Derecho

Tsunade heaves a rather wretched sigh. The first time she’s interacted with Konoha properly in years and it’s to join another godawful war, it’s almost funny.

The Sannin had claimed her position at the rear of the war effort, organizing the medical tents and the rapid response teams. She pointedly refused to join the front line, choosing instead to be doing something actually worthwhile. Even from miles away, seated halfway up their plateau on a wide swathe of land, Tsunade can see Manda as he rips through the army of their allied forces coming to coil around what she presumes to be their Godaime Hokage. If she squints she can just about make out the tiny figure of Orochimaru at Manda’s head, surrounded by many other tiny figures.

Once, not too long ago, Tsunade would’ve felt a visceral sort of hurt at seeing her lost friend. Now, the most she could drudge up is a sad, frustrated sort of resignation. Orochimaru is a grown man, no matter how much she once loved him he’s made his decisions, let him lie in his own bed.

Commotion below her draws the Sannin’s attention. Tsunade takes the last few steps to stand at the cliffs edge, watching in morbid amusement as a lone man cuts through the squad supposed to be guarding the medical tents. He’s masked, black cloak billowing in the winds, red clouds blazing as he flings the guards around like toys. What Tsunade might call tentacles lashing out and around him.

Tsunade rolls her eyes, and steps off the cliffs edge, letting herself plummet. Honestly, does she have to take care of everything around here?

Her initial hit misses, the bastard lunging away at the last moment, and instead sees her heel striking the side of the cliff instead. The plateau shatters beneath her feet, a massive crater fracturing the earth. The ensuing landslide sends both Tsunade and the offending nin sliding fast down the cliff side. They trade blows in rapid fire, leaping from foothold to foothold as boulders are ground down to dust in the slide. Tsunade succeeds in shattering the mans clavicle, and the returning whip of tendrils cracks painfully over her arm. Already she’s repaired the fractures there, and planting her feet with a steel grip of chakra the Sannin wraps the offending tendrils twice around her arm, twists, and flings the man over her shoulder and the rest of the way down the plateau.

He crashes with a satisfying crunch, soft, rich soil and wild flowers giving way to the harder, packed earth and rock below ground, shattering around him in a beautiful crater.

Tsunade lets the landslide grind to a rocky halt, high heels affixed firmly to her foothold. Further up the sheer side of the plateau what’s left of the guard alight on the cliffs behind her.

“Tsunade-sama!”

The Sannin brushes off the concerned call with a grunt, flinging her haori aside as she readies herself for an undoubtedly hard fight.

“Retreat! I will hold the line here!”

The enemy Shinobi peels himself out of his crater with a groan and the crack of many bones popping back into place. Black, writhing tendrils flailing.

“Oh, the irony.” The mans voice is deep, broad shoulders heaving as he tears off the tatters of his Akatsuki cloak. “Here I am, once more, sent to kill a Senju scion.” Dual toned red and green eyes glare at her from over a cloth mask, skin writhing oddly as eldritch-like tentacles pry apart more flesh.

Tsunade blinks, an old memory tugging itself free.

“Ah! Octo-brat!” The nickname her idiot of a grandpa had bestowed upon his ill begotten assassin. If looks could kill, which they could but Kakuzu luckily lost the genetic lottery in that instance, Tsunade would be nothing but ash.

The look of sheer disgust is plainly displayed even through his mask as the man rolls his eyes. “Ugh. I will enjoy scrubbing your line from this world.”

Tsunade rolls her eyes right back. “Greater men have tried Octo-brat, and they’ve all failed.”

She hopes her wayward student is faring better than she is.

…

Sasuke sneezes into his elbow as he absently ducks a flying blade. Wiping his nose he kicks the offending shinobi in the gut so hard he pukes blood, collapsing in a heap to never rise again.

The good news is that they made it in time to intercept Kiri before they set sail, the bad news is that Naruto and Jiraiya are terrible at subterfuge and unashamedly blew what little cover they had. It sparked a bit of a skirmish, and now Team 7 and the Ame rebels are trapped in a power struggle trying to gain control of the beach.

The rebels, mostly comprised of civilian fighters, are doing an excellent job in their hit and run strategy. Setting traps and bombs to pick off the cannon fodder padding the majority of Kiri’s ranks. Sakura had promptly disappeared somewhere, though they were both supposed to be guarding the beach, and Sasuke had been left on his lonesome to deal with this shit. The teen heaves a rather wretched sigh, honestly why is he the only responsible one on this team?

“Such a heavy sigh little brother.”

Sasuke turns to blink up, unimpressed, at his brother. The older Uchiha approaching with a bloody trail of bodies left behind him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with Mogu on the East Beach?” Where it’s safer. Goes unsaid but is heard all the same. Sasuke’s brother is undoubtedly a powerhouse, but with his fragile constitution only just starting to strengthen everyone had agreed it best to keep Itachi from the heart of the fight. He’s supposed to be guarding Mogu and all their boats in case they need to beat a hasty retreat.

His brother only smiles, it’s a soft thing but it’s undoubtedly edged in mischief. “Change in plans, Mogu’s storming Kiri with some of it’s own rebels and taking the village while the majority of its forces are busy here.”

Huh. Kiri having its own rebels actually makes sense, that they’ve struck up a camaraderie with Ame’s rebel force so quickly is both expected and also terribly ironic.

Both Uchiha tense in tandem as a peculiarly abrasive blood lust floods the beach. There’s a man picking his way towards them, smile unhinged and eyes manically bright, a large, red scythe slung over his shoulder.

“Yo, Itachi! Guess the rumors really are fucking true?” The man stomps his foot through the head of a still barely living Kiri nin without breaking stride. Blood splatters up his leg, dyeing it a shining red, pale sand stirred from the sudden movement clinging to his shoe.

“Traitorous son, turned traitor a third time! How fucking predictable!”

Beside him, Sasuke’s brother narrows his eyes behind wire rimmed glasses, purple frames shining in the midday light.

“Hidan, I can’t say this is a pleasant surprise.”

Hidan gives no further dialogue, hefting his scythe from his shoulders and lunging forward, crowing in glee.

…

Sakura and Kisame face off in a soggy marsh clearing, not four miles from the beach. Sakura’s nodachi is already in hand, pink glittering poison barely discernible in the drab, marsh lighting.

Kisame is decidedly unfazed, in fact one could say he was almost bemused.

“You know, we don’t actually have to fight right?”

Sakura’s shoulders draw up, defensive. “The hell we do! You still owe me a round damn it!”

Indeed, during their brief journey with Kisame before he headed back to Akatsuki to take up a position as a sleeper agent, Sasuke and Naruto both got to spar with Kisame. Sakura was frustratingly occupied during both of said times, and ultimately wasn’t able to face the man before he split from the group.

The shark rolls his eyes, but obligingly lifts his Samehada. “Kid, either way we’re both supposed to be rendezvousing at the beach within the hour. So hurry it up.”

Sakura refrains from jumping with joy, just barely.

…

So brawling with an S ranked missing nin could be kind of fun.

Sasuke rarely ever had need of his full strength, and with Itachi forbidden from using actual ninjutsu until his treatment plan was complete, having free reign to rearrange Kiri’s topography with his fists was an artistic endeavor.

The Uchiha trade blows with the frenzied Hidan, the other man proving startlingly fast and very slippery. He relied on the length of his scythe to corral and control his enemies, and used close ranged attacks to finish them. Hidan also seemed impervious to ordinary handicaps, like the agony of his femur breaching his flesh.

Hidan won’t stop for anything short of removed limbs, and Sasuke is more than willing to oblige.

Sasuke ducks forward, under his brothers high kick intercepted by Hidan’s scythe, arm extended and cuts a flaming swathe of flesh and bone from the madman’s body. Like butchering a side of steak, his arm from above the shoulder sloughs off his body, the wound cauterized immediately.

The thing about chakra scalpels, is that they are invisible. Applying an exact amount of fire based chakra to the scalpel added a barley detectable shimmer of heat around his palm, but the blade was left free to extend and contract as he willed it.

Hidan stumbles backwards, laughing, why the fuck is he laughing?

He doesn’t seem bothered by the pain, relishing in it actually, and with a flourish flips his scythe around neatly to cleave a still warm corpse from the numerous scattered across the beach in two. Hidan says something then, softly and with reverence but it’s not in a language Sasuke has ever heard, and the body trembles on the ground as if it were still alive. Skin frays apart, blood soaking away into the ground and body made into ash to be swept away in the breeze.

Hidan’s skin takes on a grey cast, like a corpse, and with a loud pop and the splatter of viscera a new arm emerges from his burned out shoulder socket.

Well that’s…something.

Beside him Itachi’s body suddenly goes from battle tense, to truly rigid, shoulders shaking. His brother stumbles as Hidan lunges for them with renewed speed, babbling about his supposed god all the way, and Sasuke snatches them both back just in time.

His brother is shaking, pupils dilated, doubled over on his knees in the sand, hands gripping at his chest through his shirt.

Fuck.

Like divine intervention Sakura and Kisame finally decide to show their faces, just as Itachi collapses to one side, Sasuke the only thing holding him up. Kisame bats away a flailing scythe, and Sakura lunges forward with poison soaked needles.

The fight quickly slips away from him as his focus narrows only to here, right now. It’s just him now, him and his brother. His brother, the idiot, who is having a heart attack on a Kiri beach.

Fuck.

Sasuke’s already working before he’s truly processed what’s transpiring, and by the time Kisame and Sakura fall back beside him he’s already stabilized Itachi enough to be moved safely. Rising the teen nods to Kisame, the shark gets the hint and stoops to pick up Itachi gently, preparing to fall back.

“Get back to the ships, I’ll take care of this.”

Neither say a word, but Sakura takes a moment to lay a reassuring hand on his shoulder before she takes off with Kisame.

“What’s the matter?” The madman jeers, like his life isn’t already forfeit. “Bored already?”

The mark on Sasuke’s forehead begins to glow, cherry red bleeding into something a little more like blood. Or maybe hell fire. Bright lines searing down his face, curling over his flesh.

“Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty of fun together. I’m sure of it.”

…

Jiraiya and Naruto, teacher and student, big idiot and little idiot.

Tweedle dum and Tweedle dummer stand on the rolling waves of the Kiri ocean, the flaming remnants of the enemy fleet a wall of burning heat behind them.

Successfully destroyed the enemy fleet, yay! Alerted the enemy Kage causing Yagura to unleash the Ocean’s Terror Sanbi and sending it into a rampage? Not yay, not yay at all.

The Sanbi roars, mouth gaping open revealing nightmarish rows of glowing teeth. Its tails whip beneath the water, forming a vortex trying to pull them closer, into its gaping maw.

“Kid?! You got Kurama ready over there or what?!” Jiraiya’s voice is nearly a shriek just to be heard over the violent crash of the waves.

Naruto’s face falls from mild terror into a sheepish grin.

“We’re not really on speaking terms right now?” The idiot duo leap apart as the Sanbi sends a chakra powered tsunami hurling towards them, though unhurt the both of them are soaked now, the lingering traces of Bijuu chakra making their skin tingle.

Jiraiya sends a retaliating wave crashing back, and is already flying through summoning hand seals.

“Well you better make your apologies fast!”

_______

“Obito…?”

Mayu, for the first time in a long time, feels entirely out of her depth. Her father, who she may have raised onto a bit of a pedestal throughout her life but what little girl hasn’t believed their father infallible at least once, sounds…lost. Since meeting Megumi, Mayu knew that her dads life had turned out infinitely better than it would’ve been, without her and Sai, and Team Ro and Team 18 her dad would’ve never existed. Hatake Kakashi the lost child soldier, never would’ve become Hatake Kakashi the father.

Now she thinks she knows some of what her dad could’ve been, could’ve stayed as. A lost, lonely man, hurt so very deeply.

She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like it at all.

Uncle Obito was supposed to be a thirteen year old boy with a smile too bright and a heart too big, was supposed to be a good kid who loved too readily and died for it.

Died. Dead. Uncle Obito was supposed to be dead, a fond memory.

Not standing atop a giant snake reveling in the chaos and death he has sown.

The fight has resumed around them, enemy Kage engaging with their allied Kage backed up by a small squad of Suna’s best puppeteers and Gaara’s long distant support. There is only Uncle Obito now, standing on the head of Manda, making a complete ass of himself.

Mayu doesn’t like it one fucking bit.

Surprisingly, however, Mayu is beaten to the punch. Literally. Sai goes from his spot folded under their dads other arm to burying his fist into Uncle Obito’s stupid face.

Her brother is usually the calm one, the one who always lectures her on “procedure”, and “strategy”. So yeah it’s pretty funny to see her cool older brother fly off the handle and deck the haunting nightmare that is their Uncle Obito. Way to go Sai!

Mayu laughs, a startled joyous thing that has no place on a blood soaked battlefield, and leaps forward. Lightning arcs off of her arms, forming a bright crackling trail behind her, as she soars through the air. Wind caresses her, like gentle hands set on her shoulders, above them grey clouds build and build, towering into the sky. Obito dodges Sai’s follow up strike, but not Mayu’s flying kick to the gut. It’s enough to send the man flying backwards, the Hatake siblings giving chase as the man goes tumbling down Manda’s winding, serpentine body.

It’s two against one, and between the combined might of Hatake geniuses it doesn’t take long to figure out Uncle Obito’s little phasing tricks. Inky beasts leap into life, massive swooping birds and snarling tigers, accompanied by the crack and flash of lightning.

“What’s wrong, Uncle Obito!” The ghosts face twists into something ugly, and Mayu follows up her taunting with a lightning powered punch.

Sai successfully slices open a deep gash on the Uchiha’s back when the man phase through her strike, “You’re getting sloppy, Uncle!” The siblings jeer, an echo of the mans own attitude not moments ago.

Snarling, guttural and furious, Uncle Obito kicks them both away. All three of them are air borne now, and the Uchiha gains more distance with a large swathe of flame forced from his throat.

They land hard on the ground, feet first as any self respecting shinobi, and the siblings lunge refusing to let up on their assault. Obito phases through an Ink Hawks talons, deflects Sai’s tanto, and dodges under Mayu’s high kick to land a punch right into her diaphragm. With lungs now forcibly emptied of air and tears blurring her vision Mayu takes her shot and twists around Obito’s arm trying to capture his head between her feet while Sai lunges in again from behind him blade flashing in his hands. Uncle Obito twists his arm around in Mayu’s hold, large hand fisting in the front of her uniform and turns to fling her bodily at her brother. Sai redirects his blade so he can catch her, both Hatake siblings tumbling to the ground in a painful heap. Obito turns to lunge after the downed teens, Ink Tigers running to defend them as they frantically try to untangle themselves. The man phases through the first Tiger and then the second—

The harsh shriek of birds, the blinding light of a storm captured in a single hand. Obito dodges too late, blood splattering wet and shiny across the ground. The man lands some few feet away, as their dad cuts off his technique and continues the last steps towards the heap of his children as casual as a midday stroll.

“Finally got your head out of your ass, Bakashi?” The words are taunting, jeering, and Mayu sends the man a glare so withering he should be glad she’s not the one with the Sharingan. Their dad only sighs, and while sad it’s not a heavy, grief laden thing. More put upon and long suffering than anything else.

He reaches down, scruffing both his kids and hauling them up to set them on their feet, untangling their gear straps with all the ease of years of practice.

“You two know better than to leave loose buckles and straps exposed.” Their dad chides them both in a familiar tone.

Straightening Kakashi turns to face Obito, his children flanking him. He’d been shocked admittedly, when first that horrifically orange mask had been carelessly flung aside. It was like facing an old nightmare, stale terror and guilt beginning stir within him. He’d watched that mask as it fell to the ground, preferring instead to see that instead of the impossibility standing on the head of a giant fucking snake. The mask had plummeted carelessly into a brush of wildflowers and tall grasses not yet wilted in viscera, orange clashing with soft blue and vibrant pink buds.

A cold, wet nose had pushed into his hand, startling Kakashi from his reverie and he’d looked down at Suzu with her big, sad eyes and realized his children were gone. That he’d been a stationary target on a war front for far too long, and that his children were gone. Kakashi had looked up just in time to watch his daughter attempt to snap Obito’s head with her feet, and the resulting fling across the field directly into Sai. He winced as they both go down in a loud clatter of weapons, gear, and groaning.

Get your shit together, Hound.

So here he is, shit only sort of together but holding for now, and his children at his back armed and thirsting for violence.

“Alright, let’s do this.” His gremlins need no further prompting, and the Hatake clan fall upon their enemy with bloodthirsty fervor.

Kakashi and Mayu take point, Sai covering them at long distance. Lightning bleaches the field in an eerie white, leaping and wrapping between father and daughter. Ink bubbles to life in great waves, forming grasping hands and hungry mouths filled with fangs, teeth and wordless shrieks. Ink Beasts lunging and swooping around them. Suzu guards Sai, snarling as she rips out the throat of an opportunistic Oto nin, blood soaking her muzzle.

Mayu flips away from Obito’s attempted grapple, allowing room for her dad to plant a knee in his face. With a particularly feral grin the littlest Hatake flies through hand signs, chakra sparking wildly as her summons appears on the battle field in a massive swirl of red smoke.

Genta, the Boss Red Panda, appears in the living world with a hearty laugh and the rampant scent of lilies and fresh water. The Boss panda stands just under seven feet tall on all four paws, and fights in just the same way the rest of the Red Panda clan does. Playfully, and with a sadistic streak a mile wide.

“Ah! It has been an age since I’ve walked the world of the living!” Genta muses, voice that of a beloved elder. Gray glitters in his rusty coat, dyeing his muzzle and whiskers. It’s only the second time Mayu has summoned Genta, the Boss panda needed to be summoned and held in the human world strictly with Mayu’s own chakra, so no cheating with her Nature. It had taken her longer than she’d like to admit to build the reserves for it.

Mayu laughs as she darts around Genta’s hulking, fluffy form. “Let’s do this, Genta!” Genta obliges as Mayu leaps up, curling herself up tightly midair, knees to chest and chin tucked in. Their chakra flares together as the Joint Henge Jutsu melts over her, transforming her into an appropriate weapon to be wielded by a Red Panda.

The chime of a very large Temari ball rings across the battlefield, and Genta laughs his deep belly laugh as the newly transformed Temari-Mayu bounces before him. Rearing up onto his hind legs Genta ricochets Temari-Mayu off of his belly, sending the ball flying with a tinkling chime. The brightly patterned ball flies, crossing the considerable distance to Obito so fast it distorts the air around it, whipping out a punishing wind. It nails the, frankly gobsmacked, Uchiha in the face so hard it forces him straight into the ground, a man sized crater shattering open beneath him. Temari-Mayu bounces off Obito’s face with a chime far too akin to a giggle.

Obito finds himself flabbergasted.

What the absolute fuck.

Obito climbs out of his crater, groaning, and finds much to his dismay that he is now surrounded by four copies of that fucking Panda. Genta stands poised on all fours, fur bristled out so much he looks like a puffy red cloud. The Temari-Mayu lands in front of one copy, and bounces up beginning to spin wildly in the air, lightning building and snapping until the the ball disappears into a spiraling orb of light. The pandas rise onto their hind legs, and Obito gets ready to phase out of the way of what’s sure to be some kind of devastating fuckery.

So busy with the immediate threat Obito’s taken entirely surprised when Kakashi leaps out of the ground beneath his feet blade in hand. Obito phases through the incoming blow on instinct, and realizes his mistake too late.

The fucking clone disperses when the Lightning Temari-Mayu is sent straight through it’s chest, and directly into Obito.

“Four-Point Belly Gong!”

The Temari ball ricochets repeatedly into Obito’s progressively more battered body.

Honestly, what the fuck.

The hellish combo ends when the Temari-Mayu sends him clear into the air where he collides with a, astonishingly fluffy, belly that knocks him straight into the ground. Briefly, their battleground is obscured by a cloud of dust and debris. Obtio left groaning in a very large crater as the dust settles.

Seriously, fuck this.

…

The Hatake clan convene on the battlefield, only fifteen or so feet away from the downed Uchiha. Obito is shrouded in the dust cloud, nothing but a dark shape dragging itself slowly upright once more.

Sai snaps his drawing scroll open to a blank space, used paper ripping free easily and tossed aside. “Something’s wrong.”

Their father hums in agreement. “Yes. He should be dead by now, Genta and Mayu’s joint attack should’ve shredded him easily.”

Mayu bounces once more before the Joint Henge pops and she tumbles free, their father catching her around the waist before she can face plant. She groans, dizzy, as Kakashi sets her back on her feet, holding her still as she tries to reorient her world view. Genta snuffles his giant nose in her hair, breath puffing over her face, before he puffs away in a cloud of red smoke.

“He did shred apart,” she complains, mildly insulted, “But every time we injured him his chakra surged weirdly, and the wounds disappeared.”

Kakashi sighed, resigned. “That, is definitely not good.”

Building chakra draws the families attention back to the problem at hand. Wind billows hard and sudden, clearing the last of the dust and revealing Obito once more. There’s blood smeared on his face, but any visible wounds have disappeared. Oh, and he’s also incredibly pissed.

With theatrical timing the ground gives a mighty heave beneath their feet, the entire battlefield quakes, the whole world shaking. Around them the war grinds to a sudden, clumsy halt, people toppling over, jutsu flung askew exploding haphazardly. The earth gives a loud groan, like a giants wail, the sound so deep it shakes in Mayu’s bones. Cracks spread across the ground, some nothing but hairline fractures, others widen to the width of her palm, a few crack open into gaping abysses, black and yawning.

As quickly as it began it stops, the world falling still, silent. No one dares to breathe.

Feet away from her family Uncle Obito smiles, it’s a nasty spiteful thing.

“Finally.”

The Uchiha grips the tattered remains of his long, black cloak, ripping it from himself and flinging it aside. Mayu has only a moment for confusion, who disrobes on a battlefield?, before she finally comprehends the new nightmare before her and horror settles in.

It’s sick, a creeping horror burning up the back of her throat. It’s the kind of thing one witnesses and never forgets, images imprinted across the backs of eyelids never to be forgotten.

Eyes. Uncle Obito has many eyes, more than any human should, they’re everywhere. Imbedded in his torso, across his chest, down his spine, over his arms. Nearly every inch of pale skin is covered in bulging, rolling eyes. Lacking eyelids the red eyes, Sharingan eyes-the eyes of his family, roll and roll. She wonders if they’re really seeing anything, or if it’s just nerves reacting to movement near them. Maybe it’s more akin to the twitching of an already dead animal, muscle memory and seizing nerves.

Some of the eyes are rolled back, as if they’re unconscious, bloodshot and oozing red. Buried beneath his collar bones, is a set of familiar, purple ringed eyes, glaring out at them.

Mayu thinks she’s gone beyond shock and horror, coming upon something distant and hazy.

Something cold and wet drags across her feet, and Mayu jolts away from the horrific visage to stare down at her feet.

She blinks, some of the odd haze lifting from her mind as she realizes she can’t see her feet. Black, cold ooze floods the ground around her feet, swallowing them completely. Her dads feet too, and when she looks Sai’s are submerged to the ankle as well.

It’s everywhere. Inky black sludge blankets the battlefield, bubbling up from the cracks in the ground, heaving like a living breathing thing. It’s flooding towards the center of the field, the thick current tugging at her feet as it flows towards Obito.

She stares hard into the shining depths of the sludge. It feels familiar.

Mayu jolts as eyes, consumed in putrid yellow, flash up at her leaving the impression of a fang filled smile.

An entirely different horror finds its place in Mayu, cold and gnawing.

Black Zetsu.

She’d thought—they’d—

It shouldn’t be here.

It shouldn’t be here!

With no Bijuu to power that fucking statue Black Zetsu should be next to powerless, right? Megumi had said so.

Megumi had said so.

And he was always right about these things.

But that’s not true, is it. The older boy had admitted it to her, as if it were some hidden shame.

He’d never finished the anime, quit before the final war. He’d never read the manga. Besides, with all the casual, and at times seemingly random, changes to the timeline they had no way of knowing if anything from the Before was ever fact.

So. Did that mean.

This was all for nothing?

The ground shakes again, the black ichor boiling. Uncle Obito is laughing amidst his Black Death, the ooze is building around him, gathering, until she can’t see him anymore. Only the sound of his laughter, only the writhing black. Building, building, growing.

Mayu realizes too late what’s about to happen, and casts her senses out as far as they can go, lightning sparking nearly invisible in the air surrounding her, searching. The feeling of soft grass brushes against her, and Mayu stares beyond the writhing ooze.

She finds Megumi there, some forty feet away and much closer to the writhing ball of ooze than she is, a streak of white against the writhing black and staining blood. He’s just on the other side of it, Black Zetsu having convalesced so much he’s swollen to the size of a large house. He’s so close he could just reach out and touch it.

She freezes, breath caught in her throat. He’s already looking at her, green eyes soft and the smile on his face gentle. Kind.

The ooze surges upwards, taller than the Hokage tower, it winds tighter and tighter. It’s starting to draw into itself with so much force it’s flying through the air, wind sucking inwards with the force of a storm. It pulses, pure energy lashing out, no one goes flying. They’re all stuck.

Megumi’s smile widens, he says something to her but it’s lost in the howl of the wind and the screams of the soldiers around them. She can only stare, horrified. Black Zetsu pulses, writhes a moment more.

Then explodes.

A black, living tsunami exploding out in all directions. It appears like liquid at first, but in actuality it’s billions of grasping, clawing hands.

She thinks she might scream, a name-it’s probably Megumi’s, but there’s nothing she can do. It’s like when you try to run in a dream, everything happening so fast but so slowly all at once. Her dad wraps his arms around each of them, his lightning surges down and into the ground, chakra pouring through his legs and feet. It forces the Zetsu ooze apart momentarily, and he powers through the rest of it with brute force, sending the three of them flying backwards. Suzu hitching a ride via her teeth locked around Mayu’s leg when the three go sailing over head.

Mayu does nothing, can only cling to her dad like a scared little girl. Watching as greedy, grasping hands rip apart thousands, friend and enemy alike. Dragging people screaming and bloody inside of itself. Mayu can’t even see Megumi anymore, he was so close to Black Zetsu…

He’s probably already been eaten.

The ooze draws everything in, and doubles in size, the black pillar towering into the clouds.

The Hatake family land hard on a solid patch of ground barely out of Zetsu’s hold, Sai and Mayu near crushed beneath their father. Behind them the ooze pulses again, the whole thing flooding outward searching for more to eat. It floods twice as far this time.

Kakashi forces them both to their feet, hands locked onto his children as he drags them forward. “Move!”

Sai gets the memo faster than Mayu, getting his feet under his own power and running. Mayu has to force her own feet to move, mechanical and fully relying on muscle memory and fear. With great reluctance she finally turns away from the towering ooze, something oddly like betrayal rising in her chest. Like taking her eyes off the writhing horror behind them is somehow conceding Megumi to it willingly. Conceding him, and thousands of other people.

They jump again as the black wave crashes down, and Mayu can see in her peripheral the grasping hands snatching away more and more people.

Further ahead, out of range of Zetsu, she can see shinobi gathering in groups of four, beckoning others to them. The Hatake make one final lunge, the four of them joining the cluster of soldiers surrounding the four shinobi. Mayu numbly registers the four beckoning shinobi to be two Iwa nin, a Konoha nin, and a Kusa nin. International cooperation finally achieved, and it’s at world’s end. She’d laugh if she could feel anything other than muted anger and distant terror at the moment.

The ground shakes as the pillar bursts outwards again, distance doubled a third time. The four shinobi fly through matching hand signs, slamming their palms into the ground in unison; a massive square stone pillar erupts beneath them, pushing them all into the air just in time. Scattered around the field similar pillars erupt as well. Some of them are not high enough, black flooding clear over them and washing away the shinobi on top. Others aren’t strong enough, crumbling away under the onslaught of the black waves.

Most of them hold though. Good. Most is good. Better than what could be expected.

Their pillar holds too, thankfully. It shakes ominously beneath their feet, but it holds. Black splashes up over the edges of the pillar, and the people closest to the edge flinch away but no one gets dragged off.

There’s roughly thirty shinobi on their pillar, and twenty-seven pillars scattered in a wide circle around the writhing ooze that she can see, all of similar sizes and holding about the same number of people. Of the thousands of Shinobi that once stood on this field, only a little more than eight-hundred remain.

Like a fucked up ocean Black Zetsu recedes, drawing back into itself like the drawing up of an ocean before a flood hits. The ooze does not tower up again, instead it just draws in, and in and in. Compressing. It’s doing something new.

What’s it doing?

This time the ooze explodes upwards, a thin stream of black soaring up and up and—oh.

The moon.

When did it become night? But that’s not right either, because the sun is still in the sky, it’s early evening.

Megumi called it golden hour.

The black soars straight for the moon, and in a show of impossible tomfoolery it pierces it. Mayu watches in stunned horror as the moon begins to crack. Then, with a mind shattering shriek, it’s nothing but deafening sound and blinding light. It’s the sound of the world screaming, it’s the light of a dying moon. The whole world shakes, the very air trembling.

Dimly, Mayu is aware of searingly bright lights plummeting past them and crashing into the earth below. Are those, meteorites?

Mayu grunts as a weight tackles her down, her head smacking hard into her brothers shoulder. It’s their dad, his weight pushing them both down and covering them with his body. He’s so heavy, why is he so heavy? The world falls silent again, still. The buzz left in her ears drowning out the no doubt awful sounds of whoever’s left. Either their dying screams or their pained cries. Her eyes finally clear of white spots, and Mayu can finally identify what exactly had been pummeling down on them from above.

It’s very pretty, though splattered in a frankly obscene amount of blood. It’s white, and glowing a faint silver. Moon debris.

It’s also scarily close to her face, it should be on top of them but it’s—

Oh.

Oh.

“…Daddy?”

It’s pierced through him, in through the back and out through the stomach. His body slack and still in death. Mayu reaches hesitant fingers up to touch his face, brushing aside his mask. He is smiling still. Softly. Gently. Lone, slate grey eye dull and glassy.

She’s covered in blood. They both are, her and Sai. Sticky warmth soaks into her skin. She turns her head, looking for her brother beside her. He is still. She can’t see if he’s breathing, she can’t see any injuries but he’s covered in blood. Same as she is, so it’s probably just—

It’s…

She doesn’t know what to do.

She doesn’t—

She can’t—

_______

Tsunade stands and watches the slaughter in shocked horror. Kakuzu is held on his knees in front of her, arms twisted up and behind him in a painful hold. Though he stopped struggling after the first wave of black washed away over half their combined forces. Or maybe it’s because she just crushed his last Heart Mask beneath her very sharp heel.

Probably a bit of both.

They watch, comically frozen, as the fucking moon shatters and something descends alongside the burning meteorites. Tsunade thinks it might be person shaped, but all she catches is a bare glimpse before the sky is abruptly blackened. It happens so fast she almost jumps, pitch black clouds drowning out the sky. Odd energy rises in the air. It sings, almost audibly. A peculiar hum rising within her, overcoming all else. Even her own thoughts.

It’s like the pressure that builds in your head just before a very bad storm blows in. Except it happens all at once and magnified by a thousand degrees. Tsunade’s ears pop suddenly and violently, hearing briefly whiting out before the agony is soothed away with healing chakra. It’s chokingly hot all of a sudden, sweat abruptly dripping from her as it quickly soaks through her clothes. In her grasp Kakuzu’s arms turn disgustingly wet as humidity attempts to drown them.

She can barely breathe, her head is spinning, and still that nearly audible energy continues to swell. If it grows much more her head might just burst.

Tsunade thinks she can almost hear words, if she strains hard enough against the pain. It almost sounds like—

Ah, it’s the world. It’s singing.

The sky splits open, and the storm pours forth.

…

Sasuke stumbles as the atmosphere abruptly turns heavy and choking. He turns away from the bloody smear that was once Hidan, staring out over the ocean as the sky abruptly blackens and the world begins to sing.

Something flashes in the far distance, white and pure. It’s familiar to him. An answering flare of light pierces the black clouds, it descends like a war hammer, audibly cracking. It rattles in his head even from so far away. It flares brighter, it doesn’t stop growing.

The world melts away into white.

_______

“Let’s be friends in the next life too, ok?”