LAYERS UPON LAYERS
Underlined - English
'Italicised' - Thoughts
In Text Bolded - Tailed Beast
KONAN
"What are we going to do with her, Nagato?" I ask him, eyes following Tobi's exit. "What are we going to do in general? Our numbers are down, we only have four of the nine Bijuu, and over half our organization is dead thanks to that woman. And now she's genjutsu'd to all hell and being shoved in our basement."
"For now, we need to contain her," Nagato's voice comes through Yahiko's body. "We can recruit. The Jinchuuriki won't be expecting new members, so we can catch them unawares. We can still win this, Konan."
"I hope so," I grimace, tongue worrying my lip piercing. "I really hope so."
"I'm not going to die," He cuts to the heart of the matter, picking up on my anxiety. "We're not rushing into this. Just speeding up our time table."
I nod.
"But right now we need funds," Pein follows up, picking up a mission scroll. "And our treasurer is dead. I think an A-Rank assasination request should tide us over."
UZUMAKI NARUTO
"We've managed to narrow down the possible locations of the Mountain's Graveyard," Jiraiya told the room as he laid down a map of lightning country. "Based off what Noa … remembered and the activities in Kumo and Ame, it's in one of two locations. I propose that we set up Naruto clones galore and wait for movement."
"Is that wise?" Asked Tenzo (Yamato?), the only person other than Jiraiya to be read in on the situation - one of the few described favorably and only favorably by Noa in her … writings. "It might tip our hand too soon."
"What we need isn't to be careful, it's to draw them out," Naruto argued, cocking his head. "If my clones draw them out and towards a singular spot of contact between the two, we can be ready and choose our point of contact. I say we do it."
"And what of Noa?" Tsunade asked, leaning back against her desk, fingers curled around the lip of the edge. "If she is the Fukushuu no Megami then she'll be on her way to the base now to give Nagato and Obtio a firm kick to their asses. She won't be read in on what we do and may do something brash - like activate one of those barriers she seems to be so fond of these days."
"And if it's not her," Jiraiya adds, clearly trying to push past the mention of Nagato. "Then that's another very dangerous player on the board that we don't know the intentions or allegiance of."
"It's her," Shikamaru insists. "And if it's not then she's going to be gunning for Akatsuki anyway, so we might as well try to ally ourselves to her."
"Let's just hope it is Noa," Shikaku agrees. "And deal with the fallout of it not being her once we reach it."
UCHIHA SASUKE
Sasuske saw Naruto tense before the others did, his eyes closed and tinted orange with Sage Mode as he sits in meditation.
"Konan and Yahiko-Pein are coming this way - they sensed us," He announced, eyes flicking open with pupils widened like a toad's. "They're angry. Get ready."
We all fall into formation. The Dobe and Kakashi stand ready to face them head on as Shikamaru and I take to the trees, ready to drop on them from above. Cat - Tenzo - merges directly into the foliage, ready to provide support with his Mokuton. Shikamaru readies the barrier seals, taking a leaf out of Noa's - the Fukushuu no Megami's - book and getting ready to seal them all in. Taking down Pein's bodies was a lesson in divide and conquer.
(It was thanks to Noa we knew that.)
Then Konan and Yahiko-Pein crash into the clearing and it all goes to shit.
NOA
A rush of chakra wakes her, and she's tied down.
By not-stone. In -
In Obito's fucking pocket universe.
FUCK.
Don't hyperventilate. Don't.
'It's fine just Uchiha Obito without his mask on its good.'
"Please tell me you didn't abduct me just to throw me in here, never to return," The words fall out of her mouth before she can stop them. She locks eyes (ish, she's not suicidal) with Obito/Tobi/Madara, before swallowing. She might be outclassed here. Just a bit. "Because that just sounds like a waste of chakra."
"You intrigue me," Obito not-answers. "And I want you somewhere controlled. So you're here.
"Well shit," Noa coughs, absently checking her chakra levels (by the way, not enough). "Well, thanks for not killing me yet? Feel free not to change your mind."
"You used Amaterasu to kill Hiden," Obito stated, and she honestly couldn't tell if it was a question or not.
A pause. Apparently it was.
"I'm not an Uchiha, if that's what you're sorta asking?" Noa speaks up after a moment, too drained to even put up a proper front. "I mean, I don't really know what you want. You have your freaky magic eyes, leave mine alone."
'Keep him talking. Keep him distracted. The more he focuses on you, the less time he's plotting the end of the world.'
"You remind me of myself, when I was young," Obito not-laughs. "So much potential, just not sharpened."
Okay, rude.
"I think you'll find that I am plenty powerful and sharp on my own, buddy," Noa huffs, indignant on her teachers behalves. "My sensei were great and I managed to off plenty of your puppets, so hop off, dickwad."
"You know our goals," Obito muses - disturbingly, his face pulling at his scars. "Yet you still oppose us."
"I'm a fucking American, jackass," Noa growls. "I was raised from day-fucking-one to believe that freedom is not just feeling free. It's having the right to suffer and fight and love and die, all by your own device. Freedom and peace is not 'possible' in an illusion, some genjutsu that will kill you even as you like it. You're just preaching for a more advanced version of narcotic addiction, you idjit."
"You are stubborn," Obito completely ignores my outburst. "But I think that you'll be of use."
'Oh hell no-'
He grabs my chin, and I can't shut my eyes fast enough before I'm falling.
UZUMAKI NARUTO
"That went a lot smoother than I expected," Naruto confessed as he sealed the heads of Konan and Yahiko-Pein into scrolls, pulling out a black rod with a sickening sound before Sasuke sets them both bodies on fire.
"That's because it was only one body and Jiraiya wasn't here - or dead," Kakashi rebuffs him. "And we aren't being invaded. Let's go, we can track them from where they came and find their base."
"That's going to be a problem," Shikamaru cut in, eyes locked on the space beyond the barrier bubble. "We've got company."
We all turn, looking into the Rinnegan eyes of the other five bodies of Pein.
All looking beyond furious.
"Naruto," Shikamaru continues, eyes flickering to the rod in my hand. "I'm going to drop the barrier. You need to go straight to the real one and kill him, no mercy. We don't have time."
He nodded. In the history that Noa knew he may have been lenient, but that was a 16 year old wide-eyed hopeful Naruto - not one who had to prepare for war. He would not allow any of his family to die today.
"Drop it," He ordered, jamming the rod into his hand.
The moment the Nara does, he's gone.
NOA
I'm in a room that is stone archways and vines mixed with trees and stained glass. A towering clock hangs on the wall behind me, it's hands moving silently and fluidly over the pearled face. The numbers are roman, each stroke matte black. According to the clock, it's midnight.
There are books everywhere, along with kunai and bits of yarn and spiral notebooks. A couch by a back wall is piled with warm blankets and pillows, the coffee table in front of it laden with graphic novels and sketchbooks.
And Obito is glancing around with palpable intrigue.
I'm inside my own head.
Recognize it. Stole one of Ino's scrolls on it. This is a mindscape.
And Obito is inside my mindscape.
FUCK.
"Get out," I order, furious. "This is my head. You have no right to be here."
"I don't need a 'right'," Obito scoffs, finally turning to face me. "You -"
He cuts off, and instantly he is way closer than necessary.
"What are you?" He demands, slicing off a lock of brown hair with his kunai before I could stop him, snatching it from the air as it fell. "I did not intend to get sucked in. And you had silver hair."
"Get out," I order again, not dignifying that with a response. "And when I kill you it will be a swift death."
"Your eyes are neither red nor Sharingan," He continues, examining me like a prized stallion - he better not try to pry open my mouth to get a look at my teeth or something. "You were disguised. Why is that?"
"I said -" I start again, but his hand is around my throat, and I curse the lack of chakra I have to stop him.
"Now, I'll ask again," Obito repeats with deadly calm, Sharingan flaring back full force. "What are you?"
"Fuck. You." I choke out, mind racing. "And I said: GET. OUT!"
Against rational, I activate my Sharingan - Itachi's Sharingan - and as the sky turns red and the world turns black, chains wrap around his arms and his neck, snaking up around his legs. He's imobile, and the moment surprise flits across his scarred features I'm already ramming my sai into his neck.
He chokes as he feels the pain, even as he lives.
"Now then," I narrow my Mangekyo at him. "Let's talk."
UZUMAKI NARUTO
"You've come to kill me, then?" Nagato asked, voice beyond weak and body frail. His Rinnegan was killing him, just as Noa said. "What do you gain from stopping world peace?"
"You are only perpetuation the circle of violence. The wheel of hate," Naruto told him grimmly, looking him right in his purple gaze. "And you are being manipulated even as you manipulate others."
"You know nothing," The frail Uzumaki spat at his cousin.
"You are dying," Naruto shot back at him, the blonde's lip quirking grimmly. "And those eyes aren't your own."
He took a rasengan and shoved it into Pein's chest.
The presumed leader of the Akatsuki coughs once, blood coloring his lips, and Naruto removed his hand as his heart faltered to a stop.
Steeling himself, he reaches up to Nagato's face and pull out first one, then another eye from his socket. They get crushed between his palms, and Naruto scrapes the goo off his hands and onto the ground. Without fanfare, he set the pile of mush on fire.
The inferno spreads as it consumes the entirety of the paper tree, integrity and fire resistance falling apart with Konan's death.
A part of him regrets not being able to save his cousin, but then that would've been another world. And that other world is one where he was alone.
Just as he the blaze flickers out, the flames brilliant but brief, a crow caws and I follow the sound, eyes landing on one of Sasuke's summons.
"Hurry, hurry!" The young bird cries. "Kaka-kun is angry! Kaka-kun is very angry! Hurry hurry!"
HATAKE KAKASHI
He can smell her.
A growl rips through him before he can stop it, anger rumbling through his chest.
The bodies of Pein had all collapsed like they were puppets with their chakra strings cut, and the Konoha nin team barely had time to be relieved before Tenzo was sealing away the bodies and Kakashi dropped the barrier to track where they came from.
They follow the trail and then - with the oppressive stench of Pein's chakra gone - he can smell her.
The feeling of tree limbs springing from the ground and wrapping around him freezes the Last Hatake in place, the only thing that stops him from flying off the handle.
"Kakashi," Sasuke is calling to him, and he distantly realizes that it wasn't the first time. "What is it?"
"I can smell her, on the trail," He chokes out, nose turned up in the air - desperate for a better scent. "It was on Konan. Faint. But -"
"Noa's at the Akatsuki base?" Shikamaru demanded, eyes alight on the trail as if he would catch some details to lead them right to her. "Blood?"
"None," Kakashi tells him. "And she wouldn't go without a fight."
"The Uchiha were known for their Genjutsu, and even Noa is weak to the Sharingan," Tenzo reminded his senpai, carefully releasing the former taicho from his bonds. "Let's plan as we go - we don't know what Zetsu and Tobi will have planned for a prisoner. They've never taken one before."
All he can do is growl in assent before they've launched themselves forward.
NOA
Torture wasn't something I enjoyed.
"Where is Pein?"
That, at least, was one part of who I used to be that survived the propaganda and the conditioning and the desentization of The Elemental Nations, of Konoha. I could tell every step of the way when I was being fed lines of bullshit. When I was being slowly introduced to treating the horrendous as okay, as part of my job.
"How many Jinchuruki have you captured?"
I knew every step of the way and allowed it to happen, because I might've once had the luxury of free speech and the ability to speak out, but Konoha was a military nation. A tyrannical, fascist state. Adapt or die.
"What are the Akatsuki plans?"
But I never allowed myself to enjoy killing, enjoy hurting. And never to enjoy torture.
"Who is your next target?"
That resolve was getting pushed, with Obito.
"Where is Zetsu?"
And it was because it was so hard to see him as Obito. As the character, the story, of a bright boy who was crushed - literally and figuratively. Excuse the pun.
"What is your real name?"
Obito was a good man, under the madness and the manipulation, and the betrayal -
"Why did you kill the Yondaime Hokage?"
But it was really hard to see it.
"How many of you are there?"
In here - in the Mangekyo inside my mindscape inside his pocket dimension … he was Madara. Or Tobi pretending to be Madara.
"What -"
"You're wasted," He spits along with a glob of blood, cutting me off - responding at all for the first time despite the numerous wounds I inflicted on him. "You're strong. You can activate and deactivate your Sharingan - you're an Uchiha, like me."
'No, I'm a medic. Idiot.'
Here, he was a hate spewing madman who killed my adopted brother's parents, my older brother's teachers, and my best friend's family. And I wanted to make him hurt for that.
I had to remind myself that there was some good in him … somewhere.
I ram my sai back into his gut.
"Tell me," I purr, emulating Anko. "Where the Mountain's Graveyard is."
He laughed.
"You were already there," He hacked through the tear in his trachea. "But you'll never make it out of here alive - much less with your mind intact."
He bared his teeth, but I was reeling.
I was in the Mountain's Graveyard.
"Oh, you idiot."