The Shikkotsu Forest did not rustle. It did not sway. It simply existed, a monument of calcified silence and acidic mists. Here, time was measured not in hours, but in the slow, drip-drip-drip of limestone dissolving into power.
Katsuyu, the Great Slug Sage, lay coiled around the central spire. She was a landscape of pale flesh, vast and unmoving, her mind drifting through the currents of the planet's groundwater.
"NYOOM!"
The ancient meditation was shattered by a wet blur of white and blue.
Tsuyuyu, the smallest and most distinct fragment of the Hive Mind, was currently attempting to break the sound barrier by sliding down the curved rib of a fossilized tree.
"Careful, little one," Katsuyu's voice rumbled. It was not spoken; it was felt, a vibration in the ground that rattled the teeth of lesser creatures. "Gravity is a harsh mistress, and you are… aerodynamic."
"I am speed!" Tsuyuyu chirped, hitting a patch of slick moss. "I am the wind! I am—OOF!"
Tsuyuyu lost traction. She spun out, ricocheting off a mushroom cap, banking hard off a limestone pillar, and tumbling straight toward a cluster of small, mindless Katsuyu clones that were tending to a pool of healing acid.
"Brakes! Where are the brakes?!" Tsuyuyu squealed.
There were no brakes.
Tsuyuyu slammed into one of the smaller, default clones. Usually, when two parts of Katsuyu collided, they simply merged seamlessly, the larger reabsorbing the smaller into the collective consciousness.
But Tsuyuyu was named. Tsuyuyu had an ego. Tsuyuyu had eaten two soldier pills and a bag of sour gummies.
Instead of being absorbed, Tsuyuyu's erratic chakra spiked. She enveloped the clone.
"Oops!" Tsuyuyu gurgled, her body blooping as it forcibly metabolized the other slug.
Katsuyu opened her massive eyes. Under the heavy lids, the optical nerves twitched in concern. "Spit it out, Tsuyuyu. You cannot digest raw memory data."
"Tastes like… static!" Tsuyuyu's eyes spun in opposite directions. "Tastes like… history?"
Then, Tsuyuyu's pupils dilated until they swallowed the whites of her eyes.
Static.
Then—Black.
Tsuyuyu was no longer in the forest. She was floating in a void that smelled of ozone and petrichor.
She twisted to look up. Up, up, up, up.
It was a slug.
But it was not Katsuyu. It was not white.
It was a monolith of obsidian slime. A creature so massive it made the Shikkotsu Forest look like a terrarium. It was the size of a mountain range, its skin the color of deep space, slick and wet and terrible.
"Wooooow..." Tsuyuyu whispered, her voice echoing in the emptiness.
Eye stalks emerged from the head of the Black Slug. They rose lazily, ancient pillars lifting the sky. It felt as though the creature was waking up for the first time in an eon.
The eyelids flicked open.
The pupils were not slug pupils. They were wheels.
Spin.
Red light flooded the void. Three tomoe swirled in the darkness—the Sharingan.
Blink.
The red vanished, replaced by a pure, veinless white that saw through all things—the Byakugan.
Shift.
Above, a moon appeared in the void, hanging heavy and close. The slug's eyes reflected the cratered surface. A burst of brilliant cerulean light erupted—the Tenseigan.
Ripple.
The blue settled into concentric circles of regal purple—the Rinnegan.
"Tsuyuyu is confused!" the little slug cried out, her mind trembling under the weight of the pressure. "Too many eyes! Too much seeing!"
Light from the moon poured down upon the Black Slug. It was a baptism of celestial radiation.
Suddenly, the obsidian skin began to crack.
Kr-kr-krak.
Sparks flew—chakra in its rawest, most volatile form. The black sludge began to slough off, atomizing into dust, into shadow, into history.
What remained underneath was beyond immaculate.
For but a moment: Divinity was made slime.
Then—Division.
The beautiful, glowing entity tore itself asunder. It did not die; it multiplied.
From the left, a creature of bubble-gum pink and corrosive gas, bubbling with six tails of raw power.
"Saiken..." the female half whispered, though the voice was male.
From the right, a creature of bone-white purity and infinite healing, vast and enduring.
"Katsuyu..." the male half whispered, though the voice was female.
They looked at each other. The siblings of the divide. The surviving halves of the Primordial Gate.
Tsuyuyu's eyes darted back and forth between the massive white slug and the bubbly pink beast. She felt the connection. The lineage. The sorrow of the split.
"Mom...?"
A non-physical force jerked against Tsuyuyu's consciousness like a hook in a fish's mouth.
"WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"
Pop.
Tsuyuyu slammed back into reality, face-planting into the damp earth of the Shikkotsu Forest. Steam rose from her skin.
Katsuyu was looming over her, her massive face inches from Tsuyuyu's tiny form. The Great Slug looked… worried.
"Well?" Katsuyu's voice was softer than usual, stripped of its echo. "How was it? The indigestion?"
Tsuyuyu blinked. The spinning wheels and the purple ripples faded from her memory, leaving only the feeling of warmth, and the image of the great white form emerging from the black shell.
Tsuyuyu looked up at the titan above her.
"Mommy is beautiful!" Tsuyuyu chirped, vibrating with genuine awe.
Katsuyu froze.
The silence of the Shikkotsu Forest returned, but the temperature seemed to rise.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, a color change began to occur.
It started at the base of Katsuyu's optical tentacles. It spread down her face, across her massive cheeks, and rippled down her dorsal ridge.
The Great Katsuyu—immortal, stoic, survivor of wars and witness to the collapse of eras—turned from bone-white… to soft pink… to a deep, embarrassed red.
For the first time in several thousand years, Katsuyu stopped being the Pale Slug Sage, and started being a mom.
"Hmph," Katsuyu grumbled, turning her head away to hide the flush, though it was impossible to hide something the size of a warehouse. "Flattery will not save you from nap time, child. Rejoin the pile."
"Okay!" Tsuyuyu bounced happily, nuzzling against Katsuyu's side. "But I saw the bubble-uncle too!"
Katsuyu paused again. She let out a long, wet sigh that sounded suspiciously like fond exasperation.
"Sleep, Tsuyuyu. Before I tell Tsunade you ate her reserves."