When sun meets moon and causes an explosion
Five minutes. That´s the time they had to wait outside the gates before Madara can first spot the group escorting Kitsune to the compound.
Their attention is not yet on him. Instead, the group seems to be busy, idly chatting and laughing whilst steadily coming closer. Rasa and Kasumi took the left and right of the group, the former seemingly groaning and the latter just wryly smiling. Osamu had taken the rear, shoulder lines tense and wary, but that was hardly anything new. The man was suspicious of all things that lived, safe for those he called his family.
What was surprising however was the way Hikaku conversed with the man that everyone has been talking about lately.
Kitsune and Hikaku had taken the front, walking side by side as they seemingly discussed fuuinjutsu theory – this was taken from what he could read from Hikaku´s lips, seeing as Kitsune´s were obscured by his mask. Kitsune was gesturing something with his hands, making circles and writing down symbols and seal components as if he actually held an ink brush. Hikaku was nodding along, throwing in words and questions here and there while intently listening to what the man had to say.
Madara however disregarded all of that. Right now his attention was solely on the blonde shinobi in question.
The young adult wore a fine tailored attire that was color coordinated with the mask that he was famous for. He was short, shorter than most that is, and his frame was covered by the flowy cloth.
What caught Madara´s attention first however was not the way the man looked or dressed, even if the startling bright color of the hair was eye-catching and extremely distracting.
No, what Madara saw first was how the man moved.
It was a simple sort of elegance, not graceful, but not quite graceless either. His steps left no foot prints behind, nothing that someone could trace him by and no sound came from leafs that should be crunching under his feet. It was like the Kitsune was walking on an incredibly thin layer of air, and he seemed to do so subconsciously. Silent movement like that was something born out of necessity. It was what a shinobi had to learn in order to survive, but rarely do shinobi ever use stealth subconsciously. There´s only ever a selected few that Madara knows of, who can use stealth and silent steps like they do breathing – and those were shinobi mostly with a skill of a clan head, or a clan heir. Men who were forced to learn and have survived until they reached the top.
Madara was stealthy, despite his large frame. Izuna was too, thought almost not as much as Madara. Tobirama was stealthy as well and belonged to one of the few people to ever be able to match him.
Hashirama… not so much. But when one can fight through life with brute force and a smile alone, then what does stealth even amount to. The fool barely even needs it, seeing how most people on the other side of the field run at the sight of him.
Speaking of Hashirama –
Kitsune carried the same sort of friendly ease, chatting with others he barely even knew and teaching them his knowledge, even if it was only parts of it. He was expressive and bright in a way that Madara only knows from Hashirama, even behind a mask. It makes something unsettling and wary churn in his gut and he shifts slightly, his usual stance becoming a tad bit more tense.
The group has gotten closer and from the corner of his vision Madara can see Izuna´s slight frown turn into a smile. It´s not the polite sort that Izuna always seemed to use whenever there were guests over that Madara was too emotionally constipated or too calloused to deal with. This seemed more genuine. Not quite the smile that they share between themselves as brothers, but the kind that Madara had seen his little brother give the folks in town whenever they passed through some of the busier streets on a rather slow night.
Inviting and kind, but not necessarily loving or deeply caring.
Interesting.
Madara raised an eyebrow at his little brother who remained oblivious to the attention, before letting out a slow exhale and turning back to the group.
They have gotten closer by now and the chatter had ceased as well.
Now.
Now Madara held Kitsune attention, and even from this distance, the Uchiha clan head could clearly see striking blue eyes shadowed by the mask pin him. Catalog him.
Assert him.
He can´t help but feel slightly impressed and maybe even insulted at the gall of this man, to analyze him and practically dismiss him. There was no tension, no fear in the way Kitsune walked further towards the gates. No, there was only something close to – relief? Strange, to say the least. Never had anyone aside form Madara´s family looked at him with something like relief. Not even Hashirama. Not in the way this young man did. Like he had expected worse, somehow.
Madara knows what kind of reputation followed him. He was the one who made sure that it remained that way. A ruthless man with no qualms to kill. A man so strong that the god of shinobi was his only ever equal. A monster with glowing red eyes that sent even some of the better men running.
What kind of worse did Kitsune expected, Madara didn´t know.
Before he even realized it, the groups suddenly stood in front of Izuna and him.
The Uchiha squad, save for Hikaku, had dipped their heads in greeting. Hikaku and Kitsune however were still at the front. Kitsune head tilts to the side, and it´s that trait exactly that Izuna had described to him that gave someone the illusion of this man being more fox than man. A curious, animal-like trait that seemed to be done complete out of reflex or habit. Perhaps “Kitsune” wasn´t just a mask. Maybe there really was some sort of relation to the species.
Summons, perhaps?
His thoughts came to a halt when Hikaku spoke up, voice firm and formal. “Lord Madara, Lord Izuna, we have arrived with your esteemed guest.” His voice was schooled, but it was rarely ever like this. Usually, friendly banter, wry comments and sarcasm were more like Hikaku, but this was in front of a guest. This was purely etiquette, something that most shinobi dreaded, but most shinobi excelled at.
Madara lets Izuna speak, who wore a polite smile on his face and nodded at Hikaku. “Thank you. You´re dismissed.”
Hikaku lowered his head in understanding and motioned for Osamu, Rasa and Kasumi to follow. They wordlessly left, leaving only Izuna, Madara and Kitsune at the gates.
Madara eyed the young adult and literally had to look down, seeing as the blonde just barely reached his chin in height. Could be because of his age, but even Hikaku stood taller and the two were just a few months apart.
There was no kindness in his features, Madara knew and didn´t care. He didn´t invite Kitsune in order to be kind, but to thank him. The most he would do was not be hostile or downright rude.
Be as polite as he could be, thank him for saving Izuna´s life, find out who he is or what his motives are and then let the man leave. Easy enough.
“Kitsune,” Madara spoke, watching as cerulean eyes slowly turn upwards, staring at him through the mask. Madara felt something akin to amusement, but also uneasy seep through his veins when blue eyes seemingly stared into his soul. It was rare that anyone ever held eye contact with an Uchiha, who wasn´t part of the family.
The only one who has ever looked into Madara´s eyes with no disgust, no fear, had been Hashirama. His friend always seemed to forget what Madara was capable of. What Madara would do to him were it not for their history. Hashirama always seemed to ignore the threat of the sharingan, because he simply was an earnest fool like that. Their fights would be too impersonal, Hashirama had told him once, if they didn´t fight like brothers.
Madara had felt incredibly tempted to kill him right then and there. To teach him a lesson and to pull him into a genjutsu as horrible as one could imagine. But he couldn´t. not because he lacked in resolve, but because somewhere deep inside of his own mind, Madara could feel that Hashirama was right.
So he didn´t. Madara averted his eyes instead, and whenever the elders asked, Madara would tell them that Hashirama´s chakra was much too vast and dense for Madara to put him under a genjutsu.
He inwardly rids himself of those thought – now was not the time to be sentimental – and pushed aside the feeling of dejavu. “It´s a pleasure to finally meet the shinobi I´ve heard so much about.”
And for a second, there was a seemingly contemplating silence.
The Uchiha clan head could feel something flaring in the air, the feeling of chakra slowly being leaked outside and creeping towards him as if careful not to scare him. Against himself, Madara could feel something akin to a shiver – not out of fear, but out of something else he couldn´t quite identify. Anticipation? Confusion? – run down his back and he subconsciously straightened, eyes narrowing at the source of this incredibly vast chakra.
There was a static in the air, scorching hot, comfortingly warm and striking cold all at the same time. It swirled and twisted in calmly, before suddenly spiking.
Heat flared in the air and reached towards him, threatening to pierce right through him. Madara´s chakra instinctively flared, reacheing out as well, parts of it to block out whatever this disgusting feeling was, and the other to wrap around Izuna.
Threat, his mind screamed. Protect Izuna, it roared.
Then, for a second, nothing. Pressure and tension left the air as quickly as it filled it, and Madara was left slightly perplexed, blinking at the lack of threat. Kitsune hadn´t moved an inch, head still tilted to the side in that uncanny manner.
But Madara could tell. Could tell that Kitsune knew what that had been – how could he not, when Izuna described him as one of the best sensors he has ever been in contact with, and that says something seeing as Tobirama was Izuna frequent match in battle – but had been completely unaffected by it. A chakra flare like that in the air would have made any decent sensor react, like Madara had, but Kitsune stood still, assessing him, assessing Madara´s reaction.
Madara disliked that thought and narrowed his eyes at the stranger in front of him, who was most likely the cause of the disruption. Had it been an evaluation of Madara? A bold move, for someone who looked like Madara could snap him in half.
He didn´t notice the way Izuna had stiffened at his side, too lost in thought, glancing towards his older brother and wondering why Madara had seemingly tensed at nothing. Izuna himself hadn´t detected the change in air, in tension. Hadn´t detected the danger that Madara had.
Interrupting his thoughts, an almost melodic and bright voice spoke up, carrying over to Madara´s ears like a gentle wave.
“It´s a pleasure to meet you as well, Lord Uchiha.”
The words seemed light like a feather, in such stark contrast to that offensive chakra that any other person might have suffered a backlash.
Kitsune extended a hand towards him in greeting. There were no callouses. No scars or rough patches of skin that indicated any sort of handling weapons or practicing punches. No traces of history of fights, and for a moment Madara wondered if this man´s healing factor was really as good as Izuna had implied.
He reached out, gloved hand taking Kitsune´s in a strong grip -
The world exploded.
His vision filled with red, swirling into view like tomoe in a sharingan and drowning him in the color of death. His senses screamed at him, yelling for blood, for silence, to end whatever was causing this shift in the atmosphere. The world was on fire and Madara´s body was unable to move as he stood with his fists clenched around Kitsune´s, leather gloves creaking under the pressure. It was a surprise that Madara hadn´t yet heard the sound of Kitsune´s bones snapping in half under Madara´s grip.
It was there again, a wave of chakra, but this time it felt much different. It was crashing over him and threatening to drown him under its surface, muting his senses and his perception. His emotions were erratic and his feelings all over the place, uncontrolled despite Madara trying to reign them in. Some felt foreign, like they didn´t belong to him at all, and yet the churning hatred cursing through his veins felt like his own.
It was chaos. Hatred and anger, so very familiar and yet so foreign, filling his chakra paths and burning him from inside out like acid.
Suddenly, his skin tingled with longing, to reach out for the source of his anger. To reach out and snuff the light out, but at the same time to add wind to the fire that provided the light. He was tearing himself apart, wishing for closure and death all the same as his mind melted.
Outwardly his composure hardly wavered, were it to anyone else. But Izuna could see it. And in the way his brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed, he could tell that Madara was acting incredibly strange. Izuna shifted closure to the two, but neither Kitsune nor Madara moved from their places.
Still overwhelmed, Madara tried his hardest to gain his senses back. Whatever this feeling was, it was taking him over from inside out and rushing through his chakra coils and eating him like acid would eat through skin.
“Are you alright?”
A voice – Kitsune, Madara managed to make out through the haziness – cut sharply through the air, like a kunai. A hand squeezed his, Madara could feel the heat of the unnaturally warm skin even through his leather gloves.
As is Kitsune´s voice were an activation, the chakra madness that had him choking and drowning vanished. It was replaced by warm strokes of chakra. Gentle waves that washed over him and seemingly carried away all madness. Sweet nothings whispered in the air and carried over to engulf him, to calm him down.
Once again, the emotions in the air felt nothing like his own, but this time they were pleasant. There was no anger. No burning hatred that had a vice grip on him and that urged him to kill. Not the feral anger that made him feel more like a wild animal than anything else.
This was safe.
Kind.
This was like the sun.
Madara blinked again, composing himself with practiced ease. He inwardly scolded himself for his attention wavering like it had, disregarding the strange shift of chakra in the air until he had time to properly think about what happened. His mind was slowly but surely recovering from the whiplash of emotions that had flooded his mind, invaded him and confused him.
His palm was itching for some reason, but he ignored it and focused back on his guest, removing his grip from Kitsune´s.
Kitsune had taken a small step back, barely noticeable, and was watching him intently. Izuna had shifted closer towards him, arm carefully placed behind Madara and on his lower back. He could feel Izuna´s chakra resonating with his, calming him down and steadying him as best as he could.
He ignores that the kind chakra he felt a few seconds ago wasn´t that of his brother but somehow it felt like it was. Doesn´t acknowledge the fact that he had felt safe under Kitsune´s chakra. It was a horrifying an absurd thought, to feel safe with a stranger as a shinobi like he was.
“Yes,” he managed to bring those words out with an even voice, surprising himself a little, “I am. Let´s step inside, shall we?”
He simply turned and didn´t wait to check whether Izuna or Kitsune catch up.
.
Naruto felt it.
Felt his world exploding and the sun sign on his palm burning with something so incredibly hot that he just barely managed to hide a hiss. Madara´s grip on him tightening hadn´t done the pain in his hand any good either, and Naruto shifted, ignoring the grinding of his bones and focusing on the glazed-over look the man in front of him had.
The first shift in the air had been caused by Naruto. He had been the one to regard Madara carefully, to reach out with his chakra and try to see what was under the façade. He had been the one to – unintentionally – make himself seem like a threat. It probably didn´t help that Kurama had leaked his own chakra in, bubbling with anger and hatred despite Naruto telling him to behave.
As soon as he felt the sudden protectiveness in Madara´s chakra, he immediately pulled back. This was not meant to escalate like this, Naruto hadn´t intended it to. And yet, seeing how this man´s first instinct was to protect, not to kill or fight, relaxed something inside of Naruto that he hadn´t even noticed had been tense the entire time.
This man was good. This man was the Madara Hashirama had cherished as a friend.
And Naruto had left it after that. He had no intention of playing with Madara´s chakra, nor to leak his own. But when their hand touched indirectly, when the world caught fire, that had been entirely out of his control.
His chakra burned.
It was a feeling of “mine-but-not-mine”, of “Naruto-but-not-Naruto”. This was not Naruto´s chakra burning through his veins and resonating with Madara´s. This wasn´t like with Sasuke, where their two signatures fit together like the sun and the moon, completing one another and comforting one another.
This was right, but wrong.
This was Indra and Ashura, but at the same time it wasn´t.
Because this? Naruto´s Indra was gone – Sasuke was gone – but there was another Indra. One that wasn´t his. One that didn´t correlate the same way that Sasuke and he had done.
Madara and Naruto had clashed with one another, their souls and their chakra rubbing against one another in the wrong way, and both of them had suffered a harsh backlash. This sort of meeting, this sort of feeling, had never been intended to happen. Indra had his Ashura, and timelines were not meant to be crossed. Their chakra knew this, and the reason why they were reacting this harshly to one another was because the law of nature had been broken.
Naruto had felt the same sort of weird pull-but-push when he´d seen the reanimated version of Madara. He´d felt the same burning rage at the face of his enemy, but during that time he had chalked it up to the adrenaline of the fight. Had blamed it on the fact that Madara had really been his enemy.
Now, the feelings from before made even more sense. The way his chakra clenched and squirmed like it was trying to get away while simultaneously getting closer.
Naruto´s mind was fuzzy with feelings not his own. Unlike Madara, he was used to it, being able to sense the emotion of other people, but this time there was no separation. No barrier to keep apart the feelings that were and weren´t his. This was like everything was sucked into a giant whirlpool and mixed together until Naruto couldn´t tell apart left and right.
He could barely make out Kurama calling out for him in all the chaos inside of his mind, trying to reach for him and to pull him out of the haze.
Not mine, his mind screamed.
Not our moon, a voice hissed.
It took a few seconds, that felt like hours to Naruto, before he could snap out of those feeling. Pulling at Kurama´s chakra, an anchor for the blonde in this situation, he managed to pull his thought out of the drowning mess. A deep breath and some concentration was all it took to suppress the madness and clear his mind.
Izuna was looking at Madara, Kitsune completely disregarded from his mind, and Naruto could feel the clear worry swirling in his signature. Madara on the other hand was stiff as a board, sweat forming at his temple and eyes blankly staring ahead.
He squeezed his hand against Madara´s hoping to snap the man out of it, ignoring the burning itch in his palm. “Are you alright?”
The haze over Madara´s gaze that seemed like fog clouding his vision lifted, leaving Madara to blink twice in confusion. His eyes narrowed as he immediately worked to compose himself, refusing to focus on the whiplash of emotions and feelings that overwhelmed just seconds ago. The Uchiha´s eyes didn´t meet Naruto´s as he spoke.
“Yes,” he managed to bring those words out with a surprisingly even voice, “I am. Let´s step inside, shall we?”
The man turned on his heel and left towards the gate, and Naruto could see the way he pushed aside Izuna´s arm to go through. His steps never wavered, but his chakra wobbled unsurely. Izuna looked at his brother with furrowed brows before turning back to Naruto, expression apologetic.
“I´m sorry about him, Kitsune. My brother can be quite… clumsy with strangers sometimes. He´s usually much more dignified than that.” There seemed to be something bitter in his voice, like Madara´s behavior in front of other people was a discussion that Izuna and Madara had quite often.
Naruto smiled wryly, waving him off. As much as Madara might be emotionally constipated – edo Tobirama´s words, not his. Though in Naruto´s opinion, Tobirama was hardly allowed an opinion on that topic, looking at the man himself – Naruto knew that Madara´s inability to properly communicate with anyone other than his family wasn´t Madara´s fault this time, but rather the fault of Naruto´s presence.
“It´s alright, Lord Izuna. A friend of mine was much the same, I take no offence.”
The look on the younger Uchiha´s face told Naruto that he definitely wanted to ask, but seeing as Madara had still not turned around to check up whether or not they were following and therefore was getting further and further away, Izuna left the questions for later and instead chose to quickly catch up to his older brother with Naruto in tow.
Naruto inwardly winced and rubbed his left hand over his right palm.
What a great start into this meeting.