The downpour was relentless, a grey shroud that swallowed the jagged peaks of the Rain Country mountains and turned the rocky path into a treacherous, mud-slicked river. Naruto walked through it, a solitary figure moving with grim, mechanical determination. The cold rain plastered his torn orange jacket to his skin, soaked through his bandages, and mingled with the blood still trickling from his nose. It offered no cleansing, only a deeper chill that seeped into his bones, a counterpoint to the unnatural heat radiating from behind his eyes.
The borrowed chakra from Kurama's desperate, final offering was fading fast, like a guttering candle in a hurricane. Each step sent jolts of agony through his battered body, amplified by the Rinnegan's constant, gnawing drain. His vision, terrifyingly sharp moments before, now flickered and swam. The hyper-focus fractured into dizzying double images: the rain-lashed path overlaid with phantom flashes of Konoha's burning ruins, the grey rocks morphing momentarily into the broken bodies of his friends. He saw Hinata's pale face reflected in a puddle, her empty eyes accusing. Heard Sasuke's choked gasp cut short. Felt the phantom impact of Boruto's small body hitting the wall. The ghosts walked with him, whispering despair in the drumming rain.
*Focus.* The command was a mental lash, cutting through the sensory chaos and phantom horrors. He couldn't afford weakness. Not here. Not now. Konoha lay days away, even at his best pace. In his current state, exhausted, bleeding, and carrying the monstrous weight of the Rinnegan, it felt like crossing an ocean on a sinking raft. He needed shelter. Sustenance. Time to master the parasite devouring him from within, even if only for a few hours.
His Rinnegan, despite the drain and the flickering vision, still offered an unnatural awareness of his surroundings. He felt the chakra signatures before he saw them – small, furtive, clustered near a bend in the path ahead. Not shinobi. Too weak, too chaotic. Civilians. Refugees, likely, fleeing the violence that had erupted around Pain's assault and the subsequent power vacuum. Their fear was a palpable miasma in the rain-soaked air.
Naruto slowed his pace, his hand instinctively drifting towards a kunai pouch that was mostly empty. He didn't fear them. They were insects. But insects could sting, could draw attention he couldn't afford. His Rinnegan pulsed, the swirling rings seeming to drink in the dim light as he assessed them through the downpour: a huddled group of maybe ten, soaked and shivering under makeshift tarps stretched between rocks. Their eyes, wide with exhaustion and terror, fixed on him as he emerged from the grey curtain of rain.
They saw a figure clad in the remnants of Konoha orange, but altered. Taller, harder, radiating an aura of cold danger that cut through the rain's chill. His face was gaunt, etched with pain and something far darker. And his eyes… those swirling violet voids locked onto them, devoid of warmth or recognition, only a cold, calculating assessment.
A collective gasp went through the group. A child whimpered, burying its face in its mother's sodden robes. The mother clutched the child tighter, her own eyes wide with primal fear. This wasn't the boisterous, hopeful hero rumored to have saved Konoha. This was something else. Something that walked out of the storm like a vengeful spirit.
Naruto stopped a dozen paces away. The rain drummed on his head, streamed down his face, tracing paths through the grime and blood. He scanned them, not seeing individuals, but resources. Potential threats. Potential… supplies.
"Shelter," he stated, his voice a low rasp, raw from strain and disuse. It wasn't a request. It was a demand, flat and unyielding as the stone beneath his feet. "Food. Water."
Silence, broken only by the rain and the child's muffled sobs. The refugees exchanged terrified glances. An old man, face lined with hardship and rain, stepped forward slightly, his body trembling.
"W-we… we have little, shinobi-sama," the old man stammered, bowing low, his voice shaking. "Just scraps… hiding from the fighting…"
Naruto's Rinnegan narrowed infinitesimally. He saw the meagre bundles, the hollow cheeks, the genuine desperation. He also saw the hidden knife one man clutched beneath his ragged cloak, the desperate calculation in another's eyes. Fear made people unpredictable. Dangerous.
"Give it." The words held no room for negotiation. He took a single step forward.
The man with the hidden knife flinched, his hand tightening on the hilt. "We need it!" he protested, voice tight with fear-induced bravado. "Our children…!"
Naruto's gaze snapped to him. The swirling purple rings seemed to intensify, pinning the man like an insect. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. The sheer, predatory pressure radiating from him was answer enough. The man's bravado evaporated, replaced by abject terror. He shrunk back, the knife forgotten.
The old man bowed lower, almost prostrating himself in the mud. "P-please… take what you need. Just… leave us be." He gestured weakly towards a slightly larger tarp stretched over a shallow overhang in the rock face. Beneath it, Naruto could see a small, smouldering fire struggling against the damp, a few meagre bundles of wrapped food, and a waterskin.
Naruto walked past them without another word, ignoring their flinching, their stifled cries. He moved towards the meagre shelter, his senses still screaming, the ghosts pressing close. He felt their hatred, their fear, directed at him now. It was a familiar sensation, echoing the scorn of his childhood, but amplified a thousandfold, filtered through the lens of his own consuming darkness. He didn't care. Scorn was irrelevant. Fear was a tool.
He ducked under the tarp, the meagre heat from the struggling fire a welcome counter to the rain's chill, though it did nothing for the deeper cold within. He ignored the terrified family huddled in the far corner – a woman clutching two wide-eyed children. He focused on the supplies. He grabbed the waterskin first, uncorking it and drinking deeply, the lukewarm water washing some of the blood and grit from his throat. It tasted like mud and fear. He didn't care. He drained half of it.
Next, he tore open a bundle wrapped in leaves. Inside were strips of dried, salted fish and hard, stale journey bread. He ate mechanically, forcing the tough, flavorless food down, his jaw working against the lingering pain in his skull. He needed the calories, the crude fuel. He could taste the desperation in the food, the poverty of their existence. It meant nothing. It was sustenance. He consumed it with the same ruthless efficiency he had demanded Kurama's final spark.
As he ate, he closed his eyes, not to rest, but to turn his focus inward. The Rinnegan's presence was a constant, oppressive weight, a cold, alien intelligence grafted onto his soul. Nagato's memories, a torrent of shared pain and twisted ideology, still echoed in the corners of his mind – the despair of the Rain orphans, the bitter taste of Hanzo's betrayal, the hollow victory of Yahiko's sacrifice. Naruto didn't dwell on the emotions; he dissected them. He sought the *knowledge*. The instinctive understanding of the Rinnegan's power that Nagato had possessed.
*Shinra Tensei.* The Almighty Push. He had used it twice now – once, uncontrolled, blasting Konan away; the second, focused, obliterating the cavern entrance. Both times, it had been raw, instinctive, fueled by desperation and hatred. He needed control. Precision. He needed to make the power an extension of his will, not a wild beast he barely contained.
He visualized the chakra pathways Nagato had used. Felt the cold, demanding energy of the Rinnegan flowing through his own system, intertwined with the fading ember of Kurama's chakra and the brittle thread of his own life force. He focused on his palm, imagining a point of absolute repulsion, a singularity of force. Not the uncontrolled explosion he'd used before, but a contained sphere, a localized negation of reality.
It was agonizing. The Rinnegan resisted, its power vast and chaotic, unused to such fine control. His chakra, already strained and poisoned by the eye's hunger, protested violently. Pain lanced through his arm, up into his shoulder, intensifying the ache behind his eyes. Sweat beaded on his forehead, mingling with the rain still dripping from his hair. He gritted his teeth, forcing his will against the tide of power, compressing it, shaping it.
Outside, under the drumming rain, the refugees watched the shadowy figure under their tarp with terrified fascination. They saw the faint, unnatural purple glow emanating from his closed eyelids. They saw the subtle tremors running through his frame, the tension in his clenched fist resting on his knee. They felt the air around him grow heavy, charged, like the moment before lightning strikes. The woman pulled her children closer, stifling their whimpers.
Naruto opened his eyes. The purple rings blazed for an instant. He raised his hand, palm facing a large, rain-slicked boulder just outside the shelter's edge.
***Pulse.***
Not a boom. Not a crack. A deep, resonant *thump*, like a giant's heartbeat muffled by stone. The air directly in front of his palm distorted violently, a visible ripple shoving the falling rain aside in a perfect, momentary sphere. The boulder, easily the size of a man, didn't shatter. It simply… *shifted*. It slid backwards half a foot in the mud with a deep, grinding scrape, leaving a perfect, smooth depression where its base had been. The force was contained, focused, utterly silent compared to his previous displays. Only the displaced mud and the boulder's new position bore witness.
The cost was immediate and brutal. A fresh wave of dizziness washed over him. The world tilted, the Rinnegan's vision flickering wildly. He tasted blood again, sharp and metallic. The borrowed chakra from Kurama's ember sputtered and died, utterly consumed. The drain on his own life force intensified, a cold hand squeezing his heart. He leaned forward, bracing himself against the rock wall, breathing raggedly, fighting the black spots dancing at the edge of his vision.
Control. He had achieved a sliver of it. At a terrible price. He had minutes, maybe less, before the accumulated strain and the Rinnegan's hunger overwhelmed him. He needed to move. Now.
He pushed himself upright, swaying. He ignored the terrified stares of the refugees, the meagre warmth of the fire. He grabbed the remaining strips of dried fish and stuffed them into his pocket. He took the waterskin, now nearly empty. He turned, his Rinnegan sweeping over them one last time, a cold, dismissive assessment.
"Stay off the main path," he rasped, his voice weaker now, strained. "Konoha's reach is long. And broken things attract scavengers."
He didn't wait for a response. He stepped back out into the punishing rain, the cold instantly soaking through him anew. The ghosts surged forward again, whispering of loss and fire. The road ahead stretched, grey and endless, towards a village that expected a hero and would find a harbinger instead.
He took a step. Then another. Driven not by hope, but by the cold, relentless engine of vengeance, fueled by stolen power and the dying embers of his own soul. The rain washed over him, failing to cleanse the blood, the mud, or the chilling darkness in his new, ancient eyes. The ghost walked on.