Derecho

Mayu’s world has gone strangely distant.

It’s different than the usual haze of her stormy Nature, where lightning sears her blood, and she becomes part of a much greater whole. Where every breath she takes is the wind across the fields, and every strike the lightning of the skies. This is different.

It’s not greater, or worse, or anything like that. Just different.

Her sense of self is gone, her body frayed apart by Nature. She thinks not even pieces remain, not smears of blood, or chunks of flesh, nothing left to be strewn about the battlefield. Her limbs are gone, they have been replaced by hurricanes, twisting and ripping apart all around her. Her voice is gone, replaced by the howling of the winds and the booming of thunder.

Something Other has come before her, something that burns with power. It rages against her, flinging power that shatters the earth and shakes the skies. She recognizes it only on an instinctual level. The thing that broke the moon. The thing that killed her daddy.

Kaguya.

She wants to be a god. She already claims to be a god.

Kaguya is a pathetic thing, prowling through the mud to gather scraps and prey upon only what is weaker then herself. Kaguya is nothing.

So Mayu does not allow her Nature to flow. Mayu takes. She takes and she takes, and she devours. Glutting herself on the flaming blood of the world, and relishing in it. She eats until she comes apart, the seams of her humanity bursting, unmaking her. She takes from Nature for the first time in either of her lives.

Mayu stands at the edge of a precipice, yawning and black and terrifying, and weeps. Weeps for the loss of all that she has loved. Weeps for the choice she must make now. There is one last thread stitching her together, one last bridge to her humanity left unburned.

If you take this power, there will be no going back.

Mayu thinks of her brother, lying still beside her covered in blood. She thinks of her father, who died protecting his children. She thinks of Megumi, who looked her in the eye and smiled as Black Zetsu devoured him. She thinks of Genki, who died in agony, slipping away in her arms.

There is nothing left to go back to.

Her mind melts away into the white. Anger, sorrow, pain, fading away into nothing. Her pain swept up into the turbulent arms of a storm, and drowned in the sounds of howling winds.

The thread snaps. The sky weeps.

_______

Kakashi awakens to the knowledge that he is completely, and undeniably dead.

Factual. It sticks in his mind in the casual way that the sky is blue, that grass is green, that he is dead.

He is dead.

He is dead and waking up and not at all where he should be, and actually he probably shouldn’t be waking up either cause he’s dead-

He’s lying on a twin sized bed, in a small, foreign room. It’s obviously a girls room, with purple and green quilts on the bed and the walls painted a soft peach. There’s paintings and pictures and flowers on the walls, and tiny dangling lights strung across the ceiling. There are framed awards hanging on the wall by the shut bedroom door, what he knows should be foreign letters proclaiming the winner of multiple science awards across many years. There is a white desk against the wall beside the bed, overflowing with notebooks and half finished homework, there’s a framed picture there of a little girl no older than twelve. Blonde haired, blue eyed, braces on her teeth, a burning light of mischief and curiosity in her eyes. She looks so familiar.

There’s a window on the opposite wall to the bed, curtains thrown open and window unlatched letting in the deep rumble of thunder and the flash of lightning from the storm outside. Kakashi rises from the bed and takes two, long strides to reach the window. Here, cold rain water splashes in from outside, it’s soaked the wood of the sill and judging by the wear of it, this is not the first time someone’s flung open the window to let the rains in. It reminds him of the windows in his home, the windows Mayu always insisted on throwing open during the rainy season; letting in storms like one does fresh breezes. All the sills in his home are weathered like this, paint pealed away and reapplied too many times.

With numb fingers and dull instinct alone, Kakashi pulls the window shut and latches it.

He turns to leave, pulling open the odd, flimsy white door silently and stepping out into the narrow hall outside. It’s so thin his shoulders almost brush the walls, the many framed pictures decorating this hall should make it feel claustrophobic, but it just feels cozy. Warm. Kakashi heads down the hall, old wood creaking quietly beneath his feet, he should be more concerned with stealth in an unknown area he supposes. But then again, Kakashi is dead now, so what’s the worst that could happen?

He is dead. Dead, and his children left behind in the midst of a war. His village left without a leader.

Kakashi steps out into what must be the living room. A fire crackles happily in the fireplace, a large frumpy brown couch and two matching chairs sit before it looking well worn and comfortable. The window at the front of the room stares out over a strange, smooth stone street, large constructs of metal lined up neatly on either side. White snow flurries down from hazy skies, a powdery blanket covering every flat surface. There’s a tall pine tree standing in the corner of the living room, soft electric lights strung across its boughs, shiny ornaments hanging from the branches. A Christmas tree.

Mayu had explained the holiday to him shortly after his appointment to Hokage. The Hatake had taken to celebrating an amalgamation of Christmas and the winter solstice every year. They had never been able to procure an evergreen tree, but they hung glass ornaments from the willow tree in their backyard.

Death feels oddly warm, it’s almost a comfort.

The creak of old floor boards from the room over, soft, shuffling footsteps drawing closer.

“Ah! You’re finally here.” A gentle, feminine voice, mellowed in age.

Kakashi turns, and finds himself momentarily stunned at the woman before him. She’s in an apron smeared in flour, having just emerged from the kitchen, long blonde hair swept up into a haphazard braid, loose strands drifting around her face. Blue eyes glitter up at him in an achingly familiar mischief, wrinkles creasing the corners of her eyes.

He knows who she is.

She’s nearly identical to the portrait in the Hatake shrine, the ink drawing hanging beside the picture of his own father, brought to life. Sai had painted it for Mayu, for her thirteenth birthday. She’s a bit older than the painting portrayed, more wrinkles, hair more grey than blonde, hands more weathered.

“Maria…?” Maria Matthews. The mother of Sarah-Grace Matthews, his daughters first mother.

Maria’s smile widens, hands wiped clean in her apron set themselves on his shoulder and guide him to sit in the cozy living room. Kakashi sits at the edge of the couch, Maria across from him in the old, brown armchair.

“…I suppose we’re both dead then?” Probably not the best conversation starter, but if they’re both in the same boat then it should be fine right?

“I suppose we are.” She speaks so gently, voice strong but kind.

“You know, I had a whole speech planned for this.” She sighs, fondly exasperated. “But, you’ve gone and showed your face at such a tumultuous time. So I suppose I should cut to the chase.”

Outside the sky darkens, snow coming down harder. Not quite a storm, but getting closer.

Maria’s eyes seem to glow, vibrant, sky blue mimicking the luminescence of violet.

“Thank you.”

Kakashi blinks, taken off guard, at the woman who first raised his daughter. The woman who is most definitely responsible for the near supernatural spirit of kindness and love in his child.

“You’re welcome…?”

Maria laughs, a full, genuine sound, nearly doubling over in her sudden bout of joy.

“…Uh…”

The woman visibly collects herself, heaving a humorous sigh.

“I told Sarah-Grace that I never knew who her father was, that he was just a mistake on a fun night after I graduated college.”

“I’m guessing that was a lie.”

Her smile dims, but her eyes stay warm.

“Yes. Truthfully her biological father was a piece of shit, more in love with booze and violence than anything else in his sorry, dead end life. He turned his violence onto me while I was still pregnant with Sarah.”

She seems distantly reminiscent, Kakashi feels a bit pissed honestly.

Maria’s gaze turns hard, steel hidden in the folds of a linen apron.

“I only let it happen once. The next night he took an unfortunate tumble down the front steps in a drunken stupor, cracked his head open on the concrete and bled out.” She casts her eyes about the small, fire lit living room. “I moved us back to Michigan soon after, into my parents old home. No one suspected a thing.”

Maria would’ve done well as a Kunoichi. She has the same, quiet menace as their best infiltrators. A long game played, always ending with a knife in the dark.

“I gave her everything I possibly could, and watched as my little girl grew into such a fearsome, loving, bright thing. She grew greater than me, greater than her piece of shit father. Sarah-Grace grew thrice the size of her beginnings, and I knew I’d won.”

Yeah, Maria Matthews would’ve been a fearsome Kunoichi indeed.

“So thank you, Kakashi. Thank you for being Sarah’s father, for being the one I should’ve given her in the first place.”

“What else would I have been?” His voice is barely a whisper, a wretched, overwrought thing. If not the father of Mayu, and later Sai, what else would Kakashi be? An empty man, inhabited only by traumas, and regrets.

In a crooked little house, in Detroit Michigan, on the eve of a Christmas fondly remembered. Two parents sit across from each other, sharing in the joy of raising their child.

In the distance, the deep rumble of thunder, like the growl of a great beast. Kakashi does not jump at the sudden flash of lightning, so bright it burns, but he does blink hard at the sudden intrusion. It’s almost a physical touch, a pull at his elbow.

Come here. It says. Come, quickly!

Outside, the snowy streets have disappeared. Now all he can see is the black of a raging storm.

Maria rises from her seat and Kakashi with her. She ushers him to the front door, the storm churning harshly beyond a cut glass window.

“You should get going, They’re waiting for you.”

Kakashi pauses, fingers on the cold silver of the front door handle.

“They?”

Marie only smiles, kindly and mischievous. The woman leans up, she’s terribly short, and Kakashi blinks in surprise as warm lips set themselves on his cheek, just over the lip of his mask, beneath his eye.

“Go, and give Mayu my love.”

And just like that Maria turns away, wandering off back into the kitchen. The lights brighten, and music drifts in from somewhere. He can smell the scent of warm sugar and flour, hear the laughter of a young girl and her mother.

Kakashi turns back to the door, flinching slightly at the sudden disappearance of the odd, cut glass and wooden door. In it’s place is a shoji door, pristine white paper detailed in silver and blue, the images of billowing clouds and a tumultuous sea painted across rice paper.

He opens the door.

A snowy, quiet street lined in cars is not the sight that greats him. Instead a beach stretches out before him, white sands illuminated by the light of a full moon. Beyond the shores of the beach lies a great, black ocean, in the distance a glittering white pagoda standing tall among the dark waves.

Kakashi steps past Maris’s threshold, sandals crunching into sand. He crosses the beach, refusing to look back, refusing to give into the trepidation trying to build within him. Stepping onto the long, ornate bridge stretching across the water, icy salt water sloshing over the edge of bleached stone and soaking his feet. The ocean is churning all around him, thrashing violently, angrily, thunder booming so loudly it rings in his head. So violent is the storm the sea life has decided to take shelter in the air, countless luminescent fish twisting through the air, Kakashi has to duck under a particularly aggressive whale.

He steps up to the pristine temple doors, they’re flung open and banging haphazardly in the wind. He enters the temple on quiet feet, halting in front of where the altar should be and is instead a toppled mountain of pillows and blankets. There is a figure standing there amidst the chaos, back to him, staring out through open doors and across the writhing oceans beyond. They’re dressed in Junihitoe, done in colors of silver, blue, and purple.

Their shoulders draw back, a wordless acknowledgment of his presence, and their long curtain of dark, shining hair shifts as they turn to look at him.

“Oh-!” He recognizes her, long dark hair framing a pale face set with luminous, violet eyes.

Ruby lips stretch into a wane smile, humor breaking through the tense lines of her face.

“If you hadn’t recognized me, I told myself I’d cast you into the ocean.”

Kakashi huffs, a bit amused and a bit indignant.

“Glad I didn’t disappoint then.”

The Kami’s smile dims, but the tension in her eases.

“In more ways than one.”

Kakashi hesitates on how to process that, but she is already turning away, stepping towards the second set of open doors across the temple.

“Come, you must see this.”

He follows her warily, coming up beside her to stare into what he thinks will be the churning waves below them. Instead it’s the shear drop of a mountains edge, deep mists shadowing the depths of the ravine far below them. If he squints Kakashi is almost sure he can just see the tops of trees in the mists.

Susano’o no Mikoto waves her arm out, over the edge of the balcony. Mist twists into shape below them, opening a viewing window into the Living World.

The land of the living is awash in white, a searing, burning white that drowns out all else. Tangled in the white is Mayu, she is…not herself. It’s an indescribable sight, the unmaking of a human soul. The way a human visage can crumble away so easily, the way a human soul can unravel, the threads of it picked apart and rewoven into something new. Something different.

“There she is,” Her voice wavers, but Kakashi can’t make out her face beyond the inky curtain of her hair. “Our girl.”

He watches their daughter be unmade and made again, watches his child tear herself apart in her grief. Like father like daughter.

“Yeah, our girl.”

The Kami turns to him suddenly, in a swirl of silk and hair. Her eyes are near glowing in their intensity, there is something writhing beneath her skin. Lichtenberg lines spreading glowing finger across her flesh.

“This power will consume her. She will not die, but Mayu will cease to exist.”

“What?” It’s almost incomprehensible, death means death, but what does it mean to be unmade?

“Mayu is the child of a Kami, she was always meant to be more.” She smiles bitterly, “But this is not the proper Rite of Ascension.”

She looks back into the writhing white far below. “If we allow this to continue it will not be the birth of a new Kami, but the creation of a Kishin.”

That certainly doesn’t sound good.

But, she wouldn’t pull him from the Sanzu river unless she had a plan.

“What do we do?”

Small hands fold over his own, her grip is surprisingly strong for a woman so small. Then again she’s not actually human, is she?

Grasping fingers of light spread from her and branch onto his own flesh, it makes his finger tips tingle. It spreads no further than his palms, waiting.

“I can give you this power, but it will have consequences even I cannot stop.”

Violet eyes stare up at him, beseechingly. There is desperation there, the need of a mother to protect her child, but there is understanding there too. If Kakashi says no, she will hold no malice for him.

Kakashi has never been good at denying himself the things that will hurt him, and Gai isn’t here to keep him in check.

He returns the Kami’s grip just as ferociously, steadfast and unyielding.

“Do it.”

Light explodes through him, searing heat setting his blood aflame. He’s boiling out of his skin, mind shrieking as it’s forced to comprehend what a mortal should never perceive.

Power surges through him, nesting in his bones, and Kakashi feels himself crest over the pain, over the noise, over it all. He breathes and it is the wind whipping through the trees, his blood boils over and it is aflame with the fires of the sky.

The ground drops out from under his feet, and he feels himself plummet back into life, as violently as a supercell.

“Please. Save our daughter.”

_______

Sai sits at the edge of the plateau, legs dangling over the cliff, and watches his sisters humanity burn away.

What was left of their forces, enemy and ally alike, had retreated up to Konoha’s plateau base when Mayu grew ten times her size and started flinging lightning big enough to shatter the earth. Luckily she hadn’t gone fully mindless in her berserking, hounding the unknown assailant that had come out of the moon.

Cause yeah that’s apparently what his life has become. His sister is fighting some kind of Martian and his father is-

In the far distance Mayu, entirely swallowed by lightning and rage, has morphed into something Other. For one she’s now the size of the Hokage tower, and for another she appears to be made entirely out of lightning. In the shifting pulses of light he can see the impression of heavy armor, old fashioned and traditional, in her right hand she wields a great spear, and in her left a whip.

Suzu, ever the loyal companion, has changed alongside Mayu. Their bond is one of the soul after all, and with Mayu forging herself anew Suzu has also been pulled along for the ride. The visage of a hulking, white wolf, its pelt crackling lightning and it’s growl the rumble of thunder, attacks alongside its master.

Honestly it’s become almost funny, watching them bat around whatever forsaken thing devoured their forces and fell out of the moon. As cathartic as it is however, it’s obvious that Mayu isn’t winning. She isn’t losing, but she’s not gaining ground either. Whatever it is that escaped the moon, it’s powerful.

Mayu roars, the crashing of thunder and the howl of a hurricane, whip cracking into the small form of the moon demon, knocking it straight into the ground and shattering open another sizable crater. Suzu snarls, the sound guttural and echoing across the field all the way up to the plateau. She lunges and snatches up the moon demon in her snarling jaws as it attempts to rise into the air again, flinging the thing clear across the field.

The crunch of long grass and dirt, footsteps drawing up beside him. Sai looks over as Megumi settles himself onto the ground beside him, the older boy wincing, mindful of the bandages over the stump of what’s left of his left arm. Megumi had been scarily close to the writhing black vortex, saved only by merit of Gaara snatching him away before he could be fully consumed. Honestly, it’s lucky that it was only an arm that was lost. The bandages wrapped over his stump are haphazard, but clean of blood.

“How goes it with Mayu?”

Sai hums, noncommittal. “She slapped that thing into the ground so hard they reached ground water.”

Megumi snorts. “Well, Kusa will get another lake to add to their topography.”

It’s silent for a moment, nothing but the sound of hurricane level winds and the brawling of whatever the fuck is going on with his sister and the Martian freak.

His sisters power grows and grows, but the feeling of Mayu herself only gets fainter. With each renewed pulse of power, Sai can feel Mayu ebbing away, whatever thing is growing now slowly replacing her.

Damn it Mayu, I’m sad too you know?

Just don’t leave me here alone.

Something in the distant field glitters suddenly and brightly, pulling Sai out of his melodrama. He looks and sees what is reminiscent of a kunai glinting in the sun, a sharp, white shine that’s somehow growing steadily, flaring higher and brighter. A familiar energy flares from within that glitter, and Sai’s heart lurches into his throat. They hadn’t been able to retrieve his dads body, or any of the other countless dead, before Mayu had turned into the rapturous thing she is now and so he’d bee left in a bloody slump atop the stone pillar. Right where that glittering light is steadily growing. A scent drifts in on the breeze, the smell of petrichor and lightning, the scent of home.

The light flares so brightly it casts shadows, before warping and twisting into itself, condensing into shrieking, chirping blade. An impossibility wields that blade, lightning bursting through the seams of his flesh, both eyes glowing an eerie, pale light.

Sai watches his impossibly alive father launch himself from his stone pillar, the force of his strength shattering it into dust. He flies across the once grassy meadow of Kusa, the light dancing from his blade so bright it’s casting deep shadows into the odd, moonless night.

Chidori collides not with the moon demon but instead the chaotic storm his sister has been swallowed by. The sound that rips through the air rattles his brain in his skull, and Sai swears he can see the air visible warp in response.
A hand on his arm startles Sai out of his shocked reverie, and he realizes he’s leapt to his feet at some point, swaying precariously over the cliffs edge. Megumi’s hand wrapped around his elbow is the only thing keeping him from falling to his death. The atmosphere turns heavier, black clouds becoming tumultuous, churning in the skies like a furious ocean, the air is so thick Sai gasps for breath.

In the far distance light flares, and for the second time today the world drowns in white.

_______

A hand on her head, familiar and calloused, she wasn’t even aware she still had a head. It ruffles through her hair, rough and uncaring, it hurts in a terribly familiar way.

She refuses to open her eyes, afraid of what she’ll see or what she won’t.

She feels breath puff across her face and can imagine the exasperated frown Genki is aiming down at her.

“Idiot!”

Mayu gasps as her eyes fling open, humanity flooding back into her all at once, every little bit and piece scattered across the cosmos or swept into the storms fitting neatly back into place.

Her daddy is bent over her, his arms wrapped around beneath her, his body against hers warm and breathing and alive.

“I’m sorry, Mayu. I was almost too late this time, huh?”

Like the cresting of a storm something snaps apart inside of her, and the building hurricane dissolves into a gentle breeze, like the summer winds in the wheat fields behind their home. Tears blur her vision, leaving warm trails down her face and dripping into her hair. She clutches him tightly and sobs, great shaking breathes heaving through her.

She cries, and for once it is not the heralding of a storm, but the gentle sun parting the clouds.

She feels the phantom of calloused fingers in her hair, and hears the echo of a heavy, put upon sigh.

The white around them melts away.

_______

Megumi watches on at the cliffs edge. The towering warrior disperses, lightning ebbing away like fireflies glinting out at sunrise, black clouds halting their tumultuous spiral. From the sparking remains of the mythic warrior father and daughter burst forth, lightning arcing through them, storm incarnate.

Megumi smiles, relief flooding him so heady it makes him dizzy.

Sai and Megumi leap from the cliff edge without needing a word between them, an ink bird bursting to life beneath them. Something catches his eye as they take flight, and Megumi jerks around to stare back at the shrinking plateau. The smell of sun warmed grass, and clear water fills him as he stares back at the tiny figure stood on the cliffs edge.

Genki waves just before he winks out of existence, great distance proving more powerful than mortal eyes.

Megumi smiles.

“Understood.”

_______

Once out of her self inflicted prison, it’s actually a fairly standard beat down.

Sai chases and restrains with inky limbs and Ink Beasts, Megumi working with him in tandem to take every earth shattering pot shot. Mayu and her dad lunging after Kaguya and searing away her power, lightning leaping between the two of them, an energy shared. In the end, like all the other monumental demises in Mayu’s life, it’s almost anti-climactic.

It ends again with a head rolling, a long mane of lilac hair tangling as it thuds to the ground. The body slumps one way, the head rolls in the other, coming to a halt in a cluster of half burned cornflowers. The hair has tangled so badly the head resembles a particularly large yarn ball.

It is over.

The four of them stand in silence, staring down at the lifeless corpse of a wanna be god.

The storm finally breaks, black clouds dissipating and leaving nothing but a warm sprinkle of water from the heavens. Dawn is revealed, stretching across the sky in pink hues, it paints the world in pale hues of gold, blush and purple.

“It’s over.”

A loud ‘pop’ resounds through the air as smoke suddenly blinds them, the four of them collectively jump and Mayu’s four seconds away from crying tears of hysterical rage because what fresh hell is this now—!

The smoke is gone as abruptly as it came, revealing four familiar figures standing atop a giant toad.

Naruto launches himself off of Gamabunta landing in a ready stance as Jiraiya strikes a pose on the Toad’s head. Sakura and Sasuke look on in exasperation.

“Team 7 has arrived!”

“You’re late!” That’s honestly rich coming from her ‘lost on the road of life’ father.

Mayu throws her head back and laughs and laughs.

It’s over, and a new dawn has risen to great them all. There is much work to be done, but for now it is over and all is well.