Chapter 15
Out on the wider battlefield.
Tsunade, Sakuko, Shoto, and Kenji were fighting fiercely through the heavy, torrential downpour.
The ground was completely soaked with blood, severed limbs and lifeless bodies scattered haphazardly across the mud.
Most of the surviving enemies were already fleeing in a blind panic toward the shores. Those few who were still fighting tooth and nail knew deep down there was no actual escape. They had come here to completely eradicate the Uzumaki clan, but the tables had turned.
They were cornered. Absolutely everything was weaponized against them, from the skies to the earth. Thick pillars of lightning rained down on them from above, and invisible, razor-sharp winds slashed them to pieces.
Sprinting through the mud, the Kirigakure commander watched the carnage unfold with resigned eyes. His instincts had been right after all.
And they couldn't even retreat.
The surrounding seas were furious. The legendary, giant vortexes that guarded the island had already risen, violently swallowing their escape ships down to the pitch-black bottom of the ocean.
Now, their only remaining chance of survival was a full, unconditional surrender, praying the Uzumaki would somehow spare them.
It was a deeply ironic thought. They had come here to destroy their home, having almost successfully razed it to the ground—and now they were hoping their victims would show them mercy.
He mused bitterly on the irony as his boots finally hit the sandy shores. Yes, he was retreating too. Only a suicidal idiot would stay in that village waiting for death.
Suddenly, he heard deafening explosions erupting behind him. The unmistakable sound of heavy chains appearing and violently disappearing echoed through the rain, as terrifying red blurs rapidly closed the distance.
The Kiri Commander sighed heavily. There was nothing left. Everything was completely destroyed; all the escape ships were entirely gone.
Looking out at the violent, churning sea, he knew it would be a completely futile endeavor to even attempt crossing the raging waters.
A few seconds later, he felt the Iwa Commander emerge from the treeline behind him, accompanied by the ragged remnants of the shinobi still fighting.
"Is this the end for us?" the Iwa Commander asked, a helpless look in his eyes.
Another massive crack of lightning violently shook the shores.
"We can try surrendering," the Kiri Commander replied grimly.
The surrounding shinobi looked at their leaders with desperate, hopeful eyes, naively thinking that their commanders' decision to yield would ultimately decide their fate. But the experienced veterans knew the grim truth. They knew exactly who truly held the power to decide if they lived or died today.
Then, their pursuers finally breached the edge of the woods. The Uzumaki chasers stepped onto the bloody sand, pure, unadulterated vengeance screaming from their very bodies.
A tense, suffocating stare-down stretched between the defeated commanders and Kenji's squad.
Finally, the Kiri Commander slowly dropped his guard.
"We surrender."
Hearing this absurdity, Kenji gritted his teeth in sheer fury.
'They have the gall to ask for mercy, after everything they've done?'
But he forced himself to keep his cool. As the heavy rain continued to wash the blood from his armor, he felt the intense gazes of his fellow Uzumaki shinobi locking onto him.
Their grim, battered faces were a stark, agonizing reminder of everything they had suffered tonight, and the irreplaceable losses they had taken to protect their home.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath to cage his raging emotions, Kenji stared dead into the eyes of the enemy commanders.
"Finish them," he ordered, his voice as cold as ice itself.
From the sidelines, Tsunade wanted to say something against this senseless slaughter of surrendered troops. But Sakuko immediately shot out a hand, gripping Tsunade's arm and shook her head.
And so, the slaughter began.
Some of the cornered enemies desperately drew their weapons for one last, futile stand. Others broke completely, turning and attempting to flee into the violent, raging seas.
But it didn't matter. Not a single one of them would leave this island alive.
Kenji shared a brief, knowing look with Shoto.
Shoto nodded and instantly flickered away, reappearing directly behind the Iwa Commander. With a single, brutal chop to the back of the neck, he knocked the man completely unconscious.
Sakuko followed his lead, body-flickering behind the Kiri Commander to do the exact same thing.
But the second her hand struck his neck, the Kiri Commander's body lost its form, instantly collapsing into a lifeless puddle of water.
'A Water Clone?!'
Sakuko immediately dropped into a defensive stance, bracing herself for a counterattack.
But the attack never came.
Miles away, deep within a dense forest on the mainland across the sea, a few surviving enemy squads were moving swiftly through the shadows.
The real Kiri Commander was leading them.
'It was a good thing I listened to my instincts,' he thought, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.
He paused his retreat for just a fraction of a second, looking back over his shoulder at the distant island of Uzushiogakure.
Seeing the violently raging seas and the pillars of lightning tearing down from those dark, ominous clouds sent a chill down his spine. It was a primal fear unlike anything he had ever felt in his life.
"You humans truly are interesting."
The chill the Kiri Commander had felt looking at those storm clouds was nothing compared to the sensation of the voice that now rang directly inside his skull.
With a face contorted in sheer horror, he slowly looked upward.
It was only then that he realized his entire reality had ground to a halt. The leaves drifting down from their flight had frozen in mid-air. The shinobi who had been in the middle of a desperate jump were suspended in the sky, as if time itself obeyed that singular voice.
Then, he saw it.
A humanoid figure, completely and blindingly white from its toes to the crown of its head.
Its face was utterly featureless. It lacked a nose, a mouth, and even a single strand of hair. There was nothing—the being was a void of pure, stark white.
Except for the eyes.
Its most prominent and terrifying features were its glowing, golden eyes. They stared down at the Commander with a cold, detached amusement, as if he were nothing more than a curious insect.
"Tell me, mortal. Why did you flee the moment you landed on the island?"
The Commander heard the question clearly, even as the being stood perfectly still with its hands folded behind its back. Its face remained a smooth, white void; in truth, there was no mouth to speak of, and no lips to move.
But the splitting, agonizing headache that pulsed behind the Commander's eyes told him everything he needed to know. The voice didn't enter through his ears; it vibrated directly against his brain. If he didn't answer immediately, his skull might simply shatter from the pressure.
"...Instincts…" he finally choked out, summoning every ounce of his remaining courage to force the word past his lips.
"Instincts, huh?" the being mused, its golden eyes narrowing as it studied the man.
"But I am quite certain they were screaming at you from the very beginning... telling you not to accept that mission."
The Commander's entire body began to vibrate with an uncontrollable tremor. A single, frantic thought raced through his mind, repeating like a broken record:
'How—how could it possibly know that?'
"Oh, do not look so shocked, mortal. There are very few things in this existence that can hide from my sight."
The entity's golden eyes flared with a blinding radiance.
"But first... let us clear away these nuisances."
Slowly, the being brought one hand from behind its back and casually snapped its fingers. In that singular instant, the heads of every frozen shinobi in the forest were simply... gone. Blasted into a red mist that remained suspended in the frozen air.
And the Commander finally broke.
'This is a Genjutsu.'
'Yes, it has to be. It's the only explanation.'
With a frantic, guttural sob, he forced his violently shaking hands together into the 'Tiger' seal, desperately trying to circulate his chakra to dispel the nightmare.
"Release!" he screamed into the silence.
"Kai!"
"Hmn? Did you amount to only this?" the being asked, its voice vibrating through the Commander's skull.
"Truly... for a species with such immense potential, you humans are quite fragile."
The Commander watched, his breath hitching, as the being raised its hand once more. The golden eyes that had previously sparkled with a hint of amusement were now dull, looking at him with boredom.
He was no longer an interesting specimen. He was just a nuisance that had overstayed its welcome in his presence.
'No... wait...'
He tried to scream, but the sound died in his throat as he felt his skull literally splitting apart under the pressure.
In that final, agonizing microsecond, a single image flickered into his mind.
He saw his wife and his young daughter, their faces glowing as they smiled warmly at him.
He suddenly remembered the feel of his daughter's small hand in his, and the promise he had made to his little princess before he left the house.
'Daddy, please return safely. Okay?'
"I—I'm sorry…"
Then, darkness.
One of the legendary Seven Swordsmen of the Mist—gone, just like that.
Suddenly, time resumed its pace. The wind howled through the trees once more, and the heavy thud of the Kiri Commander's lifeless body hitting the mud echoed through the forest.
The being watched the corpse fall with absolute indifference.
"Humans really are such strange creatures. In his final moments, he desperately wished to see his family one last time," the entity mused. It drifted down, landing softly on the blood-soaked ground and beginning to walk past the fallen shinobi.
"He destroyed countless families with his own hands. He slaughtered fathers and brothers. He enslaved mothers and daughters. He committed atrocities beyond count," the being continued, stepping over the Commander's body without a second glance.
"And yet, at the very end, he begged for the warmth of his own family?"
A low, hollow chuckle escaped from a pair of lips that had just begun to materialize on its featureless white face.
He looked toward Uzushiogakure, which remained entombed within the raging storms.
Then, his gaze shifted toward the Konoha reinforcements. They were struggling desperately against the sea, failing miserably to reach the island's shores. To them, the storm was an impassable wall; to him, it was merely a curtain.
He ignored them. Turning his attention back to the heart of the village, he sighed.
"Truly... fate is a fickle thing. First, it tries to empower the Jinchuriki to correct its own course," he mused, his golden eyes tracking shimmering threads of light that only he could perceive. "And then, the very moment he was born... Fate abandons them entirely. It switches sides."
He let out a dry, knowing chuckle.
"Well, at least Uzushiogakure survived. I have stepped on so many toes to change this canon story," he whispered, his face scrunching into an expression of mild annoyance. "If, after all of that effort, I still have to intervene personally... I would be very disappointed. And my promise to Mito hasn't broken yet."
The being then shifted its gaze toward a particular patch of darkness in the early dawn.
"How much longer do you intend to hide there?" it asked, its voice laced with amusement.
The darkness stirred, coiled and ready to flee into the roots of the earth.
The being sighed, its voice turning flat and dangerous. "Zetsu, was it? Or should I call you Black Zetsu? If you attempt to flee... I would be quite annoyed."
Black Zetsu froze. In that instant, he felt as if the very fabric of reality had tightened around his metaphorical throat.
The being finally shifted its gaze away, allowing the creature to breathe, even though he had no need for it.
"For Kaguya's sake, I will overlook your involvement in this—this once," the being said, its eyes glowing with an ominous radiance as they locked onto Zetsu's single white eye. "But... there will be no next time."
Black Zetsu felt as if two golden suns were peering directly into the depths of his soul. A thousand questions burned in his mind—chief among them, how this creature knew of his Mother—but for the sake of his continued survival, he remained silent.
Without a word, he dissolved back into the shadows, fleeing the scene with a speed he hadn't used in centuries.
"Ahh... kids these days truly have no manners," the being sighed, its voice dripping with mock disappointment as it watched the shadow of Zetsu vanish into the roots of the forest.
But inwardly, a much more mischievous light flickered within its golden eyes.
'Oh, I am definitely going to rub this in Kaguya's face the next time I see her,' it thought, the featureless white face almost seeming to smirk. 'It's going to be absolutely hilarious watching her fumble through this one.'
Then suddenly a gust of wind passed him.
He let out a weary, dramatic sigh and looked ahead.
"Seriously? Even you are against me now?" he asked in an exaggeratedly hurt voice.
He looked down at the tiny, swirling blob of concentrated wind. It was launching miniature slashes of air that seemed to stop just inches before touching his white skin.
With a bored expression, the Being casually stepped out of their trajectory.
The tiny wind-blades whistled past him, instantly erupting into massive, jagged trenches that carved through the earth for several meters behind him. The Being didn't even bother to look at the devastation.
Instead, he reached out and lightly flicked the swirling mass with his finger.
As if deeply offended, the tiny blob puffed itself up, vibrating with indignation as it began violently sucking in more air from the surroundings, growing larger and more turbulent by the second.
"Heh. Children..." the Being chuckled, his golden eyes glowing with a final, amused glint.
"Now, now... no need for such violence," the entity whispered.
The Being's casual words forced the very fabric of reality to bend and shift. In an instant, the aggressively puffed-up wind-blob was forcefully deflated, its turbulent energy collapsing into a harmless sphere. Before it could even react, it was flicked away, sent whistling through the air at a blurring speed back toward the ruins of Uzushiogakure.
It was gone in a heartbeat, a tiny streak of light disappearing into the storm clouds over the island.
When the Being looked back, he groaned at the devastation left in the wake of the little spirit's tantrum. Sliced trees lay in ruins, the ground was cracked and gouged into deep trenches, and the forest itself looked like a battlefield.
"What an unruly child," the being muttered, his voice softening into a loving, barely audible whisper as he finished: "At least... #@ &# #@$."
With that final, cryptic word, he simply dissolved into the fabric of space itself.
As he vanished, the world seemed to take a collective breath. The fallen trees stood back up as if pulled by invisible strings, the jagged trenches in the earth sealed themselves shut, and every trace of the slaughter—the blood, the weapons, and even the bodies—simply ceased to exist.
The forest returned to a state of pristine, untouched silence.
*********
Hello there,
This chapter was mostly for future volumes.
Nothing much happened, just some foreshadowing.