Naruto: Tales of Ashihara

Naruto: Tales of Ashihara

Kakumei – Arc 1: The Consumer of Worlds

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Chapter 36 – The 5 hosts

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Right after his meeting with Naomi, Sasuke followed her advice and went to see the child found by the ninjas of Kumo. When he arrived there, all he found was a passed out boy in the hospital. There, he was asked to wait for the kid to wake up.

Many hours have passed since he entered this village. In the meantime, he went to visit Z's grave, where he found Minaa. After that, he followed her to her house, in the quarters of her clan, to wait until the hospital calls again. Currently, he's just sitting on the roof, and wondering about his last year's discoveries. As his thoughts are obviously guiding to Momoshiki again, he stands up and goes to find a distraction.

In Minaa's backyard, he finds her doing some sort of yoga exercise, while her cats, next to her, are trying to replicate all her poses. Sasuke spectates briefly before sighing and looking away when he realizes that she's completely naked again. The red-haired woman notices him and stops her sport.

"What's wrong?" she genuinely asks.

"It's been over 10 years, Minaa." says Sasuke. "Why are you still going around with little to no clothes at all?"

"Huh?" does Minaa, upset. "May I remind you that I am in my house? So I dress however I want to?"

"You're not dressed at all." says Sasuke. "And even earlier, in the cemetery, you had nothing but underwear."

"I just don't like clothes. It was never just some kind of phase. And why do I have change my style in any way while you're still hiding in a cape like 12 years ago?"

Sasuke looks at his black cloak surrounding his whole body. He doesn't respond anything. He understands that his comment was pointless, and simply agrees with her.

"And why does it bother you anyway?" adds Minaa, with a flirty look. "Am I awakening something in you?… Nah, you're a married man and a father!"

Sasuke totally ignores her teasing and just looks around the place.

"Did I mention how odd it was for a lone kunoichi to live in such a house?" he asks.

"I'm not alone. I'm with all these boys and girls!" she answers while showing off the dozen of cats and kittens surrounding her.

"I didn't mean it like this." adds Sasuke. "In Konoha, most ninjas live in an apartment, unless they have a family or are high-graded heroes. Even most of jonins don't have a house."

"I'm not just a random kunoichi." she says. "I'm a fourth war veteran, who's even more respected since I worked by your sides. Plus, I'm off to become the leader of my clan in the future."

"The leader?"

"Yeah! The current Nii boss doesn't have any descendant, and I'm his first choice as a successor. Ain't that great?"

"It is, I guess."

Minaa leaves the backyard and goes to put on underwear in the house, then quickly comes back to Sasuke with a beeping tool in her hand. Sasuke recognizes the kind of tool that Naomi uses to communicate with employers or other mercenaries. He now remembers that this was the point of his first mission with Minaa and Z, to deliver this technology to Kumo. By the way, Sasuke remembers Fuuka, the one that leaded the Kumo-nin trio on this mission.

"Tell me. It's been years since I last saw Fuuka, your former captain. What happened to her?" he asks.

"It's been at least five years since I last heard of her too." sadly answers Minaa. "Don't know what happened. The Raikage says it's classified… But don't worry, she didn't die. If she did, it wouldn't be hidden away."

"She must have joined the secret forces of the village." suggest Sasuke.

"Uh? How do you know about the secret force?" exclaims Minaa.

"Shouldn't I?"

"I was told even the Kage council wasn't aware of it… Anyway, I got a message for you. You're wanted at the military hospital. It's about some kid that just woke up or something."

"I have to go then." says Sasuke who turns around to leave.

"It was nice to have you around." says Minaa. "I'll catch a boat to Kiri tonight, and we'll see each other at Kobo's funeral."

Sasuke just nods and disappears.

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Seconds later, in the military hospital, Samui is waiting for Sasuke to arrive, standing in front of a room's door.

"Did he wake up?" asks Sasuke who pops out of nowhere next to her.

Startled by this sudden entrance, she catches her breath discreetly and contains her reaction. She calms down and answers.

"Yes, But there appears to be a major problem." she says.

"Which is?" asks Sasuke, who follows her gaze to look through the door's window and see Darui calmly speak with the kid in the room.

"Amnesia." responds Samui. "Except his name and a few details, he forgot everything about who he was. About what happened that night, he forgot everything. The medical team thinks this has been caused by a brain shock."

Sasuke doesn't say anything, and just looks at the young boy sitting on the bed. Brown skin, mid-long yellow hair, and black eyes. This kid's chakra feels special in some way, mainly its color. It isn't blue tainted like for most people, but white. So white it shines bright enough to be almost visible to the naked eye. Sasuke sighs again, disappointed. If this boy lost his memories, he won't bring him any more information. He'll have to guess Momoshiki's motivation differently.

He turns around to leave, but is surprised by a familiar face standing behind him. A, the 4th Raikage, was waiting for Sasuke to notice him.

"Are you about to leave?" asks the big old man.

"The hospital at least…" answers Sasuke, confused. "Why? What is it?"

"Mind if we talk a bit?" proposes A.

Sasuke narrows his eyelids, unsure, but accepts and follows his old enemy.

In the hospital room, Darui stands next to the kid who sits on the bed. He was speaking to him, giving him some context about the place he is in now, trying to help him remember at least the last thing that happened to him. But he already understood this is pointless. So he just kept explaining his village's purpose and spirit.

Now that Sasuke left, Samui enters the room and gets by the Raikage's side.

"How is it going, lord Raikage?" she asks.

"Samui, …" says Darui to add her into their discussion. "meet Yukai… Yukai, meet Samui."

"So that's your name." says Samui to the confused kid.

"You again?" says Yukai, who remembers her from earlier this morning.

Samui gets closer to Darui, and speaks quietly to not be heard by the kid.

"We still don't have any clue about what kind of boat he was on." she says. "Should I check if we find anything about him, given his name?"

"I don't think you'd find anything." answers Darui, quietly. "Judging by his look, he's definitely from this country, but I never heard of him. The genetic analysis mentioned that he possibly has some sort of unknown Kekkei Genkai too."

"Say, Lord Raikage?" wonders the kid, interrupting the whispering. "Why do you have something written on your shoulder?"

"Oh this?" answers Darui, trying to play it cool. "This is a symbol. A sign of trust and power that has been gifted to me by one of my predecessors."

"Your predecessors?" says Yukai. "The Raikages?"

"That is right." he says. "The Raikage. The ninja who commands, protects and fights for this village, and land."

"So you're a warrior, a fighter?" asks Yukai. "I'm sure I'm one too."

Darui turns his head to look at Samui and get her feeling about these words. Samui looks suspiciously at the kid.

"This isn't good." she whispers.

"He isn't a menace." answers Darui, also whispering. "He's just a kid, and is amnesic."

"If he used to be a threat, whoever lost him will come to get him back." suggests Samui.

"I don't think so. Nobody's bad enough to think he can walk in and out of Kumo without losing at least his life."

"So what do you suggest we do with him?"

Darui leans down and gets to his knees, next to the kid.

"Listen, Yukai." he says. "Would you like to meet other people that are your age? First I'll introduce you to my daughter, she's called Aoki. I'm sure you'll be friends."

Yukai doesn't answer and just stares, curious and confident, before nodding in agreement.

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Now farther in the village, Sasuke joins A on a balcony, many dozens of meters up in the sky.

"What is this about?" he asks.

A first doesn't answer anything, so Sasuke comes to lean on the balcony next to him and watch the horizon.

"I've been looking through some of Konoha's classified files." says the former Raikage. "I found out the truth about Itachi Uchiha."

"How did you…" Sasuke starts to say, angrily.

"Just as he became the Hokage, Naruto Uzumaki declassified and published a lot of Konoha's root files." answers A. "The context for the Uchiha Massacre happened to be in there."

"That bastard!" complains Sasuke who turns around, ready to leave for Konoha and confront Naruto.

"Wait a minute, would you?" asks the old man. "I'm making an effort by inviting you to speak peacefully. Could you at least acknowledge it?"

Sasuke calms down and stares at A. He goes back to his side and leans on the border again to listen to what he has to say.

"After I found out, I've thought about it, really hard, about what happened at the summit." explains A. "And I understood. What brought you there, what motivated you, was only to get revenge for your brother."

Sasuke doesn't answer anything. He just stares with his eyes widened at the man with whom, back then, he blindly fought to death.

"The one you were after was Danzo Shimura, who was Hokage at the time, and now I understand why." adds A. "I was only in your way."

"You had your right to fight too." answers Sasuke. "At the time, all you knew about me was that I may had killed your brother."

"Exactly!" says A, who stands up and faces Sasuke. "Don't you get it now?" he adds menacingly. "Now we both know why we were there. We were both wanting revenge for a brother. I'd like to say this makes us even, but I can't. Even if we have a brother's love in common, I can't understand how the loss of all your clan, by the hands of your village, affected you. I do not know, and will never know, how it feels to be this alone."

Sasuke stands up to face the former Raikage too. He looks up to stare at him right in the eyes, and thinks. The words he just spoke, must be the reason why Naruto chose to declassify these files. It may annoy him, but this could greatly help him to be more accepted if people know better about him.

Sasuke's flattered by Naruto's action after all, especially the sacrifice it is. Revealing such information about Konoha obviously had to have some bad consequences for its reputation. Still, it pisses him off.

Sasuke notices A's eye movements looking down, so he follows his gaze and sees his hand up, waiting to be held. He gets his right arm out of his cloak and shakes A's hand.

"I apologize for the bad reputation I gave to you." he says to Sasuke. "I know I'm partly responsible for this."

"I apologize too." answers Sasuke. "For what I did to your brother, to you, and to your ninjas. I know that no given fact will wash the guilt off me. I'll just keep working to deserve your forgiveness."

"Keep it this way, then. If it's what you want." answers A, still shaking the Uchiha's only arm with his remaining hand.

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In the lands of Heart, newly baptized the lands of Gods, a young woman, with red-brown hair, blue eyes and tanned skin is walking, following the direction given by some sort of compass. She's wearing a black ninja outfit, but with only one sleeve, on the right arm. She also has a single glove on this hand, and a white scarf rolled around her waist.

As she walks through an empty forest, she thinks. She's been sent here to find a lost child. A child that was lost on a child trafficking convoy. A convoy that was interrupted and sunk down by an unknown threat. All she knows about who attacked the boat is that he's dangerous, and all she knows about the kid is what he looks like. From all the people who could have been sent, she was among the most trustworthy. In the business, she goes by the name "Killin' Kiss", one of the most demanded private mercenary in the world. Despite this girl's young age, "Killin' Kiss" has been in business for over 10 years already.

As she gets deeper in the forest, she feels that she's coming closer to her destination. The compass she's holding can specifically localize the kid she's looking for. Still in an empty forest, she performs a one-handed hand sign to break an illusion. As she intended, a village suddenly appears to her eyes, not even hundred meters away before her.

Hikarigakure, the village hidden in Light, is the capital of the whole land. To prevent any possible invasion by a stranger army, the village is kept from anyone's sight with a genjutsu that hides it and replaces it with a simple forest. This is the village where the leaders of the Tomoe clan came after Gozen Tomoe united the land. It is the capital of all the lands of Heart.

Now that their hero died in combat, Gozen's daughter took the lead of the clan and left the capital with her clan, returning to Ketsugakure, their original village. Who leads the capital now? Killin' Kiss has no idea, but she'll have to discover it if she wants to accomplish her mission and find the child.

Now ready to enter the village, she's surprised that nobody is here to keep the gates. Once she steps in, she looks at the compass' needle. It is pointing all the way forward to the feodal temple that lies in the center of the village. Seeing this, she wonders… It appears that those who took over this continent and killed the great Gozen Tomoe, are the same people as those who crashed the convoy and kidnapped the kid she has to find.

She hides the compass away, and decides to go on without indication, as she'll have to handle her research differently from there on. But something else has been bugging her. Since she passed the gates of the village, she feels a sort of presence in the air, that makes it hard to breath. Confused she looks around and up until she finds them. The source of this feeling.

Two people, all dressed in white, floating in the air above the village. The girl stands still and watches as the biggest of them flies down to the ground, somewhere in the village. Killin' Kiss stands there, staring at the one who's still in the sky and looking down on everyone. Feeling unsafe and unwell, she looks straight forward and tries to calmly go through the village, just hoping to not cross path with this floating figure. However, when she looks down, she finds herself face to face with the man that was standing above the village an instant ago.

Paralyzed by fear, she stands agape as the man like creature roams next to her, completely ignoring her, as if she wasn't worthy of his attention. This behavior by the long haired, pale, horned man makes her even less comfortable. The aura of this being, its chakra, the feeling you get only by standing in the same village as him, now starts to fascinate her. She takes a deep breath and turns around to witness this majestic figure again. She sees him levitate very close to the ground, and ignoring any other living thing that is being terrorized by his sole presence.

"A-Are you… Are you God?" she dares to ask.

These words reach Momoshiki Otsutsuki, who wasn't paying attention to the inferior beings around him. It catches his ears and causes him to lightly turn around to gaze at the young woman. He stares at her, for a long moment, and decides to come closer. As he moved way too fast for her to catch even just a glimpse of it, he now stands right in front of her and looks into her eyes. The young mercenary falls back on her butt, and quickly changes position to get on her knees, as if she's sitting, praying in a temple, in front of Momoshiki.

Unmeishin

The Otsutsuki activates both his Byakugan and uses them to read the fate of the girl sitting in front of him. He then observes the chakra pathways of her body and gets a bit curious. He comes a bit closer to look on her right, and smiles. "She looks a bit older than a simple child, but she's just fine." he thinks. He turns off his Dojutsu and stares at her, finally ready to answer her question.

"Am I God, you ask?" he says. "Not yet. Only with a small 'g' for now… Tell me young girl, how old are you?"

"I… I am 16…" answers the startled girl.

"You are among the few inferior beings that actually got my attention. May you join me on my quest, as one of my hosts?"

The girl, afraid by this question, yet fascinated, doesn't say anything. After a long silence she just lightly nods her head, not sure of what her move implies, but already ready to fully commit her spirit to this god. Momoshiki raises a hand and opens the orange rinnegan in his palm.

Chimatakami

A space rift opens and swallows the young woman, transporting her inside the castle that sits right in the middle of the village, the castle where the leaders used to live. There, Killin' Kiss stands and looks around to see where she is. Momoshiki Otsutsuki levitates through the portal and closes it. Behind where the portal was, the young girl now sees two kids. One is sitting on the ground, with his face hidden in his arms, held together around his knees. All she can see is that he has dark pink hair.

The other kid is standing in front of her, and, to her surprise, looks exactly like the kid she was supposed to find. A tall 10 year old boy, with brown hair, shaved shorter on the sides and longer on the top. However, she now has no more intention of completing this mission. All she wants is to discover in what glorious purpose she'll assist her new god.

In the room, Momoshiki floats to stand above them. Another space gate opens and Kinshiki comes through with two young boys, looking identical, with the exception of their hair color. One has black hair, and looks, impressed, at the levitating god. The other has blond hair, and stares, still a bit frightened by the giant man that brought him here. Momoshiki gazes at these two kids, and activates his Byakugans again to use the same jutsu as earlier.

Unmeishin

After a single second he turns off his dojutsus and prepares for a talk.

"You five young, inferior, sorry things, have been chosen to accomplish your destiny: to stand as a threat, above all of this little ninja world. I have united you in this exact place and moment to offer you power. The power to come over any obstacle of this planet. Power to compare to gods. Together, we'll harvest every single drop of chakra, life and energy this world has to give and will make it ourselves. Ultimately, together as one, this same power will make us… God. Able to come over any thing that stands in our way, able to overcome our own fate."

Kinshiki stares at Momoshiki, knowing full well that he purposefully omits the part where he'll have to devour all these poor kids, for them to be as one. He looks to the humans assembled in the room to see their reactions. Of the two twins he brought last, the black haired one steps forward to have a closer look at Momoshiki. The brown haired kid that they took from the convoy does the same. The young woman, Killin' Kiss, stays sitting on the ground, in a praying pose. In the back, the blond haired twin and the pink haired kid stay back.

"They do not look ready for the task, Momoshiki." says the old giant. "I will personally take care of this. I will ready them physically, and mentally."

"Do as you wish." answers Momoshiki who comes closer to the ground. "You'll have plenty of time, while I find the last piece of our puzzle."

"Great, I'll stay here and raise these children." says Kinshiki who gets on his knees next to the pink haired boy, still hiding in the back with the blond one standing next to him. "This one, however, should receive a bit of your wisdom…"

"I have plans for him, simply don't question them." answers Momoshiki, who despises being told what to do.

"My apologies… I suppose you'll do the dirty work."

"Yes, I'll look for the Daitengu, and find a suitable host for him."

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End of Chapter 36– Next Chapter: the Uchiha Path