Chapter 46: One Minute 'Till Midnight

We were quite the trio. An ancient evil, cast off from what was debatably a goddess, which had arguably become a god in his own immortal right. A legendary villain, who had killed and clawed his way up, usurping the eyes of god and planned to achieve even more. And a modern genius who had transcended death, a death he meted out to others all too readily through inventions which had slaughtered armies, destroyed cities, broken nations.

I had four goals. First, kill Zetsu. Second, kill Madara. Third, failing either goals one or two, survive at least another two minutes and eighteen seconds, while keeping my surviving enemies in the area, for my Thor attack impact. Four, survive the experience.

It was fucking tense. All of us were good enough, unknown enough, that if two ganged up on the other, the other would likely die first. And we were on hair-triggers, prepped to respond to the potentially supersonic speeds that ninja combat happened at. In other words, the first one to make a serious move would get pasted, and the tension just kept rising and rising.

I grinned. “So, Madara. I’ll admit, I’m unlikely to join you. But I’m willing to hear you out after we kill this asshole. What do you say?”

He grimaced. “I say you could speak more like the noble you are, Uzumaki-san. But agreed.”

“Excellent,” I hissed, my smile so wide it was practically splitting my face. Madara was a threat, sure. He was basically a comic book villain, defeated in the past, faked his death, and then plotted for decades to come back and win.

But Zetsu was so much worse. I wouldn’t go so far as to call him the ninja Anti-Christ, but certainly the Anti-John-the-Baptist. If Madara survived, the world – or at least the part of it I cared about - had a decent chance. If Zetsu did, much less of one.

I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t trust Madara at all. But it was in both our interests to see Zetsu dead.

“Hey, Zetsu,” I said. “Get fucked.” Then I dumped a full month of Kurama’s unfiltered chakra into the area.

See, the biggest problem with Zetsu was how well he could run and hide. He wasn’t human, and didn’t use human chakra. No, Zetsu was made with nature chakra. Which meant as long as he kept his emotions in check, he had next to no discernable chakra signature. Even then, the “next to” part of that would have needed a really good Sage capable of noticing the barely-increased nature-chakra concentration that leaked from whatever chakra-containing or spreading techniques that Zetsu could manage.

But Kurama’s chakra was very fucking far from natural. The Sage of Six Paths was a genius, and a legitimate claimant to the title “demigod.” But still, when he split the Ten-Tails’ chakra, it wasn’t like dividing a cake into slices. No, it was more like dividing nice, chemically balanced molecules into a bunch of very reactive atoms, and then adding a nice pile of emotional imbalance on top.

In short, Biju chakra was corrosive, damaging all the natural (and processed, such as human) chakra in the area as it tried to balance itself out. And I’d dumped enough that if I didn’t win, and clean up after myself, well… the resulting mess would make Chernobyl look like a beach resort in the Caribbean. Not to mention the kind of monsters this place would spawn…

But it was worth it since Zetsu couldn’t blend in with nature, couldn’t hide his signal, couldn’t run.

In short, Zetsu was like a blue colored fish in water – very, very difficult to see. So I died it red, and used a dye that also happened to double as a chemical weapon.

He hissed in pain, as did Madara. Even I was having a hard time with it, and I had all the seals necessary to at least survive the environment long term.

Zetsu leaped at me as Madara’s flames licked at the monster’s heels. He was fully black, in his natural state rather than joined to one of the White Zetsu clones. His maw opened wide as I opened fire with my lasers.

They were about as effective as a candle flame on a normal human. That was one of the many issues with chakra users. At some point, they began to take on a sort of ontological weight that could only be damaged with similarly high densities of reality-warping chakra magic (whether delivered by fist, blade, or justsu). Zetsu was old enough, foreign enough, that despite his relatively low power he was merely lightly burned and blistered rather than torn apart.

But I hadn’t expected my lasers to be effective, just to draw his attention as I blasted away at his eyes.

I was lifted off of the ground at that moment, a dozen of my adamantine sealing chains coming out of my body to defend or attack as necessary. I wasn’t a master of earth jutsu, but Madara likely was due to his cheat of a bloodline. Only a fool would stay in contact with the ground in such a situation.

But more than that, I was being tactically sneaky. The chains I had resting on the ground only looked that way. In reality, three of them were forked where the chain’s curves rested on the earth, the forks hidden underneath the ground, ready to attack from the sides and rear as Zetsu closed. And a number of my larger individual chains were actually bundles of very fine thread-chains, ready to spread out and envelop my enemy when he tried to dodge.

My chains swatted down the kunai that Zetsu threw at me. It was a bit embarrassing, really; his throwing weapons weren’t enough to really threaten a standard combat-focused jonin, let alone be used in this battle of ancient monsters, old titans, and the newest of giants.

Then Madara tightened his flames from a wide blast into a thin, narrowed beam. It was so hot and fast that it shattered the stones on the ground when it missed, the sheer energy forcing the stone to boil and explode rather than melt. He swept it past Zetsu who panicked, leaping and spinning as he tried to dodge. But Zetsu failed, his left arm coming off at the elbow, the remainder quickly vaporizing without his chakra to shield it.

Zetsu opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I made my move while he was focused on Madara’s attack. My chains erupted, coming from all directions, and between his pain and my overwhelming attack, Zetsu failed to dodge a trio of them. Two were medium sized chains, barbed and vicious, but the third was made up of micro threads. As I channeled cutting wind into half, and Kurama’s toxic chakra into the other half via seals, I exploded the threads out into a spiral that reduced Zetsu into a sludgy mist.

Madara and I waited, tense, for a moment before we realized that Zetsu was truly dead. I wouldn’t totally trust it; after all, look at Madara’s little faked death trick. But I was fairly certain Zetsu was dead. I’d baited the fanatic into the confrontation, and Zetsu was never the best fighter. Cunning, manipulative, intelligent, and evil – yes. But if he’d been stronger he’d never have needed to be so manipulative.

Both Madara and I were grinning like wolves that had just caught a rabbit, exulting in victory and sated bloodlust.

He relaxed, even by just the tiniest of amounts. “See, Daichi? We make an effective partnership. Together, we could bring an era of true peace to this world.”

I shook my head. “Madara, I know what you were planning. Zetsu’s influence or not, it was insane. And I bet that in your arrogance you haven’t even given it up.”

His eyes hardened. “You made me aware of the risks and traps. Now, I can plan around them. I can avoid the mistakes of your prophecy, seize the Bijuu, and defeat even your exiled god if needed.”

“You couldn’t even beat Hashirama,” I scoffed, carefully noting how his hands twitched at my mockery. “Someone you knew well, sparred with often, and had years to plan for. Why would I trust you against someone who has a legitimate claim on the title of deity?”

“So help me!” he shouted. “I refuse to believe that everything I have suffered was for nothing! I bear the sage’s eyes! I bear his legacy! Help me accomplish my destiny!”

I hadn’t really expected to talk Madara down. But we were standing around in an area with enough of Kurama’s chakra to make Chernobyl look like an idyllic, unpolluted vacation spot in the countryside. Every moment I could keep him talking was an advantage. So it was a shame that it looked like our conversation was coming to an end.

“No, Madara. There was no grand destiny. Just a conspiracy by the world’s most vile plotter. Your eyes are a result of recombining the Senju and Uchiha bloodlines, remaking the sage’s. And again, I suspect that was needed for Zetsu’s plot. Otherwise, as you well know, you would not have survived.”

And wasn’t that true. Senju and Uchiha bloodlines caused one of the few inherent chakra-nature pairings that were non-viable. Any true Senju or Uchiha, in other words those that carried enough of the bloodline to matter, couldn’t have children with their opposites. Stronger Uchiha and Senju would even violently reject each other’s blood if transfused.

I was projecting the truth of my words into my aura. Madara could ignore it, but knew that I at least believed what I was saying. Chakra was partially based on mentality, belief, assurance. The more off-balance he was, the better my odds.

“I’m sorry to say, Madara, that your life was not for nothing. Rather, it was for evil. You were a pawn, meant to advance to the end of the board and be replaced with a queen. Just… allow it to end. Make peace with yourself. With your life. Allow you soul some succor. Your brother has passed on. So have your friends. But this world, this life, is not the end. Be at peace. And give up this insane quest.”

He glared at me. “No. I am still the strongest. I am still the sage’s heir. And I will take what is rightfully mine. Join me, or I will ensure you cannot stand against me.”

Great. He’d gone full on Kaguya syndrome.

But still, I had to snort at the idea he was the strongest. “You were never the strongest, Madara. Hashirama was probably the most powerful. Tobirama the most creative. Zetsu the most cunning. Hell, despite your eyes, your greatest claim is probably being the most blind. But Madara? You can get fucked now too.”

And then everything exploded.

See, while I hadn’t managed to get Hiraishin working quite yet (it still had this nasty habit of killing living creatures), I did manage a team shared storage space based on the same technology. Which meant that my teammates had access to all the aircraft I typically carried around. And given the improved slaving-controls and auto-pilot functions, they could pilot all those drones at the same time too.

Our two stealthed Peregrines were set to record the fight, and follow Madara should he survive. That left three Pelicans, a little outdated but still heavily armed, three of our newer Sea-Hawks, which we’d replaced the Pelicans with, and a single Osprey, the closest equivalent we had to a flying battleship. All armed with specialized seal munitions over and above the usual rapid fire cannons, machineguns and lasers. It was the kind of firepower that could level a city. And it was all targeted at one man.

Unfortunately, Madara was the kind of ninja who could level a city too.

Watching him fight back was an education. One that I’d have enjoyed much more if I hadn’t feared immediate death. And not just from Madara – I’d given the order for extreme danger close. That meant “bombard my position such that the damage doesn’t do worse than halve my shields.”

Lasers lanced down, but Madara instantly covered the whole area in smoke. It wasn’t enough to avoid the ships’ sensors, not given the backdrop of Kurama’s chakra to provide constrast, but it did disperse the energy beams into uselessness.

Luckily for me, those were only the least of the drones’ weapons. Unluckily, the rest fared little better. Madara twirled and spun, dancing and leaping away from the streams of incoming fire. Seal-shells were cut down by fire techniques and kunai. He shun-shinned around, almost teleporting as entire football fields of terrain were set of fire, crushed under impossible gravity, torn apart by razor-winds, cast into the void, or any of a dozen other exotic effects.

The ground was shaking, turned into the world’s largest bass speaker as acoustic-vibrational destruction seals used the high speed of sound propagation within a solid to make fleeing underground impossible.

And then, seconds after the bombardment began, Madara finally had a moment to retaliate. It looked like a laser-show at a concert as his impossibly thin, impossibly hot threads of fire-chakra turned the air into plasma as they traced back along the paths of incoming fire to impact my air support. Even the heavily shielded Osprey only held for a moment before its shields were over-run and it was swatted out of the sky.

Madara came to a stop, sweating and panting, his clothes disarrayed. He was even bleeding from a few near misses. It was nice to know he was mortal.

But he looked pissed.

Before he could move, I tried out my finisher. The Mind-Flay technique flew out, a bolt of incredibly fast, incredibly difficult to notice yin-chakra designed to over-reinforce and burn out every neuron Madara had.

His fist glowed, and he fucking swatted it away. I didn’t even think that was possible. Hell, the technique basically used a mix of genjutsu and medical-aspected chakra, specifically because they ignored most ninja defenses.

My eyes widened. Oh, shit. This was part of the Rinnegan. Controlling chakra energies, and sensing them. That meant Madara was a lot better with the Rinnegan than I’d hoped.

As Madara’s hand came up, I dodged sideways as quickly as I could. But his gravity pulse still caught me, passing through by my chains and shields as if they weren’t there. I’d gotten partially out of the way, the blow only clipping my shoulder. It was still enough to shatter my upper arm bone and spin me into half a dozen revolutions.

I bled momentum off by having my chains cut through the ground, and opened up on him as I came to a stop. He seemed more tired that I had expected; the blow had been powerful, but nothing near what Nagato or “Pein” managed in canon.

Oh, that’s right, I thought. Uchiha, not Uzumaki.

I opened up on him, my directed energy seals trying to blind his eyes while my cyclone bullet and cannon seals launched round after round at him as I closed the distance. Grimacing, I dumped the rest of Kurama’s un-purified chakra that I had stored. The concentrations were bad enough now that even jonin could expect lasting health issues. If untreated, minor demons and demonic-mutated beasts were likely to become a serious issue for the surrounding lands in the future. But as bad as that was, and as much political capital as it would cost me, I would be happy to deal with it as long as I survived.

Between the corrosive chakra clouding his vision, and his need to dodge and avoid my attacks, Madara was much less able to hit me than before. We zoomed over the terrain, destroying ground and trees with our missed attacks as we avoided each other’s blows while trying to end the fight. Our wounds were building up, his superior skill and technique matched against my superior reserves, ability to spam attacks, and seal-shields.

In the end, it was coming down to endurance. And even though I was taking hits more frequently, and more severely, one of us had a bijuu willing to fill their reserves and speed their regeneration, and the other did not.

I could see it in Madara’s eyes when he realized that he was losing.

And when he decided that if that was the case, he may as well flip the board.

He began channeling a massive amount of chakra for some do-or-die attack. Probably do-and-die, actually; the split focus, the chakra demands on an already strained system, it was just too much. Well, too much to manage to keep dodging quite so well at least. Just as he launched his attack one of my cannon shots blew through his knee, taking out the lower half of his leg.

It didn’t help me much though. He’d hit me with another gravity pulse. But to compare it to the one that had fucked up my shoulder was like comparing a tank’s cannon to a nine millimeter pistol, both in size and in intensity.

This hit pulped me.

I came to a moment later, and all I felt was pain. I was literally overloaded before an emergency seal kicked it, numbing all nerves.

“Kurama, what’s the damage?” I thought to my partner. I didn’t think I was even capable of speech at that point. He took a moment to answer, and that’s when I knew I was fucked.

“It took out most of your guts, your right lung is gone, left is perforated, and your heart is damaged. I’ve managed to stop you from dying of shock, but I can only keep your brain alive another dozen or so seconds. As it is, we’re mostly in your mindscape, which is the only reason we can even have this conversation.”

Oh. Well, fuck. “And Madara?”

“You managed to hit him in the leg with an explosive cannon round. I doubt he’s moving at all right now, and if he is it won’t be fast.”

I looked up, and saw the streaks of re-entry from my kinetic bombardment. It might be pyrrhic, but I’d take the victory. After all, death was hardly the end. Not for me. And the idea of being part of a “rocks fall, everyone dies” situation was kind of funny.

“Well, Kurama. It’s been real.”

The nine-tails snorted. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. I haven’t been this entertained since, well, ever. You’re going to transfer my seal so that I can come with you.”

I would have laughed. If, you know, I could breathe. “That’s nice, Kurama, but no way can I store your chakra in my soul.”

“I know. But you can take me with you in death. The seal should be enough of a link that if we both hold on, you can keep a grasp of me. And then while I may leave my body, my chakra, behind, my mind and soul will continue with you.”

“That’s insanely risky,” I complained. “Co-mingling souls like that. Let alone what the experience of death might do to you…”

“And yet, it is my risk to take,” he stated firmly. “You will not leave me behind on this wretched planet to suffer boredom until I go insane.”

“Well, it’s pretty damned risky for me too, you know.”

I could feel his sharp-toothed grin. “You forget my origins. I am but a part of a facet of power. It is part of my identity to be part of something greater. You qualify.”

He had a point. I was pretty sure I could pull it off.

“I was sort of hoping you’d look after my family. Keep Sachiko and my progeny safe, make sure Uzushio stayed on the straight and narrow.” Sachiko had “biological samples” to allow me to have heirs for just this kind of eventuality. It was part of our agreement for her to flee fights like this one when I ordered.

“I am coming with you,” Kurama stated. “And I will keep you in this mindscape, frozen in time, until you agree.”

I laughed a bit at that. It may be a risk, but having company during the timeless isolation in the Void, let alone a friend to stay with me from life to life, seemed worth it. “Very well then.”

We prepared ourselves for death, and Kurama released the mindscape.

And thus ended my second life.