in the mud, something from outside could arrive and wipe them all out. So the answer wasn't to keep scrambling. It was to evolve.

Duly impressed, as everyone present had been, the Byakugan's owner carefully asked what the revolution would concretely receive right now. The answer:

Protection from the Akatsuki and from neighbors, meaning other countries and hidden villages. If anyone moved against them with military force, the Emperor would intervene. Smaller conflicts, however, the revolutionaries were expected to handle themselves; that was within their capabilities and unlikely to come at a steep price.

In the not-too-distant future: sweeping domestic reforms. An end to the graduation massacres, an end to the persecution of "undesirable" clans. The establishment of new governance. Gradual restructuring in line with the changing reality: no large-scale conflicts meant dramatically easier logistics, access to any point on the planet, and a major shift in what sectors actually needed workers. A substantial number of shinobi would have to retrain into something less focused on cutting and killing and more centered on building, healing, sealing, and so forth. Alongside that, naturally, access to global knowledge in medicine, fuinjutsu, and a host of other fields, plus assistance in territorial reconstruction.

In general, the old system would not be kicked down all at once but rather transformed piece by piece. For instance, the existing treaty with Konoha would not be canceled; their food supply would continue as agreed. Cutting to the broadest possible summary, the Emperor was offering the world a boring life of stability and development.

There was, without a doubt, one more tricky question burning on everyone's tongue that no one dared voice: what guarantees were there that the being set to rule the world wouldn't simply change his mind, or decide he'd had enough peace and felt like orchestrating a massacre? Meaning, beyond his own stated interests, it would've been nice if he gave the world a kill switch, like Hashirama had done with the tailed beasts. But no. Given how Senju had ended up, and given the way everyone had been quick to exploit those "switches," expecting anyone to hand over a real lever of pressure was naive. Humanity had already demonstrated its own incompetence. Like the revolutionaries, most of them understood they were not in a position to make demands. So all they could do was hope for the reasonableness of the being before them and take solace in this: his reputation was, at present, remarkably clean? In Konoha, the Emperor had already defended the village, neutralized a bijuu, and subdued Orochimaru. He'd come here without killing anyone. And the odds of him suddenly changing his mind and letting everything spiral into a massacre were, statistically speaking, fairly low. At least in the near term.

And yet...

"I cannot simply accept all of this," Mei said carefully. "Your plans are enormous and frightening. But the words about castes, persecution, fighting for the pride of others... they strike too close to everything we're dying for. I won't give my oath on behalf of an entire nation right now. But I am willing to work and to watch what you actually do. If fewer people are dying, it will be hard for us to keep doubting you. For now, we need time."

"Time?" The Emperor raised an eyebrow. "It seems you've misunderstood. You have exactly two options."

At his words, Hozuki, who had begun the meeting with considerable fear and had since worked himself up into an unbelievable state of nerves, twitched again. Throughout the time he'd spent listening to the speeches of this being that had appeared in their country, his mind had been crumbling further and further under the weight of thoughts that tore at him. Even Mei's warning was losing its hold in his head.

"This world will change. But I will not force you to work. It will happen with you or without you. You simply shouldn't forget that you live in my world." With that, the blond's head slowly turned toward an even lighter-haired head. And no, not Jiraiya's. "Do you have something you'd like to say to me, Hozuki Umishio?"

"Your power..." the young man began, and every revolutionary in the room snapped their eyes to him. The shadow of desperation on his face did not sit well with any of them. "It isn't real, is it? Your village has the most skilled genjutsu users..."

The kid had found a thin, brittle straw connecting him to the old reality, and was gripping it with his teeth rather than fall into the new one.

"Your bravado is just... too good to be true! Do you really think it isn't obvious that you're dragging us all into some dirty scheme of yours?!"

And honestly, there was something to what Umishio was saying. The probability that any shinobi could acquire this kind of power was so vanishingly small it was essentially zero. Maybe it really was an incredibly precise genjutsu, crafted specifically for the revolution's leadership. They might even have been taken separately, one by one, to apply it this way. And maybe the entire world around them was an illusion? There was no end to the rumors about the Sharingan's ability to brainwash people. And what mattered here was that maybe this Triple-Named really didn't have his power, and they were being temporarily recruited to carry out commands convenient for the Leaf! It would be the most masterful deception in the history of humanity!

Even as he said it, Hozuki wasn't entirely sure why he'd done it. To prop up his ego? If he told himself he was inside an illusion, he could pretend to comply and then do whatever he wanted. Except right now he'd probably just made his own position worse.

The people beside him understood that too.

The Emperor listened to all of it. Then he slowly tilted his head back and looked down at the speaker.

"You dare doubt my power," he stated coldly, then extended his free hand outward.

Flash!

The revolutionaries, already stretched tight on another peak of dread, lurched when they saw that dangling from the Emperor's hand by the hair... was their comrade's head! The body collapsed to the floor.

One second, and they lurched again, each in their own way. Jozame made to surge forward; Mei moved to stop him; the rest could only watch in mute horror.

But then everyone froze like wax figures when they caught movement nearby.

Hozuki's body shuddered several times, then began to move, clumsily, unsteadily, trying to rise... without a head. Where the neck had been was something like an impossibly clean, black, paper-thin seal: a two-dimensional ellipse, smooth and flat, hiding all the shinobi's innards from view.

And when the head in question turned to face them...

"Aaaaaah!" Umishio's eyes flew open, and he let out a scream of pure terror. This despite the fact that his lungs were not, at this particular moment, connected to his mouth.

But almost immediately, the screaming lips seemed to melt and seal shut, leaving the hall in dead, total silence.

"Silence cools the mind. Grants wisdom. In one week, you will have gathered enough scraps of it, or you will be dead."

After those words, a portal opened several meters from the Emperor's lounger. By the color of the water, it led to the Kanashi Ocean to the south. A moment later, the head sailed through, the Hozuki Kekkei Genkai transforming it into water midair, where it surfaced as a formless, translucent shape on the waves. The portal closed.

"As for the rest of you: also one week. More than sufficient to verify my authenticity. If I do not see your compliance, this land will find itself another administrator. You're dismissed."


Uzumaki Naruto's POV

With a cold expression fixed in place, I watched the revolutionaries file out of the hall, eyes bugging out, leading one headless body between them.

Displeasure crept onto my face.

Jiraiya had been wrong; my mood hadn't been bad going in. I'd had a plan: stay cold, no jokes, project the kind of regal aura that makes people fall in line rather than theorize. A lot of thought had gone into it. This temple, for one, which had required me to go through upwards of a thousand academic papers on architecture before I built the thing with my own hands. The look, for another: exposed muscles designed to subconsciously press on people's minds. And yet... it still wasn't enough. Someone still crawled out of the woodwork, cooked up conspiracy theories, and twisted everything to make it look like one big scam, as if he, bright boy, had caught me red-handed.

Said bright boy had quite a swim ahead of him. Not one hour. Not even twenty. Excellent time to reflect on his behavior.

To be fair, by all accounts, this Hozuki wasn't stupid. He'd made it to the leadership of the revolution, and he ran his clan. The kid's nerves had just snapped.

"I thought he'd hold it together," Sakura sighed nearby. "They were so composed at first. You made a good impression, Naruto. But looks like you overdid it..."

"Yeah," I agreed. "But honestly, Terumi had them well drilled. Except for the one. So they're not like... any of the Sannin. Right, Jiraiya?"

I directed that at the man who'd stayed behind, whose every team member had taken a beating from me at some point.

He let out a sigh.

"This isn't how I pictured it... the end of the eternal cycle of hatred."

"Generations will pass before human nature actually changes. Unfortunately, this is only the twilight of the old ways. Not the end."

The Sage started making sounds again, this time closer to grumbling.

"Like Mei said, all these changes... they look terrifying. Naruto... aren't you afraid of becoming too inhuman?"

His question earned a raised eyebrow from me.

"Old man, you're being dramatic. Making up crap. Thinking a lot is fine, sure. But action is what gets results. Now go on, get drunk at a bar or whatever you need after all this."

"Yeah..." He turned and took my advice.

My eyes slid toward Sakura, who had more to say.

"What we're doing is just 'freaking incredible,' as Karin would put it. I'm so glad I can have a hand in something like this. And so grateful I have the chance..."

"Oh, come on." I waved it off, a little embarrassed, and pushed myself to a sitting position. "My treasure. I'm glad I found you too..."

"My role is clear to me now... Working with these revolutionaries will be easier for me specifically. They're not as afraid of me."

"Exactly. But they'll need to get used to me too, eventually. For now, though, I'll have to put the load on you..."

We exchanged a few more mutually flustered sentences, weaving business talk into the warmth between us. Then, standing up, we went over once more what we intended to do in the near future. Because this particular appearance had been about far more than just the revolution.

Afterward, making my way down the corridor, I smirked.

"Didn't hand them over after all," flashed through my mind. According to my reliable sources, Mei had brought a certain scroll with her. And inside that scroll were several cakes prepared specifically for me. She'd apparently been too rattled by how bizarre the situation was to remember. A pity. Had she presented those upfront, I might've been kinder to them. "Ah well, what's done is done. As for this plan... I hope the provocation works. Because if it does, we earn their trust and become a local hero in one move. After that, getting compliance should cause minimal problems."


Deep Night. Interlude. Karatachi Yagura

The young-looking man sat in his residence, face unreadable, listening to the animated report of a spy. The spy, jabbing at what appeared to be someone's hand-drawn icon of a man on a platform, launched into what bordered on a fanatic's account of how, on the western edge of the country, something close to a deity had materialized, had already spoken with the revolutionaries, and that by all indicators, the latter were on the verge of falling into line.

What was more, even setting that aside, the revolution had secured enormous backing from the sudden, entirely unexpected arrival of a Konoha delegation. One of the Legendary Sannin. And the Nine-Tails' jinchuuriki...

"I need to be very careful," moved through Karatachi's mind. "I need to reach out to the Leaf immediately. Try to pull them to our side. As for the revolution, I need to urgently prepare sabotage operations, weaken them as much as possible. And then..."

But Yagura's rational train of thought was not destined to continue on those tracks. A shinobi who had been watching from the shadows stepped forward and dropped both the spy and the Mizukage simultaneously into a Sharingan genjutsu.

Moments later, by the will of a certain masked Uchiha, Yagura initiated an emergency mobilization. He had "suddenly changed his mind" and decided that the shinobi of the Mist needed to move right now to break the alliance between the revolution and Konoha before it could solidify.

Instead of careful, measured action in the Village's best interest, Kiri would now be throwing itself into an enormous gamble. All for the purpose of testing the capabilities and hidden cards of a certain entity that had turned out to be inconveniently powerful.

The Akatsuki's shadow leader had grown tired of sacrificing his inner circle of pawns. Yagura, besides, had more than served his purpose. In the near future, his fate was to become a sacrifice for the empty husk of the Ten-Tails regardless. At least this way, he'd be useful for a little longer.


The Following Morning

Mei sat in silence with the revolution's leadership in the meeting room. At this particular moment, no negotiating was happening; they were hearing out the accounts and perspectives of various people from within the movement.

"So I'm standing on deck, watching this temple," said a scruffy-looking captain of a fishing vessel. "And I couldn't move a finger, I'm telling you, not while He was talking. And when this... God raised everything, I absolutely lost it! I had a side angle on it, see, so my eyes could still move! And when He raised His hands, it wasn't just the water nearby that went up. The whole ocean rose! All the way to the horizon! I thought: he lets go and that's it, the city's done! That kind of tsunami would've wiped everything to hell. But no, He held it! And set it down smooth..."

"Understood, Tuchiyo-san. That's enough," Mei noted without emotion. The man bowed and left.

Sitting with everything she'd seen and heard, the kunoichi found it genuinely difficult to piece together adequate thoughts.

That speech... the Emperor's. It had simply been too piercing. His words had landed somewhere deep in Mei's soul, as if he'd been very well informed about her and the revolution. And at the same time, she both wanted and didn't want to believe Umishio's theory: that they'd been trapped in a genjutsu, and that the reality around them was just an illusion. But the very thought terrified her, because it meant they were completely helpless.

The woman addressed those present:

"Your thoughts?"

"This is totally fucked," Jozame offered concisely. He received looks suggesting he'd just stated the most obvious thing in the room.

"It's unlikely to be genjutsu," Ao noted. "The Byakugan can't be fooled that way."

"Maybe we're each just a piece of someone else's genjutsu," Chojuro said thoughtfully. He'd somehow ended up in the room as well. "In that case, none of us can be trusted."

"We are not in an illusion!" Ao snapped.

"That's exactly what you'd say if you wanted to convince us otherwise!" the boy shot back, refusing to yield.

"People in genjutsu are rarely capable of critical thinking. And you're thinking way too much!"

After that pointed rebuttal, Chojuro's brief flare of courage fizzled out. Finding no comeback, he simply deflated.

"An illusion is called reality if they're indistinguishable," Mittei said with complete detachment.

"Alright," Mei cut in. "Ao is right. A genjutsu this long and this detailed is too unlikely. We proceed on the assumption that this is real, but we stay cautious. I'll go first: the ideas laid out by that shinobi from Konoha are extremely promising. Frightening, but achievable. Your thoughts?"

Ao, arms tucked into his sleeves, furrowed his brow.

"As always, relying on an outsider is suspect. Even if he is... that, we, shinobi of the Land of Water, can manage our own affairs."

"And how exactly are you proposing we refuse his offer?" Terumi asked, at which the shinobi's expression grew even more severe.

"Everyone has a weakness. You don't actually want us to just roll over and submit?"

"He hasn't given us any reason to doubt his word... yet," Natsuo said cautiously.

"Yet," Ao underscored.

The tension was rising. Terumi did not appreciate her advisor's implication that she wanted to humiliate her own shinobi.

"Mei-sama, Jozame..." Natsuo began carefully, and both looked at him sharply. But one of the country's most pivotal figures had to raise this, had to know how they'd act and whether anyone might pull something unexpected. "He... intends to spare Yagura, doesn't he..."

Jozame's fist clenched with barely contained fury, as a shadow moved across the woman's face.

"I think time will tell who is actually capable of redemption."

"Hm..." Jozame's mood lifted, a cold, vicious smile twisting his mouth. "People rarely change. Ah well. Too bad."

"Exactly," Mei nodded. "Our vengeance, even if diminished, will still come to pass."

Bang! The door slammed open.

Out of nowhere, the same messenger from before burst into the room. The same one...

"I-I... I-I... I-I..." he started sputtering, but catching Ao's sharp glare, he clamped his mouth shut, breathed in and out several times, and started again, slowly. "Yagura is mobilizing troops! Analysis says they're coming for us!"

The revolutionaries' faces went stone-still in response.

"Well then... We'll soon see whether those guarantees from the... Emperor... were genuine," Mei observed. "For now, full combat readiness!" Her voice cracked through the room like a whip, and everyone inside it, and everyone within two walls in every direction, straightened. "Check all approaches! Mittei! Reinforce the detonation grid on the perimeters of our projected engagement zones immediately! Jozame, get every fighter up and battle-ready! We rely on ourselves first. Right now, with home-territory advantages, our forces are enough to hold our ground without losing too badly! Ao, take command of all scouts and sensors! Report to my desk every thirty minutes! You, messenger, get to Umishio's second-in-command. Tell him to take his entire Hozuki clan and set up ambushes at all known enemy command positions! Chojuro!... Go make me some coffee."

"Yes, Mei-sama!" everyone shouted in unison, including the messenger, then scattered in every direction.

"And just like that, the quiet life is over again," the woman sighed, now alone in the room. Then, rising, she walked slowly outside.

She needed to collect a few things, then relocate with everyone else to the island where the attack would most likely hit.

But first... she had to deliver the news to this... Emperor.

---

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[Welydora]

Interlude. Uzumaki Naruto

I hadn't been sitting in my temple all that long before Terumi Mei quietly stepped inside and requested an audience.

This time, instead of the lectus-couch, I was seated on a pompous throne in the style of a marble building with gilding.

"Yagura is pulling his forces together." The kunoichi didn't beat around the bush the moment she walked in.

"I know," I replied, which visibly surprised her. Still, this time I actually bothered to explain. "The movement of large masses is very palpable…"

A wave of my hand, and between us, under Terumi's already bewildered stare, a dynamic image materialized: a port, the sea stretching beyond it, and hundreds upon thousands of shinobi hastily boarding ships, streaming in from the distant city.

I was using an advanced telescope technique, the kind Hiruzen employed with his crystal ball, plus an illusion similar to an illusory clone, only more advanced.

"This mobilization… It feels too sudden," Mei said after staring for a few seconds, shifting to her next thought. "Is it possible someone was pulling Yagura's strings again this time?"

To that, I simply shrugged, which earned me an even more bewildered look.

And honestly, I genuinely didn't know. Thanks to the control exerted by that masked prick, Yagura had been deeply unstable, if the reports were anything to go by. It was damn near impossible to tell which thoughts were actually his and which had been planted.

"I am not omniscient," I clarified. "But I know a great deal. It is good that you reported this. As I said, I, the Emperor, will intervene."

Terumi gave a careful nod, then made a show of wanting to ask exactly how that would be done. I explained that I would raise a temple on the shore and meet them at the front line. While the Mist shinobi were still aboard their ships and on the water. After that, to Mei's anticipation but not particular enthusiasm, I began issuing orders:

"You're raising your forces, that's also good. But I'll make an adjustment: you're doing it not to fight, but to manage those who surrender."

"—!" Mei flinched, clearly wanting to say something. But she didn't dare… I closed my eyes.

"Stepping aside from the topic for a moment. Let me be clear: here, in this temple, in your terms a headquarters, I am less a god and more a manager. You can relax, get yourself together. What I need from you are facts and objections."

The tightly wound kunoichi blinked in surprise again and let herself unwind just a fraction. I made a mental note that I clearly needed to expand my list of talking points in my self-introduction, because people around me did nothing but look shocked.

"How exactly do you see this playing out?" she finally asked, deciding to hear me out fully.

"I'll do what I did when I first came here. Only stronger…" Mei, possessing a functional memory, simply gave a slow nod. "Your people will handle escort duty, screening, disarmament, and medical care for the arriving surrendered forces. At the point of engagement, set up three half-rings that will close into full rings once the surrendered move inside. The outer ring is for catching runners. The middle ring is for security. The inner ring is for weapons collection, sorting, and initial screening."

"That… We were planning that as Plan B. In case—"

Having heard my plan, the head of the revolution began speaking uncertainly but couldn't bring herself to say out loud the direct assumption that I might not pull it off. Recalling the fate, not the darkest but hardly a cheerful one either, of their leader Hozuki, that was entirely unsurprising.

Hearing this bleating, I suppressed the urge to sigh, rested my head on my hand, which I'd already draped over the armrest. My gaze went especially piercing.

"Don't sugarcoat it for me," the statement escaped me, and the kunoichi flinched. "I understand. You don't trust me. Preparing a full front is extra overhead on your end."

"Even so…" She found the nerve to push her point, and I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes.

"Fine. If you want to run several thousand shinobi ragged preparing approaches and mining square kilometers of coastline, knock yourself out. They'll be the ones putting everything back the way it was afterward. Fine, if it gives you peace of mind."

At that, a visibly heartened Mei agreed enthusiastically.

"But that's not all," I didn't miss the chance to bring her back down. "I'm forbidding summary justice against the prisoners."

The woman's wide-open eyes told me plainly that the odds of that particular order being followed were… not the highest. But I continued.

"Victory is inevitable. But afterward, we cannot allow a massacre, or revenge, or chaos. Do your best to get that through to your people."

Terumi had no choice but to agree.

After that, adding a few more points, I managed to convince her not to stress too much about things going wrong. The kunoichi then left the temple to prepare to move to the other island. I had to do the same.


The following morning, or rather closer to noon, my humble self appeared in the sky above the island the revolutionaries had seized.

Since the Land of Water was an archipelago, the Mist shinobi would have to arrive by sea, aboard ships. And the trip was no joke. Roughly thirty kilometers from the neighboring island. They wouldn't arrive until evening.

Of course, shinobi could have crossed that distance far faster over the water. But not every shinobi is strong. An army is about far more than individual strength. Many would be winded by even a ten-minute sprint, but if they arrived rested, they could still contribute. So they would make the crossing by ship, along with all their supplies and other gear.

Below me spread the sight of dozens of people swarming about. Most of them, using Earth Release, were burying explosives. A lot of explosives. A truly staggering amount. The revolutionaries had volcanoes here and, well, a passable economy already, which for their quasi-state was already pretty impressive, so they could afford to splash out on a fairly solid defense.

After watching the activity below for a bit, I picked a suitable spot right over the water, descended slightly, and my voice unexpectedly carried across, warning everyone not to panic and that I had everything under control. But my sudden appearance alone, dropping straight out of the sky, had already thrown people off balance. Then they saw my two fingers come together in the seal for economical concentration, and the earth and water began to tremble. At that point, everyone sharply but without panic, since the shinobi were spread at decent intervals, cleared the area to watch as, seconds later, displacing cascading walls of water, an exact replica of the temple that had recently "arrived" at their other island rose from the strait. To say everyone lost their shit would be an understatement. Some shinobi with an affinity for Earth Release could create something resembling a building, sure. Powerful shinobi, like Mei, could reshape entire battlefields. But to create something not only massive but impossibly intricate and deliberate? No, don't even bother trying.

Though, perhaps they were overestimating me somewhat. I had planned this structure well in advance; it even had basic but functional fuinjutsu networks built in for future containment.

Not long after, the revolution's leadership swept in from the camps that had been set up before dawn. Namely, the duo of Mei and Ao. I had just finished my work and was waiting for them. All to explain that here was a temple. Very solid walls, and plenty of space. Not just grand halls, but also storage for weapons, rooms for interrogation, a space that could be properly set up as a field hospital, and a whole block of individual cells. And that they should make full use of everything inside.

"But… uh…" Mei failed to get a thought out, prompting Ao to throw her a sharp look for the stammering. But having thrown that look, he didn't open his own mouth either.

"My temple is not the sacred space you're imagining it to be. Yes, it's a symbol. But beyond that, it's an architecture of governance."

"Pragmatic," the shinobi nodded.

"You're starting to understand me. Inside, you're responsible for logistics; I handle the outer perimeter and the pressure. Continue your work."

With that, the mini-meeting was over. I watched the pair of shinobi walk away.

Then, on a whim, I decided to check what these ninja had managed to put together. Fortunately, with some concentration, my spherical vision could see into the distance almost like a Byakugan. Beyond the various fortifications, there was a clear distribution of the right forces in the right positions. Josame, Chojuro, and many other ninja I could feel were genuinely capable were deployed at interception points. Mittei was flickering through Shunshin, overseeing the sabotage placement, meaning the island's detonation charges. The shinobi near the shore, having caught hell from their recovered commanding officers, were back to working diligently. Several Hozuki were already scoping out positions far out at sea to cut off distant retreat across the water. In the distance, I also caught Zabuza with my "eyes," placed in command of one of the defensive nodes… Well, look at that, Mei's personal refinement program at work. He'd certainly dropped a few rungs on the career ladder. Further off, near the city, I came across a slightly odd scene: gathered in front of a pile of crates was a crowd of shirtless, enormously built men, looking like they'd just escaped a bodybuilding competition, while standing atop the crates was… I believe her name was Yase Ai, a large, rocky-looking woman. She was belting out a speech, occasionally throwing her arms wide and even throwing a full punch at the air at one point. She was currently… hmm, rallying the troops and telling them how they were going to tear everyone apart. Sora stood nearby with a perfectly indifferent expression, watching. It was… charismatic, yeah.

Noting that they had things well in hand here, I relocated home, leaving a clone behind to keep watch. There was still plenty of time before the attack, so I decided to stop by my favorite confectionery shop and properly decompress while all sorts of people out there were busting their asses.


Evening. On hundreds of ships of varying sizes, crammed onto the decks or packed inside the hulls, more than ten thousand shinobi waited. Not just chunin and above: there were plenty of genin among them too. The Mizukage's unexpected order hadn't allowed for a full mobilization; many shinobi were on distant missions across the world, and a couple thousand simply couldn't be pulled back in time. But the number now moving across the water was already monstrous.

"We have allowed these traitors to live on our islands for too long. We showed weakness when we failed to exterminate them all. Now they have sunk so low as to attempt to sell our country to the Village of Leaves! We must tear out this threat immediately, before it takes root!!!" Such was Yagura's order.

Many of those now swaying on the ships were nursing serious doubts about their leader. He was extraordinarily powerful, but his policies were… too selective and too painful for a portion of the shinobi. Many feared him and more than a few had been eyeing the revolutionaries, wondering whether to join. Yet this was hardly the first wave of revolution, and Yagura had remained in power through all of them. Many had simply given up and made their peace with it.

And now they'd been yanked from their routines and shoved, without even being given a chance to catch their breath, toward a slaughter…

Insanity, thought many. Their leader was a madman; that had long since stopped being a rumor and hardened into near-established fact. Yet even so, many of them were only half-frustrated right now. Because their path, despite the spectacularly terrible tactic of a straight-on frontal collision, still held a non-trivial chance of success. Even if far from rosy.

The Mist shinobi had a numerical advantage. A little more than twice what the revolutionaries could field… But on their own territory, with better supply lines and command, if the revolutionaries chose guerrilla warfare, there was no guarantee the Mist loyalists would come out on top at all. Furthermore, the Mist soldiers had been told point-blank that the Leaf was backing the revolutionaries. They hadn't sent troops, but that wasn't guaranteed to last. And the fact that a few shinobi had been sent anyway was both unnerving and, in a strange way, somewhat relieving to many Mist ninja.

One of the Legendary Sannin, Jiraiya, and the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails, who'd been generating the kind of wild rumors lately you could listen to for days.

The problem was that those two could tilt the war dramatically, cut down a lot of regular soldiers, and, in theory, could even defeat the Mist's own monster: Yagura, who had fully subjugated the power of the Three-Tails. The silver lining was that if Karatachi were taken down, the country would descend into enough chaos that a man could hightail it and bolt for some other continent without worrying too much about hunter-nin coming after deserters.

Defectors stop being a top priority when the leadership is busy subjugating their own country.

So, by and large, the average Mist shinobi didn't so much want victory as they wanted Yagura and the Konoha shinobi to tear each other apart, while they personally stayed alive and got to live a quiet life as far from this snake pit of Five Great Villages politics as possible.

Beyond those holding the pragmatic views above, there were, of course, two more factions among the Mist's thinkers. But both were widely considered behind their backs to be just as out of their minds as Karatachi himself. The first were the patriots, people who saw the butcher's methods as the right course, steering the Village toward greatness, prosperity, and all that. The second were the idiots who genuinely hoped that maybe, just maybe, Konoha would roll in alongside the revolutionaries and take over, and then of course everything would be fine and they wouldn't be turned into colonial slaves… Though the second group was genuinely sizable, thanks to what many other shinobi considered equally idiotic rulers of the Leaf, who would genuinely try to impose order on a neighboring country, draft treaties about living in harmony, and pat everyone on the head. However, the majority of average Mist shinobi had enough brains in their heads to understand that the Hokage didn't rule the Leaf alone, and that the Leaf would indeed continue to be ruled by the Hokage, but if Kiri were seized, his reach would be too short to control his own representatives, who most likely wouldn't share that Will of Fire of theirs.

Maybe the Kiri ninja were wrong. Things could turn out any number of ways. But maybe not, and taking that risk was terrifying. And so, while most of the Mist shinobi weren't exactly in a rosy mood about what was coming, they nevertheless held out hope for the best…


Some time later. It was deep evening, when the sun had already painted the world orange and was half-hidden behind the horizon.

One of the commanders of a large unit, a man with pale blue skin, stood at the bow of his ship with an anticipatory grin. He was savoring the thought of his feet finally touching dry land. And how his cold, ocean-stiffened body would warm itself in the blood of traitors…

The deputy head of the Hoshigaki clan had heard plenty about the rats dug in here. People who had no techniques of their own refined through generations, no clan, no concept of honor. The shinobi was already picturing it: crashing into their camp, feeling the heft in his hands as he lifted bodies on his two-handed sword.

As a member of the upper caste, unlike many of his peers, he actually enjoyed doing the work typically reserved for the third caste. Killing gave him what he so desperately lacked: genuine emotion. Only when adrenaline was screaming through his veins did he truly feel alive.

And now the shore was nearly within reach. Except they could see something beyond the expected coastline: a temple? Unusual for these lands, very much so. But recently, just very recently, certain rumors had been spreading through the village about a temple just like it. Those rumors had been… highly impressive. Impressive enough that a sizable portion of the Mist shinobi began to feel deeply uneasy just from the sight of the structure.

"Mizukage-sama!" A voice rang out from a lookout on the mast of the neighboring ship, where the head of the Mist himself was currently sailing. "There… it's him! Uzumaki!"

"Move forward!" Without hesitation, Karatachi's thunderous roar carried across hundreds of meters. "Stay sharp!"

Hoshigaki, hearing the certainty in his leader's voice, stretched his lips into a bloodthirsty grin. That certainty partially spread to the others, but the man also noted that a considerable number of shinobi remained visibly shaken.

"Tch. Weaklings," he muttered under his breath, then went still, waiting.


Not everyone immediately noticed that something in the world had begun to shift the moment Yagura gave his command…

The noise of the waters slowly faded, while the sky shifted its pigment from warm orange to an increasingly deep crimson. The sun, positioned directly behind the temple, seemed to swell with dark blood-red color within just five minutes.

Finally, the wind died, and the water went completely flat.

The ships had come to a halt at a distance of somewhere between five hundred meters and a kilometer, far enough that they still needed to reach the shore but close enough to fully take in both the temple looming to an absurd height and the oppressive atmosphere surrounding it.

A dead silence fell as everyone just looked around, glancing at the temple, at their leaders, and not a single soul dared to be the first to speak. But someone else spoke for them.

"You didn't come here for a holiday, did you?" The voice that swept through the space around them, sounding as if the speaker were standing right next to each of them, was bone-chilling, the kind that made you shudder. "Who I am should be known to you. The rules I have established, likewise. So those of you who have no desire to taste the bitterness of punishment… I am ordering you to come here, to the temple, and surrender. You will become members of a new community and will find a path to redemption."

A tremor ran through the Mist's army. The story they had only heard, and only a handful among them had ever seen the icon, was unfolding before their eyes. The figure of a god, whose very outline couldn't even be made out through the blinding light of the sun…

Yagura, seeing this, moved quickly to restore confidence in as many ninja as he could before his force crumbled without anyone even striking a blow:

"Shinobi of the Mist! We are here to defend our honor! We will not allow Konoha's invaders and these insurgents to subjugate us! For the Hidden Mist! Forward!!!"

And, to no small degree, those brief words worked.

Karatachi jumped off the ship onto the water's surface, gripping his hook-staff, and in that same instant thousands of shinobi began to pour down one after another in an unending avalanche, taking to the water as well. Some, seeing the resolve of others, found their own courage, and their numbers kept swelling.

Echoing their leader, countless throats erupted into roars, whipped up by the raw adrenaline of impending battle. The air filled with a cacophony of restless, hungry sound.

Among them was him. Hoshigaki's racing heart trembled at what was about to happen. He could already feel the flesh of his enemies on his fingertips.

The water rushed beneath the shinobi's feet as the temple continued to loom larger, growing ever closer. Many tried to peer ahead, and some, stepping into its shadow, managed it. In that moment they saw not a figure standing upon a pedestal but a blond leaning casually against a low railing, simply watching them in nothing but white cloth around his hips and a golden laurel wreath. But beyond that… it all seemed far less scary than they'd heard. A more or less ordinary-looking person, as mortal as any of them.

Except…

A barely visible wave washed over the advancing army, and the world seemed to fill with blood. The taste and smell of iron flooded lungs and throats at once, making many freeze in place as everything around them filled with a faint crimson haze. And then…

Thousands of shinobi were literally knocked off their feet as an overwhelming aura crashed down upon the world!

What descended was not so much pressure as the presence of hell itself made manifest on earth. Horrific illusory visions immediately flooded the minds of those who had fallen.


Hoshigaki himself, having barely weathered the initial impact of the aura, felt his muscles seize a moment later and went down onto the water. A beat of clarity, and he realized he was under someone's direct attention. In a futile attempt to jerk his head, he froze. The ninja heard his own heartbeat, clear as day, and then scorching, soul-deep pain drowned his mind.

His limbs were wrenched and torn away. The deputy felt the full horror of it, everything his own nerves transmitted, unbearable agony. But he didn't black out; his consciousness didn't fade. Hoshigaki felt his heart hammering wildly, felt the water beneath him growing warm with blood. But only after a couple seconds, his mind submerged in agony, did he fully grasp what had happened to him. And that realization only hit him with even greater despair. He was alive in the body of a dead man. Only pathetic seconds remained before he left his body entirely.

Like a switch being flipped, the world shuddered again. His mouth, no longer restrained by anything, fell open and let out a cry of pure despair.

And thousands of others answered him in kind. The coastline, which had plunged into silence moments before, filled once again with an orchestra of screaming. But now the screams held only pain.

Struck as if by lightning, Hoshigaki seized up. Then his body, the one without limbs, lurched upright onto what had seemed to be ripped-out legs. Again he didn't understand what was happening, but the pain had stopped. In terror, he looked himself over, and to his utter bewilderment, his body was completely intact. When his gaze swept the surroundings, the sight that met him was hundreds of fallen comrades.

Some were convulsing, clawing at their own faces, screaming without pause. Some, with empty stares, were gazing into nothingness, whether lying flat or on their knees. Some were curled up, choking on their own saliva and tears, sobbing.

Not far away, a young shinobi held a kunai in his shaking hands. His legs had folded under him, lowering him into the water. But he didn't notice. Instead, his gaze was fixed on something in front of him. But there was nothing there.

"No… Yuriko… I didn't mean to…" Trembling, he dropped his head to stare at the kunai, which seemed soaked in blood to him. "N-nooo! That wasn't me! I didn't do it! NOOO!"

Snapping his head to the side, Hoshigaki caught sight of a ninja clamping both hands over his mouth. Sobbing into his palms, he twisted his torso left and right in erratic spasms. As if he was seeing something horrific, trying to get up and run, but something wouldn't let him.

Another glance, and he saw yet another Kiri warrior. Standing perfectly still. But in his wide-open eyes, there was no spark of life.

He turned back. Behind him, hundreds of shinobi were running, not hiding their primal terror at all. He'd ended up among the weak-willed ones who couldn't manage a single step at first, while the "lucky" ones, screaming uncontrollably, had already bolted toward the open ocean, as far from here as possible.

Seeing his chance, his mind screamed: Run! He lurched forward, immediately tripping over someone's body. But, refusing to stop, he crawled a few more meters across the water, splashing it aside, before scrambling to his feet and running again.

He didn't understand what this was, why he felt this primal terror. But every fiber of him was screaming where it was coming from and who he needed to flee.

No fear of being branded a traitor, and whatever came with that, could hold him now. His previous supreme terror, the demon Yagura, had been shoved far to the back of his mind. Because right now, the deputy was in the immediate vicinity of something that could, on a passing whim, make him know the most wretched agony imaginable. He was in the power of a monster that had not yet focused its attention on him. And while that was still the case, every fiber of Hoshigaki's being understood one thing: while there was even the smallest chance, he needed to go. Without looking back.


Unfortunately for those running, the world was not nearly as kind as they had hoped. The creature they were fleeing from had no intention of letting them scatter.

Behind their backs came a tremendous metallic peal, and they saw massive golden chains arcing through the sky, soaring past the ships to encircle a simply enormous expanse!

Another moment, and after the chains drove themselves in, a barrier blazed into existence between them, even redder than the world around it.

The hearts of the shinobi went cold with the understanding that they were sealed inside…

But that was not yet the end…

"R-A-A-A-A-A!!!" A deafening but familiar roar of a Tailed Beast erupted from the very direction most of them had been running toward, which sent the majority sharply correcting course and, even despite the barrier, preferring to scramble as far toward its edge as possible from what their lord had now become…

Karatachi, as a certain blond could see from a distance, had managed to withstand the pressure thanks to genjutsu-disrupting chakra in his head. And under orders from afar, he began to act.

Yagura was a short distance from the ships, in the form of an anthropomorphic red-and-black figure with three tails, also pouring a tremendous volume of chakra into the world. Under the crushing pressure that had already slammed into the shinobi, picking out this new chakra source wasn't as easy as usual, but it was definitely noticeable.

The Mizukage didn't stop. In his Tailed Beast form, wasting no time on dramatics, he ran through a rapid sequence of hand seals, then drove his fists down onto the water.

With another thunderous burst of displaced air, white smoke swallowed hundreds of meters in a second. But almost immediately it began to thin, revealing an enormous Tailed Beast within: a colossal form resembling a turtle. A grey carapace studded with spines, the same stone-like ridges covering its face and two limbs. Beneath the shell lay thick, reddish flesh.

It immediately submerged into the water, then surfaced.

But that wasn't even the worst of it. Without a moment's pause, right before its face the beast began drawing in blue and red negative and positive chakra particles! All to form a Bijudama, the most destructive technique a biju could unleash!!!

The shinobi, already scared shitless, at least those with enough brains left, realized they were trapped inside a sealed barrier and that, by all appearances, it was over; their lives were done. Because the destructive wave would have nowhere to go except inward, grinding everyone to nothing!

With another collective drop of their hearts, the sphere finished forming and launched forward at tremendous speed toward the temple sitting at the far inner edge of the barrier, which enclosed only the coastline.

But the moment it arrived, when many shinobi had already squeezed their eyes shut and made their peace with dying, it seemed to stick in midair, where lines of fuinjutsu appeared. A moment, and the destructive sphere simply vanished!

Then things grew even stranger. Some of them saw the blond on the balcony, from whose back the chains had been emerging all along, form a seal, and from thin air massive torii appeared above the Tailed Beast, immediately plummeting down and driving the biju to the bottom, pinning it to the ground at a relatively small height compared to the beast. Then from the Uzumaki erupted several more enormous chains that also plunged through the water column to the bottom. All of it led to several seconds of agonizing anticipation before a figure of the Three-Tails, glowing white, burst up from the water, distorted, shrank, and flew into the raised hand of the young man at the temple. On that hand, besides the mark that had just appeared, another black line became visible, before the limb was returned to rest against the marble railing.

A second passed, and after the end of the light show, a heavy silence hung. But it was broken again by the same being:

"So. Your leader has been defeated and will be judged. My order still stands. This is your last chance to surrender. Do not make me send you back to hell…"

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

Uzumaki Naruto's POV

I sat on a throne in a massive hall where a couple thousand people were currently swarming about, watching them with measured calm. This was the sorting and disarmament facility, and also the single largest concentration of Mist shinobi at this particular moment.

Suppressing the army that showed up went about as smoothly as expected. After the second stage of enhancement, my energy output had taken yet another step forward. And my Mangekyō control, keeping perfect pace, let me not only crush them good and proper but top it off with an equally impressive genjutsu illusion.

Extracting another Tailed Beast while keeping the vessel alive went even more smoothly than with the One-Tail. As for the revolutionaries afterward, not one of them dared peep a word about the global "balance." Yagura, for his part, was currently sitting in one of the temple's rooms awaiting trial, which would double as yet another act of cementing my authority. Cementing the image of someone who has the right to judge, obviously.

My eyes caught on Mei standing nearby, watching the proceedings alongside me.

Goes without saying, the revolutionaries had been through quite a lot themselves, what with the crushing aura (even though it wasn't aimed at them this time), the barrier, and then the Three-Tails making its grand entrance and, by sheer coincidence, firing a Tailed Beast Ball right at the section of the barrier where a sizable number of said revolutionaries happened to be standing. But because Mei had adopted a tactic similar to Yagura's, namely screaming at her subordinates that everything was fine and projecting confidence, that sprinkled just enough reassurance over her shinobi that they not only didn't scatter, but once the barrier dropped, they remembered Plan B fairly quickly. Which had always been Plan A from my end. Meaning they started accepting the surrendering Mist ninja.

Of course, not everything went perfectly. A few hundred brave souls preferred to scatter across the water like ants. But more than four out of five were captured by the revolutionaries who happened to be awake at that hour. The ones who escaped were not very significant in the grand scheme of things.

What actually pleased me was that a full fifth of all the Mist shinobi, even though they'd arrived, never dared step off the ships to follow their comrades. They only came ashore after the whole barrier business was over. That made it crystal clear: my global authority was still growing.

As for the immediate business at hand, I was sitting on my throne to serve as a big scary scarecrow so the ninja below didn't start pulling shit while they were still bunched together. Once the Mist shinobi were properly split up, organized resistance would be impossible, and neither the revolution nor I would need to worry about them. After that, we could move on to the final consolidation of power.

I'd ordered the Mist shinobi to surrender for the obvious reasons, but also so several thousand people didn't slit each other's throats over my arrival, and, once again, to solidify my position. Lately it felt like every sneeze of mine was some global political chess move.

This "detention" might look hypocritical on my part, but not entirely. I'd told the revolutionaries before that I wasn't, like, holding them by the hand, and could replace them. I'd also stated that all sides in their conflict bore guilt, meaning even Yagura would get a chance at redemption. But the Mist shinobi? I had no intention of just letting them walk. Not a significant chunk of them. Because they'd gone against me. And I, as the world's leader, shouldn't forgive that. Thanks to my particularly sharp memory, every face that had jumped off those ships was seared into my brain; several thousand shinobi would get harsher punishment than the rest. But all of them would be going into... well, not penal battalions, but, hmm, mandatory contract service. Not for life: those who hadn't been too rowdy would get a couple of years; the more spirited ones, five. And obviously, those contracts wouldn't be a sweet deal.

It might remind the locals of the first and third castes, with the shinobi mostly just swapping places. But... it lined up with what I'd said, since I'd told them I would judge impartially based on what people had actually done. And this was exactly that: judgment by actions, not because I didn't like someone's face. Plus there was a clear exit criteria: obedience, quality of service, and a few other things if you got into the details.

Five hours later, deep into the night, everyone had been sorted. The process wasn't so much random as it was designed to figure out who was a genuine massacre fanatic and who was just a sane person stuck in a shitty, suffocating situation. They used interrogations, cross-referencing against various lists (slightly less obsessive about remembering faces than me, the revolutionaries still had their own archives), and various testimonies from both revolutionaries and Mist shinobi. Fates varied based on the results. And the revolutionaries handled it well. I only had to make three corrections: call Mei over and point out a few individuals who needed particularly close attention, to head off any future incidents like "disgruntled types" organizing against me or anyone else in the structure I was building.

I could've done it all myself. Shadow Clones and all. But if I personally solved every problem, no system would ever form.

And so, the main milestone in my takeover of the Mist was cleared. After the show, the revolutionaries started obeying me properly, and more than that, they'd actually seen me do something genuinely positive for them. Preventing a mass slaughter, for example. The shinobi of the former Bloody Mist, currently scared out of their minds, would integrate into the unified structure and obey me too.

Two days passed in these proceedings and sorting until things more or less settled down, and then we moved to the next phase.

Yours truly was currently sprawled across yet another throne in one of the halls of the same temple.

Sakura was beside me, along with an unremarkable-looking man in Mist shinobi garb.

"I didn't think I'd have to work with him. But if you're sure..." she said, glancing oddly at said man and then at me.

"He'll stay in the shadows, just as backup."

"Yeah, I get it..."

We were both talking about Snake, and it was indeed him, just with a changed appearance, as if he were a piece of furniture. Said piece of furniture paid this no mind, just listening carefully to the substance of the conversation.

"Unfortunately, it'd be better if I stayed here for now and then moved to the Mist village—"

"Yeah, yeah, you told me," she cut me off with a knowing nod. "Who knows what those nutjobs might pull. And I'll do what you want: lead the capture of the Land of Water's capital..."

Her voice trailed off toward the end. Clearly, Sakura hadn't expected she'd be doing anything like this in her life.

"Sometimes I really love how fast you get things," a soft smile appeared on my face. "So few problems and so much efficiency. The contrast is striking."

At my somewhat odd compliment she waved me off, telling me not to embarrass her.

The mini-meeting, whose purpose was to introduce Sakura to Orochimaru's new appearance, was essentially over. The plans had been drawn up beforehand. Orochimaru left the room immediately. Since his submission, he'd dialed back the snark and hadn't said a single word.

Sakura though... she held her gaze on my face for a second, then lingered on my abs longer than she should have, before hurrying out after him.

"Hah..." Left alone, a sigh escaped me. "And it's all heading somewhere obvious."

Toward a harem, essentially, one that had already more or less formed around me. Now, with the second body enhancement, when my body and the girls' bodies had become fully physiologically adult, it seemed like maybe it was time to stop being a guardian of my seed. And yet... one of them was thirteen. The other, twelve.

I mean, that excuse was pretty weak. Considering that my patchy memory recalled several members of the human race from my past life who were supposedly adults on paper, but look closer and it was all wind between the ears, drool dribbling from the lips, and no trace of an adult personality beyond bad habits. Some of my genin acquaintances looked far more interesting in terms of depth of character, to say nothing of Sakura. The girl had gone through catharsis (gotten rid of that manic obsession with one particular individual) and had toughened up considerably as both a shinobi and a human being. And her enhanced brain introduced plenty of corrections away from typical teenage problems.

Still, I'd decided to give the girl time to gain experience. Sending Sakura to take the capital was exactly that: she'd work with a bunch of people and grow another step.

I could've brought Hinata along in the same way. But honestly, she wasn't someone who particularly enjoyed the shinobi life or combat in general. She was a pretty sensitive person, even if she could be fierce when needed. So after a careful question from me, she'd chosen to stay in the Leaf. How much effort it took to convince her not to worry about Sakura and me is hard to put into words. But my tongue turned out to be flexible enough that day to talk her down from spiraling too hard.

The one who'd really been dying to follow me here was Karin. After I told my overly nosy "employee" with that overly fanatical look in her eyes what I was planning to do here, she immediately caught fire with the idea of tagging along. And that wasn't surprising.

She'd been spending more and more time handling affairs and paperwork around my home and lab, and at one point begged me to start training her as a shinobi. Back during the Chunin Exams, sitting on the edge of the world just to protect herself had really not sat well with her.

But she was still too weak for anything like what was happening in Kiri right now. Even if I'd enhanced her body, this required precision thinking, not just raw power. And so, forcing myself, under her pleading and clinging to my leg, I left the girl at home.

To sum it up, I'd decided to keep waiting and keep carrying my proud title of virgin. After all, they always said it was true, and after thirty years of holding the position I'd become not just a mage but a godlike being!

Although... Hmm. Mei was quite easy on the eyes. More accurately, she was one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen in this world. But nothing was likely to happen with someone who was a bit afraid of me. And besides, it wasn't beauty I valued in people. Not with my kind of options.

"Alright, enough," I stood up from the throne. "Capturing the Mist village. Let me check how the preparations are going."

Having finally surfaced from my musings, I got to work.

Specifically, checking on how the revolutionaries' preparations were going, and they were going well. That very evening a couple thousand troops loaded onto ships and headed out with Mei, Josame, and Natsuo toward the Mist. On the western flank, Ao remained behind as deputy.

A day and a half later, in the early morning, I watched with satisfaction through the Telescope Technique as my little minions, showing up unannounced at the village, immediately spread through it like they owned the place.

Several squads took the Residence right off the bat, handling it cleanly. The building had been left guarded by genin, who had nothing to put up against coordinated jonin; after taking a few slaps, they quickly surrendered the building. The stronger shinobi also guarding it were crushed by sheer numbers.

The revolutionaries had a slightly harder time with the handful of "pureblooded" shinobi who had somehow managed to stay in the village. But again, numerical advantage, when five tokubetsu jonin of roughly equal strength jumped on one, didn't give much chance of even going down fighting, let alone winning.

Several more squads had to get creative to take the remaining administrative buildings besides the Residence: archives and other facilities needed so the new government didn't end up bare-assed. Meaning without even understanding what was going on in their own country. They had to get creative because a couple of said archives had a particularly battle-happy retiree holed up inside who, upon spotting the intruders, started chucking kunai with explosive tags, shredding and blasting everything around them to hell. So not everything was saved intact. A couple of fires even had to be put out.

By evening, having captured everything and handed out beatdowns to anyone with complaints, Mei stood on the special announcement plaza and declared that the Mist now had a new boss, and a bunch of reforms would be implemented (elimination of the caste system, ending the hunt for people with bloodline limits, and so on down the list).

Those remaining in the Mist, still mostly genin, simply folded, acknowledging that yes, they surrendered. And this wasn't all that surprising, considering the old regime hadn't been the brightest, while the new one was being established by what were essentially their own shinobi.

The next day, practically like Aladdin, I flew in on yet another mobile temple. Parking it near the village while flooding the surroundings with pomp and pulling the most arrogant face I could manage, I announced that I was satisfied with how the revolutionaries had restored order. Then declared that they were no longer revolutionaries, just Mist shinobi, and by extension, my vassals. After which, accepting the oath in return with a weird expression (weird because I'd already announced the fact of their submission as a given), I departed back to the island where most of the Mist shinobi and Ao still were.

Then came the trial. The guilty were executed, the innocent were punished, and the uninvolved were chewed out for letting this whole mess happen.

The guilty were mostly drawn from the backbone of the village's previous administration, which, thanks to nepotism and the elimination of anyone who was "different," had been pretty unified in its thinking. Also the majority of the Hunter-nin, meaning the ones who had carried out the persecutions and killings that had been very unjust for the local populace. The innocent were those who'd followed the guilty's orders, but not out of enjoyment: out of fear of punishment for desertion, because they didn't know how to live any other way, because they were "following orders." Also the handful from the now-former revolutionaries who hadn't held back and tried to take "revenge" on the captured, plus other assorted criminals. The uninvolved were those who'd been against Yagura: the former revolutionaries and those associated with them.

Yagura himself, by the way, was placed in the innocent category due to the control he'd been under.

And so, having affirmed my authority yet again, demonstrating mercy alongside impartial application of law, yours truly continued to "loom over everyone's souls" to maintain order in the region after the initial shock wore off.

Meanwhile, my clone had been watching the capture of the capital. Orochimaru and Sakura hadn't needed help; there wasn't anyone in the city who could threaten her. And on her end, things had also gone more or less smoothly.

The key positions were captured, complete with all the important papers, and a new person was put on the throne. The capital's guard for the now-former Daimyo turned out to be no joke: a dozen jonin. But for Sakura after the second stage of body enhancement, that wasn't her level.

The only headache was having to replace a lot of people. And finding replacements wasn't easy. Luckily, the former revolution had some really solid people to cover at least part of the top. Natsuo, who arrived in the capital later, wasn't much of a shinobi himself but came from a clan of administrators native to the capital. They'd been kicked out under Yagura, but now they could reclaim their old positions with plenty of energy.

And so, the Land of Water was reunified fairly quickly and brought, de facto, under my authority. These had clearly been eventful days for its people. Though not only for them. Actions of this scale can't help but ripple across the entire world...

---

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[Welydora]

Interlude: Sarutobi Hiruzen

The old man, a fixture in one particular Konoha residence, sat at his desk as ever, shuffling through his eternal stack of paperwork. Nothing that day seemed to foreshadow trouble, until a certain jonin walked in.

A man somewhere around thirty. Still young, yet with the face of someone who'd seen everything this world had to offer. That was precisely what rubbed the Hokage the wrong way, because the shinobi standing before him had never looked like that before.

"Everything alright, Yuzu?" Hiruzen carefully asked the spy who had been embedded in Kiri's revolution long ago. The man had already weathered four waves of it and was, by all accounts, considered "one of their own" by now.

"I want to retire, Hokage-sama. If you'd please sign…" He produced a scroll from his pocket, broke the seal, and held out the paper.

"Ahem!" Coughing, Sarutobi accepted it, though he made no immediate move to decide its fate. "Right… Tell me everything. And where's Sora?"

The spy told him.

The Hokage was, needless to say, impressed.

"And Nara-san is with Senpai. They've gone on a bender…"

"So a new era has begun… Hmm-hmm-hmm," the old man drew out, drumming his fingers on the desk. Then, with a nod, he signed the paper. "Go on, Yuzu. You're a free man now."

The jonin seemed to physically brighten. He shrugged off his vest on the spot, pulled off his headband, left them on the chair by the desk, and without a moment's hesitation vaulted through the open window. Hiruzen sank deep into thought. He turned over in his mind the information about a certain Three-Named, who had declared himself ruler of the world, who had first cowed several thousand shinobi, then an even greater army of those same shinobi, and who had, for all practical purposes, already brought the Land of Water to heel.

"When I rule the world, you be my deputy?" The words surfaced on their own from a distant past.

Usually, when Naruto pulled some spectacularly massive stunt, Hiruzen panicked. But now an absolute calm had descended on Sarutobi. He had a clear, bone-deep understanding that no amount of "blub-blub-blub" would help here anymore. And so, as an elder who had truly seen this world, he thought about how to navigate this situation. The answer was already right in front of him.

That same day, a messenger hawk took flight toward the Daimyo. The very next day, a council of jonin and officials of the Land of Fire convened. With the aforementioned Daimyo present, naturally. There, the old man, deploying every ounce of his considerable eloquence, began arguing that after recent events in the Land of Water, Konoha had become the number one target for every spy and provocateur in the world.

"Well, it already was, because of Uzumaki," thought everyone else in the room, but Hiruzen pressed on. He declared that now of all times the Leaf needed a Hokage who could ride out to the front, conduct negotiations, and serve as a symbol, not a decrepit old man like himself.

The assembled audience wasn't particularly moved by this either, still having vivid memories of what that "decrepit old man" had managed to pull off on a certain rooftop during the attack on the Village.

But the Third wouldn't let up, and ultimately proposed for his position a hero of the great wars, a close personal acquaintance of "you-know-who," and a man universally respected among shinobi: Hatake Kakashi.

At that, the attendees, without much further deliberation, took pity on Hiruzen after all, and voted "yes."

The very next day, a certain silver-haired man, who also happened to have a talent for skipping meetings of exactly this kind, stood with an expression of absolute bewilderment on his face, accepting the hat with the kanji for "Fire" and improvising on the spot for something halfway intelligent to say so as not to look like a complete idiot during his own inauguration as Hokage.

As for the old man, now unburdened of his great responsibility… though retaining his post for life, as was tradition, the obligations had passed to another. He quietly slipped away to the far edge of the Land of Fire. There, in a small backwater village, he bought a little house by a pond, became an ordinary fisherman, and left all the rest of it behind.


In the Hidden Stone Village, in the Tsuchikage's residence.

"Aaaaaah!!!" Clutching his head, the small old man who served as the village's ruler was comically scurrying around his office. "We're all dooooomed!"

"…" Watching the spectacle with a complicated expression on her face, a dark-haired girl who was also in the office sighed. "Gramps… maybe cool it."

In private, she allowed herself considerably more liberties than she would at the council.

"This world," the old man stopped in the center of the room and, dropping to his knees, stretched his hands toward the ceiling, "is doooomed!"

"Weren't you the one who kept saying you'd outlive three generations? Maybe it's finally time to hand over the Tsuchikage position…"

"What do you know?!" he cried in a tone of theatrical despair, cutting Kurotsuchi off. "And another thing—"

He attempted to spring sharply to his feet, which sent a loud crack snapping through the office.

"Agh… My back!" The Tsuchikage grabbed the offending body part, instantly forgetting whatever point he'd been about to make. "Granddaughter…"

"…" Said granddaughter, saying nothing but conveying volumes with her face, walked over and, gripping him, straightened Onoki's spine with a single knee movement, which made him gasp and breathe deeply. Then the girl asked, "So what have you decided to do… after all that?"

"What is there to do…" His voice losing all its softness now that he no longer needed help, Onoki stated, "We sit tight and stay quieter than ever. Maybe if this bra—"

He cut himself off sharply, glancing around as though afraid someone might hear.

"Maybe then, if the Emperor is merciful, our lives won't change. And we'll be looking for a diplomatic channel with Water… or rather, the Empire."

"Right…" the girl drew out. "Smart. So when are you handing over the hat?"

"You and that damn hat…"

They continued to argue.


Ei, the Raikage, his lower face hidden behind clasped hands, sat in his residence and studied his subordinate with careful eyes. The man had told him… quite a lot. And Ei had no idea what to make of it. Because what he'd just been forced to sit through sounded less like the report of a sane person and more like the ravings of a lunatic.

"I hear you. Take a month off."

Being, on occasion, a reasonably levelheaded ruler, the Raikage decided not to jump to conclusions. Wait for the next batch of reports a few days out and compare the details.

Except when everything lined up…

"What the hell is going on?!" Ei erupted, bringing his fist down on the desk and splitting it clean in two. "What does this Uzumaki think he's doing?! How can he be stronger than Father?!"

Raging and rampaging, he laid waste to everything in the office while the latest messenger made a hasty exit.

Calming down only after a couple of minutes, the Raikage stood breathing heavily, fury still radiating off him, and summoned two operatives.

"You!" He jabbed a finger at one of them. "Tell Mabui to increase funding for those two projects. She knows which ones."

He was referring to the authorization of experiments targeting jinchuriki weaknesses, and Mabui's own lethal technique, Heavenly Transfer.

The first masked operative gave a quick nod and bolted off to find the woman in question, who also happened to be the Raikage's assistant.

"You! Where's Bee?!"

"Um…" The second operative hesitated, but seeing his lord's expression grow progressively less friendly, answered quickly, "At Teitsu Square! He's rapping."

"His garbage rhymes again?! Tell him to drag his ass to our spot! From now on, we train three times as hard!!!"

Uzumaki Naruto's POV

"Information warfare is paying dividends," I noted from my throne in the hall of my temple, watching the Stone shinobi take their leave. "They're already starting to butter me up. All the better."

I had ordered the people of the Land of Water to spread information about me. The same information I had personally delivered from the podium not long ago.

Right now, I had another meeting scheduled.

"How's life undercover, 'Spy'?"

At my question, the man who'd just entered broke into a dead-fish smile.

"Splendid, Uzumaki-sama…" replied Mittei, a man whose name, taken literally, meant exactly that: "spy."

"A mercenary who spent years witnessing the suffering of ordinary people in this country and decided to join the revolution." That was what the former revolutionaries knew about him. In reality, he was a Root operative. With, quite literally, the most brazenly constructed cover file I had ever read. Who could possibly be more suspicious and unsettling than a mercenary whose name literally meant "spy"? A man who had spent years wandering God knows where, doing God knows what. The absolutely perfect profile for a planted agent, because if you dug deeper, you'd find he was completely clean. "Mittei" was a name worn by several people, other Root operatives who had been leaving trails across the Land of Water for years to build a future alibi. And the current Mittei himself was, in fact, a native of the Mist, recruited the moment he graduated from the Academy. Danzo had spent several years cultivating a specialist like him. As one of the revolution's leaders, he would have stood at the very heart of the future hidden village. He had been responsible for nearly all the intelligence on the Water revolutions across multiple waves.

"What brings you here?"

"Umishio has returned…"

"That Hozuki? Yeah, I know."

"He's pushing his clan toward undermining your authority… Literally. Amateur."

"Oh, is that so. Alas, poor Yorick!" I exclaimed with deliberate theatricality, at which Mittei turned his head with a questioning look. "Shakespeare. Never mind. As for the Hozuki, neutralize him with Raiton. And take his head. Seems he did better without one."

"Hm…" Mittei appeared to think it over, as though trying to remember. "You're right. He talks less that way."

Shortly after, my agent left the temple with an Imperial edict in hand. I continued with matters of state. My reforms were coming along well enough. But to make this country run efficiently, a great deal more still needed to be set in stone. And so, going through the proposals submitted by various officials, I added my own thoughts and formed my own assessments. All in preparation for the next council session, where I'd throw everything into one pile and push through the best decisions.

Interlude: Haku

Late evening.

The Ice Ninja, sharing a meal with his Zabuza-sama at a tavern in the Village of the Mist, felt very strange. Even stranger than when they'd been released from prison and brought back home.

Two weeks had passed since a certain… arrival. And only now had he, and the swordsman too, grown accustomed to the fact that falling asleep in their home village, in their home country, they no longer had to dread a sudden attack by Hunter-nin.

"Mmh, damn good potatoes," Zabuza said blissfully, his smile evident even beneath the bandages as he patted his stomach.

"The food really is good. It's like going back to—"

"Don't," Momochi cut Haku off, his tone darkening by a full shade in an instant. Not that it did anything to dim the other's good mood.

The supply line for food from the Leaf had already started running. Neither of the two could fully appreciate the scale of it, but every other ordinary Mist shinobi was practically in ecstasy eating real food instead of the slop that less-than-wealthy ninja had scraped by on before. Under Yagura, the economy, agriculture included, had gone straight to hell. Now, Earth-natured shinobi were being mobilized en masse to fix that.

When they finally finished their meal and stepped outside into the dark, a pair of ninja with unfamiliar patches on their shoulders stopped the duo of the swordsman and the masked figure on the empty street.

"The hell are you two doing out here during curfew?" one immediately got in Zabuza's face, which earned him a raised eyebrow.

"What curfew?"

"Due to the elevated risk of sabotage, a curfew has been implemented to maintain order," the second one explained evenly, at which Zabuza's eyes went wide. He'd literally never heard of anything like that in his entire life. Haku, for his part, had a mask in the way of expressing anything.

"Let's take a little walk to the station, sweethearts," said the "bad cop."

"…" Momochi pulled a deeply unimpressed face. He didn't appreciate the label. Or the attitude.

"Zabuza-sama… maybe let's not?" Haku asked carefully, at which the first shinobi bristled, while the second, sensing trouble, started making frantic calming gestures at his partner. That one, apparently, had no idea who he was actually dealing with: none other than the Demon of the Bloody Mist himself.

"The hell do you mean—"

Neither the first nor his partner got to finish their sentences before both were seized by the throat. Then, with one wide swing, they were simply slammed face-first into the cobblestones.

"Easy," Zabuza rumbled, and the two of them walked on. Only to get chewed out by their superiors the next day for disorderly conduct.

"You're here too?" Momochi said, genuinely surprised. Arriving at the location designated for his punishment, the sewers, he found "the first one" there. The "bad cop."

"Yeah… They told me to work on my manners."

Zabuza snorted and headed to the utility closet to grab the tools. Then they both got to work.

Interlude: Haruno Sakura

The pink-haired girl leaned against the marble railing, looking out over the Village of the Mist.

It felt like a long time had passed, but given how densely events had been stacked, it wasn't quite that. Just two weeks. And already so much behind them.

Undeniably, many good things had happened. The kunoichi could watch the country coming back to life right before her eyes and couldn't stop feeling that quietly exhilarating sense of having contributed to something real.

But not everything was perfect.

The reforms were moving, but not overnight. There were still shinobi who had fled, and even professional Hunter-nin still operating. There had been two attempts on her own life… Not that the attackers had anything resembling a real shot. But still. The fact remained.

Sabotage on several islands had only compounded the supply problems, and that needed immediate attention. Smuggling had started cropping up in certain areas, and that needed handling too. Mei, Ao, and Sakura were dealing with real administrative headaches. Occasionally in a very shinobi-specific way: first, you have to punch someone in the face, and then you establish order.

And yet, all she felt was an even deeper gratitude toward the one who had given her the chance to build something this significant. Toward the one who had himself become something far greater than she could have imagined…

"Shh…" Mid-reverie about a certain blond, Sakura was interrupted by the appearance of a shinobi behind her. She'd sensed him long before, but now it was time to snap out of it completely.

"What is it, Josame?" the girl sighed.

Fear. Naruto had inspired far too much of it. Which was why someone like Natsuo communicated with the Emperor through her, relaying reports and such. This particular relative of Hoshigaki only dared approach the Emperor for the most critical matters. So her reaction was obvious: whatever this ninja wanted to say, it wasn't that important.

"I… It's… I'm really embarrassed to even ask."

"Just say it," Haruno prompted him, raising an eyebrow. The ninja in front of her wasn't usually one to stammer.

"Well. My dream… The truth is, I've always dreamed of a quiet life. Without all this… battles where someone's getting their guts torn out or strangled…"

"Get to the point."

"And so, it seems like that time might have come…" The man pressed on, then went silent, and to Sakura's surprised eyes, tears began sliding down his face. "We waited so long for this…"

"He was only speaking about his own dream, wasn't he?" Haruno noted oddly to herself, thinking that perhaps the swordsman had meant not just the other revolution leaders.

"Nobody among my people knows… But all this time, I've been seeing someone…"

Sakura was surprised again. This time, though, by the sheer sneaking-around skills of a certain shark-face.

"Her name is Hozami…"

"Fanged Shark? She's a Hoshigaki?" flashed through Sakura's head.

"And… Lady Haruno… Would you be willing to marry us?"

"…Wha… Um? Me?" She was completely thrown. "I mean. Why not Naruto?.. Well, the Emperor?"

"We… think the Emperor is too busy for something like this. But perhaps you'd have the time? You, as the messenger of a god, could bear witness…"

"Huh? Ha-ha." With every passing second that the full weight of what was being asked of her sank in, Sakura grew more visibly flustered. She started slowly backing away. "No, no. I actually think the Emperor can find a free minute for this. You go ahead. And I'll go, I'll talk to him… Maybe work something out…"

And, breaking into a run, Haruno bolted away, eyes wide as saucers.

"A wedding… Officiate someone's wedding. No. I did not sign up for this." She moved deeper into the temple, thinking furiously about how to gracefully dodge this embarrassing honor and quietly pass it off to the main culprit, the very reason the two of them had this honor in the first place.

At that very moment, somewhere in the Village of the Rain, a certain blue-haired woman sneezed. It seemed like if she and the pink-haired girl ever crossed paths, they'd find a very special understanding.

Uzumaki Naruto's POV

Another council session was underway. In a country changing as fast as this one, they'd become a daily occurrence. And with that kind of pace, things moved fast.

I wasn't in my ceremonial robes and laurel wreath right now, just a white t-shirt and black pants. Home clothes, basically. Comfort mattered more at the moment. Whereas not long ago I'd been stressed about having to sit or lie in specific poses during receptions so my biju wouldn't show through the fabric.

Having married off one colorful pair the day before, I was now working through another round of proposals and contributing my own. There were quite a few of us at the table: besides the former revolution leaders, Mei, Ao, a slightly jittery Natsuo, and Josame, there were also capable people from across the Land of Water, and one bald old man who had served as an advisor even under Yagura. Right up until Yagura had thrown him in prison for giving advice that was, in the late Mizukage's view, far too "sensible." Sakura, having completed the bulk of her work, had already departed for the Leaf.

"…lost track of the target at Sapo port. Two schooners were set ablaze by remnants of the opposition. In light of this, I propose reinforcing the—" Ao's report flowed on, and I listened with a thoroughly bored expression.

Things had grown considerably quieter lately, and the issues being raised sometimes got outright trivial, like the burning of two little boats. These thoughts were nudging me toward a realization: this chapter seemed to be closing, stability settling in. Which meant that before long, my presence wouldn't be needed at sessions like this, and I could pursue my own ideas within the growing system while having more time for a more varied and actually enjoyable personal life.

The only thing was… those thoughts about stability had clearly been premature.

The boredom vanished from my face when, at no great distance, someone materialized straight out of thin air.

A being carrying within itself an energy that was monstrous even by my standards.

It had more chakra than the Nine-Tails. Several times over.

"Well, that's… sudden," I thought, marveling at my own fate. "Like it's playing a cruel joke on me."

"Are you alright?" Mei asked me, when Ao went quiet and everyone noticed I'd raised my eyes to the ceiling.

"No…" I breathed in deeply, then out. "I don't know if it'll help, but announce an evacuation. There's a chance this country ends today."

And under gazes, some uncomprehending, some immediately flooded with terror, I stepped through a teleport to hang in the air before the being whose silhouette still lingered, dim but unmistakable, somewhere at the back of my memory from another life.

"He… I thought he'd come later. What made him turn his attention to this world?"

---

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[Welydora]

In a dimension made of black cubes with red-trimmed edges, a throne stood against a wall built from stacked, interlocking shapes. A man with long black hair tied back in a ponytail sat upon it, one arm braced against the armrest. In his other hand he cradled a glass of the finest crystal. The dark-red liquid inside swayed lazily as he studied the shadows around him. His dark, penetrating eyes stared ahead, lost in thought.

"Humanity," he mused slowly, as if tasting the word. "Weak, short-lived… yet stubborn creatures. I'm flattered, though. A pitiful, ordinary world, and yet it managed to surprise me again?"

He closed his eyes, and his thoughts drifted back to where it all began.

The vessel he currently occupied introduced itself, when necessary, as Jigen.

To the eye, an ordinary man. Tall, pale-skinned. Unremarkable, save for the diamond mark below his lower lip and the circular black seal on his abdomen. This body was already approaching a thousand years old, and from the moment of its taking, it had not aged a single day.

Otsutsuki Isshiki. That was the name of the one who had claimed the vessel. He'd had no choice at the time; his own body had been split in two by one of his own clanswomen. She had fed the lower half to the God-Tree to cultivate a defective chakra fruit from part of the planet's energy.

Originally, they had arrived together to plant a Shinju seed on Earth. According to Otsutsuki clan doctrine, it was the woman who was to offer herself to the grown tree, for she stood lower in rank. All for the sake of a perfect fruit: the distilled essence of a planet's life and genes.

But Kaguya had her own ideas about that.

The upper half of the wounded Isshiki managed to escape. By chance, he came upon a temple and, within it, a tall, pale-skinned monk.

The Kokugan, the eye in Isshiki's left socket, held the power to shrink objects. Ordinarily only inanimate ones, though the owner himself was the exception. In a moment of critical weakness, when his strength was barely enough to keep him alive, Isshiki shrank himself and crawled through the monk's ear into his brain. Gradually, over time, he bent the body to his will.

That was how he found a vessel. An imperfect one.

Otsutsuki possess a special seal, Karma, that allows them to be reborn even after death. For a long while, he absorbed nutrients while residing inside the monk Jigen's skull, until he had gathered enough strength to inscribe it upon the vessel he had found.

This fuin, however, could not be placed on just any living being. No, synchronization was required. Without it, the creature marked by Karma would die. Though, of course, with certain additional variables, exceptions could always be found. Isshiki managed to place Karma on the monk, even though the man's body lacked full synchronization. The key lay in the fact that it was an incomplete Karma that had been inscribed, one that transferred only a portion of the alien's genome, as the human body in question could not withstand the full might of an Otsutsuki. Were he to attempt a full revival through Karma into Jigen's body, the vessel would hold for two days at most before tearing itself apart.

Back then, millennia ago, the logical move for Isshiki would have been to seek out a suitable vessel and be reborn in his full form. But vessels were not so easily found. Though he had tried no small number of times over the years, he eventually set aside the search for a while among the weak genes. That is to say, among humans.

He knew what had become of Kaguya, who had betrayed him. She had been preparing for the arrival of other clan members, and along the way had borne children by humans. Those children inherited a fragment of the Otsutsuki genome.

In his weakened state, Isshiki lacked the power to face her direct descendants head-on. So he chose the long game: allow humanity to develop to the point where a proper vessel could be cultivated from among them. That would require deep genetic work, a level the civilization was nowhere near capable of yet. The other option was simply to wait for a fortunate convergence of genes. But that, too, demanded time.

Isshiki was in no particular hurry. And rather than sit idle, he occupied himself with a second project, no less vital to the fulfillment of his mission.

After a long recovery, through the power of Karma, Isshiki reclaimed his ability to perform spatial jutsu. And by opening a portal into a special dimension once used by five other Otsutsuki, he conducted his experiments within it.

His goal was the cultivation of a God-Tree. A Ten-Tails, in miniature. The dimension lacked the energy for a full one, but even this would be sufficient given enough patience.

Following the mechanism his clan had long since perfected, he planted a new seed grown from his own chakra.

When the Juubi matured, Isshiki would find a suitable vessel and inscribe Karma upon it. Then he would feed Jigen's body, already well on its way to becoming an Otsutsuki body, to the beast he had raised. And, reborn in a new vessel, he would consume the Earth's chakra fruit once the God-Tree had devoured all life from this planet.

Everything was proceeding according to plan. It was simply a matter of time.


Occasionally, to break the monotony, he would travel and wander the Earth for a while. He rarely found anything of interest.

The gene pool kept drowning in wars. The most notable curiosity, perhaps, was the second-rate offshoots, fragments of the former, imperfect Juubi. These miserable imitations were little different in Isshiki's eyes from the rest. Yes, their chakra was considerably greater, but utterly useless. The Otsutsuki confirmed this to his own satisfaction when the natives went and sealed the lesser tailed beasts away.

Centuries passed. Isshiki's Juubi slowly gathered strength. Two to three decades remained before the fruit would ripen.

And then something unexpected happened.

During one of his visits to Earth, Isshiki noticed something troubling: half the energy of the most powerful of their so-called "Bijuu" had simply vanished. The suspicion triggered a faint tension within him. Using a spatial jutsu, he effortlessly extracted gold from the treasury of some minor ruler and paid a group of ninja for reconnaissance.

The answers they brought back provoked one of his rare flashes of irritation.

These underdeveloped creatures had actually managed to seal a portion of a Bijuu into some dimension they called "the stomach of the Death God."

What did they know of true gods? It was an act of senseless blasphemy.

The fact remained, however, that even his razor-sharp sensory abilities could not detect the missing energy, as though it had ceased to exist. The Bijuu had vanished from every dimension accessible to his perception, as if erased from the face of creation.

Even so, Isshiki soon suppressed the anger. Against the full potential of the planet, half the energy of one tailed beast amounted to no great loss. He returned to his plans, focusing on the Juubi and the forthcoming chakra fruit.

But his calm didn't last long.

Barely a decade later, he visited Earth again and found that yet another Bijuu had vanished. This time, even his impeccable self-control showed cracks.

Now acting on instinct, Isshiki went personally to the location where the anomaly had first occurred. But when he drew close to the village, he, to his own astonishment, sensed the missing Bijuu once more.

Some young gene… human had not only managed to seal two Bijuu within himself simultaneously, but had also concealed the chakra of one of them at a substantial distance from him. From an Otsutsuki.

He observed this specimen for a while, noting clear deviations from the norm. The possibility that someone sufficiently talented by birth had ended up in sufficiently favorable conditions for that talent to flourish had, to the Otsutsuki's surprise, actually occurred in this world. Humanity had set foot on the path toward making itself into something far higher than what it was. Of course, this specimen bore little resemblance to a Heavenly Being; it fell vastly short. But the sheer fact that humans were capable of reaching such heights gave Isshiki a quiet satisfaction. A little more time, and the search for a suitable vessel in this world would become considerably easier. This was excellent news, because it meant he might not have to wait very long after the Shinju's formation was complete.

And so, having noted the promising gene in his memory, he began visiting the human world more frequently.

His next reason for a display of emotion came far sooner than he had expected.

A matter of mere months, and another Bijuu had vanished from his senses…

This pulled Isshiki out of his composed observation. At first, he considered it unnecessary to investigate personally, and so once again enlisted shinobi for reconnaissance. But after hearing the details about some kind of god, he decided, with considerable skepticism, to verify things himself.

Proceeding with caution, the man chose not to approach close enough to see with his own eyes. Instead, using methods particular to his clan, he connected to the sage chakra permeating the entire Earth and, experiencing in the process the burning hatred of the one who had sealed her will within the Juubi that had once walked this planet, managed to conduct a careful survey. The pain was worth it…

The gene he had noted in his memory. That human. He had made another leap. One vessel, three tailed beasts. This meant only one thing: the genes of this mortal were strong enough to bear such a devastating burden.

Without question, that person was no god. He didn't even approach the strength of a main-branch Otsutsuki. But with his own power limited as it was, Isshiki was glad he had not come to meet him unprepared. Because after the gene's last power leap, it was far from certain that the alien, in his current vessel, could even escape if their encounter went badly. Who knew what ace might be hidden up the sleeve of, apparently, the greatest genius humanity had ever produced?

And at the same time, he could not afford to let him slip away. This person's body, given its resilience, could possess a high natural affinity for Karma. Perhaps if not the man himself, then his descendants could fully accommodate an Otsutsuki. And so Isshiki, who had yet to find a suitable candidate after all this time, simply could not allow himself to lose this one.

Taking stock of the young man's genetic potential, he understood: his current vessel would not survive a direct confrontation with such an opponent. But that did not mean abandoning the idea. The Otsutsuki had always been a pragmatist; he preferred to minimize effort wherever possible. Simple diplomacy could resolve the problem. With his knowledge of humans, he knew they craved gold and their worthless scraps of paper. If necessary, it would be no trouble at all for Isshiki to procure a large quantity of either to get what he wanted.

As always, the Otsutsuki's plans included contingencies. Should diplomacy fail, Isshiki intended to ensure that the potential partner, or enemy, would find it impossible to refuse.


Jigen's body gave the faintest shudder as his thoughts returned to the present.

He rose smoothly, leaving the glass balanced on the armrest. Then, without any visible effect, he shifted from one space to another.

The Kokugan could not only alter the size of matter; it could transfer it, along with its owner, into its own dimension. That was precisely where he had been until he decided to step out into the external world. Into one of the buildings that belonged to him on Earth.

Of course, not having been fully reborn within Jigen, the latter's body lacked that particular eye, as well as the other one belonging to the Otsutsuki: the Byakugan. Yet even while dwelling as a small parasite inside the human, Isshiki granted his imperfect vessel the ability to perform jutsu… But this time, he chose to make use of one of Karma's capabilities instead:

Before Jigen, a black vortex materialized in the air in an instant, its depths flickering with crimson light. The mesmerizing sight produced a low hum that rolled through the room.

Unhurried, the Otsutsuki stepped forward.

The sensation of the transfer was instantaneous. And then Jigen was met with a sight that was breathtaking and terrifying in equal measure.

Grey cliffs stretched upward like the petrified aftermath of a battle between titans. The sky overhead, painted in an ominous violet, pulsed with energy.

Jigen arrived on a large platform flanked by several walls. But what held his attention was what lay below.

Beneath the elevated structure, riddled with openings, sprawled an enormous, unnatural creature. Radiating chakra of staggering intensity, it trembled with fury and the desperate desire to devour the one who had appeared before it.

Jigen, drifting through the air, descended calmly toward the massive, beige monstrosity. It fixed him with a single colossal crimson eye adorned with concentric rings, three tomoe glinting on each of the first two.

Before him loomed the Juubi. Far from its true form as it was, even in this state its power eclipsed any of the Bijuu of Earth. It was substantially stronger, in fact, than the one whose might Kaguya had once consumed.

"R-R-R-AAAAH!!!" A primordial roar tore from the beast's throat, rolling like peals of thunder.

"It is not yet time to devour me," Jigen's deep, commanding voice answered.

"R-r-r-r-r…"

"I ask your forgiveness, but I need to borrow your energy."

Jigen raised his hand toward the Bijuu. Dark tattoos spread from the limb across his entire body, lines resembling the rays of a sun but asymmetrical, imperfect. Karma granted more than physical enhancement and access to spatial jutsu. It also allowed the absorption of chakra.

A crimson radiance stretched from the Juubi's body toward the man as a dense torrent of energy poured into Jigen. As the chakra filled him, the vessel's body began to change. A horn grew from above his brow, curling around the back of his head until its tip rose above the other side of his skull.


When the flow reached its limit, it cut off abruptly. Only a tenth of the Juubi's former chakra remained.

"Don't worry," Jigen's voice dropped to something close to a whisper. "I'll return it soon. If not all of it, then the greater part."

The moment he finished speaking, a new rift opened in the air. The man vanished, leaving the monster to howl in impotent rage.

The beast had been created to devour the Otsutsuki. But today, it was fated only to snarl in helplessness, its purpose still unfulfilled.


Uzumaki Naruto's POV

"Greetings. You're not exactly the most expected guest here," I said, looking into the face of an ordinary-looking man with a ponytail and white garments.

"My apologies for the lack of formalities. I come uninvited," he replied with measured courtesy, before casting a brief glance at my hand, where the seals of the One-Tail and Three-Tails rested. "My name is Jigen."

"May I ask what compelled you to make such a long journey?"

A chill tried to creep down my spine, but I smothered it through sheer willpower. Having… something like that in close proximity couldn't not set me on edge.

But whatever the case, I wasn't a barbarian, and since he wasn't attacking, I had no objection to a conversation.

"Long?" He tilted his head ever so slightly, while a flicker of mild suspicion passed through the chakra background he wasn't particularly trying to conceal. "I need something from you, Naruto. Consider it a business proposition."

"Is that so… I'm listening." My eyes narrowed just a fraction as I turned over what I might be offered. Takeover of a neighboring world? Assistance in devouring this one? Help locating the local Otsutsuki, who had probably not shown her face in her clan for the better part of a thousand years? All of that was genuinely intriguing, though it fit poorly into my own plans. Still, I couldn't deny the proposition might be something else entirely, perhaps even mutually beneficial. So we continue… "But before you make it, how about we relocate somewhere more fitting than a plain street?"

"I was simply waiting for the opportunity," Jigen nodded, and then his body began to be covered by tattoos overflowing with the chakra residing inside his head.

Before I could ask anything, he extended his arm to the side, and in its direction a spatial rift several meters in diameter tore open. The silence of the world, broken until then only by two voices and gusts of wind, filled for a time with a low hum.

"After you."


Somewhere in the wilderness. A small, elongated house in the Land of Valleys. The only one for kilometers in any direction.

We sat at a long table of dark wood, in a bare but well-appointed room decorated in shades of green. Apart from the table, a pair of throne-like chairs, and an ornate chandelier, there was nothing else.

"Would you care for some wine?" Leaning back, he made a casual wave of his hand, and the aforementioned appeared on the table, along with a pair of glasses.

"No, I don't drink alcohol. Perhaps you have something sweet?"

He looked me over, then nodded.

A moment later I was sipping hot chocolate, listening to the propositions of a very well-prepared entity. In the fashion of one particular island nation, we dispensed with prolonged preamble; a matter of seconds, not minutes, was all it took to get to the point.

"I won't conceal it. It's been some time since you first captured my interest. I even indulged myself with a passing observation," he swirled his glass of wine.

"…" Nothing in my expression or my energies gave it away, but his words sat very poorly with me. So I'd failed to detect a creature stronger than all the Bijuu combined? On the other hand… Was I supposed to take his admitting this as genuine candor? Or as a deliberate signal that his capabilities exceeded mine?

"I was struck by the existence of someone as talented as yourself. You possess certain qualities you may not even be aware of. They interest me, which is why I'm prepared to make a generous offer."

"I'd imagine," I took my turn to look him over. An Otsutsuki… Authoritative, meticulous, and monstrously powerful. Someone of his capabilities could do a great deal, which meant he could offer a great deal too. "With someone like you, I'm sure we can reach an agreement, provided both sides walk away with something. So, what is it you want?"

"I need your biological material." With a click of his fingers, a small plastic container appeared in front of me.

I nearly choked on my drink the moment I recognized the item. After which a cascade of suspicions began to take root.

"He wants… my hair?" I ventured, going with the least alarming interpretation.

Jigen paused for a beat, then clicked his fingers once more, placing before me, for good measure, the local equivalent of Playboy, a magazine with naked women.

"(。_。)… (-_-)…"

And here he'd been sitting so businesslike. Couldn't he have found a slightly more tactful way to frame this kind of request?

"…Do you see something inappropriate in my actions?" he asked with genuine puzzlement, then took another small sip of his red drink.

And there he sits, perfectly at ease, as though everything is entirely fine. Then again, from the perspective of a being who may not have probed particularly deeply into the nuances of human social interaction, perhaps it genuinely seemed that way to him.

"Hm?… No… probably," I blinked, having already settled on a definitive answer. Still, I was curious. "Would you care to explain what the material is for?"

"Eugenics. My aim is to cultivate the closest possible approximation to an ideal shinobi."

"Refreshingly direct…"

"I see no point in dishonesty. So, what figure were you thinking?" His eyelids dropped just slightly in anticipation.

Apparently my question had been taken as consent.

"You know… I think I'll decline your offer, however generous it may be. My genes are my own secret."

And genuinely, what was he planning to do with them? Possibly something of benefit to the world at large, but I seriously doubted it. On top of that, an Otsutsuki was an alien whose entire species was in the business of consuming planetary gene pools, and studying mine could reveal some vulnerability in me. With that advantage in hand, he could do absolutely anything he pleased… Right now, speaking with me, he was unsure he could oppose me without taking losses. So why had he come to talk at all? Surely not out of some predatory sense of courtesy?

He shifted his position, moving the glass to his other hand.

"I can offer something greater than money."

"…" I raised my eyebrows slightly, prompting him to hurry up.

"Power… and immortality," his voice dropped even lower on the last word. But I merely let one eyebrow slide down in condescension while the other climbed a fraction higher.

"By what means?" "You can offer me what I already have," I decided not to finish the thought aloud.

"Kara is an organization I will found and lead. Its plan is simple in its grandeur. We will cultivate the Divine Tree, a being that will absorb all the chakra of this world and produce the Fruit. That Fruit is the key to immortality and power beyond your comprehension. But executing this plan requires a vessel. The Divine Tree needs a sacrifice with particular genes in order to yield the Fruit. And to receive those genes, a body with an exceptional genetic foundation is required… I believe someone of your capabilities would have no trouble creating a clone from DNA that we modify. In this way, we create the perfect instrument."

"And you're proposing to share part of the Fruit?"

"Precisely…" And in his chakra background, in the faintest, most barely distinguishable of notes, there rang out unmistakable dishonesty.

Well. What else was I supposed to expect from a creature like this?

"…Yeah, that would be very tempting for many people," my face went blank as the warmth left my eyes entirely, replaced by something cold as steel. "But not for me. Is this really just a parasite from the Otsutsuki clan wanting to devour yet another planet?"

At my words, his gaze filled with what appeared to be sincere regret, and he closed his eyes.

"A pity… You were among those who advanced the technologies of this world so remarkably far. But you are not the only one. I'm certain that in time, a small piece of your body will suffice…"

Neither of us had made any move with energy while he spoke. The moment he finished, I immediately drew chakra from the outside world, flooding my body with power. From "Jigen," chakra surged upward in a flash, and through a spatial rift torn open above the building, a massive, tapered column came hurtling straight down at me.

Teleportation, and I watched the small negotiation house acquire an unscheduled hole with a crash.

"Fast. But not fast enough," the surprised thought flashed through my mind as I thrust out my hand and immediately fired an Adamantine Chain from it.

The air exploded as an object moving at multiples of the speed of sound tore through it. And then, with some surprise, I watched my technique tear apart the body of Jigen, who had already gotten back to his feet…

The lone building, already damaged, immediately folded in on itself under the shockwave chasing after my technique.

"Overestimated him?"

No. When I yanked the chain back, beneath the rubble, far faster than before, chakra ignited at the destroyed body's location, and a spatial distortion swept it away.

"Where is he?" The Mangekyo lit up in my eye sockets instantly as I scanned in every direction. Who knew where he might have instantly regenerated and gone to ground, waiting for a blindside strike.

But nothing remained, only the residual traces of spent chakra. Closing the distance quickly, I swept the collapsed building aside with a gesture and began to analyze, working to pick up a trail. An enemy like this couldn't be left alive.

Less than two seconds in, I had analyzed part of some very faint properties… after which I had cause to be quietly grateful I'd devoted only part of my attention to it…

Through my senses, a flash of something microscopic: one directly in front of my head, several more at my chest. An instant later, in those exact locations, black chakra-saturated stakes materialized at impossible speed. I managed to intercept with my hands only the one aimed at my head and the one driving toward the center of my chakra core, while my chest announced their arrival with a crunch, acquiring several deeply embedded new additions.

"Now that's fast!" the thought tore through my mind. "Even the toads' sage chakra didn't block it…"

"Remarkable reflexes…"

The same deep voice, behind me, but I managed to slip away with a spatial technique before several more stakes could find purchase in my body. They pulsed painfully, sowing chaos through my energy system. But thanks to the "crutch" in my eyes, I managed to execute the technique fast enough.

Without pause, my body, using those same eyes, dissolved into energy, letting the stakes fall clear, then reassembled itself completely whole. Izanagi, though it cost a considerable amount of chakra given the "weight" of my body, put me back in fighting shape in an instant.

"But it's not just the resilience and the chakra… I was wrong," he continued speaking even as he pressed his attempts to skewer me with sharp stakes. "You've forced me to be reborn in this worthless vessel. But you've also let me confirm that you are an excellent candidate for the next one. A complete Otsutsuki, whose destiny is to be consumed by the tree. To be reborn, and become something greater…"

"There's a lot more contempt in your tone now," I said, sidestepping another volley of stakes with a spatial technique.

As I evaded, I moved steadily upward, ensuring our exchange wouldn't catch anyone below in the crossfire… even if the nearest people were several kilometers away.

My opponent, capable of flight himself, followed. Compared to his first attempt at an attack, he was now substantially faster, substantially more treacherous. Those stakes masked their own chakra exquisitely and existed at a scale nearly impossible to track, only expanding to full size at the moment when dodging was nearly out of reach. It took time to adjust, to begin anticipating their appearance and acting preemptively, and it demanded the lion's share of my attention.

During one such evasion, I got a proper look at the one who had reappeared. He was now bare-chested, his near-white skin covered in black tomoe and other markings, wearing a white coat with a high collar and violet trim. His long hair had become a short, segmented style, grey, matched by a grey beard. A horn had grown from his head, while his right eye glowed yellow with some unknown dojutsu I had never encountered, and his left held a Byakugan. Through all of his attacks he still held his glass of wine, and had taken another sip at some point during it all.

"Don't you want to introduce yourself again?" I asked with genuine curiosity, preserving what remained of our performative courtesy.

No answer came immediately. Only another surge of chakra rolled through my senses, as directly above me, something opened. An enormous black cube with pulsing crimson outlines. It wrapped itself in waves of distortion that made reality appear to shudder, losing definition. That wave nearly neutralized my teleportation, forcing me to immediately flood my leg with a far coarser chakra structure to attack.

The limb connected with a heavy impact, and the world around us shook from the explosive collision, after which I slipped away via teleportation to watch two more cubes snap shut on where I had been while the first one shattered into fragments.

"Otsutsuki Isshiki." The name resonated through the air like an echo, and behind his back something materialized that set my nerves even more on edge: an entire constellation of black cubes, each one pouring out waves of destabilizing chakra, submerging everything around them in chaos.


They moved with sharp, erratic motions around their summoner, refusing any semblance of order, cutting off every convenient approach to him.

"Well, then. Now that introductions are out of the way, I suppose we can take this to the next level," I said, and felt a grin spread across my face.

Those cubes were a serious problem. My strike shouldn't have recoiled against me at all, but the destabilizing aura had managed to crack my defenses enough to send the shockwave back through me. And yes, this creature likely had more cards yet to play. But he could still be matched…

He had already shown part of what he could do. As, for that matter, had I.

But we had yet to show our full power!

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

Following Isshiki's introduction, I was back to dodging his attempts to skewer my body with rods. Meanwhile, my body, driven by the synergy of merging chakras, had begun to visibly transform.

My height was closing in on six and a half feet as the muscles across my frame swelled and pulled taut like cables of adamantine steel. My clothes couldn't keep up with the expansion and tore apart, leaving only my pants, elastic enough to survive, now riding up like shorts. My skin deepened to a dull gray, hardening many times over and thickening slightly to cushion the blows I was about to deliver. Then, from my arms, legs, and back, protrusions began erupting, hollow at their cores and shaped like jet nozzles. They gave my chakra concentrated release points, instantly multiplying my maneuverability.

I fired a burst of thrust from them and shot upward in a jagged line, simultaneously projecting my chakra outward into the world.

"This leaden curtain just isn't doing it for me today," I said, spreading my arms wide, hanging directly beneath the canopy of dark, swollen clouds.

One moment. Then the sky shuddered and collapsed. The vast ocean of clouds crumpled inward like a blanket yanked from all sides, plummeting as one enormous sphere directly onto Isshiki's position, only to be ionized a second later by the lightning chakra I blasted into it.

The world was swallowed by the toll of thunder. Thousands, millions, of plasma discharges detonated the surrounding air with concussive expansions, breeding a chaos of overlapping shockwaves from within.

Had that storm sphere, crackling with lightning, materialized over a city instead of an empty wasteland, nothing would have been left but dust. But the one person standing inside the apocalypse didn't seem to care.

The sphere began to shrink before my eyes. Without so much as a flinch, the Ōtsutsuki drank in every ounce of the lightning chakra.

Only when a small, chakra-drained glow, barely the size of a ball, floated in front of Isshiki did he bother to acknowledge it. With casual contempt, he flicked it away with a wave of his free hand.

"Shinjutsu techniques…" he murmured. "Your ninjutsu shares a resemblance to those abilities."

The cubes orbiting him had taken no damage either. Remarkable.

"What are you talking about?" I pressed, hanging above him. The Mangekyō flared in my eyes as my chakra, along with every sage-energy current I could command, surged into it.

What flooded toward Isshiki next wasn't a wave. It was a point-blank battering ram of Amaterasu, far more complex and potent than the eye technique in its base form.

But the cubes folded themselves into a funnel before their master and began rotating, dismantling my technique with pulses of chakra before it could reach him. The alien himself extended one hand and, once again, swallowed my attack whole.

Energy attacks are just wasted breath on this guy, aren't they.

"I have studied your human jutsu," he began, with the faintest trace of reproach in his voice, since I, being the uncivilized sort, had asked a question and then refused to let him answer. "They are nothing but pale shadows of absolute jutsu. Shinjutsu, the arts my clan wields. Shibai, however, stepped beyond the will of the Ōtsutsuki. He became a god."

This time, I actually let him finish. But, possessed of spectacular shamelessness, while Isshiki delivered his monologue I quietly extended an almost thread-thin probe of chakra behind his back. The probe was so fine and imperceptible it would have been nearly invisible even to a powerful Byakugan. Its purpose: to prep a particularly fast technique for what came next.

Another teleport, and I was behind him. My body and arm ignited with chakra as the thrust from the nozzle protrusions accelerated the strike, loading it with sheer, titanic force.

Closing in centimeter by centimeter, the space beneath my palm warped, unable to contain what it was carrying. But Isshiki's body flickered, the yellow dōjutsu in his eye socket blazing to life, and in an instant he shrank to a microscopic scale and vanished from the world entirely.

I yanked my arm back, but couldn't contain all the energy. The air beneath me ignited into plasma across dozens of meters, and the destructive wave that followed tore into the earth below, carving a trail of craters and leveled trees for kilometers in every direction.

"Damn it," I muttered, frustrated at not wrapping this up cleanly. Then I surveyed the damage, gave a quiet snort, and teleported across thousands of kilometers.

The transition took less than a breath, and beneath me the sand oceans of the Land of Wind stretched open. Above, instead of evening, it was so early in the morning that sunlight only showed at altitude, barely kissing the desolate desert below.

A pulse of sensor chakra swept across the earth, carrying frequencies I recognized. Then, close by, a spatial rift tore open in the darkness my eyes could easily pierce, and Isshiki stepped out of it. Wine glass still in hand.

"I regret to say it, but your existence threatens my plans," the dandy said, and he genuinely sounded regretful. "I have no choice. I will eliminate you."

"The feeling is mutual."

"Then let's not waste time." He drained the last of the wine in one clean tilt, let the glass fall spinning toward the desert floor, and raised both hands skyward.

The already-dark sky went darker still. Literally millions of black, sharpened columns materialized in it, along with an array of other bladed objects of every shape.

Looking up, my Mangekyō began autonomously tracking the staggering number of motion vectors for all of it. There was no outrunning it by simply putting distance between us. It happened faster than a blink, and the world was consumed in black lines as the Ōtsutsuki's attack came down.

I chose not to gamble. I simply stepped into the space within my own eyes. I stood on the gray prism there for a couple of seconds, then returned to the world.

"Not bad," I said, watching Isshiki lower his hands. Then I snapped sideways via teleport as a pair of cubes tried to crush me. "One-one. And I think it's time to play my trump card."

Black fūin markings spread across my hand as chakra ignited at my fingertips. Then they touched the seal that had just materialized on my stomach.


For the fragment of my consciousness that slipped inward, the world blurred and resolved into dark corridors stretching away into the distance. The squat walls around me gave off a faint, sickly yellow, while the ceiling was almost entirely covered in pipes that snaked down along the walls at intervals.

There were many passages here. But stepping down onto a floor sheeted in shallow water, my avatar in this inner world moved with purpose toward a specific, spacious chamber.

Soon, enormous iron-grated gates came into view, one panel bound shut by a slip of paper bearing kanji. Beyond the gate, the darkness showed nothing. Yet even now, a low rumble was rolling out of it.

As I drew closer, I was noticed. Something began moving behind the towering metal bars.

Two massive red irises ignited within the cage, pupils drawn to slits. Each one the size of a man.

"Rrrgh…"

A growl that deepened for a moment, and a gust of wind hit me like a wall. The figure inside the cage stepped closer to the bars.

"Wandered in all the way to the end of the road… You're finally here…" the deepest voice I'd ever heard rolled out from the Nine-Tailed Fox, measured yet thunderous. "Has another jinchūriki come crawling to me for my power?"

With mild irritation and far greater condescension, he lowered his massive head to get a better look at me standing some ten meters back.

"Worthless little human. Speak your piece."

"Got it in one," I said, my expression flat. To the Fox's visible surprise, the cage between us began to open.

At the same moment, with a few adjustments, my chakra moved to suppress the unsealing of Minato and Kushina's Shadow Clones. The Fox, being quick on the uptake, arranged his face into an expression of towering arrogance and raised one paw.

"Die!" His claws swung toward me.

But a flash of my Mangekyō, and the bijū froze. His arm stopped a bare few centimeters from my face. The shadow of visible strain crossed his features as he fought to complete the movement.

"Once, not by your own will perhaps, you caused me pain," I said, tilting my head up to meet the Fox's gaze. "Call it a contradiction to my stated principles, but I have never placed myself beneath this world. So accept my repayment. Know agony."

One second, and my chakra drove itself deeper inside the Fox. All to force his energy to begin literally breaking apart. It was a technique analogous to the Eight Inner Gates, the Hachimon, but not for me. For the bijū.

The Fox jerked. Bloody veins spread across the whites of his eyes from the pain. Then an unfathomably vast ocean of bright chakra tore out of him, with a pronounced tilt toward Yang.


Back in the real world, dark fūin lines spread across my entire body as the energy came flooding in.

"Hrrgh—" I bit down, fighting to hold the current.

But.


A blinding flash blazed across the still-dark sky and lit up dozens of kilometers of desert below as though a second sun had ignited. In its wake came pressure so crushing it was literally driving the sand down into the earth for kilometers around the standing figure, fusing it solid.

Nearby, shielding his face with one hand, Isshiki watched the spectacle with strained attention from inside the protective cage his cubes had formed around him. His dōjutsu, cutting through the searing light, saw not just a blinding flare where his opponent stood, but a clearly defined axis rising from the scorched, ashen sand all the way into the sky above.

But that was not the end. The axis faded, and in its place a radiant figure appeared, wrapped in white.


Energy. Power tearing me apart from within.

And at the same time, as it was being absorbed, something on the edge of my awareness began flickering. Something dimly familiar.

Something closer to Hashirama's sage-chakra than anything else I'd felt. Nearer. Stronger. Meaner.

"This… isn't… enough…" The realization crystallized, and my distorted voice cut through the relentless roar.

My arms shot outward, fingers driving into the very fabric of space itself, bending it. Then I pulled.

The world around me groaned.

With that gesture, two miniature black holes came spiraling into existence on either side of me, drinking in the light and spinning into radiant disks. The world below, which had been compressing under the weight of the pressure, seemed to inhale and then reversed itself. The ocean of sand that had been driven downward erupted upward in particles, swarming toward me, cocooning me in an ever-growing sphere.

Inside, scraping for scraps of conscious thought just to keep my own body from tearing apart, let alone to do anything else, I began drawing sage-chakra from everything around me. The Fox's power was crushing, but by absorbing specifically the Yin-spectrum sage-chakra, I was counterbalancing it.

As the energy approached its ceiling, by my will the breakdown inside the Fox ceased, leaving him to collapse, withered down to skin and bone. Then the gates in my inner world began their slow, grinding closure.

The sand sphere, which had by now grown to three kilometers in diameter, began to darken visibly for any outside observer, until within seconds it had become a mass of black, dry dust.

Just moments later, after a teleport, my feet hit the top of the sphere with a heavy crack as I landed on it. My body had transformed again, a distorted, shadow-drenched Yin-clad figure, five meters tall. A brilliance of white light, like the core of a supernova, had concentrated in my chest, illuminating everything around me.


The aura of uncontrolled power no longer poured off me. Only the space a few meters around me continued to warp.

The sphere beneath had contracted to roughly two and a half kilometers. Gathering myself, I seized it with my chakra, then sent it moving in a curved line. The little black planetoid ignited instantly from atmospheric friction, streaking at incredible velocity before being hurled toward Isshiki, who had been watching the whole spectacle.

But instead of destroying the alien, the "meteor," almost at its destination, shrank to the size of a small pebble in an instant, which the Ōtsutsuki casually caught between two fingers. We locked eyes. Then the "pebble" disappeared and reappeared directly above me in its full magnitude.

The deafening thunder of its superheated body, my instantaneous teleport to a high altitude, and from there I watched the meteor slam into the desert plain below. It unleashed colossal energy as it punched through the earth to staggering depth, generating a monstrous shockwave. The blast was so tremendous it left me ringing, and the distant red of dawn was painted a sinister crimson from the heat. The entire continent shuddered as though struck by a giant's hammer, and where the meteor had struck, a new mountain was rising from the rubble.

I didn't rush to move. Visions filled my head. I felt, or thought I felt, the emotions of everything around me. Of the planet itself. And one emotion stood out with startling force.

"Is that why you Ōtsutsuki need the Tree? Because you can't absorb a planet's chakra on your own?" My question cut through the air as the rumble of the sphere's impact began to settle.

Isshiki, watching the aftermath with his usual composure, gave a single slow shake of his head.

"Worlds do not simply accept outsiders. Harvesting genes through the Jūbi is more efficient. Even bearing one-ninth of it is an extraordinary burden," he said, pointing at me.

"Yeah…" My body was shaking now, shivering as though a fever had set in. My voice had dropped, rasping and guttural, far deeper and louder, carrying across the landscape like rolling thunder. "I can feel it. This energy, like a venomous snake whispering of my own death. But at the same time it demands your destruction with a force that won't be denied!"

Clenching my clawed hand, I channeled energy into it, and the space around me fractured with a grinding shriek. Around me, the shape of an enormous black dragon had begun to coalesce, its eyes blazing to life as twin white searchlights stretching off into the distance.

Seeing the technique taking form, Isshiki teleported to a safer distance and positioned his cubes in a funnel across what he assumed would be my path. But I didn't go straight. I went up, arcing high, then pivoted and came down vertically on Isshiki, who'd already reoriented his cubes upward to meet me.

The dragon, warping the space around it and tearing through it as it passed, didn't even register the cubes it erased from existence on its way through. Then it plunged dozens of kilometers deep into the earth, boring an opening more than a hundred meters wide.

The surface shook immediately. And with every passing moment, the tremors grew. The colossal energy the dragon had carried was transferring into the earth itself until the tectonic plates began to move, radiating shockwaves across the entire continent.

The gaping, lightless chasm left behind soon began to fill with red, as Isshiki, reappearing in the world, looked down into it. Understanding where this was heading, he teleported a couple of kilometers sideways, just in time to watch a torrent of magma erupt from the depths of the planet like a volcano, like another axis, blasting skyward. The molten sand around the opening was swelling on the spot, rapidly forming a massive volcanic structure with a new mountain beside it.

Watching the cataclysm unfold, Isshiki didn't immediately notice me materialize beside him, until my massive strike was already swinging for him.

The Ōtsutsuki barely managed to shrink away, and my blow sent a white-hot wave angling outward and down. The air along its path ignited from the friction on contact, covering the desert for a moment in a rolling sea of plasma. Another shattering peal of thunder cracked through the air.

In that same instant, Isshiki, regrouping, made another attempt to crush me with incoming cubes. I answered by detonating my energy outward in both directions, triggering a white burst of force from the impact. The cubes were disintegrated on the spot.

Need to wrap this up faster. I won't last long in this form, the thought lit through my mind, and I surged back into the attack.

"Dark emotions saturate every inch of this world's chakra. Concentrating it in myself, I feel it more clearly than ever. But is this just the world rejecting outsiders? Or does it have very specific reasons to hate you this much?!"

I pressed the question while landing blow after blow.

"You are perceptive," was all he offered in return.

The world buckled under the concussive exchange, and in the wake of my strikes, scorched canyons tore open stretching for kilometers in every direction.

Now feeling the dark emotions within the creature too, I was finding Isshiki even faster, while the Ōtsutsuki himself seemed slower. More powerful as I was, I was beginning to read his shrinking before he executed it, while Isshiki now needed to maintain distance just to have time to dodge at all.

My attention grazed over two more seals, two more tailed beasts. It felt like if I played every card at once, the fight would end on that same beat. But the real question was whether I'd survive that. I had serious doubts.

Isshiki kept trying to demolish me with cubes or trap me in waves of them, while I kept trying to close into hand-to-hand range, teleporting to him again and again.

In a short span, I'd thrown an enormous amount at him. Not just monstrous strikes that tore the world below into bare stretches of blasted earth reaching to the horizon, but other techniques too.

Enormous golden palms summoned through Hashirama's senjutsu slammed shut a fraction after Isshiki had managed to slip sideways. Rods I'd scattered in every direction to construct a cubic crimson barrier turned out to be useless when the Ōtsutsuki shrank down and slipped through a spatial technique, while inside the barrier a landslide of black columns, cubes, and rods erupted and blew it apart from within. A particularly close eye-lock and the Izanami I unleashed, which drained no small amount of my chakra, produced zero effect: Isshiki's body had moved before the chakra reached him. And I honestly wasn't certain it would have worked even on a direct hit, given the alien anatomy involved.

I ran combination after combination. Not one landed.

We were both getting tired.

At one point I misjudged, stepped into a massive rod, and lost an arm. It spun away ahead of me as I dropped back and down, putting distance between myself and the rods still angling to tear into me.

Isshiki, finally sensing my error, closed in. The nearer the range, the easier it was to direct his flying objects.

With cubes coming in from behind, I chose to go forward instead, reversing direction hard, back into territory where the rods had already cleared out, though Isshiki himself was closing that distance. My Mangekyō caught it: dozens of microscopic cubes erupting from Isshiki's space, arraying themselves in a wall between us, already waiting for the moment I'd close in. In answer, my remaining arm ignited in a coating of gray chakra, and my opponent clicked his tongue, annoyed I'd spotted another of his tricks. He decided to hold then, to grow the cubes and try to crush me with them regardless, since I'd apparently charged energy specifically to break them.

Except something black flickered, and just a moment later Isshiki looked down with a stunned expression to find a clean hole punched through the upper portion of his chest, while my own transformed limb came hurtling back toward me like a needle.

Desperation swallowed the Ōtsutsuki. And then uncontainable fury.

The cubes, with me already among them, expanded instantly. But all they crushed was the arm I'd committed to that strike, because once again I'd gotten out via spatial technique. Straight to Isshiki, who had begun to fall.

The energy concentrated in that limb surged back into me, and my claw-like fingers drove into the side of Isshiki's skull, wrenching it around and seizing hold of the unique dōjutsu. Then a kick from my leg sent him flying clear of the cubes beginning their own descent.

We came down onto the scorched sand.

My severed arm was already growing back before my eyes, wet with regeneration, lengthening into something with even longer claws than before. I began moving toward Isshiki.

"The Byakugan has a blind spot. And you have impressive regeneration…" I noted the obvious: that with a chest cavity punched clean through and pieces of his brain scattered across the desert, the alien was still alive. Still slowly pulling himself back together. "But it doesn't matter. Your path has no more meaning than your healing, Ōtsutsuki. Devouring worlds through the Tree to grow stronger. Being devoured by the Tree to be reborn. Repeating the cycle, over and over."

I raised my regenerated arm and drove it into Isshiki's chest. Wrapped in the energy of my soul, it reached inside and drew out the powerful, ancient core of the Ōtsutsuki's soul.

"Everything is dust if there is nothing left to be reborn into…"

My jaws opened wide, and a pulsing sphere hung above them.

The body of Isshiki, no longer alive, could only watch as the creature consumed the soul it had housed until now.

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

A stream of energy flowed from Isshiki's soul into my maw. Once it shriveled down to nothing but a faded orb, my hand clenched, and a moment later its rapidly crumbling fragments hung suspended in the air before dissolving entirely.

"It's over," I said, glancing down at what was now, without question, the corpse of an Otsutsuki.

The dojutsu in my hand vanished, and my energy reserves tensed up...

A massive shockwave of my chakra instantly rolled out across the world, a silent declaration of my victory.

"Kgh..." I grimaced.

My central nervous system was running on fumes, strained to the limit, riddled with micro-damage throughout. No question, I could still dance if pushed. But even as things stood right now, I was looking at roughly three, maybe four months of self-repair just to claw back to where I was before the fight.

Thinking through my condition, my eyes drifted to the seal housing the Kyuubi.

"You and I were never going to be friends, were we?" I gave an ironic pat to my distorted, blackened abdomen, thinking of the emaciated fox. "And yet... if things had gone just a little differently, this Otsutsuki wouldn't have been a problem for either of us."

And that was the honest truth. If I hadn't been burning energy to suppress Kurama's hostile chakra, if I'd had his backing instead, just that one missing rung on the ladder, I could've ended Isshiki in seconds. Instead, I now had to bleed off all that aggressive energy and foot the bill for recovery myself.

I formed a one-handed concentration seal. Light and dark energies poured out of me into the world as my body visibly began to shrink, reverting to its original form. Then, pulling a change of clothes from my spatial storage, I quickly started shaping a construct-sphere in my palm, similar to the ones Hagoromo's children used, to pump energy into the cooling corpse at my feet. Without a soul, it would become useless fast, and I needed it. Even with a destroyed brain and no way to extract memories, an alien's body still had plenty of secrets to yield.

Then, sealing Isshiki away inside a separate spatial seal like a specimen in a jar, I swept one last look across the scorched desert and teleported home.

Three sets of worried eyes converged on me the instant I arrived.

Karin, who'd been sitting in a tight knot of nerves alongside an equally tense Hinata and Sakura, shot to her feet. She started moving toward me, but—

"...Oh." The redhead was immediately intercepted by Sakura's arm, her hand materializing firmly against Karin's back to stop her cold.

"You okay?" Sakura asked. That was exactly why she'd stopped Karin from accidentally putting pressure on a body that might currently be compromised.

Noting that I didn't look scratched up in the slightest, she released the redhead, who shot her a wounded glare in return.

"Not exactly at peak condition," I replied. "But I've still got enough left to put down ten Kage. Don't worry, nothing's broken that can't be fixed."

Hinata slipped up quietly and pressed my hand to her chest, offering her silent support. I found it absurdly endearing and rested my chin on top of her head.

Besides my "envoy" Sakura, the other girls had also, at their own request after yet another round of body cultivation, taken on a more mature appearance. And beyond the obvious physical changes, both Hinata and Karin had chosen to grow their hair out.

"We were worried..." Sakura noted, pressing in as well.

"Hey. That sounded an awful lot like you're blaming Naruto for having to deal with that unknown crap," Karin muttered, burying her face against my collarbone.

"I was just stating a fact. No subtext," Sakura replied evenly, with no real interest in arguing the point. Karin grumbled something unintelligible under her breath.

All things considered, a certain quiet bliss settled over us.

Gradually calming down, Karin eventually moved her hands away from my shoulders, where they'd been draped from behind, and began running them down my torso. But the moment they drifted one centimeter lower than what polite society would consider acceptable...

Smack!

"Ow!" Karin yanked her hands back as Sakura's slap connected. "What? I was just making sure Naruto was in one piece."

At that moment, eyes half-closed, I found myself contemplating my monastic existence in a house full of several very adult-looking girls.

We pulled apart.

"You had to ruin it," Sakura said, lowering her eyelids and casting a faintly disapproving look at Karin.

"Wait, so what, that means I'm the one at fault?!" the culprit managed, caught somewhere between outrage and dawning self-awareness. She got back a look from Sakura that said "Yes" as plainly as words could, with just the lightest edge of condescension.

"Let's just drop it," Hinata offered diplomatically, then redirected her attention to me. "What was that creature? Its chakra wasn't human."

"Right, what the hell even was that thing?" Karin seconded. I scratched the back of my head; the phrasing sounded awfully familiar for some reason.

"I'll explain everything. And I think... I'm taking a few days off. How do you feel about spending some time together?"

In response, I received synchronized approving nods, conveying that yes, I'd absolutely earned the rest after all that, and yes, they were more than happy to once again step away from the world for a while and enjoy life.

And so my account of events began. While I talked, I noticed the aftershocks of that battle were still rippling outward across the world. The floor beneath our feet had started to shift.

And at some point the sound waves would arrive too, rolling in like slow, muffled thunder, booming steadily for minutes at a stretch. With energy discharges that size, a strange aurora had painted itself across the night sky, so the girls drew the curtains.

So there it was: I'd essentially saved the world, and I stayed home. But outside, not everyone had the luxury of just handing the cleanup off to someone else and calling it a night. A battle with an Otsutsuki doesn't just vanish without a trace.


View From Other Nations

Of all places, the Land of Wind had it worst, which when you thought about it wasn't all that surprising, given that's exactly where everything had happened.

Residents who hadn't seen it coming were jolted awake by a violent tremor. When they stumbled outside, what greeted them was a sky far too bright for the hour, blazing with light. Then came a brutal sandstorm, and with it low, drawn-out sounds like rolling thunder that seemed to go on and on without end. It hit everyone, the outermost borders as much as the capital and Sunagakure alike. The earthquake shattered an immeasurable number of structures before dying down after about ten minutes. The thunder, though, the kind that made it impossible to think, hammered on for over half an hour, while the storms were set to flush the warmth right out of the country for more than a full day. People could only take shelter in whatever solid structures had survived. Only settlements with particularly favorable geography were spared the worst of it, places like the Hidden Sand itself, nestled deep between its rocky walls.

Konoha and the Hidden Stone, sitting nearly twice as far from the epicenter as the worst-hit parts of the Land of Wind, fared considerably better. But they still felt it, quite literally. They too saw the light first, in the dead of night, with the tremors and faint rumble reaching them later, and noticeably weaker. Both villages, built with attacks in mind, carried out successful evacuations to designated safety points. Even so, the incident left a mark on everyone. There was something deeply unsettling about knowing that somewhere out there, something so massive and so dangerous was unfolding and you couldn't touch it. Couldn't influence it. You just had to swallow it and hope fate was feeling generous.

The Land of Water and the Land of Lightning got off lightest. The former caught nothing more notable than somewhat rougher-than-usual storm swells, while the latter only felt a faint tremor considerably later. But the glow on the edge of the sky, and after an even longer delay a sound that wasn't so much heard as felt in the bones, one that left some people genuinely nauseous, was something else entirely. As for the sensors, who felt every bit of what was happening on Earth far more acutely than anyone else: not a word from any of them, except creative profanity. What colorful language was making the rounds in Konoha and the Hidden Stone, let alone the Hidden Sand, was anyone's guess.


Hatake Kakashi sat in his residence with a look that could curdle milk, listening to one report after another while keeping people posted outside to manage the evacuation.

Several hours after the "signal of humanity's victory," once things had more or less settled, Konoha convened an emergency meeting.

Presiding over it, naturally, was the new Hokage, Kakashi. Looking simultaneously bored and completely in control, honestly not sure how he kept pulling that off, the village head got straight to it, going for the jugular to kill the brewing situation before it boiled over.

Keeping an absolutely straight face and an even straighter line, he declared everything was fine and there was no reason to panic. Everyone had made it safe and sound into the shelters inside the Hokage Rock, so people were perfectly welcome to go home, write their reports, and get some well-earned sleep before noon. Oh, and by the way, their genin was home, and it'd be a real shame if anyone gave him a reason to get up. The kid was probably exhausted, and who knew what he might do if people started making noise. Besides, their shinobi had spotted some rather brazen Raikage spies out there. No point picking fleas off each other at home when there's someone sharpening a kunai right next door.

And then, without letting anyone get a single word in edgewise, he told them to go ahead and do what their smart Hokage had told them. Well, most of the shinobi did disperse. But a few stayed behind. The kind who tended to be older, far more convinced of their own authority, and conspicuously short on good judgment. They cornered their leader and promptly started tearing into one particular individual, leaving Kakashi to stand between them and whatever impulsive nonsense they were clearly itching to try.


The situation in the Hidden Stone wasn't entirely different.

Tsuchikage Onoki sat in the village council chamber in silence, sweating cold right along with everyone else. After a long deliberation, he finally arrived at a firm conclusion.

"That kind of power... capable of casually swatting down someone at Hashirama's level." The old man bared his teeth. "We weren't wrong to refrain from making any sudden moves against the Leaf. The time has come for me to make a difficult decision. I believe you'll understand. I am ordering our submission to the coming Empire. That is how we maximize what we stand to gain."

Onoki was, all things considered, a rather proud old man. But he also had just enough political sense to know that fighting the Emperor would only make everything worse, while the prospects of compliance, judging by the Mist, might not be nearly as grim as most people were painting in their heads.

The Tsuchikage had spent so many years winding his influence through the Stone that he had no doubts his word would carry. Especially now, when everyone was scared.


A, having convened his own council consisting only of his most trusted shinobi, was equally deep in thought.

"I... I don't know what the hell to do," the Raikage admitted, his bass voice filling the office in a rare moment of vulnerability that surprised even himself.

He sat behind his desk while the others stood around him. All except one, a white-haired aide seated at a nearby desk.

"Yo, doesn't matter what freak showed up to fight, our boy put him down — that's right. Chill, bro. We'll talk to the man and come out tight." said the Eight-Tails' jinchuuriki with an easy drawl, playing up his not-quite-rhymes as usual.

He shared a certain look with A, the same massive build, though with a bandana and shades pushed up on his head, plus a whole rack of thin-bladed scabbards across his back.

"Bee, shut the hell up with your rap crap!" A snarled. "You don't get it. What if we can't talk to him? Then what? We just roll over like the Mist did with the Land of Water?"

"Plan B still needs considerably more time," the aide, Mabui, noted flatly, which made A's fist tighten with barely contained frustration.

"Looks like we're gonna have to bend the knee to those bastards..." said the blond man standing against the wall with a deceptively calm face. His name was C, and he was one of A's bodyguards. Catching the extremely meaningful glare his leader leveled at him, he quickly added, "Temporarily!!!"

"A predator waits," came the voice of the blond girl across the room, the jinchuuriki of the Two-Tails. "We keep our heads down and our intentions to ourselves until we've developed either a sufficiently powerful sealing jutsu, which jinchuuriki do have a particular vulnerability to, or brought the Transfer Seal to an acceptable level."

The dark-skinned young man with voluminous white hair gave a quiet nod at that. Darui, A's second bodyguard and chosen successor.

A grimaced. Then he gave a measured nod.

"That's a plan. Now let's get the full council together and work out the details."


Mei, upon receiving the report about the wave of Naruto's victorious chakra washing over the planet, exhaled with a tired but genuine relief.

It was as if a mountain had slid off her shoulders, knowing that the words "this country might not survive the night" hadn't come true.

But when elephants fight, the grass beneath them gets crushed. And even the Land of Water hadn't been spared. A sound that drove people to the edge of sanity. Emergency evacuations. All of it whipped up panic and terror. Yes, the Emperor's victory over an unknown monster had strengthened the faith people held in him, but right now the immediate priority was reining in the chaos before too many lives were lost to it.


Interlude: Black Zetsu

Wet, rhythmic chewing sounds filled the dark cave. The creature, split into two halves, was nervously working its way through the flesh of an unknown but impressively muscled shinobi.

White Zetsu didn't particularly enjoy eating people; he found them too tough. Black Zetsu, on the other hand, had a taste for them, especially the ones with a satisfying chew. And besides, the act of eating them had a calming effect.

That said, this was the one and only situation in which Kuro Zetsu displayed anything approaching a positive feeling toward the human species. Or toward any other species, for that matter. His only revelation, his only devotion, was his creator. His mother. Kaguya.

He was furious. Rattled. And for the first time in a very long while, afraid. His plan, centuries in the making, had just cracked straight through. A bit more pressure and it looked like it might shatter entirely. And if it did, Zetsu would fail in his purpose. The very thought twisted everything inside him: that he might not be able to resurrect Kaguya.

Otsutsuki Isshiki had shown his face after nearly a millennium. A pathetic worm who once upon a time had fancied himself superior to the Mother.

Blasphemy.

Back when Zetsu didn't yet exist, Kaguya had nearly killed the one who'd dared raise a hand against her, against the Goddess. Now that lesser creature had finally died, and Kuro couldn't help but savor a flicker of petty satisfaction over it.

Still.

Zetsu stopped chewing.

A plan coming apart at the seams isn't the end.

This sudden enemy was far too powerful; even all of Zetsu's pieces together wouldn't be enough. That was a problem. But it didn't mean Kuro couldn't solve it.

Uzumaki Naruto... Zetsu choked on a bone as the name surfaced from the past, coughing it onto the cave floor. A curious kid. The one who's been making the Leaf's elders hide under their desks...

Black Zetsu had a hobby: he liked watching talented people. Collecting promising pieces, in a manner of speaking. The Will of Kaguya's curiosity had at one point extended to a certain blond. But now Kuro could only curse himself for not having given the Nine-Tails' jinchuuriki the attention he deserved.

Too entangled with the village, too complicated a target, too much heat. That had been his thinking back then. Now all that was left was kicking himself over it.

"You thought of something?" came White's infuriatingly chipper voice.

"Chew quietly," Black snapped in his low, grating tone.

But White wasn't wrong. A shape was forming in Zetsu's mind.

To resurrect Kaguya, he needed the Ten-Tails. But the revival of the Juubi didn't have to be perfect. A portion of the tailed beasts' chakra would be enough to give the Goddess her vessel.

The unfortunate reality was that without all of the tailed beasts' chakra, she would be nowhere near the peak of her power, and she would not be pleased about that.

Still, reason had to prevail. Given what that human aberration had demonstrated, Akatsuki had no hope of claiming even a scrap of the Nine-Tails, the Three-Tails, or, as Kuro was increasingly certain, the One-Tail. Which meant Kuro would have to take matters into his own hands.

They might be coming soon, and so the time had come to move fast and accept some risk.

Kuro had been watching the one they called the "Emperor" from a distance, studying his actions, and based on what he'd seen, he held certain cautious hopes that a dialogue might be possible. That he could offer knowledge. Point the man in a useful direction. With Kuro's experience, that shouldn't be beyond reach.

Kaguya's power was immeasurable. It dwarfed anything Zetsu himself was capable of. Even weakened, she would be able to walk between worlds. And so he had to do everything in his power to steer this "Emperor" toward resurrecting Kaguya, appealing to the simple truth that she knew more than Kuro did and could therefore offer more.

After Her resurrection, it would no longer matter what the "Emperor" thought, or what became of this world. Zetsu and Kaguya could simply find some other living world, consume it, and then return here for vengeance.

There was nothing left on this Earth for the Goddess to protect. And so she could move somewhere no mortal could follow and search for a suitable world across centuries if she had to.

On that note, having arrived at a difficult decision, Zetsu gave a nod to himself and, incidentally, to White. He still had to cook up a convincing story; people loved listening to those. But first, he needed to make sure one idiot in a mask didn't bulldoze through the delicate business of building a manipulative rapport before it had even started. And after that, gather more information to better know which strings of his target's soul to pull. Urgency mattered right now, yes, but a few days wouldn't break anything.

---

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[Welydora]

Uzumaki Naruto's POV

The day after the Isshiki incident, I had the house to myself and was indulging in the purest form of human achievement: doing absolutely nothing. Recovery, officially. Hinata had left for a mission, because no matter how badly the world had been rattled, the Village still had quotas to fill. Sakura was helping her parents with something or other. Karin, despite the declared rest period, had already started ordering reagents for my lab on her own initiative, so that when the break was over, I'd walk back in to find everything prepped and ready.

But wallowing in laziness for too long wasn't in the cards. After lunch, an uninvited guest showed up at my door. Not quite Otsutsuki-tier, though. More like a significant step down.

"...Emperor?" Kakashi asked, uncertain, when I opened the door. He was in his white Kage robes this time.

"It's just Naruto here. Come on in, you're no stranger."

He visibly relaxed, nodded, and a moment later stepped inside.

"Recent events have caused quite a stir in the Village," he began as we made our way to the kitchen. "I've managed to sort out some of the problems. Not all of them, though."

"Come to cry on my shoulder, Hokage-sama?" I asked with a grin, nodding toward the chair by the table as I pulled the loose-leaf tea down from the shelf and put the kettle on.

"To tattle, genin-san," Kakashi corrected with a tired huff. "Speaking of which, any interest in becoming Hokage?"

"Nope. What, do I look stupid? The position I already hold comes with considerably more power and, with the right approach, considerably fewer headaches. Why would I want that deadweight?"

A sigh of pure, bone-deep exhaustion came from Hatake's direction.

"And you're already sighing just like a Hokage," I noted. "So stay one, by all means."

"My life is suffering..." he murmured, shaking his head. "Anyway. There are a couple of problems in the Village..."

A reel of images flashed behind Kakashi's eyes: jolted awake in the dead of night by waves of chakra cold enough to raise the hairs on your spine, flashes tearing across the sky, panic rippling through the streets, and then, somehow worse, hours upon hours of jōnin from the council chewing his ear off. In short, his phrasing just now had been a generous understatement. He continued, choosing his words carefully:

"One is minor, and the other is you. The minor one being brazen spies from the Hidden Cloud. I've been using them as cover for you..."

What followed was an explanation that, as things stood, both he and I had managed to accumulate an opposition of several jōnin who were deeply upset about my conquest of the world and were now demanding someone find a way to rein in this dangerous, unmanageable me. Because how dare I, apparently, reach for the power that rightfully belonged to upstanding people. Meaning them. Kakashi, for his part, had been holding the line, arguing that I was our shinobi, that I meant no harm to the Leaf, that I was by any reasonable metric a sane and functional person. Therefore: no reason for the fuss.

"I mean, I even showed them your certificate... but they simply won't calm down. They say a state cannot submit to one man. And that I need to find leverage over you before it's too late for all of us."

Siiiip. I took a long, contemplative sip of my tea, then set the cup down.

"Right, right." I nodded slowly. "A gathering of half-wits projecting their insecurities onto a ruler. Do they happen to be aware, by the way, that they already answer to one man: the Daimyō?"

"You don't understand, that's different," Hatake started to explain, but I cut him off.

"Yes, yes, indirect levers, technically not obligated to comply, blah blah blah. Fine. Here's what you tell them: if they can't stomach losing face by answering to a mere man, they're welcome to think of me as a god. And if they have grievances to air, they can find the spine to come before the Emperor and say it to my face instead of hiding behind your skirts. Pass that along."

Several expressions cycled across Hatake's face in response to my little speech. The last one landed squarely on universal sorrow made flesh. He sighed, somehow looking even more miserable.

"Still, as Hokage," the man's grimace grew more pitiful still, "I'm obligated to ask: what should Konoha be preparing for?"

A smug grin spread across my lips.

"Preparing to pledge fealty."

"...To swear an oath?"

"No, to listen while I announce that they're my subjects. Not now, though. A bit later."

I laid out the specifics of how I envisioned it, and the picture wasn't all that different from what they'd seen in the Mist. Full subordination, a handful of reforms, though nothing as drastic as what had happened in Kiri, forging much deeper ties on the global scale, a slow restructuring of the existing order, and so on. Kakashi had already anticipated most of it, but hearing the details seemed to ease something in him, the reassurance that I wasn't actually planning to run the Village into the ground or turn it into some kind of Hunger Games scenario. He lodged a complaint, as a formality, that all of this was going to be a massive headache. That's fine, I told him, he'd survive. The silver-haired martyr gave a long-suffering nod and took his leave.

Over the next several days, my humble self indulged in rest: a few restaurant outings with the girls, one trip to the theater, savoring cakes, or simply sleeping. Everything except the last one, unfortunately, had to happen in distant countries, because my recognizable face drew way too much attention back home.

Then, easing back into things gradually, I made my way to the Mist to see how things were holding up. As it turned out, quite well. My governors had proven they weren't just decoration; they didn't need me hovering over their shoulders to maintain order. Unsurprising, given that they'd been maintaining exactly that kind of order through a revolution.

The shinobi of the Land of Water had grown, on the whole, even more compliant, without so much as a flicker of thought toward overthrowing me. Zabuza had fully integrated into the system. The Hōzuki clan, whom I'd suspected might rally behind the executed leader's ideology, chose not to do anything stupid and fell neatly into line. Yagura had settled into his new post, well away from his former revolutionary associates, and was carrying out his duties conscientiously. None of it was particularly surprising, considering they were operating under the authority of an Emperor who moves continents.

Maybe I should have moved all of Konoha a couple of times just to make an impression on the stragglers. But assessed soberly, that pathetic little opposition of mine wasn't worth the theater. Honestly, they weren't worth anything.

A day later, I planted my temple outside Konoha with considerable fanfare and, with equal fanfare, announced to the sound of trumpets that the Land of Fire was now part of the Great Empire. And that they were free to rejoice and take pride in the fact that they now had an Emperor.

Under the crushing weight of my reputation, the shinobi found they could not refuse.

As for my so-called "opposition": inside the council chamber, they were a state unto themselves. But when it came time to actually handle things with their own hands, they stood quietly with everyone else, dissolved into the crowd, and put every effort into pretending they didn't exist.

After the, let's call it, oath, I offered Kakashi the first stage of the body-enhancement procedure, framed around the position of governor. He accepted. That immediately pushed the already near-zero probability of unrest in Konoha against its glorious Emperor even lower and placed Kakashi-Hokage higher and more influential than before.

Shortly after, given the opportunity, I decided to wrap the Leaf even more tightly in my authority. So I offered the body-enhancement to a man who genuinely deserved it, a man of real principle: Might Guy. And this giant of a man, weeping and lamenting that he was not worthy of such an honor, eventually yielded to my persuasion and became the protector of the Land of Fire region. After which, delighted at the prospect of finally being able to give his beloved Kakashi a run for his money again, he started chasing him through the streets of Konoha screaming about the Power of Youth at the top of his lungs.

Leaving my subordinates to sort out their petty squabbles on their own, I moved on via the next temple to the capital, where, once again beneath the crushing weight of my reputation, the Fire Daimyō also bent the knee to the Emperor. To me, that is.

Using Shadow Clones and my ability to sense deception and negative emotions, I swiftly replaced a substantial portion of the upper echelon's personnel, then mapped out the directions I expected them to move in. Fortunately, there was more qualified talent here than there had been in the Land of Water.

Then, for a rather less sweeping objective, I ordered architects to be found, to design a few residences for me. Properly lavish ones. Living in a rented cottage was beneath my dignity at this point. So I allocated land for myself near Konoha, in the capital, and in a few other particularly scenic locations for country estates, and made it clear that the architects were not to constrain their imaginations, because I would be doing the actual construction myself. After all, shinobi and Fire Country officials alike had plenty of other work ahead of them, building up and expanding the country and everything that entailed, so let them spread their efforts across the whole state. And of course, they should be prepared: within a month, key figures would begin submitting regular reports to the Emperor. Or rather, to his Shadow Clones.

Amid all of this, a day passed, and by the time things had quieted I was sitting on the throne in the Leaf's temple. Today I had company; Sakura had decided to join me out of curiosity. We were down to our last appointment for the foreseeable future.

He walked in hunched, with the bearing of a man who hadn't merely been beaten but spat on too. An Uchiha.

"Long time no see, Sasuke. How's life? How's the tomato garden?" I opened pleasantly.

My guest, however, found no joy in that. It was written all over him: being here, inside the temple, asking something of me, was a profoundly humiliating experience.

"The cursed seal. I'm ready," he cut straight to it.

"Hmm. Noted. The deal stands. Keep next Friday open, ten to eleven in the morning. I'll come by and we'll take care of it."

With that, our productive dialogue concluded. He gave a nod, turned, and left.

"Pitiful," Sakura commented from beside me once the Uchiha's back had disappeared through the door. "A man who can't accept the new reality. Can't adapt..."

"Dead weight, from Evolution's perspective." I shrugged. "Do you feel sorry for him? I do. A little."

"Definitely not more than you do." The girl let out a displeased sigh, watching the empty doorway as old memories surfaced. "Then again, let's not dwell on lost causes."

"Yeah..."

I too watched the space where that Uchiha had been and wondered why I was helping him at all. The motivation wasn't sentiment, not the kind you'd feel toward some lesser creature. It was something closer to gratitude for what he'd been able to give me. Even if most of those things weren't strictly to his credit, the Sharingan, the Indra construct, the Uchiha library were all worth a couple of favors that cost me nothing. And I should make a note to myself: arrange a meeting between this Avenger and the object of his Vengeance, to finally close the book on the story of two brothers so it stops flickering at the edges of my mind.

With that, the day's appointments were done. And so I returned at last to my favorite pastime: methodically taking things apart. Specifically, intact corpses. Back in the lab, naturally, I hadn't forgotten about the Otsutsuki's entire carcass. His body was full of mechanics I had no prior frame of reference for, and working through all of it would keep me occupied for months. And that eye of his was interesting too; the underlying principles were worth borrowing.

In addition, my clones were engaged in probing new spectrums of Earth sage chakra. Not just the one I'd accessed through Kurama's chakra, but also from the One-Tail and the Three-Tails. Those carried a distinctive concentrated power and equally potent aggressive properties.

All of it was sparking a flood of new ideas for further physical augmentation. My current level of power, incidentally, was already sufficient to begin studying the Rinnegan, which, as I'd discovered, shared certain fragmented internal characteristics with the new Earth sage chakra spectrums now available to me. That led me to the thought that I should take another look at Sasuke's eyes and Kakashi's eye, and also borrow a pair of already-awakened Rinnegan from my slightly lesser colleague, the one occasionally referred to as a god in the Rain Village. And a look at the Ten-Tails' vessel wouldn't hurt either, given that it processes the entire spectrum of Earth sage chakra simultaneously.

In the midst of these thoughts and experiments, several more days passed, split between the lab and resting at home. But just as I was getting ready to go visit the Akatsuki, as luck would have it, they came to me instead. Or rather, their true leader came.

"Did no one ever teach you to knock?" I lifted my hand from the fūinjutsu Analyzer seal, which promptly went dark, and turned around.

In the vast hall of the laboratory, rising up from the floor, stood a black humanoid figure with fully yellow eyes.

The creature tilted its head.

"I assumed you preferred getting to the point over wasting time on etiquette."

"Hmm. Fair enough."

My eyes swept the room: the bright space, several tanks with human subjects floating inside them, now with Otsutsuki genetic material, and the table behind me wrapped in sealing arrays, with a single tank at the center of the formation where an eye floated. A black sclera with a golden iris, golden triangles converging toward it like rays. The unique dōjutsu of Isshiki.

I covered the tank with my hand, sent it into my personal space, and turned back to Black Zetsu, who had likewise been scanning the laboratory.

"Let's hear your proposition," I said, my face unreadable. My eyes looked right through him, reading his nature down to the core.

"You may call me Black Zetsu."

"Yeah, I know who you are, slick. Don't keep the Emperor waiting."

He twitched, processing the implications of what exactly I might know about him. After a moment, however, he continued:

"You managed to kill an Otsutsuki... And you must be seeking answers. You hold power that humans were never meant to hold... and yet you hold it."

"Recall the beginning of this conversation," I reminded him flatly, prompting him to get to the offer already.

"...The Rabbit Goddess."

"Go on."

"You won't be able to open certain doors without her." Zetsu's voice picked up slightly; he was clearly starting to worry about losing my attention. "There is knowledge that does not belong to humans. There are keys to dimensions that are inaccessible to those who are not... Otsutsuki."

"You're not entirely right. According to Isshiki himself, my jutsu are comparable to his clan's techniques: Shinjutsu."

"Ninjutsu is only a fraction of the true techniques. You had enough of those fragments to build something greater," he continued, heaping on the flattery that, judging by the emotions he was barely suppressing, was utterly and completely insincere. "But my Mother... Kaguya, can offer so much more. The knowledge of the oldest clan, whose history predates even this world... She was betrayed by those she sought to protect. Yet your abilities are sufficient to restore her."

He glanced pointedly at the Otsutsuki clones in the capsules, making his implication clear.

I gave a short hum and folded my arms.

"Smooth pitch. To summarize: you're offering me Kaguya as a knowledge source, and in return you want her brought back. Simple enough. But what do you plan to do after? Say she's not exactly stable, say she decides she'd like to absorb all the chakra in this world? As is customary in her family of parasites."

Zetsu twitched. An entire bonfire of negative emotions erupted inside him directed at me, for having the audacity to insult his mother. None of it showed on his featureless face.

"You are powerful... but you are particular. Pragmatic. You would not kill without reason. And... you are capable of making the right decision."

A smirk appeared on my face.

"'You're not like the others, so do what benefits me.' Did I miss anything? Pathetic attempt." I extended my hand, and Zetsu stumbled backward. The tension in his emotions was unmistakable. "That trick works on Uchiha, play on their martyr complex and watch them dance. Not on me."

Realizing where things were heading, Black Zetsu made a sharp attempt to sink into the ground. But my hand was faster: it closed around his head, and spreading sealing marks pinned him in place.

"No!" A wail of genuine anguish tore out of him as he grasped his situation. "Shinobi were only ever meant for a great purpose! This is the meaning of your existence! You are instruments! How could filth ever manage to—"

I'd already stopped listening to his mounting hysteria. I sent him to a specially prepared frozen-space seal.

"Noisy," I muttered, turning back to the table. I unsealed Isshiki's eye back onto it as though nothing had happened and resumed my research.

The seal I'd used to contain Black Zetsu had been partially derived from the dimensional properties of that remarkable eye. In Isshiki's own version of such a space, he had stored his stakes, his cubes, and various other inventory, all of which I had also gotten around to examining.

As for Zetsu's idea, it wasn't actually bad on its own merits. Resurrecting Kaguya was genuinely viable. But on my terms, extracting the maximum value from the exchange? That had real promise.

Moving on to the Akatsuki. After finishing in the lab, I decided to pay them a visit sooner rather than later. I wasn't about to let them waltz into my measured life uninvited. And my first stop was one particular character in a mask.

I have an old score that it would be rather nice to finally settle.

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

That night, I wrapped up my business at the lab and headed toward a certain network of caves in another country: one of Akatsuki's bases.

"Figured he'd have them," I smirked, stepping into the underground chamber where an entire wall of jars greeted me, each one floating a Sharingan. "Not that they'll do him any good now."

I moved down the corridor and, a moment later, passed straight through a door into a room furnished with almost nothing.

In the far corner, darker than the rest, lay a sleeping bag, and in it, a ninja I'd known for far too long.

I approached without a sound and crouched over the man, who seemed not to have a care in the world.

His slow, steady breathing stirred something old in me. Old feelings of helplessness. Of despair.

"Calm, just like bef—"

In an instant, a hand shot toward my throat, kunai in its grip. It never arrived. My own hand moved faster than sound, and the arm went sailing into the wall, detached at the stump. The room shook with the crack of a broken sound barrier.

"—ore."

Obito grabbed what remained of his limb and lurched back. Pain carved itself across his scarred face, but he didn't let himself scream.

Now I could see him clearly: a ninja in black, both eyes blazing with Mangekyō Sharingan. The man who'd nearly killed me on my birthday. The man whose actions, if not by his own direct hand, had taken my mother's life and the lives of many others.

But I wasn't interested in the fine print. Details rarely change the reality of things.

"How does it feel, being a puppet on a very long chain?"

"Uzumaki Naruto…" he stated, his voice low. "You didn't come here to ask stupid questions. What do you want?"

"What do I want…" I rolled the words around on my tongue. "Your suffering. Obviously."

Slowly, I extended a hand toward him. Reality began to warp on cue, and from it emerged unmistakable tentacles, slipping into view.

They were woven from my soul's own energy. I had been so utterly powerless that day, I thought. Let's see what they can do today.

"Wait! Hear me out first, a world without suffering! That is my Eye of the Moon Plan. You don't understand what you're about to destroy. Akatsuki will bring true happiness to everyone!"

Halfway there, my tentacles stopped.

"I called you a puppet for a reason. Though I suppose you've already lost your strings. As for the Eye of the Moon, it's nothing more than a temporary illusion. Its endgame is this entire world becoming fertilizer for the Divine Tree."

The tentacles moved on.

In that same instant, the Uchiha attempted to phase into another dimension using one of his Mangekyō techniques, but my own Mangekyō countered and shut it down.

Realizing the ability wasn't working, Obito pivoted fast, letting his other eye go white to attempt Izanami.

Useless. An absurdly dense mass of chakra, blindingly fast and invisible by ordinary shinobi standards, was simply swept away with a flick of my wrist.

He tried to jump sideways next, but he couldn't move at all. My will had already entered his mind on Yin chakra. Only his remaining eye could shift, darting around, tracking the grey-luminescent tentacles as they drew closer.

And all he could do was let the rising terror show in his pupil.

The tentacles coiled around his soul's aura like a vise and squeezed.

When they bored through the Uchiha's aura, I felt Obito's soul radiating pain immediately. The tendrils converged on the outer core, letting me savor his despair.


The following portion of the scene has been removed due to its extreme violence and explicit sadism.


Holding the Uchiha's lifeless body, I closed my eyes. I'd finally done what should have been done long ago.

Then I let go. A body without a soul, like a puppet whose strings had been cut for good, simply crumpled to the floor.

"Nothing," I said, describing what I felt.

I'd expected something deep. Some profound sense of satisfaction. Instead, it felt roughly like taking out the trash.

Actually, no. Worse than that. My mood dropped.

I lowered my head, spared the corpse a contemptuous glance, and sealed it into a storage tag all the same. No point in wasting materials.

As for that room full of Sharingan, I'd study those dōjutsu capabilities later. Maybe something there would spark an idea for a new technique. Though I honestly doubted I'd find anything worth getting excited about.

With this Akatsuki base personally seen to, I headed home.

My next objective was to deal with the rest of the organization's members, though given my current mood, there was a very real chance I'd just kill them all if anything rubbed me the wrong way. And showing up in person wasn't exactly befitting of me.

So the next day, I sent them a messenger instead: an old "friend" of theirs who also happened to be the organization's traitor. Orochimaru.

My letter simply stated that I wished to speak. Pain, the acting leader of Akatsuki, took note of his true leader's disappearance and decided that, given their diminished numbers, it was wisest to gather together and come to the Emperor.

A couple of days later, in a considerably more neutral mood, I received several cloaked visitors in my temple: Pain, Konan, Itachi, Kakuzu, Hidan, the puppeteer Sasori, and the bomber Deidara.

As they drew closer, I spoke from my pompous throne.

"Well. You clearly have the good sense to come here rather than cause problems first. Before I get to why you're here, allow me to share a little history."

No preamble wasted, I laid it all out: the secret plan of their hidden leader Obito, the even more secret plan of their even more hidden leader Madara, and the even more secret plan of their naturally even more hidden leader still, Black Zetsu.

"And so now you may congratulate yourselves. The Akatsuki's mission is accomplished. The great villages will no longer be at war. Just not because of you, because of me."

They stood there, thoroughly overloaded with information, working hard to process it. The time leading up to this, since my public announcement to the world, had been anything but obvious or predictable, and it had generated truly colossal what-the-hell energy. Coming here and listening to me speak, they could only stand and soak in the reality that had just been dumped on their heads.

"Moving on," I continued, at which the audience snapped back to attention. "Your organization marched toward a noble goal, but the road it walked was drenched in blood."

I was about to go on when I was rudely cut off.

"Yo, hold the hell up!" shouted the silver-haired guy, jamming his enormous scythe in my direction. "Akatsuki used to help me pull off massacres just fine. But now that you've pulled that stunt in the Water Country, what, I won't be allowed to make offerings to Jashin-sama anymore?!"

"Hm." I fixed my gaze on this individual, scanning him carefully with my sensory abilities but finding absolutely nothing divine about him. "Hidan, correct? I've heard about your little Jashin cult."

At my words, he puffed out his chest like he'd just been given an award.

"Of course you've heard of us! We're the most badass cult in this whole goddamn world!"

"Right. At one point, I took an interest in you and your group specifically. And what I found was nothing but a tangled web of inhumane, forbidden techniques performed on human subjects, and you, their sole successful result. So here's the bad news: your immortality, your abilities, they're just ordinary jutsu. Not a gift from your made-up god."

In response to that, Hidan's eyes bulged with outrage, and he clearly wanted to say something very colorful.

"You—!" he started, but was cut off mid-word when the space around him began to spiral from my technique, and his body was sealed into a storage tag.

"I never liked him," Kakuzu remarked, apparently assuming I'd just killed his colleague.

A couple more Akatsuki members nodded at that, which made me look at them sideways. I'd expected a bit more solidarity from them.

"Ahem. Right, then. You are all stained with sin," I went on. "But I'm offering you a chance at redemption. Will you take it?"

"What exactly does redemption entail?" Pain, the organization's leader, finally spoke up.

"Essentially, work in your respective specialties, but under my authority. The work simply becomes less dirty. You'll be dealing with the world's problems rather than chasing money and power. Your terms, naturally, will be mandatory, unlike those of the less sinful."

The pierced redhead, or rather the puppet his true body was controlling from a distance, took a few seconds to think. Then he declared:

"Akatsuki agrees. We have been watching your actions, and they do not, in truth, contradict what we were striving for ourselves. But in fulfilling our duty, we will continue to observe." He glanced at Konan, received a nod, then turned those purple ringed eyes back on me.

In response to the Akatsuki leader's attempt to save face, I simply gave an indifferent wave of my hand, making it clear that I didn't rate them nearly as highly as he seemed to think. Also making it clear that I frankly didn't care, as long as they followed orders properly and didn't undermine my authority by stirring up chaos.

"So… we won't be making money anymore?" Kakuzu asked, sounding deflated.

"Redemption isn't permanent. Eventually, you'll be free to try something profitable. But legal."

Kakuzu perked up at that and nodded.

"And good service will be rewarded. You could ask me for something. Like the ability to walk, for instance."

I glanced pointedly at the redhead, and he and Konan exchanged a look. I'd just demonstrated that I knew their real situation: Pain being a puppet body controlled by a fellow Uzumaki, a Rinnegan user who also happened to be something of an invalid. By dangling the possibility of a full life in the new world ahead of them, I'd bumped up the probability of genuine loyalty and dedication by a few solid points.

Sasori, a shinobi who'd converted himself into a puppet and was currently operating in the form of a hunched figure, and Deidara, a blond with a ponytail and a prosthetic embedded in his eye, also exchanged glances. Their paths weren't so different: both had spent their lives in pursuit of their respective art forms. For the first, that meant puppet-making. For the second, making the biggest possible bang. Thinking it through, they likely concluded that their lives wouldn't lose their meaning; with caveats, they could still pursue what they wanted. Sasori just wouldn't be able to turn literally anyone into his next puppet whenever he felt like it, and Deidara wouldn't be blowing up everything in his line of sight. Naturally, they both had strong personalities, and under ordinary circumstances they wouldn't have simply agreed to bend the knee. But where are the ordinary circumstances, and where am I?

Having largely settled the question of their fates, I let them disperse, keeping only Itachi in the temple.

"I didn't think it would all unfold quite like this. Shisui… he would have been glad, seeing where the world is headed."

"He would have. The world awaits its own fate. As for you, your story with your brother isn't finished. Are you planning to die at his hands, or are you simply going to tell him the truth? Sasuke's unlikely to stay bitter, seeing as the main problems for the Uchiha have, in essence, been removed."

"I… will think about it," the schemer said, then turned and walked away.

"Hmph," was all I offered to his retreating back.

After that meeting, life ran its course for a while. I had a great deal to attend to. When several months had passed and my energy had restored itself to its former level, I found myself in my brand-new, absolutely enormous laboratory, or rather in one of its enormous halls, examining the husk of the Ten-Tails.

After a fairly brief inspection, it turned out that resurrecting Kaguya didn't require collecting the chakra of all nine tailed beasts. If the goal was to restore her consciousness and give her something close to her former power naturally, enough for her to reassemble her own body herself, then yes, you'd need all of them. But it was simpler for me to just do it by hand. With my own chakra, to be precise.

So a few hours later, I was looking at a female body floating in a tank of liquid: very pale skin, long light hair, horns, the Byakugan, and even a Rinne Sharingan in the center of her forehead.

I wasn't given long to contemplate the sight, or her internals in the most literal sense. From behind me, out of nowhere and from beyond this world, two old men appeared, hovering in the lotus position, suspended in mid-air.

"Wonderful. People just wander in and out of my lab like it's a bus station," I muttered, as Rinnegan and Byakugan turned on me simultaneously.

Before me hovered the sons of the very Ōtsutsuki I had resurrected, the one whose body was soon to wake.

"You are making a mistake," said the old man with the long goatee, chestnut hair, and Rinnegan.

"It pains me to say this… But she cannot be allowed to return to life," continued the second, beardless one with light hair and Byakugan.

"Hagoromo and Hamura Ōtsutsuki." I gave them a tired nod, having already made peace with the fact that they'd showed up. "You may call me Naruto."

Noticing they were still floating in the air, I walked a short distance away, dropped into an armchair that happened to be there, and turned it from the desk to face them.

"Everything is under control."

The old men pivoted slightly to follow me, and after my remark, Hagoromo looked ready to interject, but caught himself when a cracking sound came from Kaguya's tank.

The woman's eyes opened. She found those two with her gaze. Then her body moved with terrifying speed, and in an instant Kaguya was up close, lifting the chins of the spirits who had arrived from the Pure World. They froze like pillars of salt, rigid with shock.

"My children… You came to your senses." Tears traced lines down the woman's face. She had clearly concluded that they were the ones who had brought her back, even though they'd been the ones who sealed her away in the first place.

"Ahem," I cleared my throat to get their attention, at which Kaguya whipped around to face me. "For the record, I was the one who brought you back to life."

They stared at me like I'd spoken in a different language.

Meanwhile, Hagoromo, his hands trembling faintly as though still uncertain, was raising his palms. One bore the mark of the sun. The other, the moon.

"Hey!" I cut him off, annoyed. "We happen to be underground, and if you use that technique, over a hundred thousand people will die!"

I had no interest in watching this old man seal Kaguya away again, the way he once had with his brother. Or rather, I had no interest in the technique's side effect: ripping a truly staggering amount of earth out of the planet to forge a new moon. Even a scaled-down version of that would absolutely level Konoha sitting right next door.

"So it wasn't you?" Kaguya clarified, then flinched as I moved her away from the old men without asking permission.

And then this Ōtsutsuki, rather than appreciating my gesture, immediately seized my arm and began attempting to drain my energy.

"Are you feeling all right?" I asked Kaguya, and she frowned.

"All chakra must belong to me…" She immediately attempted some technique, but the sealing tags that erupted from my hand instantly subdued her, wrapping around her completely. Then I sealed her away.

"Well. Ungrateful, these extraterrestrials. Or maybe I assembled her wrong somewhere."

A thoughtful expression settled on my face while two pairs of freshly stunned elderly eyes bored into me.

"We know you managed to defeat our mother's enemy… But with such ease," Hamura said, clearly impressed, and I waved him off.

"I didn't give her much power. Right now she wasn't anywhere near the level of that alien."

"Indeed… I can sense six of the nine tailed beasts…" Hagoromo confirmed, eyeing me with slightly more suspicion than his brother.

"They're in my seal. Everything's fine."

"'Until the one who will guide them to the right path emerges, they must remain free. Do not attempt to gather them for personal power, that is the road to the world's ruin.' Look at what my descendants do," Hagoromo quoted, apparently himself, and shook his head.

"Well, technically, I saved this world with the Nine-Tails' help. He was at least one of the significant contributing factors."

"That is true…" Hagoromo conceded without reluctance. "It seems my teachings were not as solid or correct as I believed, if they could be so thoroughly turned against themselves."

"Change in this world is inevitable. One can only prepare for it," Hamura observed philosophically. "Not only your descendants cause headaches. Only one of mine is left, so that's still something."

"Our power wasn't needed," Hagoromo continued, gazing down at his own hands. "It seems you, the Emperor, genuinely do have everything under control. So why did you resurrect Kaguya? And please, indulge the curiosity of two old men: what is your vision for this world?"

To the request for information, I responded with information. By the end, the three of us had struck up a reasonably warm conversation, in which they shared their own stories and more recent experiences in turn.

Hagoromo's reaction to my fight with Isshiki had been fairly measured: he simply began nervously watching the Earth and positioning himself "energetically closer" to it, ready to manifest if the world had need of him.

Hamura's life, on the other hand, had been considerably more eventful. He told me about his clan of Ōtsutsuki, not Kaguya's kin but his own descendants who had lived on the Moon. They had, it turned out, interpreted their ancestor's words in precisely the same fashion as Hagoromo's descendants, which is to say through a particularly unfortunate part of their anatomy, and the end result was that only one of Hamura's descendants remained on the Moon. And not merely because the rest had died. No, that last surviving descendant had also developed an ambition to "save the sinful world of Hagoromo's descendants" by stealing a Hyūga woman with sufficiently pure blood from the Earth, helping himself to the eyes of another such woman for maximum potency, then using those eyes to connect to the Moon's ultimate dōjutsu, the Tenseigan, harness its power, and drop that very Moon onto the Earth, killing every living person. All of this in order to afterward repopulate the planet with the previously kidnapped Hyūga woman.

Hagoromo and I exchanged a nod at that little tale, and I asked Hamura if he'd care to enlighten me about what exactly that eye of his was. He explained that in his old age he'd awakened the next evolution of the Byakugan and fused it into something unified, intending to create an energy source that would improve his descendants' lives. But it had all spiraled into internecine genocide.

After that, I asked whether I might study the Tenseigan. The two old men, by that point fairly satisfied with my intentions for the world, agreed, and also agreed to teach me one rather impressive technique: the creation of Gudōdama, black spheres that unite all elemental natures within themselves.

Then, in parting, they invited me to drop by the Pure World if I ever wished to consult them, while I told them they were welcome to come by as well, whenever.

At the very end, Hamura made one request, about that last remaining figure on the Moon.

"My descendant, Toneri. I believe loneliness weighs on him up there. But he is not suited to society, and I cannot simply leave him on Earth alone. Might you look after him?"

"Um… Not personally, but yes. I can direct him somewhere he won't be alone. Somewhere he might learn how to interact with people. And perhaps begin to live something resembling a normal life."

"I could not ask for more." He bowed his head.

"Don't mention it. It won't cost me much." I waved my hand.

"Well, if that is so."

And with that, we said our goodbyes. The young man in question arrived on Earth shortly after, and in a spirit of genuine goodwill, I covered all the bills, set up a generous bank account in his name, and checked him into a psychiatric facility. Not to lock him up, but so that people who actually knew what they were doing could teach him how to function in human society.

After that, pleased with how things had unfolded and satisfied with the knowledge I'd gained, I headed back to the lab. I had an enormous amount ahead of me. Beyond configuring genjutsu on Kaguya so I could read her memories, I still had to study the Rinnegan, the Tenseigan, the tailed beasts' senjutsu chakras, and a whole pile of other things on top of that.

And on top of all of that, I still had to keep at least one eye on the Empire.

Sigh. My life is rough.

And so I went to work, while the world outside once again began to pick up speed.

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

A few months blew by fast. While running the empire through Shadow Clones and personally lounging with the girls, I spent a sizable chunk of my time feeding my inner lab rat down in the laboratory.

As is customary for individuals of the blonde-haired Yamanaka persuasion, I, armed with suitable material, living and not-so-living subjects alike, developed a proper memory-reading technique. One that worked not just on humans, but on the Ōtsutsuki as well.

Through this, I read Kaguya's memories… and what I gleaned from her wasn't exactly a treasure trove. The most eyebrow-raising piece was about a certain progenitor of the Ōtsutsuki: Daidare. The catch was that Kaguya only knew she existed somewhere out there, and that she vastly surpassed even the Ōtsutsuki gods. Which was… unsettling. Not in a keep-me-up-at-night way, just a thought lingering in the back of my mind. I still had time on my side, and sooner or later, new visitors from that cursed clan would show up. Maybe one of them would know more.

As for Kaguya's more practical knowledge: she'd heard a great deal about what was called Shinjutsu, but she couldn't actually use most of it. Dimensional teleportation, various forms of spatial manipulation, cultivating and controlling the Ten-Tails. That last one I actually got to poke around with firsthand; her memories held a path to the dimension where Isshiki kept the Jūbi. That turned out to be particularly useful, giving me a working example of how to make a body even more resistant to hostile chakra than mine already was. On top of that, combined with the Ōtsutsuki's accumulated knowledge, it immediately made my planned globe-trotting search for the remaining Tailed Beasts completely pointless. I no longer needed them to learn how to absorb the full spectrum of the planet's Senjutsu chakra.

It just kept happening. Whether I was picking apart Kaguya, poking at the Ten-Tails, or tinkering with the Tenseigan up on the Moon, every single time, a flood of knowledge hit me that was damn near impossible to process all at once. But little by little, I managed.

Aside from the eye-cleansing ability, the product of all that effort was a unified Dōjutsu I'd managed to cobble together from literally every single one I'd ever seen. And now, both my eyes, and it should be noted, not only mine, housed what I'd generously describe as a mega-ultra-super-Dōjutsu. By local standards, anyway, and possibly even by the standards of some Ōtsutsuki. Though for me personally, it was nowhere near the ceiling.

To spare everyone a miles-long lecture, its abilities, on top of the Sharingan and Mangekyō I already had, included: significantly enhanced chakra perception and heightened sensory awareness, a near 360-degree field of view; improved combat tracking and elemental affinity comprehension; gravity manipulation, meaning attraction, repulsion, and the ability to create a gravitational trap-satellite; body mechanization, additional limbs and integrated weaponry; extraction of a person's Yin-spirit and the ability to read information from it; mass summoning of creatures; chakra absorption and technique neutralization; the summoning of the Earth's natural construct, the King of Hell, for interrogation, lie detection, and restoration of destroyed bodies; resurrection of the dead; creation and use of black chakra-receiver rods for suppression, immobilization, and signal transmission; remote control of bodies and puppets through said rods; summoning and control of the Ten-Tails' Earth Avatar; a chakra mode with a sharp boost to all stats, flight, and the formation of chakra "hands" and manipulators; controllable chakra spheres for simultaneous offense and defense with the ability to reshape them into weapons or constructs; a large-scale rotational destructive chakra attack; an immensely powerful chakra beam or blade capable of cleaving the Moon itself; control over the lunar mechanism and the Moon's trajectory; telekinesis and force pressure for manipulation of objects and masses; control over the Moon's dolls and guardians, previously operated by the Tenseigan; planetary genjutsu via lunar reflection; mass root manipulation to encase targets in cocoons and harvest their chakra; instantaneous replacement of the surrounding environment with an alternate dimension; opening portals between dimensions for travel and attacks; an instantaneous position-swap with a target or object at range; and the creation of invisible "doubles" existing just a hair outside this reality, capable of striking into the real world while being nearly imperceptible to ordinary senses.

In short: if the Mangekyō had been, as I called it, a "vat" containing only scraps of inherited properties, then now that same vat was nearly full. Relative to Kaguya, it was outright overflowing, since I'd unlocked fragments of techniques she herself couldn't use. And on top of all that, Isshiki's Dōjutsu abilities had been thrown into the mix as well.

All of it was well and good, of course, but over time it started to feel like too much, a kind of saturation that bred boredom. So, beyond entertaining myself through the aforementioned pursuits, my attention was caught by the arrival of a certain someone in Konoha. And for a bit of a change of pace, I decided to grace her with my Imperial presence.

"Let me remind myself to get you a map and a compass," I said, materializing in a hospital office buried under mountains of paperwork, where a blonde woman was currently rummaging through said mountains. "Welcome back, Tsunade."

She startled at the voice and turned toward its source by the time I finished speaking.

"…Emperor?" she asked. It was the question that, regrettably, far too many of my acquaintances had been asking me lately.

"For you, I'll make an exception, but only in official settings," I sighed. "Honestly didn't think I'd see you again. What've you got here… paperwork, logbooks."

"Shizune was very insistent, so we came back," Tsunade offered, as if justifying herself, still not entirely sure how to behave in my presence. "Asaka-san took me on, by the way. He said he'd report it to you at the monthly meeting."

That explained both why she was here and why she was reading things not just anyone was cleared to read.

"The chief physician, yes, I remember. As for you, that took guts. Good for you. Coming back to work in a hospital, in spite of a fear of blood…"

In response, the kunoichi turned away, clearly unwilling to revisit the past, the moment a beloved person died in her arms while she stood there helpless, unable to save them, and the trauma that had rooted itself in her ever since.

But I pressed on, shamelessly. "Want me to take that fear away?"

She looked at me with a mixture of skepticism and suspicion.

"I have some experience with digging around inside people's heads… and not only in the literal sense. One technique, and you could go back to being a full-fledged iryō-nin."

"A full-fledged iryō-nin…" Tsunade went blank. First at what was, in her view, a rather pointed insult from me; then from the realization that, given my current status, she was better off ignoring it. Then, turning it all over again, she gave a sharp shake of her head. "No. I don't want anyone poking around inside my head. Why did you even come here?"

"Oh, someone's already stopped doubting what I'm capable of. As for the reason, can't I just drop in on an old acquaintance?"

"According to Jiraiya, that never ends well."

"That's an insinuation, and it's not for everyone. As for the trauma… well then. I'll come to you in the night and do it to you without asking."

"…"

"I meant the technique. Just a bad joke."

Tsunade gave a careful nod. I took my leave of this unusually tight-lipped woman.

And so, the Village of Konoha gained a very high-ranking medic, and a second highly skilled iryō-nin in the form of Shizune. But my greed was far from satisfied. Because my offer of help had been refused, I was getting access to that very high-ranking medic in frustratingly limited doses. So, added to my daily downtime routine was a daily visit to Tsunade with the exact same question: "Mind if I do a little brainwashing?"

I'd planned to stop at ten. A person can only be tormented so much before it stops being fun. And besides, the reason I was doing it at all was because the odds of Tsunade actually feeling better and more whole after being healed were, frankly, very high. So I wasn't just stalking her. I was stalking her for her own good.

I always appeared in out-of-the-way spots, careful not to damage the Emperor's image. And collecting my daily "no" got more entertaining with every attempt. If at first she kept her composure, by the third day, there was a noticeable edge to her.

On the fourth day, she hit me with a "no" before I'd even asked. I asked anyway. Then, after a full minute of staring each other down, the Senju, who had figured out exactly what I was going to say, gave me her "no" after the question. Only then did I leave.

On the sixth day, catching her in the hospital corridor, I had the luck of stumbling upon her in a foul mood. That time, my "no" came wrapped in a stream of bitter muttering: "Another one… You people are driving me insane!"

Curious, I asked whether someone from the Yamanaka clan had started pestering her as well, which earned me a heated dressing-down in response. No, it was Jiraiya, pulling his old tricks, trying to court her. She'd smacked him across the face with the roses he'd brought and told him never to ask her out again. Again.

"Since Jiraiya's so persistent, why not just go on one date with him? He might turn out to be a decent person underneath it all," I suggested helpfully.

"He is not decent! A decent man doesn't peep through windows at fifty, and he doesn't write smutty pulp fiction for hormonal teenagers! And for the record, I'm not going out with anyone!"

"Our Hokage seems to enjoy the books," I shrugged. That earned me a look from her that communicated with crystal clarity exactly what she thought of Kakashi for that, what she thought of Jiraiya, and that she would very much prefer, putting it mildly, to never lay eyes on any of us ever again. "As for your rejection of companionship. Old age? Running a bit dry? If you let me deal with the blood phobia and actually come back into the world properly, I could help with that too, if it's been eating at you."

"…" Tsunade's gaze became a hundred times more eloquent. It was plain she very badly wanted to beat someone to a pulp. Funny who that could be.

Holding her temper together by the very last thread of self-control, the Senju cut sharply around me and stormed off.

On the seventh day, as I approached Tsunade in a dim back alley after her shift, her eye started twitching.

"I'd rather run into a serial killer," she began, arms folded tight across her chest. "You can stick a kunai in a serial killer's ribs. Break their nose, their arms, their legs, their spine, however many bones you like…"

"True. Mine are a bit too dense for that, and the Senjutsu chakra keeps the skin covered," I nodded along with complete understanding. "So, shall we fix that head problem of yours?"

"Fix yours first. No," she practically spat the last word and was gone.

I chuckled to myself. Cracking already?

The next day, we met when she opened her front door. By a remarkable coincidence, teleportation being what it is, I was standing right there on her threshold.

In my hands materialized the medical certificate I hadn't thought about in months.

Taking it, Tsunade read it through. Then, alongside the indignation of finding me at her home, a second expression joined the first.

"Did you bribe a psychiatrist? Or coerce him into issuing this using your position?" For a medical professional who hadn't grown up in some cartoonish post-Soviet bureaucracy, the idea was genuinely outrageous.

"No," I said simply. "If you don't trust me, you're welcome to go see him yourself. He used to help my academy instructor… The instructor got fired, admittedly. But for an entirely different reason."

She put her hands on my shoulders, seized me with chakra, and attempted to physically lift me out.

"Ngh…" Straining considerably more than she'd expected, Tsunade did manage to push me back over the threshold. "How much do you weigh?…"

"Not much," I answered honestly, measuring in terms of my own strength.

The Senju gave me a long, strange, drilling look, then shut the door once there were no uninvited persons left on her side of it.

On the ninth day, I met Tsunade by making myself at home in the armchair in her office, feet up on the desk, naturally.

Freezing in the doorway, she stared at the furniture I'd claimed, then exhaled deeply and crossed her arms.

"You're not going to leave me alone, are you," she stated. It wasn't a question. Before I could answer, she went on: "Fine! I… I've actually been thinking about what you said. A lot. And let's do the thing you're suggesting…"

"'Let's do the thing.' One-all," I cheapened her words without a shred of shame. "Though honestly, I expected you to hold out longer. Now I understand how Shizune managed to talk you into things. You're just a pushover." I nodded at her, completely unfazed by her irritated glare. "Well. It won't take long. Look me in the eyes…"

And so my daily micro-vacation came to an end, and Tsunade was relieved of her… trauma. Afterward, with almost no provocation on my end and almost no desire on hers to rearrange my face, we managed to have a reasonably civil conversation.

Tsunade mentioned that upon arriving, she'd gone to visit Hiruzen, and casually asked me what fate had befallen Orochimaru. She'd heard from the old man that he was "with me," but without the details, which the old man himself didn't know.

In response to her question, she accepted, with some suspicion, my offer of a trade: information for information. I then told her what had actually happened, that I'd done a considerably more thorough job of brainwashing the Snake than I had with her, pressing him into my service. Tsunade was… well, rather surprised by this, though it didn't seem to make her significantly more wary of me. My strength was already common knowledge, and my repeated asking rather than simply overriding her mind had actually demonstrated some degree of moral character and the fact that I kept myself in check. And since she felt no sudden urge to start worshipping me or erecting temples in my honor, she didn't have much real cause to suspect I'd quietly installed anything extra in her head. She suspected anyway, of course, purely on principle, which I met with cheerful ribbing that drove her up the wall even further.

Then, remembering the terms of our trade, I followed up with a shameless question about why she'd gone so passive on the personal front. In response, I received an irritated explanation: there had been someone, and she was observing a kind of celibacy out of loyalty to him. And said someone had, as it happened, died in her arms from blood loss, which was precisely what had given her the phobia she no longer had.

Not quite sure whether respect or pity was the appropriate response, I left without offering either.

After that, time lurched forward again.

I lived with my future harem in sprawling, brand-new residences, occasionally building new ones whenever I felt like switching scenery. Luxury had, without question, been added to the equation. In the home that Konoha was already beginning to quietly resent us for, my estate near the Village alone covered a hundred square kilometers. It was home to vast, manicured parks, pristine lakes, and a five-story villa of wood and stone built in a Scandinavian style, woven authentically into the landscape, with not a single goddamn pipe sticking out of the roof. Ahem. The villa itself measured over a million square meters of floor space. Modest, really, well within my means to build something orders of magnitude larger. But everything in that house was a work of art, of calm, of warmth. Its entire purpose was to bring peace of mind, and it delivered.

Beneath the villa sat the laboratory. Besides my own work in it, the girls had their own pursuits to keep them busy. Primarily, this meant self-discovery through various professions, along with some assistance on my end of things.

Most of the Empire's operational matters were handled by my subordinates. But as for its expansion, in a certain respect, I offered that task to those I trusted. And they didn't say no.

Hinata, having accepted that this would bring her global renown and with it, power and greater means to realize her future projects, agreed in the end to go out and subjugate several countries on my behalf. Cruelty wasn't exactly in her nature, but living with it turned out to be less of a burden than it sounded, as contradictory as that might seem. And her assignments were, in essence, on the lighter side.

In Stone, where ties to the Empire had already been firmly established and everyone understood which way the wind was blowing, Ōnoki immediately began bowing the moment Hinata appeared. He trembled as he acknowledged the Emperor's authority, visibly flustering her. She'd thought she was merely the envoy of a godlike being capable of erasing entire countries in a single strike, so she hadn't expected that kind of reception, let alone for it to throw her so thoroughly off balance.

After the shy Hyūga's visit, the aforementioned Ōnoki practically herded the entire Land of Earth's elite to the Village, just so the Emperor could receive them all at once and wouldn't have to make a separate trip to the capital.

Then, specifically to avoid sending our pink-haired companion anywhere alone, Hinata proceeded to the Land of Iron, home not to shinobi but to those who called themselves samurai. Having observed the Empire's way of life, they joined without aggression or any unnecessary nonsense. They turned out to be some of the most reasonable people in the bunch.

Following much the same approach, Hinata visited several more countries, informing them that an Emperor was coming and they should gather at a single point. The only difficulty, if it could even be called that, arose in one country, which happened by sheer coincidence to be the smallest. By that same coincidence, its ruler had been living completely cut off from the outside world, ignoring every piece of news circulating the globe. When he first received a letter embroidered in gold thread, he threw it in his treasury and ordered the messenger, who had delivered it in an irritatingly declarative tone, killed on sight. Naturally, the guards failed entirely, and along with their ruler, they were beaten up and physically thrown out by the girl. New governors were then installed in the country, while the old ones were simply executed shortly thereafter for the attempted insurrection.

And so, Hinata broadened her horizons, tempered her character a little further, and made her mark on the world as the Empire's envoy, especially in Stone and the Land of Iron.

As for the other girls, Sakura contributed the most to the "world conquest" effort, bringing a large number of smaller countries to heel.

Among her accomplishments was the subjugation of Sand, where the Daimyō dropped to his knees and begged to be accepted into the Empire before she'd managed to say a single word. And, while still pleading, asked her to pass along a request to someone of three names: that next time he chose a battlefield, he pick somewhere outside their country.

Beyond that, her experiences were frequently similar to Hinata's last visit. Because all too often, the rulers of the least accomplished nations seemed to have egos significantly larger than the Emperor's. That is to say, very large indeed.

As for Karin, she'd been with us long enough that she'd quietly and firmly woven herself into the fabric of the group without anyone really noticing. Her assignments had progressed steadily in complexity and trust, climbing higher and higher. From the moment she'd started her shinobi training, she'd also taken on some ninja-adjacent responsibilities, not field work exactly. She'd been curious about what specifically I was doing in the laboratory, and even after I explained, she still asked to assist. Seeing eyes full of drive and an eagerness to learn, I didn't refuse. Myself, along with a few others, began bringing her up to speed in medical science.

Now, Karin, possessing considerable power following her "elevation" but with few opportunities to demonstrate it in any flashy capacity, was looking for a test. Watching what the other residents of my household were getting up to, she found herself increasingly fired up by the idea.

It took more than a few attempts before Karin finally wheedled out of me permission to go "dominate a country" herself, and a big one, at that. But in the end, I decided to give her what she wanted.

"You'll be going to the Land of Lightning," I said. A cryptic smile spread across my face as we stood in the laboratory beside the floating capsules of figures that vaguely resembled humans.

"Oh…" She actually faltered in surprise, before a shadow of contemplation fell over her face. Something about this felt like trouble waiting to happen. But soon enough, she gave a firm nod. "I'll handle it."

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

Third-Person POV

In a business suit, no entourage, but radiating an almost aggressive self-assurance, Karin stepped out of a spatial rift onto the streets of the Village Hidden in the Clouds.

People immediately recoiled from her, giving way, though she barely acknowledged it, since no one actually moved to stop her either. Instead she surveyed her surroundings with a half-smile, one hand planted firmly on her hip.

The air was crisp. November was only just winding down, though there was no snow yet.

Countless rocky spires vanished up into the clouds, and thousands of buildings, grand and modest alike, clung to their faces. The architecture of Kumogakure lived up to its name; it was genuinely built at cloud level, and the mist sometimes drifted right between the floors of its towers.

So this is the mightiest Village in the world... After the Empire, naturally, Karin thought, taking it all in. She glanced at the sun's position, gave a small nod to herself, and set off toward an enormous building rendered in shades of blue. They should have everything ready by now.

Kumo had been informed of Karin's arrival ahead of time, so she'd expected to be received. What she hadn't expected, and had deliberately arranged, was to not be escorted from the very start. She'd chosen to arrive this way to gain a small but meaningful psychological advantage. And it paid off.

After walking a couple of blocks, she activated the dōjutsu she'd been granted, concentric rings laced with numerous tomoe, and through a full kilometer of solid stone and cloud she spotted something that didn't quite add up.

Some of those fūin arrays serve no obvious purpose. And there are far too few civilians inside the complex, she noted, though it didn't slow her pace. Either way, this is my debut on the world stage. I cannot afford to fumble it.

Right on cue, halfway to the residence, three shinobi moved to intercept her. They wore blue uniforms with generous white paneling and sparse red trim.

"We welcome you, Uzumaki-dono!" all three called out with reverence in their voices, though none of them bowed.

"Took you long enough," Karin snorted.

The ninja let the jab slide without a flicker of emotion. The one standing in the center stepped half a pace forward.

"The Raikage-sama and the others will receive you at the entrance. Please, it would be our honor to escort you."

"Honor," she drawled, catching a slight insincerity in the chakra of the man who'd spoken. "Sure, lead the way, since you're so dying to 'honor' me."

They soon emerged onto a wide plaza before the residence itself, massive, angular, and built from blue stone and metal. Two fully armed guards flanked the entrance, but they were beside the point.

The welcoming committee stood just ahead of those guards, exactly as expected: a colossal man in a white cape, the Raikage, with blond-haired C on one side and the dark-skinned, silver-haired Darui on the other. A little to the side stood a sharp-looking woman with the same white hair as the latter two. Completing the picture on the wings were the blond Nii Yugito, the jinchūriki of the Two-Tails, and a man built like a brick wall, Killer B, the Eight-Tails' jinchūriki.

Every last one of them wore the same expression: stone-faced and humorless. Karin clocked it the moment she came within range.

"What's with the funeral faces? Come on, crack a smile, the radiant me has graced your village with her presence!"

"Uzumaki Karin," the Raikage rumbled, ignoring her tone as if she'd wandered off a circus train, identifying her instead of offering a proper greeting. "The Emperor's Envoy."

"And you must be little A," Karin shot back, pressing her advantage by carefully omitting any and all titles. "Good of you to come out yourself. Lesser rulers tend to hide behind their walls."

The Raikage's jaw tightened, his face doing something complicated. People didn't speak to him like this. People had, in fact, never spoken to him like this.

"You're overstepping."

"I'm stepping exactly as far as the Emperor permits me to," Karin replied, her tone perfectly level. "Which is quite a distance, actually. And one more thing: our positions are hardly comparable. You'd do well to show a little more deference, unless you're keen on losing that hat of yours."

The Raikage's mustache twitched.

"We are pleased to welcome you." Mabui stepped smoothly into the breach, seeing A's composure crumbling with every passing second. "If you're not too tired from the journey, shall we move to the negotiation hall? Everything is prepared."

"Not even going to introduce yourselves? Fine by me. I never liked small talk with strangers anyway."

Shortly after, the entire group was seated at an elliptical table. All of Kumo's representatives sat rigidly on one side, while Karin sprawled in her chair on the other, alone, with all the ease of someone who'd reserved the entire room for herself.

C, Mabui, and Nii simmered at the indignity of having been ordered to host this meeting. And now, to add insult to injury, the Empire had sent exactly one person, as if one was all it would take. The only thing keeping the situation from being a complete slap in the face was that this particular individual happened to be from the Emperor's inner circle.

As for the Raikage's feelings on the matter: if A had been a tea kettle, the whistle would've been audible in Konoha. But he was not a kettle. He was a man, and no small one, so he held it all in, a living portrait of barely contained pressure. Only the sheer, undeniable display of power the Emperor had put on more than a year ago kept A's notoriously short fuse from blowing entirely.

"So. No preamble," Karin began, her voice smooth and unhurried. "By the authority granted to me by the Emperor, I am hereby ordering you to assemble your elites and submit, without objection, to the authority of the Great Empire."

A jolted in his seat, the veins in his temples rising to the surface.

"Are we able to—" Mabui tried, scraping together her last reserves of diplomacy in an attempt to ask whether alternatives existed. She didn't get to finish.

"You may observe the Emperor's welcome ceremony according to your own customs, provided it does not diminish His standing. You are permitted, and encouraged, to frame submission to the Empire as a domestic regional observance," Karin said, ticking the points off on her fingers. "Your people will become full citizens of the Empire. You personally may decline the role of regional administrators, but that does not exempt you from following Imperial law. And no, unlike you, the nation as a whole does not have the right of refusal. That is precisely why I'm giving you an order rather than a suggestion."

A's hands found the edge of the table. The surface cracked.

He held it together long enough to issue a single, clipped command: "Mabui!"

"Yes!" The Raikage's aide shot to her feet, slammed her palms onto the floor, and an enormous fūin formation blazed to life across the entire surface, with Karin squarely at its center.

The dōjutsu in Karin's eyes flared to life in response, radiating something that made a primal part of the brain scream to take a step back. Her hand began drawing in chakra at a measured, deliberate pace.

"So the plan was to relocate me... and seal me?" she remarked conversationally, as the glow beneath her continued unabated and the teleportation stubbornly refused to trigger.

A snapped his gaze to Mabui and found her drenched in sweat, straining to complete a technique that simply would not close. A shadow fell across his face.

"Take her hostage," he corrected her phrasing. "Your 'emperor' has an inflated sense of his own importance. And you are not him. We'll use this girl to show the boy where he's vulnerable, and we'll get what we're owed."

There was, without question, a far more calculated scheme lurking beneath those blunt words.

It was the first time during the entire meeting that Karin frowned. She didn't like the tone. And she especially didn't like the disrespect being aimed at her... idol.

"You people in Kumo have always had an oversized opinion of yourselves. Your whole history is one long string of stolen techniques from your neighbors. Your father tried to steal the Emperor's mother. And you tried to steal my... hm. My friend. And a friend of the Emperor's. Looking at you right now, I can see time hasn't smoothed out a single rough edge."

Karin's hand clenched.

The fūin array went dark. Mabui collapsed somewhere under the table.

"Everyone, NOW!" the Raikage roared, his body erupting in a crackling mantle of lightning.

He lunged forward at a speed that blurred the eye and immediately took a devastating palm strike to the chest. He hit the wall. He went through the wall. He tumbled off the cliff.

The others didn't hesitate.

B spat out some mangled rhyme and detonated into a six-tailed shroud. The air howled with chakra, and while the jinchūriki was holding back enough not to level the building, the floor still fractured in a web of cracks as he bore down on Karin.

It ended for him in exactly two touches. The first scattered sealing fūin across his body, locking down the beast's chakra. The second sent him flying after his bro.

"Lightning Style: Illusion Lightning Column Flash!" C shouted the unwieldy name as he finished his hand signs, and his body detonated in a blinding burst of light.

"Genjutsu of that caliber doesn't work on me," Karin said, already standing behind him. She caught his arms in a chakra grip and simply tossed him through what was left of the wall.

The moment that was done, she caught the incoming attack without even looking: the long claws of the Two-Tails' Yugito, blazing with blue chakra.

"Keep your claws to yourself." Karin snatched the second hand just as fast, snapped the claws clean off, and with her now-free hand delivered a single blunt strike to the woman's head. Yugito dropped.

The only person left standing in the room, besides Karin who looked entirely unruffled, was Darui, both hands raised.

"I... surrender."

"Really?" Karin walked over to him without a scratch on her. "Well, good for you. You wouldn't happen to know how to run a village, would you?"

"Raikage-sama named me his right hand. I was meant to succeed him."

"Then remember this well, Fifth Raikage." Her voice went dead cold. "The Empire does not tolerate disobedience."

Then, just as quickly, the lethal intensity lifted. She turned to look at the unconscious Two-Tails jinchūriki with the undisguised curiosity of someone who'd just spotted something interesting. "Wait, the tailed beast inside her is... a cat?"

"...What's going to happen to us?" Darui asked quietly.

"Typically, an attack on us, the Envoys, is treated by the Emperor as an attack on himself. And typically, that's followed by an execution."

The blood drained out of Darui's face.

"But you tried to capture me," Karin said, looking back at him. "So don't panic. I think the execution is going to be just for A. This whole thing was his idea... Don't answer that, I already know."

The Kumo shinobi could only bow his head. There might have been a spark of relief somewhere in him that his comrades might be spared. But the shadow of his lord's fate was eating at him from the inside. As was the sheer, grinding injustice of this world. Who could have guessed that one girl, just one, could throw around shinobi who'd spent years forging their strength and not even break a sweat doing it? What was even the point of all that effort?

"Alright, I've decided. I'm taking her with me."

"...Huh?" Darui didn't even notice his face was wet until he heard himself make that sound. He wiped his eyes.

"We don't have a cat at home. This one'll do." Karin relocated Yugito via spatial jutsu to somewhere unknown. "In one week, you'll assemble to formally accept the Emperor's authority. I'll come by to check. Now then, bye-bye!"

And under Darui's completely uncomprehending stare, the red-haired girl simply vanished, along with their jinchūriki.


Uzumaki Naruto's POV

"Nice work. You handled it well," I said, and Karin absolutely lit up at the praise. "The only question is, what exactly do we need this for?"

I gestured at the jinchūriki she'd brought back.

"Her? Nothing, really. But the cat inside her is incredible! I saw pictures! Can you get it out? Let it live with us!"

I looked at the woman, Yugito, I recalled, and back at Karin. "You do understand a cat comes with responsibilities, right?"

Karin's expression went through a brief but visible thinking process, and then it was like a light bulb clicked on above her head.

"Oh! Then we keep the blonde too! She can look after the cat. We've already got tons of staff, what's one more?"

"She's a living person, you can't just… And the tailed beast is sentient, besides—"

"They both attacked me. So they can deal with the consequences!"

I could only shrug at that. Fair enough, I supposed. Couldn't have people going around attacking my Karin.

And so, barely ten minutes later, I found myself watching Karin melt into a puddle of adoration over a miniature, heterochromic blue fire cat lapping from a little bowl.

I had made the cat genuinely the size of a normal house cat. For authenticity.

As for Yugito, once Karin had gotten her full fix of cute, she scooped the woman up by the arms and hauled her off with a brisk, "Right, you're my lackey now. You're doing my missions and keeping an eye on the animal."

And just like that, the Lightning Country episode was wrapped up.

The execution, in the end, really was only for A, which honestly surprised me. To my genuine astonishment, the others, persuaded by their own advisors and jōnin, managed to find enough common sense to submit to me rather than put up some pointless show of defiance. But then, it wasn't so surprising really. The Raikage's gambit had been risky and, for the most part, pointless, because the standard of living in the nations that had joined the Empire hadn't fallen. It had risen, quite noticeably. And so the shinobi of Kumo, as guardians of their citizens first and foremost, were able to swallow the bitter pill, acknowledge their error, and accept it. Their people would genuinely live better for it.

With authority now established in the last of the Great Villages, I turned back to my own work.

Lately, inspired by ideas I'd drawn from the Jūbi, I had developed a specialized ultra-dense material, synthesized from my chakra and an excellent conductor of it. My plan was to wrap the entire Earth in this material so I could manage all of the planet's chakra at will.

The project would take a great deal of time to realize, of course. But time was something I had plenty of. There was also the next stage of physical enhancement to consider, possibly the eyes as well, and I hadn't forgotten the soul-fortification project either.

With all of that in motion, time moved at a startling pace. Fast enough that I didn't even notice when my eighteenth birthday came and went.


In a space of pure darkness, a sphere of blue chakra pushed back the void. It wasn't enormous, barely ten meters across, but it was dense in a way that had nothing to do with size. Here, in an artificial dimension, the laws of ordinary space held no sway. That was precisely why this place could exist at all; sunken deep into the strata of dimensions, it exceeded what reality "up above" could contain. That upper world simply lacked the capacity to hold this much energy concentrated in a single point.

I was the energy. I was the chakra, and it was me. In this place, I stood one step closer to the concept of a Creator than anywhere else. A space perfectly suited for experiments upon oneself: it was within a shell of one's own chakra that will became its most encompassing.

There was no conventional physical body here. It too had dissolved into energy, ready to re-manifest according to a pre-formed template whenever I chose. Only the soul itself remained as it had always been: grey, untouched, unchanged.

My soul. Until now, it had done nothing but grow more powerful. Today, it would undergo its first serious intervention.

To begin with, I had no reference point for how to divide a soul, and that was precisely my goal. The tailed beasts had no souls, properly speaking; they were constructs, animated by the world's chakra, just as the Jūbi was. Zetsu, a fragment of Kaguya's chakra, had no soul either; he existed only because of his connection to his progenitor.

All I had was experimentation. And eventually, a solution emerged.

The concept of soul-division arose from the success of my technique for complete spiritual healing, the ability to nourish and stimulate the regeneration of all layers of a soul, not just its outer aura.

Without getting too deep into the theory, I had achieved this through a kind of genjutsu-virus. My energy would convince a foreign soul that my energy was its own native component. By doing this, the recipient soul would not deploy its "antivirus" against the intrusion and wouldn't tear its own shell apart in the struggle.

The technique had limitations, naturally. It only functioned under controlled conditions, once I had already fully "broken open" every layer of the subject. I could not apply such a suggestion to living, resisting opponents. But it did make something else possible: I could now pump energy into an external soul and briefly simulate the effect of an Awakened Soul, my term for the state in which a carrier becomes consciously aware of themselves as a soul and gains the ability to direct its energy.

Through experimentation on those I felt no particular attachment to, I learned not only to strengthen souls, but to regenerate the damage caused by that strengthening, to heal the cracks. And yet the instrument opened far wider doors than that. There was a great deal one could make a soul do.

It was in this way, having confirmed the method's safety for myself through a considerable number of subjects, that I gained access to the technique of Avatar Creation. In other words: the ability to divide a single soul into several discrete parts.

I needed an Avatar for two reasons.

The first was simple insurance. If someone managed to kill me and consume my soul, I would still exist.

The second was a path toward greater power. Living in this world of chakra, I had never managed to "awaken" a soul in anyone else. Which meant the only way I could study my own soul in any depth was by doing it myself; others simply weren't capable of wielding soul energy.

But it was a reasonable assumption: if it had worked for me, then somewhere in the boundless multiverse there was another practitioner. Two researchers are generally better than one. A billion are almost always better than one, and my modest self, with proper organization of that billion, was unlikely to be the exception.

Which meant I needed to find a world where an Awakened Soul was a matter of course. Not to experiment alone, extracting knowledge in fragments, but to draw it out in volumes from whoever the local experts happened to be.

But the Avatar currently taking shape wasn't meant for a world of souls.

No, its purpose might seem less dramatic, but it was no less promising. Given that other forms of energy exist beyond chakra, there must be analogous systems out there as well. The aim of this Avatar was to reach a world with a different energy system, study it, and grow stronger. And, if possible, to focus on mastering whatever spatial arts that world had developed. That domain, the one that enabled travel between worlds and through that travel made everything else possible, interested me most of all.

Still within the artificial dimension, I ran through the algorithm one final time in my mind, then turned my focus inward toward the soul's deepest layers. The grey, humanoid silhouette of my aura raised its hands. Time to begin.

Beneath the steady glow of blue chakra, spiritual energy began to concentrate inside my "chest," gathering at the outer shell of the soul's core. It took the shape of a sphere, similar to the inner core but transparent. It held still. Then it began to fill with color, not as an approximation but as a genuine copy, mirroring the exact structure of my own soul. Next, I built the outer core layer by layer along the same template, and then the thin membrane of the aura.

And there it was: a new soul, formed entirely from my energy, assembled whole within me. A moment later it passed through my aura and unfolded into its own shape, humanoid, identical to mine.

"Should I call you Father?" it addressed me, not in words but through the qualities of the soul-energy it radiated.

"Given where you came from, Mother might be more accurate," I replied, struck by an odd feeling I couldn't quite name. Something like oneness in two forms. Far deeper than any bond I'd ever felt with a Shadow Clone.

My new interlocutor reached out, pressed its fingertips to my chest, drew a drop of energy from the aura, and began stretching it between its fingers like pulling at something impossibly elastic.

"This brings back memories..."

"Back to communicating with just one voice, though at least an intelligent one. And as for how we perceive each other..."

"The closest word is 'I'," we said simultaneously, acknowledging that regarding ourselves as a single whole was the most accurate framing. In essence, it was.

My "Avatar" was a fully realized soul; it generated its own energy for its continued existence. But because we were literally identical, it had no difficulty establishing a connection between us, and then even extending influence over my energy. In a sense, we were unified, despite occupying different points in space.

"Well. Let's not go developing a personality disorder," I said.

Through our connection, thoughts could be shared seamlessly. The "Avatar," already knowing everything, "gathered" itself, condensing into a small sphere wrapped in its aura.

The rest of the work fell to me. Hovering over the "Avatar," I poured an ocean of my own soul-energy into it, fortifying the bond between us so it might survive across any distance, even if it could only transmit vague impressions, so that it would have the means to return and fulfill its purpose. And then I sealed memories of the people closest to me in this world inside it, ensuring that loneliness wouldn't hollow it out.

Finally, I opened a portal to the Void, that dark space from which my soul had once entered this world.

The "Avatar" slipped through and went silent, its energy emissions ceasing. I watched as the space around it began to distort, and then the universal mechanism drew it through the dimensions.

Our connection began slowly thinning.

The Avatar, drawing on knowledge inherited from the Ōtsutsuki, was to orient itself there and locate a world that matched its criteria.

Safe travels, the thought crossed my mind as I felt my second self exert its will and then, gradually, drift into sleep.

I still had work to do in this world.

---

Author's Note: The Avatar's story will be explored in a separate book, Fairy Tail, which I've already started posting on my page. This book will continue to follow the reincarnator in the world of Naruto.

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

Done sending off the "avatar," I stood before the mirror, studying myself with mild contemplation. A certain someone's newfound hobby had done a number on my look. Well, mostly just my hair, which had graduated from "grew however it wanted" to "a barber spent ten seconds running a comb through it." Now I had a center part, and a few strands fell across my face just below the eyes, lending me something of an air of mystery.

Narcissism session concluded, I made my way through the house. Soon enough I was out on the balcony of my Konoha residence, scanning the cityscape of hundreds of high-rises, and connected to the Empire to check on the latest developments.

The Empire: my depersonalized, unconditionally loyal mind, existing as a controlling construct woven through a web of thick chakra lines that carried, well, chakra. The Empire had effectively brought the planet's entire natural energy under my domain, filtering it much like the Juubi once did. It supplied me with enough chakra for my experiments and, by now, left me orders of magnitude stronger in raw energy than I'd been during the clash with Isshiki.

Beyond that, the Empire also served as an intelligence network, limited as it was. But it was precisely thanks to it that the phrase "the Empire is watching you" was entirely literal.

Finding nothing that demanded my attention, I gave a satisfied grunt. Then I turned around and headed back inside. I had something else coming up soon.

As I walked the corridors, brief flashes of recent events drifted unbidden through my mind. Compared to my own expansion, relatively little had happened.

The fate of the Uchiha had been settled, and rather tragically. Itachi never shared his reasons for wiping out his own clan, and when he finally faced his brother in battle, I suspect he let himself lose. It gave Sasuke the chance to live in a new world without the weight of the past dragging him down, just another combat shinobi serving the Empire now.

Pain had put in enough work to earn his healing. Nagato, restored to his true body, now handles the occasional flare-up of rogue shinobi considerably better. Or summons rain where it's needed. After I finished studying the Rinnegan, I returned it to him.

Kisame had been kicked out of prison and put to work.

Zetsu remained sealed, while the Otsutsuki bodies hadn't been put to work either; they stayed with me as valuable subjects for various experiments.

That was only a fraction of what had transpired. But I wasn't left alone with my thoughts for long.

"You're back!" Karin launched herself from behind a door with a wide grin and immediately hooked her arm through mine. Right, we had a date planned. "Okay, let's go, let's go. You've been in there all night…"

As she dragged me down the corridor, I found myself admiring her without really meaning to. After her physical enhancement, Karin had truly come into her own. Her curves were fuller, firmer, and in some respects had surpassed what nature originally provided. But it had only truly started to pull at me now that she'd grown up in more than just the physical sense.

"What?" she asked, catching me looking.

"Just admiring. You get more captivating with every passing year."

"Hmph! Well, obviously!" She arched her back and continued down the hall with a thoroughly self-satisfied strut.

"So… did it work? Did everything go alright?" she asked, her tone shifting to something more serious.

Karin could sense my emotions clearly and almost certainly already knew the answer, but worry still slipped through her voice. As my assistant, she was deeply embedded in my affairs and understood what the completed Avatar experiment meant.

"It all went smoothly."

She gave a nod, and we carried on.

Over the years, Karin's personality had changed little, same as Hinata's and Sakura's. But each of them had found their calling, and that had transformed them in its own way. Our lives didn't revolve entirely around one another. Pursuing our own ambitions, building something of our own, that's what made us happier.

Sakura had been the catalyst, the moment she decided to prove something to herself and to the world. That fire spread to the rest of them.

Karin had inherited her mother's perceptiveness, and from me she'd picked up a certain ruthlessness. She had grown far beyond a mere lab assistant. Trained under my supervision by Danzo and Orochimaru, she had taken on a role not unlike the head of Root, but on a global scale: intelligence, information gathering, and control. Under her command ran a network of operatives spanning institutions and laboratories the world over, all in service of my long-standing goal to consolidate humanity's achievements into a single pair of hands.

Intelligence work had suited her perfectly from the start. Since childhood, Karin had perceived people through their chakra. She was used to watching, tracking reactions, anticipating. Now it was her vocation.

The door before us swung open, revealing my wardrobe.

"Drop your pants, heh-heh…" she snickered with deliberate ambiguity.

Right, another one of Karin's passions: fashion. She now curated outfits for our whole, well, you could call it a family.

Before long, the four of us were strolling down a paved road, dry despite the snow blanketing the rooftops all around. December had come in cold, but the ground beneath our feet was warm. Heated roads had become one of the new innovations of Konoha's reconstruction, and for that, credit went to the pink-haired girl walking beside me. Sakura headed something resembling a Ministry of Innovation, where they were marrying electrical engineering with fuinjutsu.

"Mm-mm-mm…" Karin eyed our group with visible displeasure, her nose scrunched up.

"What's wrong?" Hinata asked, speaking far more freely than she might have four years ago.

"I spent an hour putting together our outfits, and then this stupid winter forced everyone to throw a coat over everything!"

None of us saw fit to point out that she could have simply looked out the window before we got dressed.

"The scarves look great, though," I noted.

Hinata went just slightly pink. She'd knitted those herself.

"And the perfume is perfectly chosen," Sakura added, eyes half-closing. "Freshness, warm smoke, something sweetly astringent… Very harmonious."

Karin had been into perfumery long before we met; she's a remarkably layered person. We suspected that was probably where her suddenly acquired obsession with style had its roots.

As we walked down the street, nobody bothered us. Leveraging my authority and absolutely zero shame when it came to protecting my private life, I had issued a decree: hefty fines and even a couple of weeks in a holding cell for anyone who dared disturb the Emperor and his Heralds outside of official audiences. Generous, I know.

At the restaurant, our reserved table was already waiting. Beige walls, framed winter landscapes, spruce branches in vases, and the soft notes of a piano drifting from somewhere in the depths of the dining room. The food arrived immediately; we'd ordered in advance.

"A genuinely brilliant invention, Sakura," I said between courses.

"You're exaggerating…"

I wasn't in the least. In three years, her brainchild had grown to such a scale that I suspected a minor cult had formed in her honor. The idea had come to her by accident: Sakura once asked about my network, the one distinguished by obelisks scattered across the entire globe. I explained that I used them to transmit natural energy chakra. She had been looking for something she could make her own at the time, something where she wouldn't be lost in my shadow. The thought struck her like lightning: what if you built something similar, a network, but tied it to electronics?

The concept wasn't entirely new. Electronic communication had existed here before. It just wasn't anywhere near global, otherwise people wouldn't still be using hawks to deliver messages.

A year of experiments later, with my help, a network running on neutral chakra had spread across the entire planet. In essence, Sakura had invented the local internet. And I got a rather pleasant bonus on top: control over the network and access to all data passing through it, both directly and through the Empire's oversight, within the bounds of its very real, if rarely acknowledged, limitations.

"What should we talk about?" Karin suggested once we'd finished the first course.

"Something stupid?" Sakura mused, pressing her chopsticks thoughtfully to her lips.

"So… work, then…" The redhead smiled like a predator. "Remember the look I gave my Scarlet Shadows?"

I recalled the Fire Country intelligence operatives under her command: black pants, and everything else a deep blood-red. Vests, cloaks with high collars, masks…

"Poor people," I sighed. "What did they ever do to you?"

"Karin, red is known to heighten irritability," Hinata began. "It has a measurably negative effect on—"

"But it looks amazing!" she cut in. "Anyway, they were complaining about how hard it was to blend in. So I added more red! That way they'll have to sharpen their skills and come out better for it!"

A pause settled over the table.

"…Not funny, right?"

"Sadist," Sakura stated without blinking, poking her in the ribs with a chopstick.

"Hey!"

"Learn to value your people," Hinata added gently.

"Hmph. Look who's talking."

And on that point, Karin wasn't wrong. Hinata oversaw all of pedagogy, from the shinobi academies to general public education. She'd taken it on for reasons that were almost heartbreakingly earnest. "I-I want to be a good mother," she had confessed at the time, turning crimson.

But the "good mother" had since revealed herself to be a merciless administrator. Sometimes I think my presence just gradually turns everyone around me a little bit evil.

That quality in Hinata had fallen hardest on her own father. Hiashi, whom the boredom of old age had bitten hard enough to push into a teaching position at the academy.

As it turned out later, Hiashi had only overhauled his attitude toward the clan and a handful of close family members. In general, he remained every bit the difficult man he'd always been. Working with children, the most psychologically wearing demographic there is, had only worsened his condition.

Operating in a way that was distinctly not by the book, Hiashi managed to clash badly with some elderly but surprisingly formidable Academy instructor. The academy director, thoroughly terrified, somehow managed to discover that we happened to be in Konoha, and set off in search of the ultimate solution to what rumor had it was the Emperor's father-in-law: namely, the Emperor himself and his Heralds. He barged into the building and interrupted my private date with Hinata.

That day, despite her usual gentle disposition, Hinata revealed that somewhere inside her lurked a dark, ruthless entity: the administrator. She threw the director out of the building and sent him straight to Kakashi so he could deal with his own unruly shinobi himself.

I could have burst with pride when I saw that.

Her father, though, got the full brunt of what came next. His "professional development program" had already stretched over a year: twenty-six countries and regions, over a hundred educational institutions. He made it home once every couple of months, for a week at most. Old childhood wounds, it seemed, hadn't healed. Hinata had developed a taste for it and seemed not to even notice that it had become a matter of principle: see it through to the bitter end. Fortunately for Hiashi, there weren't many regions left.

Hinata, incidentally, hadn't stayed confined to pedagogy for long. Far from it. She was a chakra wielder, and she had developed a hunger to understand the human mind. She took up psychology, and somewhere down the line it just happened that she brought the Yamanaka clan under her wing. Or rather, they brought themselves under it once she asked to borrow some of their more interesting reading material.

"It didn't exactly work out with the outfits this time," I said, steering the conversation back. "But there's always next time. Maybe we'll make up for it in Keishi?"

"The capital of the Fire Region?" Sakura asked, her tone half-statement, half-question.

"It's been a while since we've gone anywhere together. Just a couple of days? Clear our heads, hit some shops…" I glanced at Karin. "I'm sure you need some… things? For your work?"

It was a weak excuse, and I knew it.

"Things?" She arched an eyebrow, but her eyes were already lighting up. "Well… actually, yes. There's a new shop in the capital that carries rare incense ingredients. It's a great reason to have some fun after…"

From there, the mood lifted considerably. We talked through our plans for the trip. Though once Karin's double entendres started flying, the girls began exchanging glances: Karin with mischief, Hinata with a blush, Sakura somewhere in between but keeping a studiously neutral expression.

Look, I understood the jokes. Almost everyone was nearly eighteen by now, except Hinata. But the details… I knew the girls had been having their little "councils" without me lately. Through the Empire, finding out what was discussed would have been trivially easy. But I'd decided to leave them their right to secrets. I'd only ever received a single mental image from the Chakra Network of a meaningfully nodding head, pointing in the general direction of those "councils."

The trip happened soon after, and we came back loaded with new souvenirs and buzzing with a kind of energy we'd all needed.

Then came a very particular day.

In this world, birthdays are a family affair, and we were no exception. Our unusual little family, me and my girls, had honored that tradition ever since we all moved under one roof. Now that each of us had found our place in something larger and was so often busy, moments like these mattered all the more.

Today was December twenty-seventh, the day Hinata turned eighteen.

We celebrated the way we always did: in stages.

Morning was just us, the inner circle, wallowing in good food and each other's company.

Then we moved to Hinata's parents' home. A proper family table waited for us there, her relatives, endless dishes, the same indulgent excess, just in a more formal setting.

And in the evening we came back to ours and welcomed guests: old acquaintances, mostly former classmates. Guy's team had worked their way in too, and broadly speaking, that was the full list.

The conversation was easy: who'd served where, who'd accomplished what, who was living how. Truthfully, the lives of most of my peers had turned out far more ordinary than the stories of my girls. Nearly all of them had followed the standard shinobi track. Everyone had made chunin; jonin was a much shorter list, Neji, Lee, and somehow Shikamaru.

Lee had opened his own martial arts school, where he taught people how to properly punch their neighbors in the face.

Shikamaru had followed in his father's footsteps. Well, his mother had made him follow in his father's footsteps, straight into the analytics division. He'd actually taken to it, since there were no major conflicts in the world at the moment, meaning he could spend a lot of time at work doing absolutely noth… resting.

Ino had become, hmm, Hinata's dedicated flatterer, which left my sweet Hyuga with genuinely mixed feelings. Hard not to, when someone was constantly trailing you to ask if they could fetch something, bring something, or maybe offer a shoulder massage. Though it was clearly more of a bit they were both in on, and neither girl minded the strange dynamic one bit. They hadn't spent much time together back in the day, but that had changed. They'd found meaningful common ground in psychology and the workings of the human mind, building a solid friendship on it over time. Both girls also shared a fondness for flowers. Yamanaka just expressed her genuine care in this particular theatrical way. It was honestly amusing sometimes to watch Ino playfully "groveling" in a mock attempt to quietly edge her father out of his position, since Hinata had, after all, absorbed their clan into her sphere of work. The blonde still knew exactly what she was worth, just like back in the Academy.

When the guests finally trickled out and the house fell quiet, Hinata and I stepped onto the balcony. We stood together, arms around each other, looking up at the night sky in silence. I was in simple trousers and a shirt; Hinata wore a shirt too, along with a skirt and those charming suspenders.

Midnight had already passed. Technically, her birthday was over. But for us, it lasted until we closed our eyes to sleep.

The stars reflected in Hinata's eyes.

"The stars… What do you think about when you look at them?" she asked softly, her voice coming from just beneath my chin. I turned and rested my cheek gently against her blue-black hair.

"Nothing," I answered quietly. "I just enjoy being here with you."

"Is that so…" Her voice dropped even softer.

She went quiet, but I felt a tension gather in her posture, as though several feelings were locked in combat inside her all at once. Mostly shyness and resolve.

"Hinata, is everything alright?" I asked.

"Y-yes… it's just…" She shifted slightly to look up at me.

A second passed. Then another. The hesitation in her was building, but I wasn't so oblivious that I couldn't read what was happening inside a girl's head.

My face began to move closer, slowly, deliberately: a provocation. And it worked. Hinata, looking for all the world like someone who'd decided to dive headfirst into an ice-cold river, let out a sharp exhale, squeezed her eyes shut, took my face in both hands, and pressed her lips to mine.

In our unusual arrangement, where I was the only man, certain questions had resolved themselves quietly, without words. The question of jealousy, for one, born from the understanding that I was perfectly capable of giving my full attention to each of them. And the question of turns had resolved itself the same way. It would have been too cruel to leave Hinata on the outside looking in while the rest of us moved on, especially given that my bond with her was the oldest of all. So we had all been waiting for this moment.

---

This fanfic is now complete. You can already read the entire story on my Patreon

 

[Welydora]

Bedroom.

A soft ray of sunlight slipped through the window and nudged my eyes open.

I wanted to groan and stretch. Couldn't, though.

Hinata, sleeping soundly in a small puddle of her own drool on my collarbone, was reason enough not to do something that tactless to the little sweetheart.

A whisper of a technique, and the excess moisture simply ceased to exist.

As cute as the whole picture was to watch, waking up that way wouldn't have been particularly pleasant for her.

The night had been wonderful. Even if we didn't get much actual sleep.

And what can I say about Hinata's initiative? A decisive kiss, and what followed, something we'd apparently been craving far more than either of us had realized.

It had been very bold of her, especially given her temperament.

Soon my attention shifted to my little sunshine as she woke up, her eyes swimming with emotion, everything from mortification to deep, quiet satisfaction, until they found mine.

"Good morning," I said softly, pressing my lips to her already-reddening forehead.

Hinata, acting entirely on reflex, grabbed the blanket and tried to bury her head in it, simultaneously pressing herself deeper into my chest.

"G-good... morning..." came the muffled reply from somewhere beneath the fabric. Her long hair, still spread out over the outside of the blanket, made for a pretty funny picture.

"Yesterday you were so much braver. Where did that decisive Hinata go?" I asked warmly, beginning to stroke the blanket where her back would be.

No answer.

Deciding not to push, I changed the subject.

"Breakfast in bed?"

After a beat of silence, a timid nod came from under the covers.

This time I materialized the food from chakra.

After that, Hinata managed, still under the blanket, to get her bra back on, because showing herself like that was, well, embarrassing, and we settled into our meal.

We weren't tired or hungry, exactly, but food made for a good decompressor. By the end of it, Hinata had reclaimed enough composure to be herself again.

I kept things easy and natural, the two of us trading awkward little remarks back and forth. Even while still tangled up in each other's arms, it worked, grounding us, helping us settle into each other. And before long, the feeling crept in that we hadn't quite said everything we'd wanted to the night before. Which meant we ended up staying in the bedroom for another hour or so.

Afterward, still wearing matching traces of bashfulness, we got dressed and headed out to the garden. Tending to it was one of Hinata's hobbies.

The winter look of all those plants had its own quiet beauty.

We sat there, wrapped up in each other again, enjoying the closeness, more innocent this time, just talking.

Between that and a few other small things, the whole day slipped by, until the four of us finally gathered for dinner.

"Oh, mmm!" Karin spotted us the moment we walked in, eyes practically sparkling with barely contained excitement, and tried to say something. Sakura's hand over her mouth cut her off.

"You did promise not to embarrass Hinata about this, remember?" the pink-haired girl reminded her, at which point Hinata began turning several shades of red. The muzzled Karin deflated visibly, nodded, and was released.

"How was your day?" I asked pleasantly, as if absolutely nothing had happened.

We settled at the table. Hinata sat beside me, still flushed, her gaze drifting anywhere that wasn't the redhead across from her.

"Productive," Hinata replied primly. "On the project issue..."

"How are you two just talking like nothing happened?!" Karin cut in without ceremony.

She was more than capable of being serious when she needed to be. Right now, she was simply indulging the sin of her own personality.

"You'll understand when you're older." Sakura patted her on the shoulder.

"Hey! You're only three months older than me!"

"Exactly." Sakura nodded at Karin with the patient air of someone explaining something to a child who just doesn't get it, and continued her story.

The other Uzumaki, and I don't mean myself, sat there visibly simmering, wrestling with her promise. But anyone watching could see the questions straining at the leash behind her eyes. Something along the lines of "How was the sex?!" and approximately a thousand follow-ups on the same theme.

Dinner wrapped up, a quieter affair than usual, for a couple of reasons: Hinata was still embarrassed, and nothing appropriately on-topic was managing to squeeze its way into Karin's otherwise very creative brain. Afterward, I kept Hinata company. She needed time to settle into everything. And a temporary shield from a certain red-haired individual who could, on occasion, be deeply, deeply persistent. So yes, I kept watch.

A couple of days later, because turning every day into an unbroken string of dates with an obvious conclusion would have been excessive, and this needed to happen naturally, I turned to a project I'd been putting off for a long time.

I stood in the lab, facing an empty body capsule, looking straight through it.

Kushina. So much time had passed, and yet the day I was born still followed me.

In the shinobi world, death is, in a certain sense, considered a grace. And summoning the dead, something unholy.

I didn't share that view. I'd simply been too buried in experiments and in building this world, making it safe, making it stop being a problem, to get around to this. Always put it off.

And now, at last, it would be done. Something I'd wanted for a very long time.

Over my raised palm, I began forming a small crimson cluster: life energy with a trace of Yin, given shape as genetic material through the Creation of All Things technique.

"I don't have her body. That doesn't matter." I began shaping the small red cluster above my upraised hand. "Life energy with a fraction of Yin, expressed as genetic material from blood..." Enormous amounts of energy began condensing within the fluid. "Adjust a portion to set a female baseline..." Reality began to tremble from the sheer volume of it. And still I pushed the concentration higher, wanting it done right.

When the Empire joined the process, channeling the energy of the Earth itself—

Crack.

An invisible fracture ran through the world, as if space along its length had simply slipped.

Crack.

Crack.

The world was breaking under it, and I stopped. Even my chakra alone was too much: only a small fraction of it existed within this reality at any given moment, the rest perpetually distributed across nearby dimensions and parallel worlds. That had always been the architecture of a Supreme Chakra Holder.

But by bringing the Empire into it, the new body had been given an affinity not only for my energy, but for the energy of the Earth itself, though far less of that would remain after Kushina's soul returned from the Pure Land and settled into her own SCH.

The energy expended exceeded what was needed to build a body by orders of magnitude. A normal body, at any rate.

Dispersing the chakra, I stilled the trembling of space, and brought into being something greater than merely a human form.

Several minutes later, the body of a beautiful red-haired girl floated in the liquid of the sarcophagus. The finer details of her appearance still needed finishing, but for those I would draw from Kushina's own chakra, which preserved an exact impression of her face.

Behind the capsule, a rift opened in space, and soft pink light poured through.

I could have resurrected Kushina in an instant the moment I'd retrieved her soul along with her chakra, simply reconstructed the old body from its imprint. But I'd built a new one deliberately. It would not be my mother by birth. Nor a twin. But our higher form would be alike, and so we'd encounter no complications of any kind. Not even if we wanted children.

A pulse of chakra into the Pure Land, and it returned to me with the soul I needed.

Shortly after, body settled in the capsule, an hour to refine the remaining details, and once I was satisfied that the soul had taken hold perfectly, I lifted Kushina in my arms. Her eyes were closed, her body unconscious.

Once, Tobirama had noticed, while resurrecting enemies with his forbidden technique, that they never remembered their time in the Pure Land. The reason is simple. They sleep there.

We moved from the lab to a proper bedroom, a far more welcoming place to wake up in than cylinders and machinery.

"My world..." Seated at the edge of the bed, I touched her face with my fingertips. "Time to wake up, Mom..."

Her eyelids trembled, and a moment later, bright violet eyes opened. The gaze was empty at first, as if she hadn't fully come back yet. Then her pupils focused and slowly rose to me.

"Welcome to the future, Mom," I said quietly, and smiled.

She went still. Then, still uncertain, she raised a hand and touched my cheek with her fingertips, as if testing whether I was real.

"...Naruto," she breathed. For a moment, she was clearly trying to fit what she was seeing into her head, and then realization hit her like a second wave. "You... you just called me Mom..."

Her voice broke, almost cracking into a squeak.

Kushina's eyes filled quickly. She blinked, and tears spilled down her cheeks.

"We're not inside the seal, my clone is there... This must be an illusion..." She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in my chest. "But such a wonderful one."

"You're wrong. In an illusion, I'd be shorter."

"Heh, how would you know what I was actually imagining?" She lifted her head, eyes wide. "Although... well, fair point."

Kushina had wanted to walk with me through every step of motherhood. But...

"The real world doesn't always go the way you want it to. But I'm glad I found you again."

"Wait... That can't be possible."

"It is."

"...Dattebane."

"Cute word," I said softly, stroking her hair.

With her beside me, something warm spread through me, as if something long absent had finally settled back into place. I had almost let myself believe in that rare, quiet stillness. But then Kushina said the thing that made something tighten unpleasantly inside me.

"So that means... Minato too?"

I exhaled.

"No. I'm not going anywhere near the Shinigami for him. That seal could have been done differently..."

Kushina went rigid.

"He had no choice. There was no other way."

"For him, maybe." I couldn't quite hold back a bitter smile. "But with a fūinjutsu team and the Third's help, there absolutely was. And that barrier... it was unnecessary."

Without really thinking, I cupped her face in my hands and tugged her cheeks lightly. Her eyes flashed with hurt, and the tears came harder. I let go immediately.

"But I don't blame you. Hours of stress and a flood of postpartum hormones, there's no way you were thinking clearly at the time."

"He wanted me to... when the time came... to do what only a mother could," Kushina spoke slowly, her face still pressed to my chest. "To tell you the things only I could tell you. And he wanted to say the things only a father could. Our chakra remained in your seal."

"But the moment never came. I'm not exactly the type to let Kurama break loose." I said nothing further for a moment. "Better to leave it in the past. Minato... I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll ever be able to love him. What he did might earn respect from a lot of people. From me, it only leaves pain. He wasn't caught in the grip of emotion the way you were. And his choices took my parents from me for eighteen years. Left me alone in the village, with no home, carrying the burden of a jinchūriki."

"...Forgive me."

"Though it wasn't all bad. Hiruzen knew how to keep his word. As a guardian figure, by the standards of the time, I'd give him a solid seventy-five out of a hundred." I pulled her back into my arms. "And I did say I don't blame you. Maybe I'm piling too much on you right now... Let's change the subject."

She pressed into me harder.

"Let's... just be here together."

"Nope, you little fool. If I go quiet now, you'll spiral straight into the dark."

"You... Is that any way to talk to your mother?" She pulled back just enough to look up at me with an expression caught somewhere between baffled and very mildly offended.

"Better you take that as a scolding than drown in guilt," I said with an easy laugh. Kushina turned the words over in her head, then let out a sad little sigh. "The modest individual you happen to be sitting on, by the way, that's the Emperor of Humanity. And then some, really. Want to hear how my life got to be like this?"

My words had clearly snagged her attention, shifting it, at least partly, away from wherever it had been drifting, even as they added a note of genuine bewilderment. And so I launched into the story, holding onto Kushina, metaphorically speaking, with everything I had, not giving her a single crack to fall into.

My account, with all its digressions and details, stretched until deep into the night. And as it happened, without either of us separating, we fell asleep in the same bed.


Interlude. Uzumaki Kushina

Kushina woke in the dark, with no idea where she was. There was warmth nearby, at her head and under her palm. She eased back and saw Naruto's face.

Her mind stopped. And then everything crashed in at once: fear, disbelief, joy, grief, gratitude... Her fingers reflexively curled into the fabric of his shirt, as if letting go would make him vanish.

For a full minute she stared at him without blinking. The blond hair, tousled by sleep. A clean jawline, high cheekbones, flawless skin, a face beautiful to the point of something almost otherworldly, and yet not theatrical, just natural. Beneath those closed eyelids, she remembered, were deep sapphire eyes.

The world around her dissolved. She didn't notice when her palms came to rest on his face. She leaned closer, without thinking, on instinct, until their lips were centimeters apart.

And then she wrenched back. Only now did she register what she'd been about to do. And the fact that her entire body was burning.

Arousal?...

Pregnancy rewires a woman: it amplifies the need to protect and care, and suppresses everything else in relation to the child. Years of raising one cement that further. But Kushina had never raised Naruto. Her mind, her chakra, they knew this was her son, and what she felt for him was the purest thing she had. But her body was responding the way it was built to respond to an attractive man. And he was attractive. Very. And those two layers, the maternal tenderness and the physical, didn't cancel each other out. They settled on top of each other.

No. This isn't right.

With every ounce of will she had, she turned away and stared up at the ceiling.

Minato surfaced in her thoughts. Then Naruto's words about him.

Pain needled her heart.

Eighteen years had passed. Kushina didn't know what might have happened to Minato inside the Shinigami's stomach in that time. Maybe his soul no longer existed at all. Or maybe whatever remained wouldn't be enough to resurrect him properly.

She didn't know much about the God of Death. Only that he was an extraordinarily dangerous entity, and that any interaction with him was dangerous and always demanded a price.

Technically, Kushina knew the method: summon the Shinigami, tear open one's own stomach, release the souls sealed within. But whether the god would demand payment, unknown. Shinobi had given their souls to him so rarely that Minato's case was the only one she'd ever heard of outside vague mythology. Which meant the terms were a complete mystery. Could it be a soul-for-soul exchange? What if he wanted a soul with powerful chakra, hers, or Naruto's? And even that wouldn't guarantee success. The possibility that the summoner would simply be consumed, freeing no one, couldn't be dismissed.

And then there was Naruto's feelings about it. He clearly resented his father deeply for what he'd done. Kushina understood that, even though it twisted something inside her.

Naruto would never let me take that risk, she thought, with grief and warmth in equal measure. Grief for the past that seemed beyond recovery. Warmth for the son she had only just found.

Definitely not right after bringing me back.

Even in the best case, Minato returned, but at the cost of Kushina's soul, then what? For Naruto, it would be a second loss. He might end up hating his father even more. He might refuse to accept him at all. And without his son's help, the ritual, and the resurrection itself, would likely be impossible anyway.

So the choice was simple. Try to free Minato, and possibly die, leaving Naruto alone. Or stay, and carry the grief of losing a husband. In the first case, that same grief would fall on Minato instead, and probably far heavier.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice half an hour pass. But the answer came.

Kushina would not try to resurrect Minato.

Eighteen years ago they had already run, and it had given them nothing. She would not run again. She was a mother. Her debt to her son had only grown over those years. And she was going to give everything she had to make up for it, and then some.

With new resolution in her eyes, Kushina turned and pressed her lips gently to Naruto's forehead. She lingered a moment, looking at his sleeping face, then quietly slipped out of bed and padded soundlessly into the hallway.

"Empire... are you there?" she whispered, calling up what she'd heard in yesterday's stories.

Her son, singular tyrant, and god, and emperor of this world... Kushina had listened to him laughing as he told her about how slow, dense, and incompetent some of his subordinates could occasionally be, and trying to picture him in that role had been genuinely difficult. When the very same Naruto had assured her she didn't need to, she'd been relieved to take him at his word.

She already knew about the network that cloaked the world and the intelligence that governed it. So she called out to it now, hoping to ask directions for her usual morning bath.

As if reading her thoughts, a smooth black panel, something like a door, silently opened before her. Beyond it was a spacious bathroom: high ceilings, darkened glass looking out over the garden, minimalist finishes. A large tub at the center was already filling with hot water, carrying the calm scent of lavender.

Kushina stepped inside, as if guided.

"Technology these days..."

She grinned, feeling suddenly ancient. Then she turned, and instead of a doorway found only a large mirror, behind which there appeared to be a door and tall cabinets.

She returned to the mirror, shrugged off her robe, and looked at herself.

"Oh, no, not ancient."

Exactly how they'd brought her back remained a mystery, but the body was if not identical to her old one then very close, only more toned. She had never in her life been in this kind of shape, this aesthetically put-together. Her face was a touch less round, the features somehow sharper. Despite the change being striking but not radical, she felt power inside herself that she'd never known before. But the most striking thing was the chakra. Her reserves were considerably larger than they'd been in life, and the control over them felt almost effortless by comparison. When she channeled chakra into her eyes, she stumbled back, the pattern in her irises had shifted into concentric rings bearing tomoe.

Kushina froze. She didn't know the details of how the resurrection had been done. But if the body wasn't simply restored but actually improved... he had worked on it. And if he'd worked on it... he might have seen her undressed.

Her face went scarlet, all the way to the tips of her ears.

W-what am I thinking?! He's my son!

She shook her head sharply and threw the thought out. The water in the tub had stopped running, time.

Kushina lowered herself into the hot water and finally let herself relax. No new thoughts came. Twenty minutes later she climbed out, dried off, and found two small wheeled stands beside her, which had definitely not been there before, holding neatly folded clothes: a soft, floor-length dress in white, the familiar kind she liked. While she was getting dressed, the stands disappeared without a trace.

"I've never been a guest at a daimyo's before. But this is probably a lot fancier than that," Kushina mused, considering that she currently had a supremely powerful artificial intelligence as her attendant, one that could, with its equally formidable reserves of energy, produce for her just about anything she wanted.

But instead of indulging that, she thought. She wanted to explore the mysterious house, but more than that, she wanted to do something for Naruto. And breakfast in bed, made by her own hands, seemed like exactly the right idea.

Kushina pressed two fingers to each temple with theatrical flair, squeezed her eyes shut, and wished herself to the kitchen.

The passage opened.

A bright room unfolded before her, full of unfamiliar metal objects: gleaming surfaces, panels with buttons, tall silver cabinets. All of it felt alien, but approaching what looked like a stove, she managed to switch it on with a thought. The cabinets held ingredients. The wooden shelves held familiar dishes.

Kushina lost herself in it. Cooking had always been one of her favorite things.

But soon there was a knock at the door.

She smiled, expecting Naruto. Instead, three girls stood in the doorway.

Blue-black hair, pale skin, and a face so red with embarrassment she looked like she might pass out, that one was barely holding it together. The redhead beside her was no less flustered, which, for anyone who knew her, was deeply out of character. The third, pink hair, was working hard to hold herself together and stepped forward to take the lead.

"Good morning, mother-in-law-sama."

"...Huh?" was all Kushina managed. Then the recent memories surfaced, followed immediately by the realization. "So there are seriously three of you?!"

"Our paths with Naruto converged, and became permanently intertwined," the leader confirmed with great seriousness. Though the phrasing, perhaps not the best she could have chosen, gave her nerves away.

"...Dattebane."

She continued.

"I'm Sakura. This is Hinata," she said, as the blue-black-haired girl gave a ceremonial bow. "And this is Karin." The redhead still hadn't come back online.

The words reached her consciousness with a delay. And then Kushina was hit by several waves in fast succession: joy, because her son actually had people close to him in this world... followed by suspicion, were their feelings genuine? And then, swiftly after, jealousy.

For a moment, the three girls seemed to shrink. Kushina's chakra surged outward, not hostile, but balanced right on the edge. The light in the room dimmed. The air began to warp.

Then, a second later, the chakra receded. Kushina gave an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, girls, lost in thought for a second. Come on, let's get to know each other properly."


Uzumaki Naruto's POV

Waking up to something resembling bloodlust in one's own home was unexpected. As was the fact that Kushina had run into the girls this fast, we'd had a proper introduction planned, with me present. It came out awkward.

To my relief and quiet satisfaction, Kushina didn't take my girls as a threat. Setting aside, of course, those first flickers of intent that had jolted me awake.

After the meeting, when we'd all settled around the table and were working through the food, which was excellent, I sat and listened to a gentle, borderline interrogation: the girls walking Kushina through our history from the very beginning. She'd already heard it from me, but this was Kushina's way of showing she cared, she wanted to verify everything herself, wanted to make sure it was all really okay. Whatever that meant to her.

We talked for around two hours, maybe a little more. By the end, the atmosphere had loosened considerably. There was still plenty of adjusting ahead for all of us, but there was no rush.

Once that was done, and I'd confirmed that the girls were fine and no one had hit their limit, I took Kushina to Konoha.

She wanted to see how the village had changed over the years, and giving her a tour was easy enough. Besides, I understood that right now I was the only fixed point she had in this world. Being there wasn't optional.

"The buildings weren't this tall before..." Kushina breathed, staring up at the nearest fifty-story tower as we materialized on the wide boulevard. "And these people... they're staring at us."

"Yeah," I shrugged as the people around us began parting in a wide arc and looking my way as if a god had just stepped down from somewhere. "This is nothing. Used to be they'd rush me, ask for autographs on... sometimes not the most dignified locations, or just decide they absolutely had to touch me. Why, I still haven't worked out."

She looked at me thoughtfully. Then swept her gaze over the drifting crowd and shuddered.

"How do you stand those looks?"

"You get used to it." I took her hand, which seemed to make some of the onlookers' eyes positively shine. "Let's keep moving... I'm pretty sure there were a couple of reporters back there."

We wrinkled our noses in unison and moved on down the street.

She kept turning her head the whole time, like a tourist who'd never seen anything like this in her life.

"I can't believe Konoha changed this much."

"After I became Emperor, the city's population jumped tenfold. Had to build somewhere for all the newcomers."

Soon a familiar stone face came into view above the towers and we drifted toward it. It turned out to be a modest half-kilometer statue of me on a plinth. On the plinth, inscriptions:

Six months since the founding of the Great Empire — hunger defeated.
Ten months... — cancer defeated.
One year, seven months... — the last war on Earth concluded.
One year, eight months... — old age declared a treatable illness. Mortality fell by more than one hundredfold.
Two years... — poverty abolished.
Two years, three months... — the unified Network, the Empire, connected every home...
...
...

"Is this all real?" Kushina whispered, staring at it.

"Yeah," I confirmed easily.

"'Yeah'?! Naruto, this is... this is—!" She couldn't find the words to contain the full scale of what had happened to the world since the Empire's founding.

"These aren't even the most impressive things I've done. Remember the story about the Otsutsuki battle? And none of it was only me anyway."

"I'm so proud of you..." She pulled me into a tight hug.

"I know... it's a little awkward," I laughed softly and patted her on the back.

Shortly after, we continued on. And a couple of blocks further, my sphere-vision caught Kakashi bounding across the rooftops. He was just scanning around when his gaze snagged on the red head beside me. Not quite the red head you usually see around here.

The sight hit him hard enough that he completely lost track of where he was in space-time. Specifically: he kept moving, flew straight into a shop sign, and then fell from about the height of a fifteen-story building. Quite neatly, thanks to a small nudge of my chakra, he landed splat in front of us.

"Kakashi, you really ought to work on your situational awareness. Not great for someone who doesn't look where he's flying," I remarked with a snort.

"Kakashi?!"

At my mother's exclamation, the man snapped upright and yanked the cloth from his second eye. The Mangekyo was already spinning.

He froze. His expression was pure speechless shock with a silent question riding behind it.

We stared at him.

"Kai!" Apparently deciding to cover his bases, he tried dispelling a genjutsu. The scene didn't change.

After another second of drilling us with that mismatched gaze, he landed on a conclusion, the wrong one. "Naruto, this is obviously some kind of terrible joke. My ANBU reported that—"

He was winding up for a full lecture. I cut him off.

"Would be a terrible joke if I'd pulled it. But this is real."

"You got big, Kakashi-chan..." Kushina's expression grew complicated. Up until this moment her resurrection had felt somehow not entirely real, as if she'd stepped into a different world, one that belonged to Naruto and his girls. But here was someone from the old world. And he looked exactly like eighteen years had actually passed.

"Kushina-sama... is it really you?" His gaze kept snapping between the two of us.

"Yes..." There wasn't much more to say in that moment, so she shifted to something lighter. "How's life been, Kakashi-chan? Find yourself a girl yet?"

"..." Kakashi looked down.

"Heh, we can skip that one. I'm busy right now, but we'll talk sometime, okay?"

A jerky nod.

"Good. Now go on, you need to pull yourself together."

Another jerky nod, and he turned and walked away on legs that were mostly air.

"So much has changed..." Kushina said quietly, watching him go. "You grew up... A moody teenager became Hokage..."

"But that only means a lot of things can start fresh." I stepped closer and put an arm around her. "And I'll be right here with you."

In answer, she silently pressed her face into the space just below my collarbone.

We stood like that for a while, then moved on toward the mountain of faces.

Talking through one subject and then another, we walked the streets of Konoha, and Kushina kept finding old buildings, pointing at them very directly and asking if yes, that is actually that place, right?

Eventually, when we reached a large obelisk about a hundred meters tall, a node in the chakra network, the topic between us started to sharpen.

"The Empire... You said it can read the surface thoughts of thousands of people at once. And that you don't usually process all that yourself?"

"Usually not," I confirmed. "I can read minds on my own too. But I don't use that on people close to me. What are you getting at?"

"No, just... wondering."

"..." I said nothing. But when Kushina began to turn red, the expression that appeared on my face said everything without a word.

"No! Don't you think I'm some kind of pervert, dattebane! And, oh!" She caught herself when the people who had been walking past us stopped, when usually they kept moving and stared less.

"That's nor—" I had been about to make a joke about self-gratification, but Kushina kept going.

"I just love you very much. As a mother," she swallowed. "I just... don't know what came over me back there."

I stopped and looked at her.

"Did you do something while I was asleep?"

"What?! No!"

"Then... do you mind if I take a look anyway?"

No answer. Just a face the color of a tomato and a gaze that was simultaneously pleading and resigned.

"Go ahead... Maybe you made an error somewhere when you were bringing me back," she finally said, grabbing onto that thought like a lifeline.

I connected my chakra to the Empire and looked. And... I was surprised. I glanced at Kushina, which made her shrink about two sizes, like a bedridden patient watching a psychiatrist and bracing for the diagnosis. I didn't like that look on her, and kept my own face carefully neutral so as not to make things worse.

"No, I'm fairly certain I... put you together correctly," I said, choosing my words with care. "The thing is, you brought me into this world, and we shared a great deal of time together back then, early on, and yet apart. Between us, there never formed the kind of bond that develops between parents and a child they actually raised. I grew up too far from you." I paused, weighing the decision. "So if feelings have taken this particular shape... I don't think we need to hold them back."

"N-Naruto..."

"And yes, you're very beautiful, and more importantly, you're kind and caring. I love you, and I'm not opposed to making what we have fuller, if that would make us both happier..."

After those words, a wave of emotion so powerful hit Kushina that I positioned myself to catch her if she started to go down.

"I think that's enough for today. Shall we put a pin in this?" I offered.

A quick nod.

"You look incredibly cute when you blush."

"..."

Afterward, in a silence that was equal parts charged and awkward, we continued our walk through Konoha. Topics didn't exactly come easily, so before long we found ourselves back home. And only there did something finally give us something to hold onto.

Kushina noticed a small blue fiery cat in Karin's arms and, with clear surprise, asked whether that was, by any chance, the Two-Tails bijuu. She got a yes, went briefly blank, then simply nodded.

She was clearly starting to get accustomed to the kind of supernatural that surrounds me on a regular basis.

Riding the wave of tailed beasts, Kushina asked how a certain flea-ridden fox was doing. She was told: no longer inside me, moved out to a nature reserve. When she asked why, I explained that I had originally planned to let him live at home as a pet. A form of ongoing punishment, in a sense... But after a year, when he'd given up entirely and was begging me to end the humiliation and swearing on everything he had never to go near humans again, I released him into the wild. The Two-Tails, Matatabi, on the other hand, had taken quite a liking to things here, regular meals, the pets from her former jinchuriki, and the other residents of the house.

The One-Tail and the Three-Tails had been released as well.

Kushina listened to all of this and nodded, as if it were perfectly within the bounds of normal.

After that, I showed her one of the home theaters. And this landed. A natural homemaker at heart, even if life hadn't let her be one for long, she discovered that the shows that had come out while she was away, and above all the ability to watch them at home, from the very first episode, all in a row, without leaving, pulled her in completely. I didn't fight it. She had taken in a great deal already. What was still coming could wait. Better she rest now and let herself breathe.

As for me, I turned to Empire business and a few ongoing projects. Not for long, though. With all processes running smoothly, I could free up as much time as I wanted these days. And this well-earned break, I wasn't stingy with it when it came to the people who mattered.

---

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[Welydora]

Going about my business, I'd also been waiting for the right moment to take the initiative in a certain delicate matter. The envious might have called it "acting on base instincts," but I saw it as a higher calling: spreading love and not making girls who'd already waited long enough wait any longer. So when the moment finally arrived, I made my way one evening to the most technically gifted woman on the planet.

The excuse to visit Sakura practically offered itself. Her work at Konoha's Research Center had always sparked genuine curiosity in me. Dozens of developments, far from always promising, came out of its halls every month, and picking them apart never failed to light a small fire of interest somewhere in my chest.

I crossed the sprawling complex, passed through the sections where over a thousand people were busy building various prototypes, and quickly made my way to the wing reserved exclusively for Sakura's personal projects.

Her lab was the embodiment of order and cutting-edge thought: gleaming equipment, holographic displays covered in intricate schematics, rows of flasks filled with colored liquids along the far wall, and several prototype devices of questionable shape scattered across workbenches. Through the wall, a supercomputer hummed steadily, thick cables running from it to a cluster of monitors and a pedestal holding a large metallic ring, sized as though meant to sit on someone's head. That device was clearly the center of Sakura's current obsession. When I appeared at the entrance, she was watching streams of data scroll across the screens.

I made no effort to hide my approach and was, naturally, noticed.

"Naruto?" she greeted me with mild surprise. "You don't usually come by this late."

"Got curious." I stepped inside, looking around with undisguised interest. "My schedule cleared up after wrapping a few projects. Figured I'd check in on our resident technical genius. And maybe offer some modest assistance, if, of course, someone of your caliber could ever need it."

Sakura normally kept a certain dignified composure in public, and even within our family circle she maintained her spine when the situation called for it. Here, though, she was relaxed. She squared her shoulders with pride, and it was plain to see the warmth spreading across her cheeks at the compliment.

The proud expression didn't last long. She cracked an almost sheepish smile.

"Actually... I wouldn't say no."

We moved to the silver-metallic ring, and she launched into her explanation with barely contained enthusiasm.

"This is my main project: the Neuro-Fūin Interface. In theory, it will allow direct linking of a shinobi's consciousness with external devices, fūinjutsu systems, and even other people, enabling instant information transfer or control of complex systems. Can you imagine the implications for medicine? Communications? Defense?"

And honestly, the implications were staggering, especially given the existence of the Empire. As it stood, not that many minds could interact with that particular intelligence: thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and only on an extremely superficial level. The local internet, while part of the Empire's domain and nominally under its influence, was only barely so; nearly the entire processing load was still handled by conventional technology. The ring she was describing, acting as a kind of conceptual scaffold, had the potential to expand the World Network to millions of users.

She placed the ring over her pink hair and began feeding a steady stream of chakra into the device. Instantly, driven by the tens of thousands of fūin etched within it and guided by the will of its wearer, multiple connections burst outward from the ring, linking with the planet's primary network and any nearby machines with sufficient processing power.

One of the prototypes, an exoskeleton, immediately picked up a dexterity puzzle from a nearby table and began assembling it with brisk, precise movements.

A remarkable application: scores of primitive fūin and techniques combined into something genuinely intricate. I said as much aloud, which made Sakura beam even brighter.

"Now, the problem," she continued, shifting to business. "The interface is incredibly sensitive to fluctuations in the user's chakra. For ordinary people, non-shinobi, with their stable if modest chakra levels, it functions nearly perfectly. But for ninja..." She nodded with irritation toward a small crate containing a stack of melted, blackened circuit boards. "...their reserves are constantly spiking. During training, stress, jutsu use. These surges just fry the sensitive components. We've tried various filters and fūin-based stabilizers, but they either slow the response too much or still can't handle the peak loads."

"Mm-hm..." Listening to her, I simultaneously used my mismatched dōjutsu to peer into the device's internals.

"We've also swapped out the materials for the sensitive components, but that only works with complex, individual calibration for each user. We tried going deeper, shifting the analysis to a more fundamental Yin component, but we lack the sensitivity. The fūin alphabet we developed hasn't fully integrated into the planet's chakra yet."

I knew exactly what she meant. About a year and a half ago, I'd organized a large-scale collaborative project with a broad group of researchers, which had produced a planetary fūin alphabet: the widest possible set of symbols, encompassing nearly everything we could conceive of. The problem was that it simply hadn't had enough time to properly mature. And none of the older, long-established fūin seemed to offer anything suitable for this application.

Sakura could brute-force the problem, bring in fūin masters to manually stamp their own seals onto each individual unit. But at an industrial scale, that would slash production numbers dramatically.

"Is the supercomputer running through fūin chain permutations right now?" I asked, stepping toward one of the screens.

"Correct. Since yesterday morning."

"Show me the latest." My dōjutsu flared brighter. "My sight goes deeper and wider. Let me try running through it manually."

"Ohhh..." Sakura drew out the sound before activating her own dōjutsu. "Mine never let me pull that off."

She said the last part with full understanding of what she was implying, and with quiet anticipation.

"Let's bend reality a little."

And with that, we got to work.

The local researchers, Sakura included, were far from stupid. I couldn't just waltz in, point out something obvious about this ring, and instantly solve all their problems. They'd already considered numerous approaches and knew how to think. But I had an advantage that made any research I touched move considerably faster: a titanic force that dismantled most of the universe's attempts to remain mysterious.

The calculations took roughly an hour. The result looked dubious, strangely warped and counterintuitive, and yet, against all odds, it worked.

Sakura's mind was practically melting. What we'd arrived at had no business functioning, at least not by her understanding of physics and current technological progress. But my dōjutsu allowed me to see far deeper and from entirely different angles, and the raw computational force of my energy exceeded the local Chakra Network by several orders of magnitude.

The crux of the solution was this: instead of reading the full chakra spectrum, the device now reliably read only the Yin component. It was less destructive by nature, and unlike chakra as a whole, over any brief window of time it could only decrease, that is, be spent, rather than spike unpredictably. This didn't eliminate the need for individual user calibration, but it simplified it dramatically. One caveat remained: if the user burned through too much Yin, the device would stop functioning, but that was a problem for future iterations. A constant Yang input from the network itself would also be necessary, which we addressed in the same session. As for what the solution did to your brain, the spatial distortions required to execute the described functions weren't merely three-dimensional. The geometric shapes they traced were the kind of things you could only describe by swearing.

Working side by side, we felt something almost tangible between us, an intellectual spark. Our understanding of each other deepened not only on an emotional level but on the common ground we shared: the drive to know. After finishing the core work, we sank into a discussion of the finer points, proposing ideas, arguing over nuances, finding common ground again and again.

The hunger for knowledge, and the satisfaction of feeding it together. Eyes lit up with ideas. In moments like this, Sakura wasn't just one of my girls. She was a scientist, an equal partner in the pursuit of understanding.

"Good work," I said finally, watching Sakura shrug off her lab coat. "But I think we've both had our fill of schematics and equations for one night. Feel like taking a walk? The night's beautiful, and Konoha looks especially good at this hour. We can call it a celebration of your scientific breakthrough."

"Hmm..." She turned toward me, looking pleased. Something flickered in her green eyes.

For Sakura, my invitation was about as transparent as freshly cleaned glass. The satisfaction that crossed her face made it clear she'd only been waiting for the logical continuation of all those years spent together.

"Let's go," came her answer after a brief pause, light and playful.

Sakura was dressed in a layered long tunic: a deep brown piece with fitted inner sleeves, and a red sleeveless top over it, accented with decorative brushstrokes of paint. Both pieces allowed free movement thanks to the high side slits. A red hairband in her pink hair and dark brown gloves completed the look.

Evening Konoha was breathtaking. The soft glow of street lanterns lit the narrow walkways, shop and restaurant signs flickered to life, and the air was fresh and cool.

We strolled unhurriedly through familiar places, still talking about the project but in a looser, more relaxed way. Then the conversation drifted naturally into memories: funny moments from the Academy, her time as my student. I recalled the intensely focused expression she used to wear on her face, and her almost-forgotten habit of dropping old-fashioned samurai phrases.

We climbed to the roof of a building along the way, leaned against the railing, and stood in comfortable silence looking out at the Leaf's skyline in the distance.

We might have stayed like that indefinitely, if we hadn't been interrupted in the most absurd way possible.

Down on the street below, Karin appeared, carrying a rolled-up poster tucked under her arm. The moment our eyes met, she gave it a sharp snap and held it up over her head.

"JUST DO IT ALREADY!" was written in enormous letters across the whole sheet.

"Apparently," I said quietly, stepping closer and draping an arm around Sakura's shoulders, "our 'schedule' is under strict supervision."

"So it seems." She laughed, genuinely and warmly. Despite her composure, the faintest blush crept onto her cheeks. "Karin has always had a unique approach to these things."

Noticing my gesture, Karin shot us a thumbs-up and disappeared.

That small interlude, paradoxically, brought us even closer. Sakura mentioned she'd prepared something special, and my curiosity left me no room to refuse. We reached a distant villa I hadn't even known existed via a spatial jutsu. Stepping inside, we came to a halt before the door of one of the larger rooms, and what lay beyond it stirred feelings in me that were, just slightly, contradictory, yet entirely positive. Along with a certain intrigue as to exactly how we'd be making use of it.

Standing there, a comfortable silence settled between us, the kind that doesn't need filling.

At the door, Sakura stopped and looked up at me. Her eyes held anticipation, a faint flutter of nerves, and something older and deeper. I closed the distance.

Our lips found each other as if drawn by something magnetic.

A deep, unhurried kiss. It held tenderness, the long-accumulated weight of waiting, and an understanding that needed no words.

On my tongue, her unique taste bloomed: cool, crisp peppermint, a light tartness of green apple, and a refined, barely-there whisper of white tea.

This is what Sakura tastes like, the thought drifted through my mind. Freshness and clarity, like a mountain stream after a storm. Strength and refinement, all in one.

When we finally pulled apart, both breathing unevenly, I met her eyes.

"Shall we... go in?" I asked softly, though I already knew the answer.

Sakura smiled, and that smile said everything.

"I've been waiting for nothing else."

She took my hand and pulled me inside. The door closed quietly behind us.


I woke to find that a certain girl draped across me had already woken up first and was now staring at my face with a flushed, deeply embarrassed expression.

"Good morning, Sakura." I opened my eyes and was met immediately with a matching pair, just green.

"Morning..."

"You look like you're overthinking something." I buried my hand in her pink hair, which made her tilt her head into my palm.

"It's just... I'd like to ask you not to say anything about what happened last night. Don't take it the wrong way, everything was absolutely wonderful... But there's no need for anyone else to know."

"That's fine. I wouldn't share our private life with outsiders anyway."

"No... I didn't finish. Don't tell Karin, please. She'll bring it up, well, forever."

"Ah, that's what you mean... I can promise I'll hold the line. But something tells me she'll find out regardless."

"Let her find out later, when I won't be as mortified," the girl murmured, and then leaned forward.

Our lips came together and didn't part for a good half minute.

"Breakfast in bed?" I offered.

"I won't say no," confirmed Sakura, her skin now back to its normal color.

After enjoying each other's company a little longer, we went our separate ways. Sakura wasn't as delicate as Hinata, and she bounced back fairly quickly.

That freed up more time for me, which I then devoted to the other girls and my mother.

That same night, I was taking in the view from one of the mansion's balconies, leaning on the railing. From that height, the beauty of Konoha, growing more striking every year, was impossible to ignore.

I'd always had a thing for observation, I think. That quiet communion with the world.

But I was pulled out of my trance by a figure who thought she was being stealthy. She was not.

I didn't shift my position, just waited to see how things developed.

Grab. A pair of feminine hands suddenly appeared at my sides and pressed themselves firmly against my torso.

"Got you..."

"Couldn't wait until tomorrow?" I asked with a smile.

"That would've been boring... Besides, why wait when I can kidnap you right now?"

"Oh? Full-on kidnapping?"

"Exactly..." She bit my earlobe.

Well. Asking this particular girl whether she was sure would be entirely superfluous.

A pulse of chakra, and suddenly Karin was perched on the railing in front of me, wide-eyed with surprise, her glasses helpfully relocated to the top of her head for what was to come.

My hands pressed against her, and my lips met hers, which she opened immediately with a burst of eager enthusiasm.

A vivid combination exploded on my tongue: pomegranate, blood orange, and a sharp kick of pink pepper. Mixing with my own saliva's notes of warm honey and ginger, something intoxicating and electric swept through my mind all at once.

"Look at you, taking initiative!" she said brightly, kicking her legs and starting to breathe harder. "You ignored me for so long... I decided I'd just have to take matters into my own hands! Did I finally manage to wake the beast in you? Heh."

"Only in your little fantasies," I said. I tried to put some reproach in my voice but only managed a warm smirk. "And what exactly do you mean by 'take matters into your own hands'?"

She licked her lips.

"Something I'm pretty sure you haven't tried yet!"

"Now I'm intrigued. Of all of us, you're probably the most... open-minded."

"Open-minded is right. And coming from someone who wants to sleep with his own mother, I'll take that as a compliment," she tried to turn it back on me, though the tone she was going for came out sounding more like fond admiration than any kind of accusation.

"Oh... So you caught our little glances?"

"Obviously! It's literally part of my job. And for the record, I won't be turning down a threesome later."

Kushina, thanks to her unusually young apparent age, had found common ground with the girls remarkably fast.

"You're getting ahead of yourself."

"And you're dragging your feet!" Karin grabbed my face and pulled me in.

We savored the taste of each other again.

"Mmph," she got fully on top of me, locked her legs in place, and started moving with impatient purpose. "Come on, my Emperor... Take me."

"As you wish, my faithful Herald. You've earned your reward."

---

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