Chapter 67
The Sound Four were strong, but not as strong as they thought they were. Each of them possessed unique powers, but Anko had been the first of the Sanin's students, and she had been chosen for good reason.
Still, the fight was four against one, and so victory came at a cost.
"Stay down," she uttered, as she put her foot on the face of the red-haired girl while her friends all lay around her. Anko herself was bleeding out of her head, and a large arrow had torn through her femur.
A part of her felt sympathy for the four of them. In many ways, they were her juniors and were victims of the same man who had betrayed her trust.
"I told you, didn't I, you four are nothing but cheap copies, whereas I am the original," and the girl glared at her.
"We are not cheap copies," she said as she looked her in the eye while her cursed mark began to glow.
"We are the upgrade," and suddenly a stranger formula covered the ground under her, as the Four of them all shouted at once.
"Space–Time Technique..."
"...Underworld Turnover!"
0000
KAKASHI HATAKE
Kakashi's life was rife with failures. He had failed his father, his sensei, his comrades, his students. There were few people he had not let down in his life, and yet the failure that haunted him the most was his failure to protect Rin.
He had made a promise to Obito. A promise that he had failed to keep, and there was nothing he could do to change that.
"It really is you, Obito..." Kakashi felt his chest grow heavy as Obito looked at him, with his red Sharingan.
"Why?" he asked, and all this time it had been him. He had been the one to orchestrate the Kyubi incident. He had been the one to kill their sensei. He was the mastermind behind all this.
"You ask me why?" he answered with a frown.
"YOU!" he raged, as Kakashi felt his eyes grow heavy.
"You have no right to ask that of me!" and he was seething in rage, as he ground his teeth.
"You killed her! You promised to protect her, and yet you failed in that one thing," and so this really was his fault. When Lord Jiraiya had first mentioned the suspicion that the masked nin might be Obito Uchiha, Kakashi had begun wondering what could ever push his old friend to do all this.
In the end, there was only one answer to that question.
"Rin," he whispered, as the memories of that accursed day came to haunt him once more.
"Don't you dare take her name," Obito raged, as Ao-san came and joined them, along with Kankuro from Suna. The two Kumo nins had managed to save themselves as well, and so there were now seven of them.
"You need to stop Obito," Kakashi pleaded.
"Rin would never want you to do this," he pleaded, hoping to make him see reason.
"And how would you know that?" he asked.
"Tell me how, when she is no longer in this world?" he thundered, as the guy from Kumo came up.
"Yo! You know this guy Hatake?" he asked, and everyone seemed interested in his answer.
"Yes," he answered.
"We were teammates once," and the answer surprised them all.
"No! I refuse to live in a world without Rin. I refuse to acknowledge a farce reality like this," he thundered, and Kakashi felt him gather his chakra.
"Teammate or not, we need to bring him down," Ao added, and Kakashi's fists balled up in frustration as Obito looked at him.
"I reject this counterfeit world, and so I shall create my own reality. A new perfect reality where no one will ever have to suffer like me," and so Obito had made his choice, and now Kakashi would have to make his.
"You are wrong," and he remembered their sensei, and his wife. He remembered Naruto, and all the pain he had caused him.
"You are wrong," Kakashi retorted as he steeled his heart.
"What?"
"I said that you are wrong. I know not what happened to you, but this is not the person I admired. This is not Obito Uchiha, I know," and so he closed his eyes and grabbed his wrist with his other hand.
"And as your former teammate, I will do everything in my power to stop you," and the rest of them all prepared themselves for a fight, when Obito began to chuckle.
"Do you really think you can stop me?" he asked.
"He is not alone," Gai said as he stepped forward, while the rest joined him.
"You are outnumbered, and we have already figured out your powers," Gai added, and Obito first chuckled, and then broke out inro full on laughter.
"HAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAHA!" and finally he stopped.
"You think numbers give you the advantage?" he mocked them, as lightning gathered in his arm, as the sound of chirping birds cut through the silence.
"Then let me even the odds," and with that, he bit his finger and slapped his hand on the floor.
"Special Summoning Jutsu!" and with that six coffins rose from the ground behind him all at once, and their doors fell to the floor to reveal six figures.
"Impossible," he heard Ao gasp, as his own eyes widened as he saw the six shinobi step out of the coffins.
"Let me even out the odds then," and they were the six jinchuriki the Akatsuki had captured, and as they stepped forward, a dark red cloak began to cover their entire bodies, as Kakashi's eyes widened.
"Is that?" Gai gasped.
"Bijuu chakra...."
0000
JIRAIYA—The Toad Sage
The Kage all followed his lead as he led them to Nagato's hideout. And the place was well hidden and protected, yet they faced little resistance as he broke through the seals and jumped into the cave, while his senses screamed out in warning.
He had faced Pain, and even at that time, his senses had not been screaming out at him like this, and yet he was a Kage and did not have the luxury of backing down.
As they entered the cave, they saw a raised platform with a dead man bound atop it through rods and chains, with blood dripping down from his body, and it took him but a second to recognise those red hair.
He had tried to search for him, for them, and yet years ago, he had heard a whisper that the Akatsuki had been wiped out in its entirety by Hanzo the Salamander, and the news of his student's demise had hit hard.
He had held onto hope, but having faced Hanzi himself, he knew well that if the leader of Ame had set his gaze on the trio, then there was little that they could do against him.
Yet it was all a lie. They were alive, but no more. He had sensed Konan's chakra vanish a few moments ago, and Nagato's signature had vanished as well, and there was only one signature in the room apart from the kage, and it was unlike anything he had ever felt.
The sheer volume of the chakra oozing off of this person, and its intensity, was unlike anything he had ever sensed. The chakra felt even more sinister than that of a bijuu, yet it was more refined than the chakra of the Professor himself.
And for good reason.
"Impossible," the Tsuchikage was the first to gasp, and the rest of the Kage were stunned as well, as they looked at the man sitting down cross-legged just under Nagato's dead body.
"You! How could it be?" Ohnoki gasped, and Jiraiya was just as alarmed, if not even more, as he looked at those purple eyes and realised the sheer madness of the situation they were in.
"It is good that you are here," the man answered, and even with such odds, he seemed unbothered as he pushed himself up and looked at them all rather lazily.
"I was getting rather bored of waiting for you," he added, as if speaking of a simple spar, not facing five of the most powerful shinobi alive.
"You are meant to be dead," Terumi Mei gasped, and he nodded.
"Maybe, but I never did share Hashirama's naive optimism. He may have believed that there was a future for the system we had built, but I knew it to be a lie," and so this was all his plan.
All of it.
"Our alliance was meant to be the end of wars and suffering, and yet it was nothing but a stopgap. The simple truth is that it accomplished nothing, as wars of clans became wars of hidden nations, and death consumes this land to this day," and there was genuine anger in those words.
"I tried to rectify this mistake years ago. Tried to right the wrong I had done, yet Hashirama refused to see reason," and so that was why he had betrayed the village.
"We fought a battle, where I put my own life on the line, and for all the love he bore me, Hashirama loved our naive dream a lot more, and so did the battle. He thought me dead, yet he underestimated the true visual prowess of a Uchiha," and now he was smiling.
"The battle did nearly kill me, and so I waited and watched as my fears came true, as wars once more ravaged the lands. The dead piled on, and I was proven right," and the air was thick with tension, as they heard the man preach.
"We had failed. Peace through understanding could never be achieved. No. It is the selfish intent of preserving peace that gives rise to wars. As long as there are victors, the vanquish will continue to exist in this world," and so that was why he intended on plunging the world into darkness, through his genjutsu.
"These are nexuses. Causal relationships that cannot be severed," and they clung to his every word.
"I will sever the fate of this world. A world of only peace. A world of only victors," he said as he looked each of them in the eye.
"I will create such a world," and they all gulped at his admission, and in many ways, his determination was a testament to their failures.
Each of them here had played their own part in the carnage that had enveloped their world over the last fifty years. They encouraged conflicts, and even after the end of the Warring States Era, thousands had died because of their petty conflicts.
"You are wrong," Jiraiya countered, and he was the first to raise his voice.
"Wrong?" Madara Uchiha asked, and he nodded.
"We are not perfect. Humans are flawed," he added.
"We fight and hate, and love. We make mistakes We repeat those mistakes, and yet we also heal. We come together, and even if we fail at that, then we trust our next generations to do better than us. We live our time and leave this world with the hope that those who come after us may do better than them, and this belief gets passed down through generations," and it was that very belief which had allowed two bitter rivals to come together to end the Warring State Era.
"You are just as naive as Hashirama," the Uchiha clan legend countered.
"You even use the same senjutsu as him," and then in the next second, chakra rushed out of his body in waves as those eyes narrowed.
"Let us see if you are even half as good as him," and with that he raised his hand.
"AGHHHH!" and the rest of the kage were all pushed back, and while Jiraiya braced himself for that, instead he was pulled towards the man, who grabbed him by the throat.
And somehow his mastery over the Rinnegan was even better than Nagato's for all of it happened so fast that Jiraiya had no time to react, as the man wrapped his fingers around his throat.
"Let me taste it once," and suddenly he felt himself getting drained of senjutsu as he tried to kick away, but the rest of the kage were quick to react.
"LET GO OF HIM!" The Raikage appeared behind him in a flicker, as he tried to attack his neck, while the ground under his feet turned into spikes aimed straight at his arm.
BOOOOM!
Yet in the next second, a blue skeletal arm appeared and stopped the Raikage's attack, while the spikes cracked the second they hit the blue skeletal armor, which began appearing around him as Jiraiya was drained of all his senjutsu.
"You want him back. Well, you can have him," and with that, he was thrown back in the blink of an eye.
"Particle Styl..." but the Tsuchikage was forced to interrupt his jutsu, as he caught Jiraiya quickly, as the Raikage was sent flying back as well.
"AGHHH!"
"What is that thing?" he asked, and Jiraiya huffed.
"It is a Susanoo," he answered.
"Ma, Pa," he whispered, and they nodded.
"We are on it," and he no longer had the time to gather nature chakra himself, and so they would have to do so for him.
"I see now. So, this is how Hashirama felt," the Uchiha legend whispered before he looked up at them, and began to cleave through a series of handseals as he gathered a massive volume of chakra.
"Let me try something else now," and the chakra he was gathering was strange.
"Mokuton:..." and none of them could believe their ears, as he slapped his hands onto the ground.
"DEEP FOREST EMERGENCE!"
And in the next second, the ground tore itself open, as a massive forest emerged right out of the land, and swallowed them whole, as Jiraiya gasped in fear.
"It can't be..."
0000
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