Chapter 59

Shijin and Kurama were the first to react following the appearance of the God Tree.

They both instantaneously reached Yama, but they too were sequestered from him by the impenetrable shell of chakra he had formed while healing Iruka and Mizuki.

The two beings of immense power, one a Chakra Beast, and the other the son of the Sage, felt the threat wash over them when Yama destabilized and the chakra shell exploded.

They both shunshined backwards with ultimate speed, and barely dodged the soundless explosion of chakra, and they too watched in horror as everyone and everything caught in it was disintegrated.

They thought it could get no worse, but when the three shifting, hulking masses of darkness rose from the ashes, Kurama cried out in anger and despair.

"You FOOLS. You incarnated Hatred into the world!

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE BURDEN OF BIJUU.

FATHER CREATED US FOR THIS!

LOOK WHAT YOU DID NOW. YOU GAVE IT FORM AND THE GOD TREE!

YOU'VE DOOMED US!"

The demon fox was yelling at no one in particular, maybe Yama, but Yama was no longer there.

Shijin, having heard Kurama's outburst, flashed to the fox's side, and asked.

"What's going on, what do we need to do to fix this?"

The Fox snarled.

"Stop meddling with that which you know nothing!

Hatred is now incarnate. Yama had only borne the Soul beforehand, but those other two shadows that appeared were the Mind and Body.

They are separate for now, but after strengthening themselves, they will merge and that will be the End."

Shijin continued.

"What do you mean strengthen?"

The Fox ignored him, and shedding his recent form of a small and silver fox, reformed himself in his normal image.

The soldiers of Lightning and Fire, who were still gasping at the appearance of the God Tree, paralyzed by confusion, beheld the full form of the Nine-Tailed Fox.

Kurama appeared in all his glory, hundreds of feet tall, spawning tornadoes and fires around him.

The fires and tornadoes killed indiscriminately, but Kurama did not pay attention, even if his father had charged him with the safety of Humans.

There were more important issues to handle, and he could not worry about both.

The power he had held secret for eons, the ability to burn his own life force and create power from nothing like the heart of a star.

For the first and only time, he activated Baryon Mode, and prepared himself for Victory and Death, or Death Alone.

Fighting the incarnation of Hatred would be the death of him no matter what, but may, just maybe, others could survive.

Kurama was the strongest and eldest of the Bijuu, and when the sky was falling, it was his job to catch it.

Shijin had witnessed the might of the Kyuubi before, but this was different.

Even his eyes could not see what Baryon Mode was. It was an ability even beyond the Rinnesharingan's ability to understand and analyze.

However, Shijin could see the effects. The power came at steep cost, and he also knew that Kurama was dying.

Shijin knew beyond a doubt, it was the level of power that could stop Kaguya, and he knew that beyond all other objectives, he had to save Kurama.

He didn't know how he knew it, but he somehow knew that destiny was at work, healing and repairing the world, while he himself was still a blight in the river of time.

With his sudden epiphany, the plan he had been perfecting for weeks finally came together as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

As Kurama charged the greatest Bijuu Bomb in history, and the Soul of Hatred stood in the shadow of the God Tree staring at the Kyuubi with disinterest, Shijin captured the entire scene in the view of his right eye.

He molded his chakra and with a quiet whisper called out the only jutsu that could save the world.

"Izanami."

Shijin, Kurama, the God Tree, and the Soul of Hatred were spliced from the River of Time by Izanami, and the Soul and Kurama never realized it.

They simply fought, locked in an eternal struggle, never questioning why they would not die.

They fought under the Shadow of the God Tree in a soulless world where the sun never moved and night never fell.

Shijin, the only one aware that he was already separated from reality wandered, looking for a very important person.

It was quite the novel experience. Shijin was reminded of the time he had initially carved the time travel seal. He wandered so far and so long, scouring the lands for Yama.

The Kyuubi and Soul of Hatred bothered Shijin not during his journey, locked in eternal battle as they were, fighting one another in a never ending cycle. Corruption itself versus the uncorruptable.

Shijin eventually did find Yama.

Yama was in an unnamed cave, deep within the ancestral lands of the Senju.

The cave was hewn by hand, and the coarse chisel marks covering the wall spoke of mortal means of production. However, the quality spoke to devotion. This was a holy site, and the devotion was impressed into the stone.

Following down into the bowels of the earth, the cave extended, but eventually expanded into a small cavern. In the center, upon a stone dais, a simple monolith sat.

There was no flame flickering atop the monolith.

Yama looked at the place where the fire should be, and never even looked up when Shijin entered. Yama did break the silence before Shijin could though.

"This world isn't real."

Shijin nodded.

"We're in a fragment of reality created by my Izanami. You lost control of yourself. Whatever that thing was that you sealed inside you is locked in battle with the Kyuubi right now."

Yama shook his head.

"No, I know that, I can feel time looping back into itself over and over again. I understand that.

This world is still reflective of reality though, right?"

Shijin, not understanding, still answered.

"Yes. We are just in a separate time, but this is also a real as it gets. Only when my desired outcome is achieved will this fragment merge back into reality.

Itachi used this jutsu against Kabuto in the past. What happens here will eventually merge back into the real world."

Yama continued.

"And outside the jutsu, that's the real world?"

Shijin nodded.

"Yes."

Yama laughed and shook his head.

"No, its not."

Shijin replied with nothing, and Yama continued.

"I wanted to ignore it at first.

But the feeling kept growing more and more, the wrongness, the discomfort.

You must have felt it too. Its lives in the deepest depths of your soul and whispers to you."

Shijin nodded.

"We're not supposed to be here."

Yama chuckled.

"How true you are, but I don't think you know why?

Maybe you think that we're in the wrong place, the wrong time.

The truth is much scarier.

There is no here and now at all.

There is supposed to be a flame here in this cave.

That flame is the flame of life and death, of existence itself, and it's gone.

We didn't go back in time at all. We created a new shell of reality around us.

This place never existed before us, and doesn't exist beyond us.

When we die, so does the world."

Shijin not quite understanding, stood in silence.

"Shijin, the flame was stolen from our home, and our world was destroyed it in the process.

There is no place to go back to even if we wanted to.

And here, this is just a shell, like a body without a soul. It never even had the flame in the first place.

This is just a reflection of the moon in the water, but the moon is gone as well.

If we but touch the water, it all shatters, and nothing will be left at all."

Shijin, not understanding exactly what Yama was saying, asked him.

"What do we do then?"

Yama whispered the next few words.

"Our world was touched by the hand of fate, and it was waylaid for no reason at all.

But we can right the wrong, and we can restore the world to what was supposed to happen.

We can take the shattered remnants of our past and bind them together.

This world is still an empty canvas, we can change it, and then we can make it real.

But I'm gonna need you help."

Shijin nodded.

"Always."

Outside the Izanami jutsu, the main battlefield was at a complete tacit ceasefire over what had happened.

All in the span of less than a minute, an enormous tree appeared from nowhere, crushing thousands, then a soundless explosion turned half the soldiers to dust.

Then the Kyuubi itself appeared, and some shadow monster further decimated the Fire and Lightning Armies, and then the Fox, the Tree, and The Shadow disappeared, just as fast as it had appeared.

Some Deus Ex Machina had shown, delivered obliteration, and left.

Each and every person that had witnessed the scene had the same disconcerting feeling in their hearts.

The quickened pace of their heart and breath as the brush of death missed them by a hair

But what was worse was the second feeling.

Everyone at the battle was overwhelmed by a tremendous sense of insignificance.

They had been ants engaging in all out war, and the casual spillover from a battle beyond their comprehension had almost killed them all.

Like some giant accidentally spilled a pail of water near their nest, or clumsily put a foot through their pile of dirt they called home.

Suddenly all the fighting and death seemed so very trivial, and each and every person felt very small indeed.

The other two battlefields faced no such luck.

Shijin had quickly sealed away the Soul of Hatred, but the Mind of Hatred and the Body of Hatred were still free.

And they had gone to the two greatest concentrations of fear and hatred nearby, the battlefields of Orochimaru and Hiruzen.

Hiruzen and Sarutobi were meeting with the Barbarian King Kurowa when all three froze as a supreme feeling of dread fell over them.

Seeping out from the ground was an ephemeral and shifting void of darkness the creeped from within the shadows, blurring the lines of existence.

The oozing hulk slowly formed itself in a human shaped homunculus and though its appearance did not change, the King and two Hokage, felt its eyes open and attention turn to them.

"How are we doing today gentlemen? Why is everyone so serious?

Let's make things a little more fun, shall we?"

As soon as the homunculus had spoken, black flames erupted everywhere around them, both inside the tent where they were discussing the ceasefire, and everywhere around the surrounding army.

The Edo Tensei Tobirama was unlucky, and the first to go, as the black flames erupted directly under his feet.

In a single second, he was totally consumed by fire, leaving only ash behind him.

Hiruzen looked on in newfound terror, having felt the edo tensei be undone completely, and he knew beyond a doubt that to touch the black flames was a death sentence.

And then he was filled with endless rage at the death of his sensei, the senseless attack on his homeland, and he knew that he could never forgive these barbarians for threatening his home.

He would kill those savages afterwards, but for now, he should first kill the one who attacked his sensei.

Hiruzen flung kunai and shuriken at the black mass, who blocked them with ease while laughing.

"Good, let the hate flow through you!"

And the the fight began in earnest, with Hiruzen creating several shadows clones, releasing devastating ninjutsu combination techniques at the cackling shadow.

The shadow did not fight back, and no technique seemed to affect it. Some attacks were blocked and deflected, while others just phased on through the shadow like it wasn't there.

Had Hiruzen been in his right mind, he would be aghast at what was occurring around him.

The soldiers of the entire Barbarian Army, all succumbed to the same rage as he was, were slaughtering each other!

Brothers in arms that fought side by side just moments before had started killing one another.

They fought like berserkers, caring not for their injuries, only living to sink one more blow into the flesh of another, to deal death by one more blow.

And Hiruzen dealt death in greater swathes than the entire army combined. As he chased the maddening shadow, throwing jutsu after jutsu at it, he did not pay the slightest attention to the side effects and collateral damages of his ninjutsu techniques that have been honed for 40 years.

Entire companies of men cooked inside their armor, falling over dead with shocked still hearts, cut to ribbons, or crushed under rocks and crashing tides, No, Sarutobi Hiruzen saw nothing of that.

He saw the world through red-stained glass, and all he knew was the desire to kill the shadow before him.

The shadow ever flitting through the army, leading the Hokage on a wild chase, reveled in the death and destruction around it.

As men died around the Mind of Hatred in greater and greater numbers, it grew stronger and stronger as their hate fed it like fuel to a fire.

The Mind of Hatred felt its power coming to a zenith, but all of a sudden, it stopped and it struggled.

The Mind of Hatred had been created by the Soul after taking over Yama's body, but it had made a fatal mistake.

It had used Yama's Shadow Clone jutsu in to create the Mind and Body.

Yama's will was carried deep within the Mind of Hatred, and Yama had begun to fight.

Hiruzen was staring at the Shadow with mind afire, seeing the world in shades of read when his reality shattered.

The Shadow, until now indistinct and only humanoid shaped, opened a true pair of eyes.

Hiruzen's view of reality was shattered as he stared into deep, pure, and crystal blue eyes that seemed so very out of place in that hulking shadow mass.

From the epicenter of his vision, where he locked eyes with the Blue Eyes of the Shadow, color seeped back into his vision, bringing the greens of trees and blue of the sky back into reality.

As the color seeped back into his vision, all his rage and hatred ebbed like the tides, leaving a quiet state of mind like the silence after a storm.

Hiruzen then saw the shadow scream in pain and slam its hands into its face as if to try to claw its eyes out, and all that occurred since the shadow first appeared came rushing back into his mind.

He and everyone around him had been put under an incredible genjutsu that turned men mad, and as he looked around, he saw the death and destruction all around him, and he saw that the barbarians were still stuck in the genjutsu, as the Shadow still held immense power, and it could still trap those without chakra, though it may have lost its grip on a supreme Kage like Hiruzen.

Hiruzen knew that whatever this shadow thing was, he could not let it slaughter tens of thousands.

He was the Professor, the second God of Shinobi, and he had learned from the Kurama Clan themselves how to hijack a genjutsu.

He himself did not have the strength to cast a genjutsu over such a large army, but the shadow did, and was still holding all the barbarians within it.

Hiruzen made over 50 hand seals in less than a second and cried out as he flared his powerful chakra.

"Genjutsu Reversal: Earth Above Heaven!"

And the Shadow, still battling with Yama's latent will, did not even notice it happening.

Hiruzen watched as the barbarians around him slowly fell over one by one into a deep and dreamless sleep. They had been seeing red like him, but right before they fell into slumber, they saw a great blanket of feathers fall from the sky.

Turning his attention back to the shadow which was rolling on the ground screaming, clawing its own eyes out to no effect, Hiruzen shuddered at the horror beyond his comprehension.

For all that he did know, he knew nothing of what laid before him and had captured him in genjutsu like he might a child.

However, Hiruzen did not have much time to ponder, as a hand ripped away from the face, and once more a blue eye stared at the Third Hokage.

A great shout resounded in his mind, with the gentle clang of temple bells in the background,

"Seal him, old man! I'll hold him down!"

He would not realize whose voice it was that had spoken to him until years later, and knowing that some secrets are best taken to the grave, Hiruzen would never speak of this moment for as long as he lived.

When he did finally pass into the pure lands, he was the first Hokage to ever die of old age, a privilege that was well fought and won.

The first people he had gone to see were his parents and Biwako. Then his sensei, and then various friends and family who had passed before him. There were two people he could never find though.

His good friend Danzo had disappeared during the Great War, and he could never find Yama and ask him "What the hell did you mean 'old man'?"

He held onto that question for years, and he never got to ask it.

That drunk old fool had called him an old man like he wasn't one himself. Hiruzen barely knew Yama but felt a certain kinship with him that was irreplaceable, like a long lost friend perhaps.

It annoyed Sarutobi Hiruzen that Yama was not there to enjoy peace with him. But being surrounded by his other friends, family, and predecessors in the Pure lands, finally knowing peace, Hiruzen was not all that bothered by it in the end.

But that story happens far into the future.

For now, in the present, Hiruzen, being an age honed ninja, never let an opportunity go to waste.

He made a few quick signs, and the five fingers of his right hand sprouted pale blue fire.

He then shunshined to the crying, screaming mass of shifting shadow and tried to slam the Penta Flame Seal into the center of its body.

As his hand approached though, his vision began to blur to red, and the details of the world washed out as he heard a different, much more sinister voice in his head.

"Do you not want revenge on those Barbarians, they would've sacked Konoha if they had the chance?

The women raped, the children sold into slavery, the men slaughtered, not even the elderly spared.

Konoha in flames, leaving naught but its walls and ashes within.

Don't you want revenge?"

And memories unbidden reeled through his mind, the loss of his precious people, the ninja he sent that never came home, all the funerals, every loss he had ever lived through in his decades of being a ninja

The memories superimposed and melded over the barbarians and in that very moment, the barbarians became the source of every grief and pain he had ever survived.

Lesser Men would have fallen to the path of revenge. Lesser men would have seen their enemies laid to waste for lesser deeds.

But Hiruzen was no lesser man, within Sarutobi Hiruzen dwelt a soul of steel, and the courage to fight for what is right.

With a might cry, he shouted his answer to the void, screaming with the entire force of his being.

"YES I WANT REVENGE!

BUT THERE IS SOMETHING THAT I WANT MORE

AND THAT,

IS FOR MY SONS AND DAUGHTERS TO KNOW A WORLD OF PEACE!'

And Hiruzen's flaming hand slammed down onto the shadow and sealed it.

It shuddered for a moment or two, then stilled and quieted.

Hiruzen may have though it dead, but then it stood up.

Though it was still a featureless void, this time it was stable, and its outline was achingly familiar, and the piercingly blue eyes stared into the Hokage's soul.

A voice that Hiruzen couldn't quite place spoke to him calmly.

"It's sealed for now somewhere between the Inner 8 prong seal and you external 5 fold seal."

Hiruzen grimaced, he knew enough about sealing to know that odd on even was inherently unstable.

The voice continued.

"I have control for now, but the Mind of Hatred as it likes to call itself will break free soon."

Hiruzen thought the name appropriate, due to its corrosive and corruptive effects on his mind that he had experienced first hand.

The voice, having never paused, continued once more.

"We can't keep it sealed, so we need to banish it.

Put a North South seal on me."

Hiruzen paused for a brief second.

Sealing scrolls were unstable for a reason, they opened a pocket dimension by using odd on even seals, and that was why they were never good for long term storage. One day, eventually, and without warning, they would collapse, and what was in them would be lost forever. They were good for only a few years to decades depending on the quality.

His sensei had done research into stabilizing them, and he had looked into Even Odd Even layer combinations.

Without fail though, every single time another Even seal was added to an Even Odd, the scrolls collapsed immediately. There was no surer way to break a sealing scroll than to put another even seal atop it.

The Shadow saw the slight pause, and the eyes turned upwards like were accompanying a slight smirk.

"I know what it does. I said banish for a reason."

Hiruzen nodded grimly, having made the quick decision that banishing this so-called Mind of Hatred was the right choice.

The third Hokage made a few hand seals before clapping his hands together, and when he separated them, the words for north and south were written on his hands in black ink.

The Hokage said simply.

"Thank you for you aid."

The eyes smiled back at him

"Just fixing my own mess."

And the Hokage slammed his hands into the shadow, North Above South, and the Shadow disappeared the instant his hands made contact.

The Hokage then felt the genjutsu on the Barbarians disappear, and he knew they would soon begin to wake.

At Orochimaru's battlefield, Danzo stared at Orochimaru.

"I will not repeat myself.

Activate the control tag and order him to kill the rest of the soldiers"

The snakes had finished their feast, and gone back to Ryuichi cave, and maybe 50% or the original army was left in scattered bands amid a battlefield full of craters and poison.

The Edo Tensei then spoke.

"Respectfully, Elder Shimura, I will do no such thing.

I trained to protect, not to kill."

Danzo ignored the Edo Tensei.

"And get him to shut up."

Orochimaru made a half ram seal, and did as ordered by Danzo, exerting full control over the Edo Tensei, and transmitting the commands.

The Edo Tensei stood there, arms crossed in defiance, now featuring a slight frown.

"I said no, Orochimaru-dono"

Danzo stared at Orochimaru and warned him in a low and threatening voice.

"Orochimaru..."

Orochimaru was completely at a loss. The control tag had never failed before.

He hated everything about this. The snakes, the army, Danzo, the tag not working and this stupid accursed genin before him that kept calling him Orochimaru-dono.

This was a completely shit day, and nothing could make it worse

The Edo Tensei spoke once more

"I've been brought here for something much more important. I can feel it more surely than I have felt anything else before."

And then Orochimaru's day got significantly worse.

A shifting black mass, eternally deep and black, popped up from nowhere, in between Danzo and Orochimaru.

The black mass the coalesced into the outline of a human body, strong in aura and back ramrod straight.

Orochimaru felt the spectre of death fall upon him and though he knew not the creature before him, he knew that it had him dead to rights between its jaws.

The the shadow spoke, in a frighteningly jovial tone.

"How are we doing today gentlemen? Why is everyone so serious?

Let's make things a little more fun, shall we?"

But then the shadow paused for a slight second, looking at Danzo with a double take.

"Oh Danzo, you're here. I love you to death.

I am such an admirer of your work.

Good Job!"

The shadow then reached over to Danzo, who, like Orochimaru, suddenly felt frozen in space like the very air around him had solidified.

The shadow then lightly patted Danzo on the back as it complimented him.

And Danzo shattered into a million pieces.

Orochimaru instantly knew the man was dead as he felt the seal on the back of his tongue melt into acid, and the acid would've burned through his jugular and carotids if not for Orochimaru prodigious healing factor given to him by the snakes.

The same thing should have happened to all Root Agents on the continent, who knows how wany survived like Orochimaru?

The shadow then looked at its hand with a questioning air, as if it hadn't expected Danzo to fall apart.

It then spoke to itself.

"Oh well. Easy come, Easy go."

The Edo Tensei then spoke.

"This is why I was brought here."

At the sound of the reincarnation's voice, the shadow whipped its head and stared at the dead man brought back to life.

It whispered and snarled out like a curse.

"YOU! I HATE YOU!"

The Edo Tensei smiled.

"I don't even know who you are!

EIGHT GATES OPEN!

FEEL THE POWER OF YOUTH!"

Then Might Dai seared the air with his movements, invisible to even Orochimaru's eye, grabbed the Shadow that had just killed Danzo, and punched it so hard that Orochimaru was sent flying a quarter of a mile from the shockwave, sustaining serious injuries.

Then Might Dai began the battle in earnest.

The Body of Hatred against Might Dai in a body that healed itself, never felt pain, and never ran out of chakra.

Orochimaru, tending to his wounds from a very far distance, witnessed a battle between Titans.

His eyes shown, and a new height of power that he never even dreamed of was before him.

Men that made Tsunade look like a child in comparison.

The soldiers that were still alive were fleeing from the battlefield as fast as they could, but Orochimaru was enraptured by the visions of glory.

As Might Dai and the Body of Hatred collided, the thunderous booms shattered the eardrums present, and Orochimaru paid no mind to his bleeding ears.

The two fighters lit the air on fire from the friction of their speed, leaving flaming afterimages in their wake all over the arena that they were forming around themselves as they carved out the landscape.

The shadow was yelling at Might Dai, and Orochimaru heard the voice in his chest, resounding so strongly it threatened to stop his heart.

"YOU WHO SHOULD HAVE GIVEN INTO HATE

YOU WHO SHOULD HAVE HATED

YOU ARE NOTHING

YOU ARE LESS THAN NOTHING

YOU ARE NO BETTER THAN YOUR FELLOW MAN

SO...

WHY...

WON'T...

YOU....

FALL?"

The last five words were punctuated with tremendous, shattering strikes, that upheaved the earth and left the land quaking.

But Might Dai took them all those blows in stride, blocking and deflecting them with the confidence and ease with which a master teaches a student.

Beneath his glorious mustache as bushy as Dai was youthful, a large and toothy smile emerged. and all Might Dai had to say was.

"Thank you for cheering me on!"

And he cocked his fist back, chambering it for a strong right straight, and when he let it loose, Orochimaru saw a blindingly bright line of light burn into his retinas, transfixing the shadow and continuing off into the horizon, beyond vision.

Might Dai had struck so hard and so fast, that his fist had turned the very essence that made up the air into pure energy that shot forward as a coherent beam of infinite potential, and that beam punctured the Shadow with ease and shot off into space to travel eternally unhindered.

Such was the power of the 8 Gates Edo Tensei.

The Body Of Hatred, crumbling to pieces starting at the wound it has sustained in the middle of its chest, gazed with fury at Might Dai.

"DAMN YOU!"

Might Dai smiled and stuck up his thumb.

"Well fought nameless stranger!"

As the Body of Hatred crumbled into oblivion, Might Dai faded to golden light, his work done, returning to the Pure Lands.

The Body of Hatred never had a chance against Might Dai, in Edo Tensei, or any other form really.

Might Dai was a man that was so preoccupied with protecting what he loved that there was no room in his heart for hatred.

No matter how Hatred could have confronted him, with the well-being of his loved ones on the line, Might Dai would have found the strength to defeat it.

Back in the World of Izanami, as the Kyuubi and Soul of Hatred fought, locked in eternal battle, Yama and Shijin were working together to bring about a miracle.

Izanami was a world without time, looping endlessly, so Yama and Shijin never found themselves in a hurry.

However, they certainly needed all the time they could get, what they were working towards was of such prodigious dimension that if they were able to achieve it, it would even surpass their achievement of creating this fake reality through their "Time-travel jutsu".

Yama and Shijin were working to make the world real. It was one thing to make a fake world, but to make the fake into real was orders of magnitude above that in complexity and difficulty.

They needed an eternity.

Yama and Shijin never lost faith, and never stopped working. No normal human could ever do what they did, but Yama and Shijin were broken.

They were so thoroughly broken that when they put themselves back together, they were only whole enough to do one thing and one thing only, Defeat Kaguya.

They weren't even whole enough to give up.

They had essentially already defeated Kaguya in this fake reality, the great Freedom Sutra meant that the Tailed Beasts could never bee reunited against their will. Kaguya could only come about if all bijuu willingly came together to resurrect the ten tails. Even if the first 8 agreed, Kurama, the eternal and uncorruptable guardian of hatred, would never agree.

Something the two realized as they studied the flow of time in their quest to turn fake into real, was that fate was undeniable in some ways. Things that were meant to happen would happen no matter what, and no amount of control would ever be enough.

Even the hand that shifted their original timeline could not overcome fate. Sakura and Obito were never meant to die, and Kaguya was meant to be sealed.

Some cruel god had meddled with the tapestry of Fate for amusement, just to see how the waters would churn as the settled back to where they were supposed to be.

But Kaguya was never meant to win, and even a god couldn't change that.

Thus they worked to turn fake into real, and restore the real world where fate had decreed that Kaguya be sealed.

Turning the fake into real had two requirements.

One, the people of the world must be given souls. In Real Worlds lived Real People.

Two, The Fire in the unnamed cave must be relit. That Fire was the Heart of the World, and if it breathed, danced, and lived, so did the world.

The God Tree was the key to both requirements.

When it had stolen the chakra from the beings of the original world, it had stolen the souls as well. Yama had brought the souls from the real to the fake unintnetionally, and had he not, all would be doomed, but Fate works in mysterious ways, and truth is always stranger than fiction.

By unsealing the God Tree, Shijin and Yama could take all the souls from the tree into the Kinga of Hell, summoned by Shijin's RinneSharingan, and then use the King of Hell Rebirth Technique to place those souls into those of this world.

Then, the wood of the God Tree itself could be used as kindling to light the Fire of Reality. All it would take is a spark, and the world would burn to life.

When Izanami finally ended, Shijin and Yama would finally put there plans into motion, and all would be well in the world once more.

Who knows how long Shijin and Yama had to wait for Kurama to finally win over and consume the Soul of Hatred?

The Soul would win over and over again, but Kurama only needed to win once, consume the Soul, and Izanami would end.

When Izanami finally did end, Kurama appeared back in the world, significantly weakened, but once more bearing the curse of Hatred, and protecting humanity from its incarnation, completing Kurama's existence as protector and eldest of the Bijuu.

Kurama laid there, purpose fulfilled, content and dying.

Baryon Mode; it was a fire that once lit, could not be put out.

Kurama felt more alive then he ever did before. He was dying, but he was without frenzy, without pretense, and without apathy.

Kurama was perfect as Hagoromo had created him.

In peace, Kurama died.

Yama and Shijin reappeared as Izanami ended, well-rested, and ready to work a miracle.

Yama undid the seal on stomach, and ripped the God Tree from within him, appearing the tree into a clearing between the Fire and Lightning Armies.

Shijin, blind in one eye from Izanami, still had another RinneSharingan to call upon, and he summoned the King of Hell, who consumed the God Tree and spit out a few splinters.

The splinters were collected by Yama, and he disappeared with great speed as he brought the remnants of the God Tree, the Kindling he would use, to the unnamed cave.

He had to hurry, as he was the jinchuuriki of the God Tree, and it was just unsealed. He was dying, and he needed to complete his task before he lost his strength.

Shijin on the other hand focused every last bit of his chakra before performing his jutsu.

It was the same one that Nagato had used to resurrect Konoha, except Shijin was going to affect every single person on the planet, both past and future.

What Nagato had done was a whisper of wind compared to the Heavenly Zephyr of Shijin.

He cast the jutsu, and in this Fake World now lived Real People.

Yama, in the unnamed cave, placed the kindling into its place atop a stone monolith, and remembered a time long ago, but not easily forgotten.

For at one point in the past, Yama had been but a single ember burning in the God Tree, and now he was becoming that ember once again.

He was using his own life force to set the kindling aflame, and though he would die, the World would become Real.

And so he channeled every bit of his life force into burning himself bright and warm, and he once more became the ember burning in the God Tree.

The Flame of Reality was lit, and Yama was no more.

Shijin was the only person in the world that felt the pulse of reality. That quiet and disconcerting feeling in his belly had finally gone away, and he knew that all was finally well.

Kaguya was sealed beyond doubt.

The souls had been returned unto the land.

The Flame of Reality was Lit.

The only problem was that Shijin was dying, same as Nagato had been following his version of the jutsu.

The King of Hell is no easy tool to wield, and one must always pay the piper.

The price to bring souls back into this world was Shijin's own life.

Yama was already dead, Kurama was dead, and even Shijin himself was dying.

But Shijin still had one eye left. He still had Izanagi.

With his final breath he cast the jutsu, and death was defied once more in the Land of Ninja.

Kurama woke with a start, for he had never slept before.

He was so sure he had died, but he found himself whole, and unburnt by the flames of Baryon Mode.

The Incarnation of Hatred was safe within his stomach, same as it should be.

The God Tree's influence had been purged from the world, and he could no longer even detect a trace of it.

In fact, compared to his memories, somehow the world just felt more right.

He knew not the words to explain it, but what had been wrong had been made right.

He then remembered his eternal fight with Hatred, and as he tasted the air, he detected the foul taint of the work of a mighty Sharingan.

He knew then that he had been tricked by that bastard devil Uchiha Shijin, and he cast his senses over the continent, intent upon dealing destined death to that Uchiha.

But his anger suddenly disappeared.

Kurama hastened to the spot he had found with his senses, and he was upon a rocky ledge that overlooked Konoha.

He had been here once before, with Yama and Shijin.

And now he found himself here with Shijin once again.

Shijin laid upon the rock, eyes staring into the sky, like he was watching the clouds go by.

But his eyes were just as clouded as the skys above.

Shijin was dead and blind, and Kurama knew that he would not have his revenge today or ever.

Kurama tried to forget this moment, but Bijuu never forget like mortals do.

Kurama had known Indra himself. To think that the mighty Kyuubi did not know of Izanagi and Izanami was foolish ignorance.

Kurama would never admit that he won an eternal battle with Hatred due to Izanami, and he would never admit that he survived activating Baryon Mode because of Izanagi.

He couldn't let himself owe two life debts to a man already dead himself, it would break his pride to never pay them back.

So Kurama very carefully scooped out a hollow in the stone with his mighty claws, and laid Shijin's Body in it.

He then methodically and unerringly built a stone cairn around the body.

When he was finished, he breathed fire over the grave, sealing the stones forever, interring the body with an honor that would only be afforded to one other person.

The Kyuubi stamped his paw into the molten rock, so that any who may come here would know that if they disturbed this area, they would face the full wrath of the Nine Tailed Demon Fox, the greatest of all the Bijuu.

As Kurama left the grave, he muttered under his breath.

"Be grateful, Uchiha Shijin. It is the greatest end one could ever ask for.

An enemy respected by the mighty Kurama."

Kurama, having already sensed Yama as well, took his time in reaching the unnamed cave in the ancestral lands of the Senju.

To enter the cave, he shrunk back down to his silver, single tailed form, and quietly padded to the final room.

Yama was seated, eyes closed, hands clasped as if in prayer or meditation.

It was the same way that he had sat in the Hatake Clan Garden every morning.

If Kurama didn't know better, he would think that Yama was once more meditating, ignoring the world around him.

Kurama felt the weight of the world on his shoulders right now, and he knew that even he was not allowed to remain here.

He was only allowed entrance to retrieve Yama, but after that, the cave would be forbidden for him and all other beings.

So he morphed into a slightly larger fox, and he dragged Yama out of the cave by the back of his shirt.

Exiting the cave, Yama dropped him on the ground, reformed to his normal gargantuan size, and gently placed Yama atop his own head with one of his tails.

Kurama then took Yama to the highest mountain in the world, a peak with no name, never before seen by mortal eyes.

The Demon Fox then threw Yama high into the air, and with the strongest fire he could summon, he cremated Yama.

Yama's body was rendered to ashes, and was spread across the world by the four winds of the greatest summit, the land closest to heaven.

Yama and Shijin could have survived if they so wished.

Shijin still had Izanagi at the end, and it was definitely powerful enough to save himself, Yama, and Kurama.

But Yama and Shijin had instead chosen to die.

Naruto and Sasuke still needed souls too.

And well, Yama and Shijin, they were never meant to be here in the first place.