Chapter 45: Dead Man Walking

About five thousand strong, the Royal Guard were Fire Country’s First Legion, directly under the Daimyo’s authority. Their job was kicking ass, as they were good at their job. Really, really good.

Every soldier was at least a genin-level chakra adept. The sergeants, each in charge of seven other soldiers, were chunin level. Under officers, including the century executive officer, guard commander, and standard bearer were all tokujo tier combatants. And a centurion typically matched up against a Konoha jonin in even a moderately unfair fight.

In short, our century of escorts included at a minimum a jonin, three tokujo, ten chunin, and sixty six genin level fighters. It was typical that there were more people qualified to serve as sergeants or officers than there were such slots available, so it wasn’t unusual to have chunin level privates or corporals, tokujo level sergeants, and jonin level under officers. In short, they had more chakra users than the typical regular army cohort, even including ninja auxiliaries.

More than just that though, everyone in the Royal Guard were veterans who had served in and seen combat with some other formation first. And unlike Konoha ninja, they focused more on combat and anti-genjutsu skills than ones for sneaking, infiltration, and escape. This focus extended to their gear; they wore proper armor, and carried seal-enhanced swords and chakra-reactive wood bows. Unlike ninja, or regular forces, they rarely did secondary tasks like building roads, escorting merchants and tax collectors, or anything else. They just trained all day, every day, or were out honing their combat edge by slaughtering the Daimyo’s foes. I suspected that if I were matching them up against typical Konoha forces, they could easily take on three or four times their number on the battlefield.

Politically, the Royal Guard were a counterweight to Konoha and the Great Noble Houses, a mass of loyal and combat-ready chakra-active warriors ready to serve the Daimyo’s interests and crush anything that drew his ire. And they managed that despite being only a quarter the size of Konoha’s force.

They weren’t the best formation available to Fire Country. The Lifeguard, for example, the Royal Guard’s First Cohort, responsible for directly protecting the Daimyo’s life, were even better. Konoha’s ANBU were better man-for-man too, as were certain elite heavy-combat units. But short of an army, or some human monster at Hanzo or Sarutobi’s level, a century of the Guard were about as good as it got. Within Fire Country, nothing should have been able to threaten us.

It was a pity our attacker never got that memo.

We only got the briefest moment of warning as a massive chakra source revealed itself some two hundred meters to our front. The centurion barely had time to raise his voice before a massive wave of fire chakra descended on our position. Our seal-armors flickered us back forty meters in an emergency evasion, seals shooting out of storage containers and activating a number of barriers to protect us.

As for the Royal Guard, they just fucking evaporated like a candle thrown into a volcano.

The chakra source was large, and powerful. But we’d met stronger. No, what was truly terrifying was how controlled it was, and how hot the flames. Three layers of our barriers had been shattered by the flames, a fourth just by the radiated heat-flash.

I had a pretty good idea who was responsible. I’d hoped he was just a figment of Kishimoto’s imagination, that Naruto hadn’t been that faithful to the true events of the Elemental Nations as they applied to me.

Obviously, those hopes had been in vain.

The flames parted, like some twisted, heretical mirror of the Red Sea parting for Moses, and through them a cloaked and masked man stepped forwards slowly.

“Madara,” I whispered in horrified realization. I gulped with a suddenly dry mouth. Sachiko and Yasu weren’t anywhere close to being ready for this fight. “Retreat, Kage contingency,” I ordered loudly. Their heads twisted rapidly, eyes wide as they stared. Sachiko especially looked on me like a god. And look at my history; I had broken nations. We had trained for this, but they had never anticipated having to carry it out.

“Now!” I shouted. In the back of my mind I could feel Kurama waking, his rising rage at the man who had thought to enslave a biju.

Then I stepped forwards as my team fled, burning enough chakra to power a town to get far away, sporting shields capable of tanking all but the mightiest of attacks.

“I hadn’t realized I’d become important enough for you to leave your shadows, Uchiha Madara,” I called out loudly, projecting my voice over the crackling and popping of the flames boiling pockets of moisture in the ground.

“Oh?” the figure sounded out, the slightest of hitches to his step. “What makes you think I am he?”

“Don’t play games,” I snarled. “Is Zetsu here with you as well?” I asked, taking a risk.

At that name the figure did pause. “You are entirely too well informed.”

I smiled at that, my muscles involuntarily drawing my mouth wider and wider. And then, I just had to laugh. “Hahahahaha!” I sounded somewhat hysterical. “Yes,” I said quieter. “Yes, I am too well informed. Shall I tell you more, Madara? Shall I tell you what I know?”

What ninja could resist that? Especially since his plan called for stealth, for being the chessmaster. If, somehow, his plans were known, he had to find out how badly he was compromised. And how it came to be. He had been advancing, and was now merely thirty meters away. Practically knife-fighting range for a ninja.

“Yes,” he instructed.

I sighed heavily, still smiling. “It’s something of a relief, you know.” My tone was conversational, like we were colleagues at a dinner, rather than intending to kill each other. “Years of preparation, of planning for the worst, for this moment. And now it has finally come.”

I could sense well controlled irritation in his aura. “I can empathize with that feeling,” he allowed.

“But you’d like me to get to the point, yes?” I asked rhetorically.

He still replied. “Yes.”

“Of course,” I said. “Of course. Just, would you mind removing your mask? I already know who you are, and it’s a bit ridiculous.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Very well. It’s not like it will make a difference.”

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And then he took his mask off, showing himself to me. He was old, well into his eighties. Though he was very fit, a lifetime of combat injuries had had its effect and his strength, both physical and chakra, was in decline. There had been no Orochimaru to perfect the resurrection jutsu, no Kabuto to improve the result, no Zetsu to possess Obito and use the Rinnegan to truly resurrect the ancient ninja.

Though his eyes showed the Rinnegan, that was actually preferable to his mangekyo-sharingan. There was a reason he implanted them in an Uzumaki; those eyes were powerful, but they consumed a commensurately massive amount of chakra. I might stand a chance.

But every moment I bought my teammates was a good one. And if I could turn Madara against Zetsu… that would be a great thing. My best case scenario was that he and I killed Zetsu, then I killed him. Both were lunatics of the highest order and utterly dedicated to establishing worlds inimical to mine and my loved ones’ interests. So a second-best outcome was buying enough time so that if I died in combat my Thor seals would wipe out the entire area, Madara included.

“So, where should I start…” I thought aloud. “I suppose at the beginning. It’s a long tale; I can get out a table, tea and snacks if you’d like.”

He just stared at me.

“No? I was just trying to be polite, after all keeping a senior standing around –“ I had to hastily dodge a kunai at that. He hadn’t really been trying to hit me, just expressing his impatience.

“Talk,” he growled.

“Alright, alright,” I said, hands raised to my chest and palms out as if in surrender. “Have it your way. Hey, Black Zetsu! If you’re around, you may as well come out!”

I had no doubt he was around, but didn’t know if he’d made contact with Madara yet. If memory served, he hadn’t, but I wasn’t willing to bet either way.

“Who are you talking about?” Madara asked.

I grinned sharply. “Ah, so that manipulator hasn’t shown himself yet then. I’ll get to him in time then. So our story begins many centuries ago with Kaguya Otsu-something.” At his glare, I raised my hands again. “Sorry, but I’ve forgotten some of the details. Otsuki? Otsusuki? Something like that; it’s not really important. Anyways, this was the dawn of the Age of Chakra. Before that, chakra, if it existed, was only in small amounts. Then something happened, and wild chakra was present. Bloodlines mostly come from mutations that originated in this era. The civilization from before collapsed.”

I could tell he was getting more irritated, so I hurried it up.

“And in one place, a tree adapted. It could filter this wild chakra, turning it into nature chakra. The people nearby worshipped it as a god; whether it was in truth divine, I cannot say. Before chakra was introduced, there were people who lived beyond the atmosphere, orbiting the planet. But either they depended on materials from the ground to maintain themselves, or some were kicked out after a conflict, or just wanted to explore and contact the ground, or were coming to harvest resources and then return. Whatever the case, an expedition of these people came to our planet, and established themselves near the tree, experimenting on it.

“Kaguya consumed the fruit of the tree, or its chakra was channeled into her. And she became mighty. Ruling as a god-empress, she feared that her fellow clan-members would one day come and attempt to supplant her. So she formed an army of White Zetsu out of humans who had been subsumed into the Infinite Tsukuyomi, leaving only a small number of mankind alive to breed and worship her. As a note, your Zetsu are not due to some Yin-Yang effect, but her army.”

“And I am supposed to believe this, why?” Madara asked.

I grinned. “I’ll get to that later. Just wait. So, Kaguya decides to give birth, and has twins. Hagoromo, later known as the Sage of Six Paths, and the other one whose name I’ve forgotten.”

He arched his brow in disapproval.

“Look, it didn’t seem that important when I learned this, alright?” I defended. “Now, either due to a chakra-illness, or paranoia, or further consumption of the tree’s chakra, or even a desire to see the world return to how it had been before – remember, in those days chakra was more curse than blessing, but Kaguya changed. She decided that she wanted to have all the chakra, and transformed into the Ten Tails.

“Her sons battled her, sealing her chakra into the Sage, and the corpse, which they sent into orbit, became the moon. Or was placed onto the moon and guarded by those who still survived there; the difference between truth and legend is difficult to discern, and chakra does not fare well outside our atmosphere so either way the husk would be isolated. But just before she disappeared, she made a manifestation of her will, Black Zetsu.

“Since then, Black Zetsu has manipulated things behind the scenes. He has but one goal; the eventual return, restoration, and ultimate victory of his creator, Kaguya. To that purpose he fed the ego of Indra, eldest son of the Sage and ultimate ancestor of the Uchiha clan, turning him against Asura, younger son of the Sage and ultimate ancestor of the Senju. Since then Zetsu has worked for a millenium to weaken and divide chakra users in general, while also trying to recreate the Rinnegan and Ten-Tails. His goal was and is to reform the nine biju into the Ten-Tails, via some demon path technique and statue if I recall correctly, before using it and the Rinnegan to summon Kaguya. Or something like that.”

“You keep mentioning how unsure you are. Explain,” Madara ordered. “And tell me why I should believe you.”

“Well, I guess I might as well mention how I know all of this. You might call me a god, though I wouldn’t use that term. Rather, I managed to achieve the utmost immortality of the soul, allowing me to reincarnate through worlds and between dimensions. It’s not uncommon for storytellers to tap into deeper truths, and this world, your story, are well known in my past life.”

He looked at me like I was insane.

I just laughed. “What, you don’t believe me? You, planning all your insanity, find that hard to believe? How else do you think I managed to create cannon-seals, came up with the idea of aircraft, built the weapons that broke Lightning? Madara, I was born less than twenty years ago. And yet two of the Five Great Elemental Countries fell by my mind and hand. The very fact that you are here is testament to my achievement.

“I changed history. Uzushio did not fall. There was no Nagato, a refugee or descendent of a refugee Uzumaki to hold onto your Rinnegan, to serve as your stalking horse. No Uchiha boy isolated by war, left behind for dead by his comrades for you to twist and manipulate into destroying his clan, your clan, so that there would be none with the Mangekyo to stand against you. And most important, the Biju are protected from you, and from any sharingan.

“Our world will not fall to you, Madara. And Zetsu, you piece-of-shit discard off that crazy bitch, you won’t win either. Kaguya’s gone. And I’ve seen to it that she’ll never return!” I screamed that last part out, smiling in victory.

I could sense Zetsu, his rage breaking the camouflage of his natural chakra. See, I’d been talking to Madara, but my real audience had been our voyeur. I didn’t need Madara to believe me. I just had to bust out enough of Zetsu’s secrets to make him think that Madara would never trust him, never work with him. Madara, that old monster, had a good enough poker face not to really show what he felt, and played right into my hands.

“Hahaha!” I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. I’d just successfully bluff-enraged potentially the single greatest threat to my nation; it was, after all, little exaggeration to say that Zetsu was the literal shinobi devil. “You dumb fuck. Such a mama’s boy. You just revealed yourself, Zetsu! You just proved me right! And now, Madara knows what you were planning, knows not to trust you!” I pointed towards him, and Zetsu leapt out from cover, slightly surprising Madara.

“There’s your proof,” I concluded, exultant in my victory. “Madara, say hello to your whatever-times great uncle Zetsu.”

Madara sighed, his age showing as he realized how much time and effort he had wasted. But the man wasn’t one to give up, and a pair of kunai appeared in his hands so quickly it was almost magic. “It seems that after I kill you both, I’ll have to come up with a new plan. Unless you’d care to join, o immortal?”

I hadn’t noticed it, but the way he spoke was a bit old fashioned. Before I could decline with appropriate crudity, Zetsu interrupted.

The black monster glared at me, its killing intent rolling over us. A wide maw filled with viciously sharp teeth appeared across its face. “I’m going to kill you, you damned pest, and then destroy everything you’ve ever loved.”

I smiled widely as chakra chains exploded from my body. “Not if I kill you first, you vile, aborted stain.”

My lover and friend were away. My enemies were divided and in front of me. I’d bought enough time for my last-resort to be overhead.

By my accounting, so far I was winning, with a lot of points too.

Now I just had to survive throwing down with some true legends, and kill both the historical and modern boogeymen of the Shinobi world. If I failed, they'd probably do everything in their power to raze Uzushiogakure and wipe out the Uzumaki.

No pressure.