The scroll had been quiet for twelve hours. Twelve hours of villagers not sleeping. Twelve hours of jōnin pacing rooftops. Twelve hours of the Chat Group typing, deleting, typing again, and saying nothing.
Then, at the hour the merchants opened their stalls and the bakers pulled the first loaves out of the ovens, the sky over every village cracked open like an egg.
[Scroll Announcement]
MOST LIKELY TO BECOME A VILLAIN — FIRST PLACE
Identity: UCHIHA MADARA
Title: The Man Who Wrote His Own Ending Twice. The Eye That Saw God And Demanded A Refund. The Founding Sin.
*Footage queued. Length: forty-seven minutes. Viewer discretion advised. (The scroll has never advised discretion before. It is advising it now.)
[Chat Group: Hokage and Friends]
Hashirama: (typing...)
Hashirama: (stopped typing.)
Hashirama: (typing...)
Hashirama: I knew.
Tobirama: We all knew, brother.
Hashirama: I knew and I still wanted to be wrong.
Madara: Hmph. First place. As it should be. @everyone Did any of you doubt? Speak now, and I will remember your names when I am bored later.
Mei: I doubted for about four seconds. Then I remembered the meteor.
Madara: Correct answer, lava-woman. You may live.
Tsunade: @Mei Don't flirt with the war criminal.
Mei: I'm not flirting, Pretending-to-be-Young Old Lady, I'm surviving. There is a difference.
Tsunade: ARM. WRESTLE. AFTER THE FOOTAGE.
Third Raikage: Finally. A man worth watching. The wood-monkey was kind. This one is HONEST.
A (Fourth Raikage): FATHER I AM STILL SPINNING I CAN HEAR YOU BUT I AM STILL SPINNING
Third Raikage: Son. Be quiet. The adults are watching the villain.
📺 On-screen Footage:
A boy on a riverbank. Black hair too long for his face. Eyes still black. A stone skipping seven times across the water. Another boy beside him — sun-browned, laughing — skipping his stone nine.
"Tch. Cheater."
"You're just bad at it, Madara."
"I am bad at NOTHING, Hashirama."
The two boys laughed. The river kept moving. The footage knew, even if they did not, that the river would one day be the Valley of the End.
[Chat Group]
Hashirama: Oh.
Hashirama: Oh no.
Hashirama: They're going to show ALL of it, aren't they.
Tobirama: Yes, brother.
Hashirama: All of it?
Tobirama: All of it.
Madara: Good. Let them watch. Let the children see what a man looks like before the world decides to break him.
📺 Footage continues:
A brother dying in the snow. Izuna. Eyes carved out and given freely. "Take them, brother. Take them and live." Madara, twelve years old, screaming into a sky that did not answer.
A treaty signed at a table with too many candles. Madara's hand shaking as he wrote his name. Hashirama crying. Tobirama not crying, but watching Madara the way a man watches a fire he cannot put out.
A village rising from cleared forest. Children in the streets with no clan markings on their backs. A flag with a leaf.
A vote. Hashirama's name. Not his.
A man walking out the gate alone, gunbai over his shoulder, the village he had bled to build receding behind him until it was only a smudge of smoke on the horizon.
"For the peace," he said to no one. "Hmph. Look at your peace."
[Konoha — Streets, Real-Time]
The bakery line had not moved in six minutes. No one noticed. An old kunoichi with a basket of plums was crying quietly into her sleeve. A genin team had stopped sparring and sat down on the curb. Iruka, on his way to the academy, found himself standing very still in the middle of the road with his hand over his mouth.
"He was a child," Iruka said, to no one. "He was just a child."
A chūnin beside him nodded slowly and did not trust himself to speak.
[Chat Group]
Izuna: Brother.
Madara: Izuna.
Izuna: I am watching. From the Pure Land. I am watching, and I am here.
Madara: ...Good.
Izuna: Brother, I gave you my eyes so you would LIVE. Not so you would burn the world.
Madara: I lived, Izuna. I lived a very long time. The world is what made me burn it.
Izuna: Brother.
Madara: Izuna.
Izuna: When I get out, we are going to have a very long conversation.
Madara: I am looking forward to it.
Footage continues — the part the scroll had advised discretion about:
A meteor. Two meteors. The earth opening. Hashirama on his knees in the dust at the Valley of the End, blood in his teeth, laughing through it, saying "Madara, please." Madara, eyes spinning red and black, saying nothing at all.
A wooden stake through the chest. A body left in the river.
A cave. Black Zetsu like oil seeping across a stone floor. A tablet that had been read wrong on purpose. An old man with white hair and a tube in his back, whispering plans to a thing that was not human and had never been.
"The Infinite Tsukuyomi," Madara said, in the voice of a man ordering tea. "Everyone will be happy. Including me. Especially me."
The footage cut to black. The scroll, for the first time in the entire arc, made no sound at all.
[Chat Group]
Hashirama: I am going to sit down.
Tobirama: Brother, you are already sitting.
Hashirama: I am going to sit down HARDER.
Naruto: ...Old Man Madara.
Madara: Brat.
Naruto: You were really sad, huh.
Madara: ...
Madara: I was many things, brat. Sad is one of the smaller ones. Do not pity me. I will eat your pity and ask for seconds.
Naruto: I'm not pitying you, dattebayo. I just. I get it. A little. The being alone part.
Madara: (silent — typing indicator flickering on and off.)
Madara: Hmph. Eat your noodles, Uzumaki.
Scroll Tremble — soft this time. Almost apologetic. The parchment unfurled one more line:
[REWARD QUEUED — UCHIHA MADARA — FIRST PLACE, MOST LIKELY TO BECOME A VILLAIN]
[Reward type: PENDING SELECTION. The scroll has, for the first time in recorded scroll history, asked the recipient to CHOOSE.]
Across the Pure Land, in a room of white stone and longer shadows, Madara looked up at the air where the scroll's voice came from. He did not smile. He did not scowl. He simply tilted his head, the way a hawk tilts its head before it decides whether the rabbit is worth the dive.
"...Choose," he repeated.
The scroll hummed once. Yes.
Madara folded his arms inside his sleeves.
"Then I will think about it."
The chat erupted. Hashirama fell off his chair. Tobirama started drafting a contingency seal under the table. The Third Raikage demanded Madara choose violence. Mei suggested he choose her. Tsunade threatened Mei. Naruto demanded ramen.
The scroll, patient as a mountain, waited.
PS: I want everyone to know I wrote the riverbank scene in one sitting and then sat on my balcony for an hour. Madara is hard to write. He is harder to write kindly. Next chapter — the reward. He gets to pick. From a list. The list is dangerous. — Author
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 70 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/Sagamaster789