Chūnin Exam Arena --- Konoha
The scroll's next section lit up with considerably less warning than usual.
Like it had been waiting for the Danzō situation to resolve and had decided the moment that happened, there was no reason to delay.
[Most Dangerous Organizations Ranking: Groups That Shaped the Era Through Collective Force.]
[1st Place: Akatsuki.]
[No other organization required consideration. The ranking begins and ends here.]
Group Chat:
[Fourth Raikage A: Naturally.]
[Third Tsuchikage Ōnoki: Unfortunate but accurate.]
[First Hokage Hashirama Senju: AKATSUKI!! Are these the people going around collecting the Tailed Beasts?!]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Yes. And they have Nagato Uzumaki.]
[Uzumaki Mito: ...Nagato. An Uzumaki.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Yes.]
[Uzumaki Mito: An Uzumaki is leading this organization.]
[Second Hokage Tobirama Senju: Leading it. Yes.]
[Uzumaki Mito: ...]
[Uzumaki Mito: I need a moment.]
Rain Country --- Akatsuki Base
Nagato was reading the scroll's projection through the base's viewing screen.
He'd been reading it for several minutes now.
Very still.
The Rinnegan eyes not moving.
Konan stood beside him.
She said nothing.
She was watching his face.
Around them, the rest of Akatsuki had considerably louder reactions.
"FIRST PLACE?!"
Hidan slammed both fists on the nearest wall.
Not in anger.
In triumph.
"DID YOU ALL SEE THAT?! FIRST PLACE!! JASHIN-SAMA FAVORS THE RIGHTEOUS!! WE'RE THE MOST DANGEROUS ORGANIZATION IN THE ENTIRE NINJA WORLD!!"
"Mm! Of course we're first!" Deidara had his arms crossed and his chin up. "Anyone who doubted it clearly didn't understand the art of what we've built! Mm!"
Kakuzu said nothing.
He was calculating something.
What the ranking might mean for Akatsuki's market value as a criminal organization.
He had spreadsheets for this.
Kisame smiled.
It was the smile of a man who had spent his entire life being described as dangerous and had simply decided to be comfortable with it.
"First place," he said quietly.
To no one in particular.
"Hm."
Itachi said nothing.
He was looking at the scroll.
At his name, which would appear shortly.
At the name that would appear before his.
He was thinking about Sasuke.
Tobi stood very still at the edge of the room.
He'd been still since the Obito evaluation.
Still in a way that was different from his usual performance of stillness.
Nobody said anything to him.
Konan watched him from across the room.
Then looked back at Nagato.
"Nagato," she said, very quietly.
"I see it," he said.
The individual evaluations began.
The scroll worked through Akatsuki's membership starting from the bottom.
Zetsu's entry was brief and clinical:
Nature itself repurposed as a weapon. Less a person than a function. Ranking notes only that the function served Madara's will, not any genuine organizational interest.
Kakuzu ranked low with an evaluation noting exceptional financial management, zero organizational loyalty --- joined for the insurance that made Kakuzu click his tongue sharply.
"The insurance," he repeated, flatly offended.
"It's accurate," Kisame said.
"The insurance has NOTHING to do with---"
"Kakuzu."
"WHAT."
"It's accurate."
A pause.
Kakuzu said nothing else.
He went back to his spreadsheet.
He added a new line item: reputational assessment.
Hidan's turn.
[Hidan. Immortal. Sincere worshipper. Combatant of genuine ferocity.]
[The scroll notes that Hidan is the only Akatsuki member who genuinely believes in what he does. This is not a compliment.]
[It is simply the rarest thing in the organization: honesty.]
Hidan read this.
Read it again.
"...THE RAREST THING IN THE ORGANIZATION IS MY HONESTY?!"
He looked around at his colleagues.
"ARE YOU ALL HEARING THIS?!
THE SCROLL JUST CALLED ME THE MOST HONEST PERSON HERE!!
JASHIN-SAMA! DID YOU HEAR THAT?!"
"It said your honesty is not a compliment," Kakuzu said.
"IT'S STILL HONEST!! THAT'S MORE THAN ANY OF YOU CAN SAY!!"
Nobody disagreed.
Which was, in its own way, fairly honest.
Deidara's turn.
[Deidara. Iwagakure missing-nin. Genuinely exceptional artist.]
[His philosophy --- that art is a fleeting explosion --- is internally consistent and, in its own way, coherent.]
[His tactical judgment is not.]
[He has lost to Itachi, Sasuke, and Naruto. In all three cases he underestimated his opponent. In all three cases the underestimation was caused by the same flaw: he thinks what he wants to think about the people in front of him.]
[Artists should look more carefully. He knows this. He chooses not to.]
Deidara read his evaluation.
His left eye twitched.
"'His tactical judgment is not,'" he repeated, very controlled. "Mm."
Another pause.
"'He knows this. He chooses not to.'" Mm."
The vein in his temple was visible.
"Mm," he said again, very quietly. "Mm mm mm."
Group Chat:
[Third Tsuchikage Ōnoki: Deidara. I told you this when you were my student. You never listened.]
[Deidara: SENSEI!! Not you too!! Mm!!]
[Third Tsuchikage Ōnoki: I told you thirty times that you look at what you want to see instead of what's there. The scroll agrees.]
[Deidara: I DISAGREE WITH BOTH OF YOU!! ART IS ABOUT FEELING, NOT CALCULATION!! MM!!]
[Third Tsuchikage Ōnoki: Yes. And that feeling keeps getting you beaten. Mm.]
[Deidara: DON'T "MM" ME!! THAT'S MY THING!! MM!!]
Konoha --- Chūnin Exam Arena
Naruto had been reading the Akatsuki evaluations with intense focus.
"Oi," he said to Shikamaru.
"What."
"The scroll called Deidara an 'exceptional artist.'"
"Yes."
"But also said his tactical judgment is terrible."
"Yes."
"So he's good at one thing and bad at the thing that matters more in a fight."
"That is a fair summary."
Naruto absorbed this.
"That's kind of sad," he said.
Everyone looked at him.
"What? It is. He built his whole identity around his art. And the scroll is saying the art is real but he uses it wrong." He shrugged. "That's sad."
Shikamaru was quiet for a moment.
"...You have genuinely unusual empathy for people who are trying to kill you."
"They're not trying to kill me YET."
"They will be."
"I know. I'll deal with it then." He looked at the scroll. "Doesn't mean I can't also think it's sad."
Shikamaru stared at him.
Looked away.
"...Troublesome," he said.
He meant it in the way he always meant it when Naruto was being unexpectedly correct about something.
Konan's evaluation.
[Konan. Paper-user. Intelligence officer. The conscience of an organization that increasingly lacked one.]
[She was there at the beginning. She watched Nagato become Pain and said nothing, because her love for Nagato was greater than her disagreement with his methods.]
[That is not a condemnation. That is a tragedy.]
[The scroll notes that Konan of Amegakure is one of the very few people in this ranking who has done genuinely terrible things and known, while doing them, that they were terrible.]
[That knowledge did not stop her. But it remained. And what we carry with us shapes what we are capable of becoming.]
[The scroll has seen her future. It will not reveal it here.]
[It only notes: she gets another chance. Whether she takes it is hers to decide.]
Rain Country --- Akatsuki Base
Konan read her evaluation.
She was very still.
She read the last three lines three times.
She gets another chance.
She didn't look at Nagato.
She looked at the wall.
At the pattern of the stone.
At something nobody else in the room could see.
"Konan," Nagato said quietly.
"I'm fine," she said.
He looked at her.
"You don't look fine."
"I'm fine," she said again.
She was not entirely fine.
But she was also not entirely broken.
And the small warm space between those two things was where another chance lived.
She held it quietly.
Itachi's evaluation.
Short.
[Uchiha Itachi. The man who loved his village more than his village deserved.]
[Ranking deferred. His story is not finished.]
Rain Country --- Akatsuki Base
Itachi read his entry.
Read it once.
Twice.
The man who loved his village more than his village deserved.
He set his tea down.
He'd been carrying that truth alone for years.
Not bitterly.
Just carrying it.
The way you carry something that's too heavy to put down and too important to drop.
The scroll had said it in eight words.
He sat with that for a moment.
Group Chat:
[Uchiha Itachi: ...]
[Uchiha Itachi: @Sasuke Uchiha.]
[Sasuke Uchiha: ...I'm here.]
[Uchiha Itachi: That's enough.]
No further messages.
But in Konoha, Sasuke read those three messages and his hands, which had been tightly closed in his lap since Itachi's evaluation appeared, slowly opened.
He didn't say anything either.
He didn't need to.
Nagato's evaluation.
The scroll paused longer than it had for anyone else in the Akatsuki ranking.
That deliberate patience before the hard thing.
Then:
[Uzumaki Nagato. Rinnegan user. Leader of Akatsuki. Known as Pain.]
[The scroll will be direct.]
[Nagato was right about the disease.]
[The disease is this: the ninja world runs on a cycle of war and hatred that feeds itself. Every act of violence creates the conditions for the next act. Every village trains children to kill and calls it strength. Every generation inherits wounds it didn't ask for and passes them on.]
[Nagato saw this clearly. He saw it young, when war took his parents, when he watched a child die in his arms, when his closest friend was killed by someone following orders from a village that would never be held accountable.]
[He was right about all of it.]
[His cure was catastrophically wrong.]
[Not because the intention was wrong. Because the method assumed that sufficient pain would teach the world what it needed to know.]
[Pain does not teach. Pain breaks. Occasionally it transforms. But it cannot be administered deliberately as a lesson --- it simply becomes another generation of wounds passed on.]
[The scroll does not rank Nagato as a villain. It ranks him as someone who saw further than almost anyone around him and then solved for the wrong variable.]
[He wanted peace. He chose terror. Both things are true.]
[Reward: None at this time.]
[Note: The scroll does not issue rewards for incomplete stories.]
Rain Country --- Akatsuki Base
Nagato read it.
To the end.
He didn't move.
He was right about the disease.
He'd spent years telling himself he was right.
Konan had never disagreed.
Yahiko had, once, quietly, in a way Nagato had understood and set aside because the mission was more important.
He'd been so certain.
He was still certain about the disease.
He could look at the ninja world and see the cycle clearly.
It was undeniable.
The scroll had just confirmed it.
His cure was catastrophically wrong.
He sat with that.
Pain does not teach. Pain breaks.
He thought about the villages he'd attacked.
The people he'd killed.
The fear he'd spread deliberately like seed into soil, expecting something other than more fear to grow from it.
He thought about Yahiko.
About what Yahiko would have said about this evaluation.
Yahiko would have said: Nagato. You already knew. You just stopped listening to yourself.
He thought about Jiraiya-sensei.
About what Jiraiya had tried to tell him at the end, in Amegakure, in the rain.
"Konan," he said.
"Yes."
"Jiraiya-sensei's evaluation. From the Sannin ranking. Did you read it?"
"Yes."
A pause.
"All of it?"
"All of it."
Nagato was quiet for a long moment.
"He never stopped believing," Nagato said. "Even after everything."
Konan said nothing.
She was watching him the way she'd watched him for twenty years --- with her whole attention, saving none for herself.
"His students always knew, without being told, that he thought they were worth the effort," Nagato quoted quietly.
"Yes," Konan said.
Another long pause.
"I think," Nagato said very slowly, "that I made Jiraiya-sensei into the enemy of my plan because it was easier than admitting he was right."
Konan was very still.
"I think," Nagato continued, "that I decided the answer was Pain because I already had the name and I already had the power and I had already lost so much that starting over felt impossible."
He stopped.
He said nothing for a while.
"That's not a reason," he said finally. "It's an explanation. They're different."
Konan let out a breath she'd been holding for a very long time.
"Yes," she said. "They are."
Group Chat:
[Jiraiya: Nagato.]
A long pause.
[Uzumaki Nagato: Sensei.]
[Jiraiya: ...I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to figure out what to say.]
[Uzumaki Nagato: You don't have to say anything.]
[Jiraiya: I know. I'm going to anyway.]
[Jiraiya: The scroll said you were right about the disease. I think you were too. I think I always knew that.]
[Jiraiya: I just kept hoping that if I wrote enough and believed enough and kept the faith long enough, something would change on its own.]
[Jiraiya: That was naive. I know that.]
[Jiraiya: But here's the thing about naive. It keeps you moving. It keeps you looking for the next chapter.]
[Jiraiya: You stopped looking for the next chapter, Nagato. That was where you went wrong. Not in seeing the problem.]
[Jiraiya: In deciding the story was over.]
A very long silence in the chat.
[Uzumaki Nagato: ...The story isn't over.]
[Jiraiya: No.]
[Uzumaki Nagato: The scroll said "incomplete stories" don't get rewards yet.]
[Jiraiya: I saw that.]
[Uzumaki Nagato: ...I don't know what the next chapter looks like.]
[Jiraiya: Nobody does until they start writing it.]
[Jiraiya: That's the whole point.]
Nagato read that message.
He looked at Konan.
She was already watching him.
"What do you think?" he asked.
She'd waited years for him to ask her that question.
"I think," she said carefully, "that the scroll appeared for a reason. And I think the reason isn't just rankings and rewards."
"What is it then?"
She looked at the scroll, still glowing above the world.
"I think it's giving people a chance to see themselves clearly," she said. "And then choose what to do with that."
Nagato was quiet.
"Did you choose?" he asked.
"I'm choosing now," she said. "Same as you."
Konoha --- Chūnin Exam Arena
Naruto had read the entire Nagato evaluation.
He read it twice.
The way he'd been reading the serious ones all day.
Then he looked at the sky.
At the scroll.
At the moon above it.
"Shikamaru," he said.
"What."
"The scroll said Nagato was right about the disease."
"Yes."
"The cycle of war and hatred. Villages training kids to kill. Everyone inheriting wounds."
"...Yes."
"That's real."
"It's real," Shikamaru agreed. "It's very real."
Naruto was quiet.
"I'm going to break the cycle," he said.
Not loudly.
Not to the sky.
Not as the declaration he usually made when he wanted everyone to hear.
Just to himself.
And to Shikamaru.
In the voice he used when he was actually serious.
"I know," Shikamaru said.
"You believe me?"
"I've believed you for a while now." He adjusted his ponytail. "I just don't say it because you get insufferable when people tell you you're right."
Naruto grinned.
"See, that's the problem with you. You think too much."
"And you don't think enough."
"Together we're about right."
Shikamaru looked at him.
Opened his mouth.
Closed it.
"...Annoyingly accurate," he said.
Pure Land
The Sage of Six Paths had been watching the Nagato evaluation.
He'd watched it unfold the way a man watches rain --- knowing it's coming, feeling it anyway.
He felt something settle.
Not the Kaguya resonance, which was still there, still building slowly.
Something different.
Smaller.
More personal.
He wanted peace.
His descendant.
His mother's bloodline.
A boy from a ruined country who'd carried the world's pain in his hands and called it a cure.
The story wasn't over.
He'd known that.
But it was easier to know it when Jiraiya said it too.
He looked at the scroll.
At the moon.
At the world below.
"...A little longer," he murmured.
To nobody.
To Naruto, maybe, who had told him don't worry, we'll handle it.
He believed that boy.
He was, he realized, allowed to believe it.
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