A/N: Hope you enjoy the long chapter~!

Please excuse the delay. Ronin was sick for awhile and wasn't able to send me what he had. Likewise, I'm under the weather myself and relied more on Ronin to help me with this chapter. I'll say this now, this particular chapter...rough in patches, because you see, we're both exhausted and not feeling well. Something is better than nothing, no?

...also, we need therapy after the latest RWBY episode.

Pretty sure we all do; those last five minutes were dark. Game of Thrones level dark.

I'm simultaneously impressed and horrified. What in blazes was that? Darkest thing I've seen in awhile...

I'll say it right now, SPOILER AND SPOILER is NOT happening to our dear sweet SPOILER, SPOILER, and SPOOOIIILER in this story! No-thank-you!

*Shivers*

Antibiotics and antivirals are starting to fix whatever's been beating me over the head, but the fact is, I'm old. Might be a part of it.

With my fifteen year anniversary on this site finally here, I find myself reflecting on the little things in life. What was once a lazy pastime meant for me and a few friends really grew and evolved over time. There are days when I look back on the last fifteen years here and I wonder if anyone will remember me; if I made an impact, despite never making a single cent on any of these stories. Some days were happier than others, and some stories I enjoyed writing WAY too much; to the point where I'd stay up all night working on them.

And of course, there are times when I look to the future and wonder what will become of things when I'm gone.

Of course, I try not to dwell on the latter overmuch; I'm still alive and still writing. In an ideal world, I'd like to keep doing so for as long as I can. But old age is catching up to me and these days, the world is filled with so much madness and death. Even before that, so many friends and fellow writers I once knew are gone, now. Will I still be here in twenty years? Ten? Five? Its a chilling thought. But for now, I'm still here, still writing.

As ever, I own no references, quotes, memes or themes.

Not a wit or a one. Here we go~!

"Tell me what you love. Give me the pleasure of taking that from you."

~Future is Now.

Ambush

When it came, he didn't experience the sensation at the point of impact, so much as it was that he had vague recollections of it. He hadn't the time to register the foreign presence fully before he found himself cratered in a cliffside a considerable distance away – half his face throbbing, blood and spit pooling just beyond his lips.

'…When these cliffs get here?' The world was still spinning as he dredged himself free of the upright crater, rock, and debris falling around him.

'He's there… with them.'

That was all it took for him to snap to a proper focus, the world following after. Remnants of dirt and stone burned away as he was bathed in golden fire. His eyes shot to the horizon. A vortex of luminescent fury spiraled out as murder became his undivided drive.


(.0.0.0.)


"!"

Neo lept back as a fright took her. The appearance of this odd stranger… the death of the Summer Maiden… Naruto's violently imposed exodus… It all happened right before her eyes, but too quickly for her to process.

That… that… thing that had made itself known just as Naruto and the Summer Maiden's fight was climbing to new heights… it just stood there now. Clenching and unclenching its knuckles with a most curious look on its face.

"Ah, and here I was only going for a… how you say… love tap." A sickly grin formed on its lips. "A frail one, that'll be rectified in time."

"Who are you!?" Winter snapped to action, bearing her saber forth; fiery, frigid light blazing in her eyes.

"What are you!?" Not to be caught behind, Amber ripped her staff from its holster. It reached its full length with a click as her maiden power began to burn in her eyes as well.

What was the right word, Neo had to agree.

The thing before them could not be called Human or Grimm. Its form was humanoid enough, but that was where the familiar features ended. Its skin was pale – devoid of the slightest pigment – with a horn that crowned around its skull before curving outwards and upwards into a point. It bore one eye that was almost pearl-like, but the other was a sickly yellow shade; bearing a black wheel pattern with eight spokes coming out of its abyssal center. Gray, rectangular protrusions stood out from its face, trying to resemble hair, but only succeeding in a bare-bones fashion. Black tattoos that were almost tribal adorned the parts of his body that weren't covered by clothes – baggy black pants and a white long coat accented by red being all that kept him modest.

'What a freak!' Neo, Amber, and Winter – unbeknownst to each other – shared the thought.

"Tell me… what are those toys meant to do?" It spoke in a way as to condescend, looking down at Amber and Winter as if they were toddlers angrily cradling rattles. It didn't so much as acknowledge Neo and she was grateful for it.

They couldn't take him. Not at all. This monstrosity that had made a ragdoll of their strongest was not in their league. He was so far above them that only a swift death would await any that tried to move in on him.

Neo hadn't survived as long as she had by challenging threats that were beyond her. She had a keen sense of how strong an adversary was and just how screwed she might be should she so choose to challenge them.

She preferred her prey to be flimsy and meek with an unfit arrogance to them, but she understood all too well that if she stayed here… the ones put to slaughter would be her, right alongside these maidens that didn't know better than to not challenge the insurmountable.

"We won't ask you again…" Clouds cloaked the sky and the temperature saw a rapid drop, Winter looked about ready to cut the formalities. "Who are you?" Her sneer shook Neo's heart.

'Not good!' Damn this Atlas nutcase! If she was courting death then do so away from here!

Neo needed to get out before these maniacs got going! This was not a battle that she could compete in!

"Hmm, I do suppose introductions are in orde-"

"RAAAAAGHHHH!"

"!" A roar, a flash, and a bang were the harbingers of his arrival. Like the big damn hero he was, he crashed in – golden coat billowing in the wind – his arm still outstretched from having smacked the smugness off the face of that alien bastard.

Neo had almost cracked a smile before his head whipped towards them and she immediately understood that nothing was okay. Those eyes – that were usually so full of life and mirth and confidence that bordered on arrogance – were now harsh; trepidation and anxiety being all she saw reflected there.

"Get away from here!"

"But-" Amber tried to voice some dissent.

"NOW!" His order was final and absolute. He left no room for more as he turned and rushed into the fray. Neo noticed that he didn't leave far away at all. For all the force that his return strike had packed; the alien had only been pushed back a dozen and a half yards. It was already recovering from the damage in a miraculous fashion.

As much was meaningful – when Naruto was struck he'd flown back so far and so fast that it had seemed as if he'd vanished outright.

'Even he doesn't believe he'll win.' Neo interpreted his order as much. He wasn't sending them away just because he wished to settle this alone… 'He's sacrificing himself…' Neo didn't know how to process that, but she understood that she didn't have time to.

She needed to get far, far away from this place. She looked to the direction most opposite to the coming conflict and ran… or she would have, but an iron grip held her firm.

She followed the trail of the arm up to Winter's scowling visage. Her eyes were quivering and were filled with just as much concern as Naruto's – no, moreso than even that as impossible as it should be.

"We have to help him." It sounded like the only thing Winter was resolute in at this moment.

"NO!" She wished to screamed, cursing the gods for her missing voice – as she had many times before. She had to settle on just nodding her head furiously to the negative, putting her foot to Winter's side, and pushing away, trying with her all to free herself from the Maiden's grip.

It was to no avail.

Damn these witches and their unfair powers.

And damn Naruto.

For it'd been in chasing him that she found herself intertwined in this mess that was so, so far above her expertise.

She hadn't known what drew her to him, she still didn't.

He'd been a cute boy and still was in all fairness.

One that didn't turn away from her despite how shady she seemed.

One that was still kind to her despite how she was forced to stick to pen and pad when she so tried to talk.

One that laughed and joked with her, something that was so rare for her before now.

One that didn't try to pry up anything about her past, as if knowing that it was something that she'd rather forget.

Damn her now.

Yes.

Damn Neo for wanting to go save him. To stop him from dooming himself. But she couldn't… yes, damn her twice, for being so weak.

"Winter! Enough!" Amber broke in between them, helping to free Neo from the Schnee's grip. "We can do this without her!"

The Fall Maiden turned her gaze upon her now and those eyes, they held something different. The anxiety was there, but so much more was as well:

Rage.

Wrath.

Betrayal.

Pity.

And not all of it was directed at her, but she could tell, that some of it - considerably some - was definitely being sent her way.

"Naruto believed in you… that fool will always be too trusting..."

That was all the words she had for her, turning and rushing away to the battle that was already picking up motion. Winter didn't bother her anyone either, running into hell right aside her fellow Maiden.

Naruto was a fool.

And they were fools as well.

Everyone was so damned foolish… so absolutely illogical. But who was she to criticize? She might have had a cozy life once upon a time. Back before. Back when she was just 'little Trivia'.

But what was she doing standing around for?

Did she want to be a fool as well?

That wouldn't be the smart move, right?

That wouldn't keep her alive, right?

She didn't have the time to think.

She couldn't think.

So she just turned.

She turned and ran.

She really needed to get away from here.


(.0.0.0.)


Taiyang wanted to hate the sight before him.

The darkest parts of him and most righteous bits spoke in concert with the notion, that he'd be justified if he just wanted to throw her away further than his eyes could track.

Seeing Raven sitting there regaling his girls – precious Ruby and daring Yang just as well as Vernal and Jin – with stories of times past… better times.

It should have put a sour taste in his mouth.

Those times… they were something that Raven had no right to anymore. She forfeited them when she abandoned them. When she abandoned all of them. The logical part of Tai felt as much to be true. No one could have the best of both worlds. But such a thought didn't reach his heart, how could it when seeing his daughters so happy?

He'd been worried when the girls suddenly vanished for the whole of a day some short time back. He feared that Yang had taken them to look for Raven again, as she had so long ago.

He felt some much fear back way then, knocked him clean out of his drunken stupor and keep him clean, it did! And he felt the same fear when he couldn't find them the other day – it was palpable in the knowing that this time they'd have an actual chance of finding her.

She'd been sticking ever so close nowadays.

But no.

It had been Ruby to drag Yang along with the aid of little Jinn. The excuse – it seems – was to ask her stories about Summer…

But Taiyang called bull crude on that.

While he never intentionally brought up mention of his second, true love in casual conversation – as those were wounds that would never heal – he'd never been secretive when either of the girls asked about her. Moreso than that, there was Qrow who could ramble on endlessly about the 'good ol days' when he had his fill of liquor.

That and Raven was something of a dreadful storyteller, only half remembering most things, even during the best of times.

She'd been too far in her own head even back then to record events properly. As much proved true now, as she recounted the time Summer took them on a daring mission to steal away Ozpin's cane and the disasters that ensued. There were so many holes in the tale that even he barely understood what she was talking about – and he'd been there!

It was a story that he – and Qrow – regaled the girls with many times. Yet there Ruby sat, doing her best to look enthused, but the way those silver eyes flicked over to Yang ever so often did so divulge Ruby's true motives.

The cunning little minx – she was every bit Summer's daughter – this was never about learning more about her mother.

It was for the sake of getting Yang to spend more time with her own.

A covert operation that would make Summer proud.

And oh, Yang did do her best not to belong, arms crossed and a frown marring those cheeks that were normally so jolly. But the way she would scoot a centimeter closer to Raven on occasion did disclose that she was coming around.

Taiyang did not enjoy the sight – no, not fully – knowing that Raven could up and leave again; be two Kingdoms over in the very next instance. But rather Yang chose to forgive her wayward mother or not... as much was never for him to dictate.

Never had been.

He was often controlling, overbearing even – it was the mother bear in him – but he knew better than to step in now.

He tried – in the past – to steer people away from paths he wouldn't wish to walk himself.

Qrow, Summer, and even Raven herself, but that only created divides… made them more willing to act without so much as asking for his opinion beforehand.

It left him unable to be there for them, to be at their sides when they were hurt, to be at her side when she died

He wouldn't allow that to happen again, not with Yang and not with Ruby. He'd be their shield – for what could he be except that – but he would not be a barrier holding them back.

Well, he'd try not to be, Ruby did try to race ahead before she was ready, so he did need to temper her patience just a bit, but he would not stop them from becoming huntress – even if he loath the thought – and he would not stop them from trying to repair bridges long burnt.

But that being said, he wouldn't let them live unhealthy lifestyles. So as Raven's horrid retelling of their epic adventure came to end, and as the clock struck midnight, he moved in, shifting from his place along the frame of the kitchen's entrance to the living room proper.

"Okay, girls, time for bed. I want you all showered and asleep within the next thirty." There was much discontent there, Jinn was pliable enough, but the rest – all firmly into their teenage phases – looked ready to rebel, but he would have none of that.

"There are some chores to be done if you're restless." The girls all rushed off, all save Vernal, but he only needed to give her a pointed stare… which prove ineffective still. He sighed, he imagined a time when that had been effective on people. Yet maybe that only had been in his dreams.

"Naruto's on speed dial." He quickly added and off she went as well.

Raven let loose half of a giggle at the sight of it all, holding herself off...

maybe for an attempt at solidarity.

Or maybe for any other number of reasons.

Tai didn't know or understand. And he was coming to terms with how he'd probably never understand her.

Not in the way that he had once wanted to.

There was an awkward silence for a time, but finally after the last of them had fully trudged upstairs, she spoke up. "There's a hellfire in them."

Taiyang sighed. Leave it to Raven for that to be the takeaway, but also she wasn't at all wrong. They were a handful. "… Would have been nice to have some extra hands around raising them."

"This again… really?"

His eyes sharpened there, not keen on how blasé she came off. "Yes, 'this again'! And it will always be 'this' until you say it."

"Say what?" She scoffed and that hatred that he couldn't bear to feel before was finally setting in. "Do you want an 'I'm sorry'? Is that what you're after? You want me to beg for forgiveness?"

"No!" He bore up, eyes harsh, aura flaring. "I've given up on that. All these years and not once have I thought – truly thought – that you'd ever properly apologize! Your pride won't allow it! What I want you to say… what I want you to explain is… why… That's the part that kept me up at night for years. So… why?"

The room seemed to deflate then, emotions going cold. Raven shelled up, not conveying an ounce of anything, not rage, not sorrow, and not even an ounce of arrogance. Taiyang's rage was still so very present, but his was a patient fury – for the only thing that you could ever be with Raven was patient.

But he swore to himself – then, there, now – that this was the end of any tranquility.

The final stop.

If he was not sated here then she'd be truly and properly dead to him.

He would comfort his daughters if… when… she failed them, but he would not engage her directly, not so much as acknowledge her… not unless she said something of substance here.

"I… I've already told you why."

"Hardly, you've told me bits, little statements that leave me to ink out the meanings… 'because of Ozpin', 'because of Salem', 'because' of anything that will let you dance around the truth."

That set something off in her. It surely had to – for all at once, she erupted, her eyes blazed and aura flared and something more did as well, the powers of a Maiden making their presence known. He'd known about her ascension by now, but now he truly knew that Raven was something more, had become something new… not quite a god, but no longer human either.

It could be called blasphemous to stand so tall before her, but he did so all the same.

He held his ground and pulled his aura to bear to let it be known that he'd not be made docile. This was bigger than him, this woman wished to be around his daughters, so he would challenge her resolve, so as to make sure that she'd not flake so easily again.

"You want to know?" She stomped up to him, blazing eyes meeting his own, glaring into them so as to find a hint of doubt. She'd not find his resolve wanting, not here. "Do you think you can handle the truth?"

"I'm a big boy, Raven. I've grown up. Now it's time for you to do the same."

That shook her; it shook her something fierce, and so once more, she deflated.

Imagine that?

Omnipotence in hand and yet she folded before a mere mortal.

He'd not rub it in…

Not now.

Not until this talk proved finished.

"-aid." It was a whisper, that proud bird of prey sounding more like a mouse.

"What?"

"I'm afraid! Okay!? I. Am. Afraid." She fell silent there, giving Tai the time to take it all in.

Not that it was much of a shock.

He'd know that she was afraid, but the way that she worded it now, he picked up on something that he hadn't quite realized until this singular moment.

"Am?" He asked, picking up on the tiniest hiccup in her words. "As in not 'was'?"

"He knows the English language, people! Someone give him a prize!" She bit that out with enough fury and ire as to fuel a fire. "… but yes, Tai... 'was' implies that I ever stopped being afraid, but do trust me when I say that this fear has never ended… not once…"

Tai bit the lining of his cheek, bit it so hard that he drew blood. He wanted to ask…

Did that mean…

No.

It couldn't be the case. He held himself back, not daring to ask what she meant.

"… It was there before you… before STRQ… It was there during our best times, our greatest achievements… And it was damn sure there as I wised up to Ozpin's ways."

That confirmed it and without him needing to ask… he hated himself for not being ready to hear it.

He was the mother bear, the guardian, the shield. It was his pride to know that he was a safe haven for those around him. To know that she never felt safe in his embrace… not once… was a lot to take in.

"Being with the tribe makes it easy. I feel fear there, sure. Fear of revolt. Fear of usurpation. But I know how to deal with that fear." She took on a sharp grin, a cruel little smile that never reached her eyes. "Be strong and survive. That's all it takes and all that there was time for: survival."

She took in a breath and he thought he could put in his two cents here, but she stopped him, raising a hand to bid him to let her continue without his petty interruptions.

"That life. It allowed me to handle fears that I knew, fears that I could conquer. With them, I didn't have to deal with true fear at least."

'True fear?' What was that meant to mean?

"True fear comes differently; it comes from another place, it comes in the quiet of the night. It comes when you're supposed to be safe. When you're in a warm bed, the closest measly Grimm is dozens of miles away and Salem even further."

"It comes to you as you're staring down at the face of something you creating. As you're staring down at the face of this miraculous creature that loves you, honestly loves you. With a man at your side – a man that was miraculously able to love you – despite how flawed you know you are."

"Raven-" She glared and he knew to let her finish.

"… And in spite of all that, you just feel more fear. You start fearing what you know to be true. That this world will try to harm this little creature in your arm, just as much as it harmed you. And you know that you're not built to be able to stop it. You're good at killing, not rearing… and no advice or books or anything would change that!"

She swiped her arm back in aggravation, wind kicking up and threatening to topple over so much furniture.

"So you look for a way out, you start relying on other fears – ones that you've tried so desperately to suppress – to give you some escape route. You begin to tell yourself that those fears were always true. You tell yourself that those strange looks your husband gives your best friend do really mean more than he'd admit."

Tai wanted to call foul, to claim that he hadn't felt anything for Summer while he was with her.

But would that be the truth?

When did he finally give himself over to Summer's embrace – to Summer's love – it had felt so right.

Like it was something that he'd yearned for, yet had been denied until that very moment. Had he loved Summer before he ever realized it? Had it been obvious to all but him? Had Raven realized it even before he did?

He couldn't ask, because she hadn't stopped talking.

"…You tell yourself that they would have been together all along had you not been so swift to steal his gaze while she was too busy playing hero. You tell yourself that they'll move on and pair up the moment you're out of the picture. You let yourself buy into those petty fears and run... maybe just to see if they hold water."

Was that true? Had her leaving all just been some cruel test to see if he would break down without her?

Some sick experiment to see if he'd hold faith or move on!?

"And when they do, when you spy in to see them cuddling on a couch watching some sappy family movie with your daughter, you believe those fears to have been right. And that gives strength to your other fears, but you try to move on."

He wanted to yell so many things at that moment…

but she was… right.

He remembered that night well, it was the night that he first truly knew that he loved Summer. Yang was six months by then and Summer had been there for every second of those six months.

She'd been his only help after Raven left, from the very moment after. She even tried to breastfeed, but Yang never latched. His little firecracker had always been independent, she had to be.

Because she learned, far too young, that not everyone was promised to remain by her.

And that reaffirmed something to Taiyang.

Yes, he had moved on and yes it didn't take him years to do so, but none of that would have been needed had Raven never left.

"You've given up any right to be furious, because you know that had you stayed then your husband would still be your husband and your daughter would still be your daughter. But they're someone else's now and there are no re-dos."

So she did have enough awareness to not place all the blame on him.

That was a start.

But it was also an end to the winds in his sail. He felt unable to place all the guilt on her. Not when she bore the guilt well enough without his piling on.

"… So you press on into the life you did choose. You lead your tribe. You lead them right into a girl with a burden she didn't ask for. A girl that is terrified of everything and you can relate, oh you can relate too well. You try to help her. If for no other reason than because of your belief that if you can help her then it would be a way of helping yourself."

Made sense, broken people often try to help people broken in the same way they are… but in the end, a broken person can't fix anyone until they themselves are repaired.

"You give her some tough love and try to help her be strong; because that's the only thing you're good at. And you try and try and try, but when she becomes a flight risk your well-trudged fears sit in and you do what you've always done. You choose survival."

So that's the story, it made Taiyang feel sick to his stomach. There was no explaining away those actions and yet Raven didn't try to. She just carried on with her rambling. Perhaps to speed by her guilt. Perhaps because she understood that nothing she could say would help her conscience.

"And after that, all that, when you hear that your best friend is dead and that your ex-husband is hurting you think to go back, for him... for her, but just as you would make that move... make that portal... your fear remind you... they remind you what you are, what you've chosen to become. Salem is after you, if not before then definitely now. And you know that those fears... that they will always be better off without you do ring true. If not before then definitely now."

"Are you done?" Tai felt so many things and none of them were pleasant.

"Yes. that's it. The big moment of vulnerability that you've waited two decades for. The whole truth. I've left everything at your feet. So… Do you feel better for it?"

"No." he gave his honest answer about the whole thing. He thought that this would just be her admitting that she was a scared little girl and in a sense, it was. But in exposing herself, she exposed him as well, exposed his failings in a way that he never recognized. Taiyang – ever vigilant – had failed to even notice just how much his own wife was hurting.

"I didn't think you would." She sighed, it almost sounded like one of relief, and for good reason. He held little doubt that she had shared any of this with anyone; not in its totality. It felt almost like an honor, but truthfully it was more of a lead yoke, heavy on his shoulders.

"It's hard, to know… to know that you never felt safe with me. Not once?"

"I've never felt safe with myself. Better yet anyone else… even you."

"… You should have said something. We could have-"

"You could have told me everything would be okay!" Her sass was brutal and to the point. "But when has anything been okay?"

"Beacon," he shot back immediately, "I thought that everything was pretty good back then. I thought you saw it the same."

"You were just too naive to know how screwed we were. You still are."

"Hn, maybe so," He chose not to take her jeering to heart, they made progress in something, and he didn't want to ruin it. "Or maybe you're just paranoid. Still are."

"Is it really paranoia when you're always right?"

"Yes… at least when the reason you're so right is because of oh so many self-fulfilling prophecies."

She said nothing, and that was all Taiyang needed to know that he'd won this discussion. It felt good, should have at least, but it was a victory that came at the loss of much. And this, there was still something else to be said.

"I don't want to know, but I gotta ask... are you going to run away from that one, too?" An eye strayed to her stomach.

She got all defensive at that. Squaring up, and covering her belly.

"So you knew?"

He rolled his eyes. Was she for real? "I'm the one that babysat you through your first pregnancy, of course, I'd know!"

"Hn, the way I remember it, it was Summer to help me through."

"Your memory has always been terribly biased."

"The same could be said for you or do you wish to regal me with the tale of how it was definitely your sole doing that made Qrow so magnetic to women?"

What!? He was, if not for the skirt incident, Qrow would have definitely been maiden-less to his last day. But he wouldn't take the bait here: "You're distracting from my question."

"Am I? ..." She hummed and hemmed, trying to look above it all, but he held firm, and she deflated, that was thrice now.

Was he a child for counting? Maybe? But this was the most emotive she'd been in so very long. Maybe because of the baby and the hormones they brought?

Bah, perish the thought.

She gave him a serious look and he could see the fear. It was like something that couldn't be unseen once you relieved just how present it was. "I... don't know..."

"Raven-"

"But! ...but even if I did, he'd find me. I'm afraid, but he's brave enough for the both of us. He'd find me and drag me back, even if he has to bind and gag me."

"Maybe that's what I should have done?" It was a joke, really.

"... maybe it is."

'Hey! Don't agree to that!' is what he first thought to say, but instead what came out was:

"He's a better man than me in that regard."

"He's better than you in many regards..."

"Are you trying to make a jealous ex of me?" It felt as much that way and with the coy smile she gave, it proved to be true.

Insufferable.

She was irredeemably insufferable. He'd escaped the trap of a relationship with this fiend and yet still she prodded and pecked at his nerves.

"… But you're better than him in a way or two as well."

A compliment? From Raven!? He had to hear this. "Oh, how so?" He took the bait, yet…

"You're better at keeping your nose out of trouble."

He would have been better off not asking. "...So I'm a better coward?"

"You could see it that way... but not quite what I meant. Your priorities are in the right place – your own first and the world second! And never shall that line be blurred."

"… still feels like you're calling me a coward." It really did, or maybe it validated his own feelings. Summer always upheld the safety of the world, fighting as a huntress until her last days. There was some part of him – a resentful mess of a part – that told him that things would have been different had he stood by her side to the very end. The girls might have two parents to this day…

...

or they could be orphans…

but that part would hear nothing of that.

"Well… I'm a coward myself if everyone around me is to be believed," She said as much without a care, having come to accept it and finding that it was not as cruel of a word as it was made out to be. "And one I'd remain if that bastard would stop pressing me."

There was a certain keenness to the way she mentioned him. Even in insulting him, a light would flutter in her eyes in a way that Taiyang hadn't seen before, not from Raven at the least. It reaffirmed something that he'd known from the moment he first saw them together. "You love him, don't you?"

She froze. In the slew of hard topics that they ran through, that question was the one she was least ready for. "... I've never said those words." Her voice was faint, words spoken that not even she believed. She made to say that she 'would never say those words', but the way it came out. It left her vulnerable in a way that she didn't like.

"But you are?"

"Tai..."

He couldn't resist what came next: "No chance, no way~! She won't say she's in love~!"

"That's it!" She pulled Omen to heel, looking ready to rip open a portal "I'm burning down that studio!"

"Oh no you don't," Taiyang jumped in front of her as if he could stop her actions. "Those movies are one of the few that Yang will still watch on family night!"

"... fine... for her..." She re-sheathed her sword, choosing against violence for the sake of her daughter. It was quite the sight; Raven had committed many atrocities, many just for the sake of saving face.

But she was different now, though she'd never admit it.

"He really has changed you."

"… stop it."

"Really," Tai meant it – this whole talk – it was… "I wouldn't think we'd ever be able to talk like this before now…"

"He has a certain insufferable way to him..." a way of making her confront her worse parts head-on. Of making peace with the past. "I guess… I should be thankful for him."

"Well, I'm definitely thankful for him, for Yang's sake." And for theirs. Before she was a lover, Raven was a friend. Having that friendship again, if only a glimpse of it... It didn't feel so impossible now. Not today, not yet, but someday... maybe...

"... yes, for her sake." Raven agreed, agreed to more than that, though she wouldn't say it. Tai wouldn't force her to.

"Oh and Raven."

"What?"

"Learn to use soap before you come around again. A dip in a river can only do so much."

"Skewered or flayed."

"Excuse you?"

"How would you like your corpse to be dressed?" Her hand went to the hilt of Omen and that left a lot of concern in the air, and then laughter. The first time they shared a laugh in fifteen years.

Neither noticed the poof of blond hair listening in from the stairwell, just out of view.

Nor did they notice the far more nefarious eyes on them from just outside.


(.0.0.0.)


Watts cracked his knuckles. How sweet. Two divorcees coming to a sense of peace for the sake of their daughter. They could all die happy.

He would have been useless in Vacuo, anyway. Cinder – the horrid wretch she was – took post there already, targeting a maiden that they knew nothing about, save for the fact that she was even more of a hassle than Fria had been even in her prime. Even if they did achieve success there, Cinder would take all the glory like the hog she was.

Sycophants did work so poorly together, after all.

That was precisely why he'd chosen to be here instead. A maiden in the mix of nursing would be easy pickings.

After all. When the fox is away, the vultures will play…


(.0.0.0.)


"Yes!"

Cinder threw her head back and laughed. She could feel it, power poured forth and into her, originating from the bizarre mark her odd savior had placed on her hand just before departure. She felt brand new. No, better than new! This power was a revolution! A revelation! It swirled and mingles over her every pour. Her every synapse. It bleed to parts of her that she hadn't felt in so very long. Limbs that had been gone numb – limbs that had been gone outright – breathed in new life.

She felt whole and perfect.

Emerald would tell her later that the mark had – for that moment – spread to cover much of her body. Not that she would care then, not that she cared now.

"Oh gods, yes!" She screamed in ecstasy. And this power only welcomed the coming of more. This second power... it was one that she recognized. One that she had experienced in recent, bitter memories.

The powers of a Maiden.

Magic.

She felt like a goddess.

No.

She was a goddess.

"Emerald! Mercury!"

The witnesses of her miraculous rejuvenation and ascension to godhood snapped forth, out of their collective daze.

"Yes, Cinder!"

"Ma'am!"

"Let's go."

Mercury fumbled. "… Go where?"

"Well our lord, wishes for us to be away from this blasted desert. He'll have his wish, in that at least." Literal fire blazed up from behind Cinder's eyes. "But there's a world beyond for us. Perhaps we'd even pay a visit to our old boss." Mercury and Emerald weren't so sure they liked the sound of that. "A goddess can't have too many masters lingering around, after all. One is already too many… so 'out with the old in with the new'…"

She upped and walked away at that. Both Emerald and Mercury were wise enough to not follow the path that Cinder now walked.

"Come!"

But they were wiser still not to disobey a direct order from their goddess.

She ferried them away to places that mortal eyes not venture.


(.0.0.0.)


Naruto made a reckless charge; he knew it was reckless because the little voice in his head was telling him as much:

'Hold! Stop! Cease! We need a plan!'

'No time!' His plan to date added up to a swift right to the stranger's face. It was a firm strike, precise in all its way, with no wasted movement.

His horned adversary caught it with an ease that didn't sit well with Naruto; his vice-like mitt held firm, leaving no chance of retreat.

The freakazoid moved to speak "When-"

Not caring to listen, a Kage Bunshin popped to life above Naruto, a kick sailing into the alien's face before he could work out his sentence. It was a nice kick too – beautifully executed – unfortunately, the foreigner had two arms. Another trap leaving the clone and the original at the disposal of the mixed-eyed man.

"You are-"

"Got you!" A second clone now pulled up behind the horned freak's rear. Preoccupied as he was, a double hammer arm swing made for his shoulders, uncontested.

And this time, it proved a clean hit!

… only for the clone to vanish the next moment, long spikes of bone jutting out of the pale stranger's back. He didn't so much as poof as he did disintegrate, crumbling into so much ash starting from the point of impact.

It only found the grace of going up in smoke after much of its torso was gone.

It looked like a painful affair.

But its sacrifice held forth an opportunity – the force of its swing was enough to make the handsy creeper's arms go slack.

Freed the first clone and Naruto as well it did!

Gave them an opening for a counterstrike!

Both took on a spin, Naruto on his heel and the clone whirling mid-air.

Dual back-heel kicks landed concurrently.

Naruto caught the intruder in his spleen.

While his clone – with the needed leverage to be more savage – struck the bastard on his neck.

A clean strike that gifted a harsh crack.

The stranger's body went limp and then went skidding off, tumbling and whirling against the ground like a kickball of flesh.

"Boss! We did it!" the clones rushed Naruto expectantly, hand hoisted up for a high five.

"It's not over." Naruto cast a warning that came too late.

"Wha-" a boney spike pierced the clone through the skull, the point sticking out from its still-open mouth in a grotesque fashion. Naruto saw his clones – mirrors of himself – die thousands of times over in the course of a career of constant battling.

It had never and would never sit well with him.

As the clone dispelled – only after it was basically headless – Naruto caught sight of the intruder, whose neck had been snapped in twine not even ten seconds before. He lay on the ground, arm outstretched, yet still glassy-eyed and neck bent up to resemble an L bracket.

At once, like a marionette begin hoisted up, he was pulled into the air by an invisible force.

His feet found purchase on the ground and his hands grasped his dangling cranium. With a crunch and a pop, his head was set straight and life made to return to his eyes. "That feeling never sits well."

"I get the feeling." His teeth would grit just a bit more at each word. High-speed regeneration – bordering on deathlessness – was such an obnoxious ability.

"Done with your temper tantrum."

"More like debating on which way to best kill ya. Assholes like you are a bitch to deal with."

"Oh, I'm sure you're quite capable of as much yourself."

"Speaking from experience. I'm a bitch to deal with." Naruto cracked his neck as to mock and remind this interloper of what he just did to him. The man – for his credit – was not the least bit fazed. Not that it mattered; brave men and cowards could die just the same.

Naruto jostled on his feet, and put his fist up, ready to carry on.

"Enough of this let's come to some common ground."

"Hm, ground, ironic."

His words were vague to the point of confusing, but as the pale bastard's pants caught fire, he at least started to understand… perhaps too late.

The sand beneath his feet became molten glass to then be devoured by a spiraling vortex of flame.

The white-skinned alien lept, showing an aptitude for flight. It was his only saving grace, yet still, the Lava Release Rasenshuriken – and the Bunshin behind it – gave chase.

"Don't be shy!" Naruto roared as he ported above the bastard, swinging down with an ax kick on his unsuspecting skull.

It was a well place strike. Sent him right down to the Rasenshuriken, but the pale pain-in-his-hide seemed to hold out two fingers and that was somehow enough. Sage Art, Clone, and all vanishing in that instance.

'Hm, tricky piece of shit.'

'Is there a reason you're playing around?'

'I like to think of it as moving methodically.'

'Naruto.'

'The girls. They need time to get away. Pacing the fight just means they've more time to make distance before things go nuclear.'

'You don't have the luxury of pacing yourself!'

'Rich coming from mister 'we need a plan'.'

"Your games are becoming insufferable." His own personal headache came to a stop, landing right in front of him.

"Believe it or not, you're not the first person to tell me that even in the last minute."

"The final vestiges of your Juubi, I presume."

"Ah, he prefers to go by the Kyūbi, but same difference."

'Oi!'

"But you know about the Juubi, color me unsurprised."

"Oh, did you see this day coming?"

"Honestly? I was hoping for an Ōtsutsuki… for Kaguya. She was hell incarnate, all in a pretty dress, but I knew I could take her… but for it to be something like you?" Naruto smirked and for the first time, this new Ōtsutsuki bristled, ever so slightly, words were not needed to convey the reason for Naruto's mirth.

"That wretch is nothing before I!"

"She looms too large for ya fella."

"You insufferable brat!" Foul chakra flooded around him, threatened to crush him outright, wave after wave, but he held firm. He would not be daunted by this Ōtsutsuki sideshow. "I am the Noble Lord Isshiki Ōtsutsuki! I'll not be made to be beneath a chambermaid."

"For all your talk, that's all you're doing! Kaguya at least took action! All you settle for is a sucker punch and then what?" Even as sand and dust and wind whipped up around him, Naruto kept to his taunts. He needed to buy more time. What better way to stall than to trigger a villain's monologue?

"She was a woman desperate! Desperate in her fear of my return! But once I arrived where was she!? Gone! Sealed away by a pair of pups still fresh from suckling on their mothers' teats! All her struggles amounted to nothing! But you!" The winds went cold and calm the man's eyes honed on him. He eyed him as one would a treasure, something to behold, an object to wield. "You will fare as a better subject."

"."

".."

"… What?" That threw Naruto for a loop. "Uh… dude, this is a fight, not a recruitment rally." Isshiki didn't seem to hear, his rambling carrying on in dramatic fashion, arms whirling as he present his case.

"Kaguya… she was too emotional… too afraid to see the glory that would await her should she just follow to the word of my every letter. It was my folly in the end. I choose to drag an urchin up from the muck when what I needed was a warrior. A soldier that could march to my tune. That boy is why you still stand. My strike of initiative..." hell of a way to describe a sucker punch. "… that alone could have proved enough to end you. When I caught your fist, I did not crush it for it is needed for our expeditions to come! I am giving you the grace and mercy to take to my side. It is your honor to have been chosen as my knight, so come!" Isshiki waved out his hand, awaiting what he expected to be inevitable.

"Yea, I pass."

"Hn… as much is fine, it's expected that even dogs of supreme pedigree must be broken in, it seems."

Golden arms sprang forth, framing a barrier around Naruto. It was all that stopped Isshiki's foot from finding purchase with his chest.

'The time for stalling has passed!'

'Agreed.'

Even now in this cocoon of golden light, Naruto understood that it was a fleeting barricade. If he was to stand mighty before this threat then he would need to bring his all.

Thus so, he made for the depth of his form, dredging at the most obscure recesses of his soul, trudging past any doubt and hesitation, he clawed at the very essence of his being. And at his very core, he found it and it did so bring a smile to his face…

… and a roar to their lips.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!"

Man and beast, mortal and eternal, announced their wrath as one, the ground quaked and the sky shook, black clouds bleating out the harsh sun.

Storm and flame, lightning and foam, ink and sand, magma and iron, they all bleed from him, imagination given life and form. This was no attack, even though it batter Isshiki – warding him further and further away.

No.

This was merely the byproduct of the existence that he was about to become!

Powers that he'd not drawn on in so very long… for fear of what or who it might break… for fear that it would break Remnant in its entirety. He drew all of it forth and then condensed it, bringing everything into himself.

Nine orbs – glimmering the darkest shade of ebon – came to life behind him spinning about in a perfect rotation. These Truth Seeking Orbs – each one to their lonesome carrying within themselves enough power to make envious any nation...

They were the telltale signs of him stepping into his zenith.

His muscles burned and his bones creak, so much of his own chakra, so much of Kurama's chakra, so much of nature's might was coursing through his frame that it threatened to tear him into pieces if he had so much as an unsteady thought.

His eyes fell upon Isshiki.

The Ōtsutsuki showed no fear – merely curiosity, a sense of zeal, perhaps he thought Naruto's appearance to be the power that he could grasp for himself. And Naruto would give it to him, just not at all in the way that he might hope.

He moved and the world moved with him, his fist hurtled into Isshiki and was met halfway, flesh meeting flesh in a catastrophic display.

The land behind them gave way crumbling into so much rubble.

Neither cared and neither budged.

Both took to the air as their footholds gave way.

Isshiki pulled back first, letting his fist fall as he cut to the side. Naruto's fist caught him in the shoulder still, bone breaking and flesh bruising as Isshiki struck out with his free hand, two fingers coated with lightning trying to pierce at Naruto's skull.

Naruto tilted away, the Ōtsutsuki's finger cutting a scorching mark across his cheek as Naruto rolled into a helix, foot striking out at Isshiki's head.

He blocked for it with his still repairing arm, wincing at the pain of his forearm snapping and his arm going limp.

Naruto corkscrewed, rotating as if on an axle, his other foot now catching the alien square on the chin.

It struck with the force of an explosive, brutal kinetic force making a shockwave that nearly shattered teeth and sent Isshiki soaring away.

Naruto kipped up and whizzed after him, two of the spheres at his back flying ahead of him trying to circle around the Ōtsutsuki and crash him down.

That or crash through him.

Both were good options.

Black cubes outlined with orange burst into reality around Isshiki, intercepting and blocking the Truth Seeking Orbs, Isshiki made to right him, but only in time for Naruto to slug his near upright face right on the button, nose cracking and blood pouring.

Forced further away and Naruto on the prowl ever more, Isshiki reeled, but as he did so he managed to catch a finger towards Naruto right before crashing into a mountain.

Naruto saw it coming, his own Lava Release Rasenshuriken manifesting back into the world and now hurtling towards him.

He did not bother to dodge, instead catching and holding firm, even as his hands burned and arms blistered. He took renewed command of his own attack and supercharged it, fueling it more and more as it bolstered in size only to be compressed again.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

It went through this cycle three times over.

Only then did he let it fly, giving his whole frame a spin before launching the Super Big Ball Lava Release Rasenshuriken at the mountain where Isshiki lie in pain.

The impact gave the impression of a supermassive volcano erupting. First crushing the whole mountain range into Remnant's crust before detonating.

A pillar of magma, kilometers wide reached the heavens, the air before arid and super-heated over the wide expanse of Vacuo's outback.

Naruto was not done. It was not enough, never enough; he made for the still-raging pillar even as a shadow materialized within the eye of the flame.

Ice, snow, frost, wave, and steam broke forth.

A massive glacier golem that froze at absolute zero emerged, reducing the magma to obsidian meteors plodding down around the golem and Naruto both.

Naruto cut left, right, and left again, whipping around the meteor shower towards the icy figure that produced more frost even as it melted.

He let an arm fall back before catapulting it forth again, golden chakra expanding until it formed a miles-wide arm. Fingers – shaped and sharpened into scythes – slashed into the golem, breaking it, and then making smithereens of it.

Sleet consumed the plains, and Vacuo experienced a sudden ice age,

Naruto cursed, summoning forth two clones and casting them off elsewhere.

He shouldn't focus on that, Isshiki was what was important here, but he would never sleep well if he didn't.

He focused back in on this fight

And the transcendental bitch did so show himself, cradling his burnt and broken body at what had been the centermost part of the golem.

Black ooze bubbled around him around with steam as his wounds curdled and bubbled away. Naruto didn't understand the importance of the black sludge until he was much too close. It shafted towards him, catching him on the neck and making a vice.

He couldn't breathe, couldn't react as more of the sludge jettisoned into him, locking his arms, his legs, and his torso into place.

Isshiki tugged him forth and rocketed to greet him.

"WHY!?"

Crash! A fist forced its way into his gut.

"CAN'T!?"

Crack! Another dislodged his jaw.

"YOU!?"

Swish! Sharpened nails broke through his ribs and pierced his lung.

"SEE!?"

Isshiki's ooze released him long enough for the horn bastard to skip above him and a foot to break down into his skull.

Naruto flew into the abyss – like an angel cast from heaven – his body slamming into the sea just beyond Vacuo and then sank, submerging deeper into the depths until he finally hit bedrock.

"I am offering your purpose! Glorious purpose!" Isshiki's voice carried even down here, his voice reverberated through his skull, creating a migraine that grew worse with each word. "I am giving you the chance, the opportunity to achieve godhood! To touch planes that mortal eyes cannot see! If you would serve as my lieutenant in arms and grant me ascension, your own would come shortly after!"

"I… don't…"

"CARE!" Naruto screamed with such ferocity that a pocket of air opened up in the ocean. He pushed his body – pushed himself – up and out. Carrying water with him.

It boiled and steamed and compressed time and again, a not inconsiderable amount of the sea compressing into his knuckles.

Unrivaled Strength festered at his fist as the ocean's water and his own chakra reached a point of boiling red. He meet Isshiki head-on, knuckled blow blasting through Isshiki's guard again and again.

He slammed into his face and skin burnt away, as did flesh, whilst his cheekbone began to melt.

"I don't care about godly ascension."

His other fish dug into Isshiki's side disintegrating it wholesale. "I don't care about any other worlds!"

He slammed his foot into the Ōtsutsuki's chest, just enough to gain distance between them.

"AND I FOR DAMN SURE DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!"

He raised his arms up high and brought hands together, hammering down onto Isshiki with all the might that his body, chakra, and justu granted him.

Isshiki's body vanished, cast aside at speeds that exceeded light – exceeded physics – and crashed into a mangled mound of parts, miles into Vacuo's tundra–like outback. Snow and sand whipped up into a mushroom cloud in his wake.

Naruto panted, breathing heavily, taking the time blessed to him to steady the air rushing in and out of his air-deprived lungs and pacing heart…

"And I don't care, fox."

… a heart that sank as he looked up to see Isshiki there – jacket gone to tatters and left to flutter off into the winds – but his body looked no worse, wounds and scars and blemishes and any damage Naruto had caused having already been healed away.

"I don't care what you think."

His skin began to darken becoming a bleak inky black, the tribalistic tomoes across his body lightening to a pristine gold.

"You are a child."

His horn grew and curved, becoming pure gold as a second identical one grew at the other side of his skull.

"A petulant toddler that doesn't grasp… doesn't understand, how this world – or any world – works yet."

His open palms slat open revealing two Rinnegan sitting center.

"But I – ever gracious as I am – will be your savior..."

His eyes matched now, black eight-spoked wheels sitting above yellow eyes.

"... And your educator."

His skull ripped open at its center and…

'No.' Naruto's frame shook as a familiar Tomoed Rinnegan stared back at him.

Sasuke's eye...

for that, there was no doubt… yet that meant…

"… And I will drag you – kicking and screaming – into a bright new future."

...

...

"… where did you get that eye?"

"Come again?"

"Where did you get that eye!?" Naruto pointed clearly, right to where Sasuke's eye sat.

"Ah… did this set you off?" Isshiki's hand grazed over Tomoed Rinnegan. "Once that world and its people were drained dry and the fruits plundered, I sought after the stragglers. That other one was too mangled to be of worth, so I took from him what he was worth. If needed as much would of been the same with you, if you had failed to impresss me, you'd of shared his fai-"

He slugged him, really properly nailed him, digging his fist in with murderous intention. It was enough to send Isshiki back – if only a spare few feet. It was clear that this new state left him a fair bit studier.

Isshiki sighed.

"That's enough."

"Gah!"

A blackened rod pierced his gut, his chakra cloak fizzling, flicking and then fading into nothing. Isshiki loosed the rod from his hand and Naruto fell.

He crashed into a mound of snow, his landing dispersing the frost and cratering him into the ground beneath.

He felt a state of paralysis take him, the chakra rod making it difficult to move much at all.

"Even in the face of transcendence, you struggle." Isshiki landed just before him, his feet crunching in the snow.

He took his sweet time in his approach, knowing that his would-be subject would not be going anywhere.

"It's become clear now. I will have to truly break you before you can understand the proper order of all worlds." He reached the cusp of the crater now, ready to descend.

Naruto wouldn't let this be how proceedings followed.

He had to get up.

He had to move.

If not for his own save, then to avenge his friends, those now lost to him. Isshiki – the monstrous bastard – made it sound so blasé, but that world that he drained the life of was his only hearth, the light at the tunnel's end. His hope and his goal…

… and those people… his friends, his family… Sakura and Kakashi… Baa-chan… Octopops… Shikamaru, Choji, Ino… Hinata, Kiba, Shino… Lee, Tenten, Gai… Gaara, Temari, Kankuro… the rest of the Kage… and the whole of the Shinobi Alliance… he knew that they were worthless to this disgusting Ōtsutsuki freak – unnamed shreds of power to be coveted only long enough to be devoured – but to him, they'd been something more precious than any treasure. In this strange land - in every moment of solitude – he missed them, their voices, their laughs, even their jeers…

… and the thought that he would never see them again… killed something inside of him.

And for him to proudly wear the iris of the bastard that caused him to lose them all…

He wouldn't let this be!

Not when he still had too much to lose. Remnant, this place that still left him with unsure feelings. It held people here that he was sure of – Amber, Raven, Qrow, Winter, Neo, so many more, and yes even Ozpin… if he failed here… would they share the same fate?

"Yes," Isshiki spoke as if he read his mind, not even caring to move closer, casually inspecting his nails in the interim between Naruto's struggles and his own victory. "These bonds that you insist on clinging to, they are your main problem. They make you weak! So I will rob this world of all its life! And the next! And the next! And the next! And you shall watch on until you realize your place! We are Ōtsutsuki, boy! Our one goal is ascension! Is godhood! Being beholden to mere mortals is weakness personified!"

"I… am… nothing… like you!" It was a hurdle and a struggle to even grit that much out, but Naruto would never let him think that their views aligned.

Even in the slightest.

At every turn, every time Naruto felt that his hatred for this mongrel couldn't grow further, Isshiki found a way to make his blood boil hotter.

Death wasn't enough.

He would talk everything from him! He would leave Ishiki a broken useless mess and only then would he bring his boot down on his inflated ugly skull.

He moved.

Even as every bit of muscle in his arm screamed a treasonous surrender, he reach out for the rod.

"You are exhausted, boy." Isshiki sighed, done playing with his food, he moved to stop Naruto from daring to escape.

Tempestuous flames and crystalline ice erupted then!

Curving pillars of nature crashing into the scenery and slamming into Isshiki foreright.

Stone ripped itself free from the ground underneath Naruto, a mudslide in reverse charging up and into the direction of Isshiki, ice joining into to further the dog pile.


(.0.0.0.)


Quickly enough, a veritable fortress of earth and ice had formed around him. Guarding him away from Isshiki, but it could not last for long.

But how was this much even possible?

It'd not been him to do it.

'Kurama?'

'We're not alone in this. You can thank your little missies for this one.'

What?

No.

No.

"Naruto!" A voice that he prayed to be a hallucination called out to him, but as her luminescent form fell to her knees and brought his head into her lap, there was no denying it.

Amber.

"It's going to be alright." A voice, another glow, and his heart dropped into his gut.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

This was a nightmare, he told himself, but he understood that even the darkest parts of his mind couldn't be so cruel.

They should have been miles away from here.

He worked hard to buy them the time.

To give them the chance to escape from this place.

"Hold still, I can't promise that this won't hurt." Winter grasped at the chakra rod still lodged in his chest. He wanted to stop her, to tell her to forget him and run away, far, far away from here, at least until this threat was overcome.

He would come back for them! He-

"Urgh." Winter groaned as fresh, searing pain coursed through Naruto's frame, centimeter by centimeter, inch by inch, the rod slowly rended itself free of him.

Winter held firm and pulled with all of her might, heels digging deep into the ground.

"Careful!" Amber warned.

"Shaddup!" With a final burst of anger, the rod broke free. Winter quickly tossed it as far away from them as possible as Naruto's dulled sense came back to him.

He beheld them and they looked like they'd been through hell. Coated in dirt and ash, wet in some places and sunburnt in others. Clothes in tatters and scars and bruises littering their bodies. Amber's left arm – dangling at her side – was mangled and torn – a big purple bruise forming at her shoulder.

All of that just from the aftershocks of his and Isshiki's brawl.

Their bodies were oozing in Maiden's light, Fall and Winter both in full swing all at once.

Conflict and catastrophe gave them allowance to tap into their powers like they never had before. Ei would eat her heart out at the sight, but then he notices. Their glow wasn't just from the burning of aura and magic… it was their life forces as well...

...they were sacrificing their life's blood for the sake of continuation even when they were well past their limit.

For his sake…

"No, no, no, no!" He grasped ahold of both of them – fumbling at unstable chakra and making it steady. He coursed it into them – healing them as best he could, restoring the life force that they were flagrantly discarding as best he could even as they resisted.

"Naruto! Let go! You have to heal yourself!" Amber pleaded.

"No! I have to keep you safe! Keep you 'live. I have to protect you! I have to-"

"You can't even protect yourself!" Winter swatted at his arm trying to get him to let go, but he wouldn't. He couldn't.

"He'll take you away too! I can't let him! I have to-"

"STOP!" Amber swatted him in the face with the might of a Maiden. Naruto fell to the ground and just lay there. "Naruto!" Immediate regret took her as she rushed to his prone form and hoisted him into her arms. Her head craned into his neck, rubbing there. "I'm sor-"

"Why did you come back." His voice was a whisper – cold and harsh as a winter's night. "Why are you hurting yourselves? Why didn't you run!?"

"We're not leaving you!"

"But he'll kill you!"

"He'll kill you!"

"I can fight!"

"And we can fight too!" It was Winter that announced their intentions, stamping her feet to the ground and making a quake. "I don't know what your problem is! You say you need us and then you send us away! You ask us to help and then you sideline us. At. Every. Fucking. Turn. Its sickening! I didn't reject my birthright for this! I didn't train into the dirt for years for this! I didn't take on the burdens of a Maiden for this! Not to be the cheerleader of some petulant man with a hero complex that can't accept help when he needs it!"

Naruto's glare bit into her "You don't understand-"

"No! You don't understand! If you don't stop him here! If he kills you! What do you think will happen!?"

Naruto didn't have to think. He knew what would become of this world and them should he fall. Isshiki couldn't have made it as much clearer. "That's why I'll stop him!"

"And that's why we'll help!"

"No, go now!"

"We're not going anywhere." It was Amber now that spoke, letting him go and moving to stand beside Winter. "This talk is over. You can do what you want, but we'll do what we want."

"And what we want is to fight that monster," Winter said as she turned. "You can help if you want to."

"No!" Even as Naruto called out to them, Winter and Amber flew away, together blazing a hole back to Isshiki. "Damn it!" He wobbled to his feet, cursing the slowness that his still-healing abdomen brought. He frantically grasped at what remained of his chakra and tugged his cloak back into reality. Launching up and away, even as the cloak still was in the process of forming.


(.0.0.0.)


Isshiki was already waiting for them top-side, floating about as if a bored child. When the Maidens emerged he was ready for them. Summoning forth two disruption cubes he cast them down at them, thinking to swat them away like flies so that he might attend to his more pressing matters.

As they came near, Winter drew her Saber and broke it into its two parts whilst Amber bared forth her bo staff and expanded it to full form.

Magic reinforced her edge as Winter diced through the cube until it scattered into bits around her.

Amber took a different approach, spinning in rapid motion – arms and staff cradled in mystic – and slammed into the cube. It reversed order and momentum, now striking out towards Isshiki.

The Ōtsutsuki merely help out two fingers and the cube vanished, back to the space from whence it came.

"So the kitties have claws, how quaint." Seeing that he needed a hands-on approach, Isshiki balled up and then rocketed toward them.

He was upon Amber before she could so much as register his existence. He rose his arm, only to realize it was no longer there. His eyes weaved back, just barely taking hint of the black sphere as it whizzed past. Blood splattered freely from the gaping wound at his shoulder.

It was painful so he did scream – cursing in an unknown tongue – as his arm desperately tried to repair itself whilst the effects of the Truth Seeking Orb bid to forbid as much. Yet he would not allow the technique of a cub a million years his junior to command his perfect self.

"HIYAA!" Amber took advantage of his pained form, slamming her bo into his skull without his arm there to allow him defense. An explosion rocked from the tip sending him curling back and ridding him of his hearing. Harsh ringing resounded through his head, making him cringe in pain.

"You blasted wretch!" His anger gave an eruption of power, his gone arm sprouting anew. He hated this one especially. He'd take pleasure in draining her body of all it had until only a mummified husk remained.

He lurked forwards to do just that, yet redirected his traffic just as another Truth Seeking Orb tried to free him of his skull. He went in full reverse as it and seven more gave chance.

This was becoming a systemic problem!

He hoisted two fingers forward so as to send the chakra constructs away, catching one, but his celebration came in the form of another agonizing bellow. The ninth orb, the same to harm him before, now returned – like a hellish boomerang – and cleaved him of the arm opposite to the one it took before.

Seeing no other choice, he vanished, shrinking into his pocket space. It pained him to put on a weak front, but he needed to regroup. A pubescent scion of his clan together with two fully realized witches were proving more trouble than they had the right to be.

But even the most well-oiled machines would rust in time.

Only he was eternal after all.


"Running off against him is beyond stupid!" Naruto cursed as he finally made it up to join Amber and Winter in the skies above the ruined Vacuo.

"Do you even fathom the hypocrisy you're spewing!?" Winter snidely chastised.

"I'm trying to protect you!"

"Keep it up, you hypocrite," Amber added.

He clearly didn't understand that they were trying to do the same for him.

The Maidens were on one page. He'd thought their constant in-fighting was as bad as it could get, but this – their union – was the true worst possible outcome.

"Look, we can talk about all that later, for now-"

"We're not leaving!" Amber and Winter stood together.

"For now, we gotta work together."

"Oh, finally something makes it through that extra-thick titanium skull!" Winter mocked him and Naruto couldn't say he didn't deserve that.

"Naruto, we've been ready to work together, but can you get on the same page as us, please?" Amber's pleaded with a question that Naruto wasn't sure he could answer. But he hadn't the time to reconcile his willingness to throw his life away for them and not allow the same in reverse. He hadn't the time to send them away, so he'd play with the hand dealt.

"He's too fast for you and if he catches you even once, that's it!"

"Naruto."

"So I'll keep him on me, you two hurl in attacks whenever possible. Even if it means hitting me as well."

"You'd not believe how swell of a plan that sounds like considering how much misery you've put me through today alone."

"Winter!" Amber looked absolutely incredulous, eying down the Schnee.

"I really don't care if you disagree." Winter shrugged. "The world might end here and, well, if everyone wants to call me an 'Icy Bitch' then this is my only chance to play the part."

"Winter…" Naruto paused not believing what he was about to say. "… I'm sorry."

"Actions, not words, fox brat."

"You're really taking the role to heart there." Naruto rolled his eyes. "But fine, once this is done, I'll do whatever you want. Now back to back, we don't know where he'll come from."

"You better believe I'll hold you to that," Winter said as she flew to position herself against one side of his back.

"You have some making up to do with me as well!" Amber called as she made it to him, putting herself shoulder to shoulder, back to back with her dysfunctionally functional teammates.

"Fine! Fine! Promise! Let's just do this," Naruto summoned his eight remaining Truth Seeking Orbs to him, willing them to surround them from all sides. Forming them into hexagon plates that left them guarded, but still able to look out for Isshiki's eventual re-emergence.

"So did Neo at least get away?"

"Didn't bother to follow her out, so not like we'd know."

'Hn, just another thing to worry about then.'

'He's coming.'

Naruto flipped into motion, spinning back and twirling a hand, willing his Truth Seeking Orbs to slide behind Winter and Amber and push them away.

Isshiki appeared just where they'd been, a failed surprise assault.

Golden flesh met an ashen fist as Naruto and Isshiki's knuckles collided.

Booming quakes of air pressure sparked radiantly outwards as they clashed more and more; ascending to the sky and collapsing to the ground as they dodged, weaved, blocked, and parried each other in rapid succession.

Their forearms collided, like bull horns locking, pushing against each other in an attempt to overwhelm the other.

"Another sneak attack!? You're hardly godly, ya know!?"

"You understand nothing about the works of gods!" Isshiki spat as he maneuvered his feet up to Naruto's forearm and kicked off. Forcing Naruto to skid back as well just as a hellstrom of molten stone and ice spears crashed into each other.

Isshiki made to focus on the maidens, but Naruto would have none of that, blitzing up and over the epicenter of the elemental impact and making like a maddened wasp right for Isshiki.

The Ōtsutsuki did well enough to duck under his adversary, but Naruto's hand struck back and grasped ahold of Isshiki's horn and tugged, crashing down on Isshiki's skulls in a meteora; wind kicking up in the blowback of both of Naruto's knees smashing into Isshiki's skull.

Writhing like a bull, Isshiki hurling Naruto forward – forcing him to let loose from his horns – and then stomped down on the Uzumaki for good measure, sending him to the ground… just in time for a bolt of lightning to shrilling curl into him.

He might have thought to use Naruto as a meat shield, had he not been so quick to act.

But as it were, he was left to fry alone.

Rage poured from his eyes, as glacial eagles joins the fray of lightning, trying to claw his eyes from their sockets whilst the electricity tried to fry away his skin.

"Ura!" He screamed and spun, a sphere of chakra cascading from his pours as he rotated, forming a perfect sphere of protection away from the elements.

Disruption Cubes hurtled out of the Hakkeshou Kaiten repeatedly until just over a dozen were careening about, they turned on an axis – splitting into separate pairs of six and – like cannon balls let loose from rail guns – they sparked and then rocketed out for Amber and Winter.

The girls went on guard, but so did the Truth Seeking Orbs that orbited them, the sphere veiling themselves around the huntresses, becoming hollow shells that wholly protected them.

As the cubes collided with the orbs, they threatened to force the spheres to dissipate, but in the same veins, the orbs threatened to force the cubes to disintegrate. It made for creaking thunderous applauds, or a drum big played, the cubes slamming down on the combined orbs with repetition, but the orbs would unless a reverb that caused the cubes to crack more with each beat.

With finality, the orbs erupted outwards in a final shocking wave that made dust of the disruption cubes, the Truth Seeking Orbs being reduced to particles of energy, but rather than dispelling to the ether, the sparks of energy flew down into a dark pit that lay in the middle of the battlefield, with Naruto zipping out of the pit – the eight Truth Seeker Orbs reforming behind him.

Isshiki watched on still in the throes of rotation and intent on keeping it up, so as to shove Naruto off if he did so dare to approach, but he did not expect gravity to betray him, air pressure becoming palpable as it shoved down onto him, forcing him to slam into his on protective guard of violent chakra. He let go of the jutsu or so be abused by it, falling right into Naruto's line of flight.

He made to safeguard himself – but a pair of crystalline serpents – formed of aura and magic and conjoined crudely – materialized around him; trying to savagely rend into him, but he outmaneuvered it and cudgeled the heads away fracturing the skulls and shattering the fang of the King Taijitu, but they did not dispel – instead reforming and carrying on their assault.

They stood no chance of striking clean – not when against his speed – but they distracted him long enough for Naruto to slam a fist into Isshiki's unprotected head with a heaven-shaking boom!

Isshiki rounded on Naruto to retaliate with a fist of his own, but a Truth Seeking Orb flew between them, threatening to reduce Isshiki's fist to ash should he recklessly make contact with it.

Instead, he shifted his fist to a palm, a black receiver forming above his Rinnegan and skewering the orb, forcing it to dispel.

Yet only to reform at Naruto's back.

"You seemed pressed!" Naruto brimmed with untold confidence, hands coming together and then away, slamming into Isshiki's cheek and throwing him into the maw of the King Taijitu.

Isshiki's eyes sharpened.

These toddlers thought they were at his level!?

Oh!

Oh!

Oh!

OH!

He'd proved them sorely mistaken!

He grabbed at the waiting fangs of the Faux Grimm and tugged at his own hips, using the leverage of a spin to send the doubled-headed serpent far away. Then he made for Naruto.

A Truth Seeking Orb made to intercept, but Isshiki shoved a black receiver through it.

Another made for him, but he wagged a finger and away it went.

A third tried to stop his ascent, but a disruption cube knocked it off course.

He neared up on Naruto now and grasped his throat, just in time for gravity to go lopsided again, slamming into them both and sending them for a crash course down to earth.

"Hey," Even in their long ride down Naruto called out to him with a grin plastered on his face. "Boom…" was his simple joke, funny enough to make burst into laughter. Isshiki did not get it, but he soon enough understood as it brimmed white and then erupted into a cataclysm of blazing chakra.

While all that went down, the true Naruto burst free from the earth and dusted dirt and snow and ash off of himself. "And here I thought that would have gotten ya?"

"You are rather naïve if that is the case."

Naruto cracked his neck as he turned and glared down Isshiki, a sadistic grin plastered across his lips – born from him giving in to his most primal desires to maim this Ōtsutsuki – contrasting with the stalwart frown on Isshiki's face. Both of their eyes shone with rage, beneath Isshiki's rage was apathy and annoyance – finding it oh so galling that the resistance had carried on this long.

But underneath Naruto's rage was an untold reservoir of hatred.

Some might even say that it was an unhealthy amount of the stuff.

He hadn't felt this much hatred in so long, not with Hazel, not with Obito, not even with Madara. Only Kaguya had managed to draw such dark intentions out of him, but he didn't care.

He'd have his chunk of flesh from Isshiki and so much more.

"They're just there you know?" Isshiki quizzed him and Naruto understood what he meant. He wish he didn't, but he understood well. "Tell me, how long do you think it will take?"

Take for him to get to them.

"You'll be in your grave before that time could ever arrive," Naruto promised, guard wide, ready to move the moment Isshiki budged even a micrometer.

"How's that so?" Isshiki laughed, it was a cruel little sound as if to say in nary a word that Isshiki was unbothered by any of this. "You may think we've been on equal ground, but you've been burning oh so much chakra. Them? They're worse, their own life forces have been the only fuel that keeps them in this fight…"

Isshiki understood it well; the three of them were on a countdown rapidly clicking to zero. They couldn't last much longer – thirty minutes more of fighting at this intensity and Naruto would falter; for Winter and Amber… they would keel over within the next ten.

"… Me on the other hand!" Isshiki gloated. "I've barely drawn on all that I have to give! Every injury you've inflicted has only been superficial before my might! Their effects are already gone! Better yet, I've been on cruise control in this state! Perhaps I should kick it up another notch and end this now!"

"I won't let you!"

"Tell me shall I start with them!?"

"I'll kill you before you can!" Naruto charged then, done with any sort of discourse.

"You can't save them all, fox." Isshiki weaved out the way of his wild swing.

"Hold still and let me rearrange your face!"

His hatred roared further still. It boiled in his blood and burned his veins with each passing moment.

"I think not. Tell me, which of them you love least!?" he grunted as they clashed again. Naruto's sneering face pressed against his, forehead to forehead. "Tell me, so I can kill them last."

"The one I love least?" Naruto gritted his teeth, blood threatening to spew from his gums. "That'd have to be you! In fact, I'd say I hate you even!"

"That wasn't an option." Isshiki cooed, shifting into nothingness.

He reappeared high above Naruto, closer to the maiden than Naruto was to any of them. "Dealer's choice then!"

"NO!" Naruto roared, charging up after Isshiki, but knowing he wouldn't make it in time.

Winter saw him coming at least, she tried to think of a way out, a way to defend, but he moved faster than thought.

Truth Seeking Orbs – the two that he had stolen away to his own dimension – materialized above his palm, perhaps he sought to be poetic. Winter only saw it as her death.

In her final moments, she thought of her family – the mumbled mess of emotions they brought, of Ironwood – the dutiful mentor that she was letting down, and of him... 'Naruto, please forgive me…' forgive her for dying.

"I said stop!" Naruto shouted as he made it to her, shoving his way between them, just in time for the orbs to slam into him.

Two vicious holes gorged their way into him, he willed them out of existence, but their effects had already taken, flesh and bone peeling away whilst life left Naruto's eyes.

Winter grabbed him for what it was worth. Holding tight as her breath left her, collapsing down to the unforgiving ground below.

The snow did nothing to soften the blow as her legs made contact and buckled beneath her. "No. No. No!" She pleaded, brushing away at the holes as if that would be enough to stop them, but they still crawled their deathly crawl, eating away at Naruto.

That had been meant for her, he was dying because of her. This wasn't his fate. Winter understood now – all too late – that this was what he'd been trying to avoid.

For what petty good she and Amber had done, they were only a liability in the end. She was only a liability in the end. Her semblance, her maidenhood, her training… it had mattered not.

"Naruto!" Amber joined them at her side, but the look in her eyes…

She understood as well.

All their tantrums and demands to fight at his side were for nothing.

They just weren't at Naruto's level... at Ishiki's level.

And he'd been the one to pay for their foolishness.

"Well, this was unfortunate." Isshiki's feet dug into the ground before him. He looked at them with only aggravation and boredom. "He was my best chance at a proper underling… but there are others, I suppose… so troublesome."

"Screw you!" Amber spat with so much venom.

"That would be the only use you'd have, but I'm not in the mood." Disgust turned about Amber's gut threatening to have her lose whatever food was left in her stomach. "But instead, I'll just have your powers and be done with you. Now come."

He made his way for them, but Winter looked towards Amber and Amber understood. They took Naruto's mangled form and sparked with whatever magic and life force they had left to them.

Up and away… far, far away they flew.

Isshiki sighed. "Why must mice be so constant in the chance?" He lazily tilted up, chasing after them further and further away.

It was only after he was properly and truly gone that the scenery seemed to fracture and crack, shattering into so much glass.

Winter lay there, Naruto in her arms and a confused Amber at her side. "…You came back?" she asked. Amber turned and sought out where Winter was looking.

Didn't take much to see what she meant.

Neo stood before them, clutching her bleeding side, weapons in hand. She was battered, scorched, and bruised – as much as they'd been – but she still stood defiantly.

She cut her eyes towards Naruto, body prone and dying.

They understood what that look meant. No words or pen and pad needed to say it: "I'm here for him!"

The words she would say were clear.

She'd come back for him.

The person to believe in her.

But perhaps, she had come a moment too late…


{...Moments Before...}


She really needed to get away from here!

And for a time she had.

The was a precious three minutes where she had fled away, but each step grew heavier, and each click of the heel wore her down.

If she did make a clean getaway… then what?

Where would she go?

Would his face just be another to the gallery that haunted her nightmares?

Would he be another to join her tea party of guilt and misery?

She couldn't bear the thought…

No, not him too.

So even despite the best of her logic, she turned back.

It was immediate regret there to greet her.

The elements themselves turned up to ward her away. Harsh blizzards, molten storms of magma, and earth-shattering earthquakes just as well.

It was all she had to avoid them, summoning solid illusions to be her shields, she hadn't bothered to think about which shape they took, willing them forth without care, but she still noticed them. Phantoms of her – of her past selves, recent and distant – forming long enough to shatter, guarding her against the worse of the elements, but not after effects.

Just enough to survive.

Just enough to carry her on to him.

She resigned it in her to let them shatter away.

They were a reflection of a past filled with regrets and pain and headache and heartbreak.

A past that she wouldn't return to.

In facing this danger, she would be leaving that past behind.

And though her future may prove short…

It would be one that she would face at his side.

The one beacon she had left in this world.

She redoubled her speed, chasing after that beacon that blitzed about the sky.

Her resolve and the revelation it wrought, shook something in her.

Her illusions became sturdier, more plentiful.

A veritable army formed in her path, marching forth to face tank the damage meant for her.

The destruction died down for a time, and she cast a subtle illusion so that she might reach him without notice.

The alien – having changed to somehow become even more grotesque – and her beacon were talking. Even while his golden muscles were tight in tension. He wanted to attack the freak, but he was holding back, for some reason.

Their voices rose, almost to a booming, and they clashed then, but the once pale bastard broke away.

Naruto chased him, trying to stop him from reaching the Winter Maiden, narrowly not making it.

Even in arriving in time, he only did so to take an attack meant for that Atlas bitch.

Neo gritted her teeth… had they only made away with her… Had they not rushed to play heroines… he'd of been okay, not having to split himself between fighting and protecting.

She casually ignored the hypocrisy of it all. That she had come to help as well, but she ignored it all…

Damn it all…

When Winter crashed she rushed to check on Naruto, still under the veil of invisibility.

Even as Amber joined them, she kept her eyes locked on Naruto. On his hollowed chest…

It looked bad, his chest disintegrating more and more…

But she noticed…

Glimmers, little more than embers of chakra… they were fighting back, trying to stop the withering effect and heal the damage.

It was slow, oh so slow, but gradually bit by bit, Naruto was clawing his way back to them, but he needed time.

They needed time.

So she would make it for them.

Even as Isshiki landed before them all, her plan unfurled. She concealed them all with a veil and overlaid illusions on top of them.

Illusions that bantered even as the real maidens weep.

Illusions that flew away… as far away as possible.

Isshiki gave chase and only once she was sure he was good and gone did she let her overlay drop, hoping that he'd be a while longer before catching the other illusions.

"…You came back?"

Winter called out to her, and Neo had half a mind to cut a seething side-eye at her, but instead, she just paid purchase to Naruto.

Knowing that they'd understand.

Needing them to understand.

She was not here for them.

He was all she needed.

And so she would wait for him.

For however long it took.


(.0.0.0.)


"All that power and still… your movements are so utterly… rudimentary."

That voice.

Naruto understood who was before him even without opening his eyes. So he wouldn't open them. He'd just lay here for a while.

He had all the time in the world for a lecture after a rest.

Being dead gave such reprieves.

So he'd just rest his eyes for a time.

For the first time since he first breathed life.

"You're not dead, ya brat! Now get up, there are things we must discuss."

That sparks some interest in him, so he dined to ask:

"So you learned to speak like you're from this century, huh?"

The voice hummed for a moment. "Well since our last meeting, I did take the time to freshen up my lingo as the kids say."

"No kid has ever uttered those words."

"Really!?"

"Really."

"Regardless, I felt the need as I really do need my advice to stick this time."

"Oh." Naruto's eyes snapped open. He popped up from the pool beneath him, standing to his full height in this void space that he had hoped to never visit again. "Come to prattle on about how much of a disappointment I am!? Well too late! Anything you got to say I already told myself!"

He rounded on his visitor, staring down Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki – the Sage of Sixth Paths – in all his ancient glory.

"You're not a disappointment."

"…"

"…"

"…"

"… excuse you?"

"Well, now, perhaps what I have to say was not in that mound of pity and guilt of yours!?"

"… Shaddup."

"I meant what I said. You're not a disappointment."

"Yes. I am."

"You're not."

"Am."

"Not."

Am."

"Not."

"Am."

"Naruto. There are a rare few things that you could say or do that would disappoint me – even in earnest – after all, you are my son… no, my grandson… err… my many time great grandson…. My-"

Naruto rolled his eyes; he hadn't remembered the Sage being so pedantic before. "Look if we have to go with something let's go for grandson, ya old coot… not like it matters now. The world where it did is gone… long gone."

"Is it?"

That took Naruto for another whirl. Had Isshiki been lying? Wait! Of course, he had! He was a villain afte-

"Ōtsutsuki Isshiki's words rang true."

Way to deflate him there. "You a sadist or something?"

"That is a business between the wife and me."

Naruto didn't want to know.

"If you know that our world is gone then why the workaround."

"At the current moment in time, our world is no more, but time is fickle after all."

"What are ya purposing… for me to build a time machine?" He thought about that and realized just how implausible as much would be. "… to have a time machine built?"

"A Time Machine? Such a thing isn't necessary. Temporal transportation can be done without such machinations."

"… What?"

"Time Travel is possible without a machine." Hagoromo tried to dumb it down a bit.

"I understood you the first time! I know what tempura means!"

"Oh, I'm sure." The coy smirk let Naruto know that he'd steered wrong somewhere, but he couldn't bother to ask where.

"But give up the knowledge, old man. How do I do it?"

"As much isn't necessary. You already understand how to, rather you know it or not."

Since when did he? This old man must be senile just as well! "… come again?"

"It's as I told you, you have so much power yet your use it in such a rudimentary fashion."

"Well, these powers don't come with a manual."

"They quite literally do."

That was news to me.

"You have an innate understand of all the numerous uses chakra bequeaths you, rather you're conscious of as much is another story."

Since when did he-

"Tell me, did you stop Gai's passing or restore your sensei's eye using that deep well of medical knowledge you have?"

"No all I did was… oh."

"Yes, oh."

Pedantic, senile, and sassy... this Sage…

"So I can just go back before Sasuke and I fought… no further still, before Sasuke left the village… no before the Uchiha Massacre…"

"I would ward against traveling back too far… or at all for that matter, but desperate times… Regardless, of what you choose, you must be ready to face the myriad of consequences that come of it."

"If you say so, thanks for the heads up."

"I'd also ward against facing problems of the past when there's still many ahead of you."

"Right… Isshiki."

"Yes, Isshiki."

"Can't I just…"

"No matter how far back you choose to go, he will still be an issue. Even as far back before time was a concept for our people. In fact, you might run into worse threats than he if you so choose to drift back there."

"So I have to do this."

"Would you wish to abandon those lady friends of yours?"

"Never!"

Time travel or no, Amber and Winter both would probably still find a way to do… things to him if he left them again.

"Then yes, you must find a way to stop him."

"… but what if I fail again."

"You've never failed before."

"Have so."

"We're not starting this again." So stern, maybe he was his grandfather. He reminded him enough of Sarutobi to fill the role. "Naruto through all that you have done, you have survived. Perhaps not in the way you'd wish. But you have survived."

"Is that what you'd call success?"

"It is. And there was a time when you would have as well."

"Well, people change."

"Yes, they do. But 'people' would pay heed to think to rather those changes are for the better or the worse."

"If you have something to say then say it!"

"Oh, if you'd ask as much of me then I will…" Naruto felt a sense of dread take him. Why'd his let his mouth lead before his brain? "You've allowed fear, doubt, guilt, anxiety, and so much more to rule you. Every action you have made in this world – anything more important than who you're cuddling with for the night – has been done out of primal fear. Fear that your past will catch up with you. Fear that you don't deserve what you gained. Fear that you will lose everything. Fear that people will use you and what's at your disposal beyond your own autonomy. Even when you veiled it with a bit of bravado, I could see it… all your actions speak of is a senseless fear."

Naruto tried to pace himself, tried to think of a clever retort, but Salem, Raiden Ei, Isshiki… he was so tired of the wordplay…. So tired of it all… so he stopped thinking… stopped holding back and just blurted what came to him:

"Yea! So you noticed! What of it! I'm afraid okay! Am I allowed to be afraid for just a little while!?"

It was hypocrisy.

He understood as much as the words left his lips.

He'd called Raven a coward too often to count and had perhaps called others worse.

But what of it!

He wished to deny it, but somewhere in him, he knew it to be true.

He led with so much fear and doubt, but he still played the role of the big damn hero as best he could.

Yet, he knew...

those were shoes that didn't fit properly, not anymore…

not since Sasuke…

"You are allowed as much as anyone else… but it has been more than a little while, ya runt."

Great! Him too…

"Kurama, it is good to see that you so choose to join us." Kurama crack half a smile, happy to see his father here, happier still that this talk wasn't being left for him to handle alone.

"Go back inside if you're just here to pile on." Naruto didn't need the fox turning on him as well.

"Oh, I'm here to pile on and then some!"

"What does everyone want from me!?"

"What we want is irrelevant!" Hagoromo chided, not at all liking Naruto's view. "You should be asking yourself 'What do you want from yourself'. Beyond your fear and to your true heart. What do you want from yourself, Naruto?" The sage shot back at him and it caught him unguarded.

That was not a simple question to answer. 'But why isn't it?' It was simple before, wasn't it? He wanted to be Hokage… no. He wanted people to acknowledge him… no. He wanted…

"Well out with it!" Kurama rushed him as if getting to the core of his being was just that easy.

But fuck it, he'd just speak without a thought:

"I want to protect everyone! I want a peaceful world! A world where no child has to be left to fend for himself! I want that not just for my home, but for Remnant as well. And right now… more than anything… I want to break every tooth out of that Isshiki bastard's mouth."

"Well, go do it, then/Well go do it, then!"

The sage and the fox – their words smacked at his back – and they jostled something loose. A weight – if a small one – fell away from him.

They said it so simply.

But as much couldn't be so simple?

Could it?

"Just like that?"

"Just like that." The Sage nodded, well, sagely. "And remember… you're not alone."

"Huh?"

"Brat… you have better friends here than Sasuke ever was to ya. You could do to trust them more."

"I trust them."

"Do you? Or do you just not protest against them?"

"…"

"…"

"That's something to think on. But is that all you came here for? A pep talk?" Naruto eyed Hagoromo with suspicion.

"Sometimes a pep talk is all one needs to get their head on straight. Now get, nothing will be done by spending the rest of your days with this 'old coot' and 'damned fox'."

"Oi, he never called me that!" Kurama railed.

"Oh, I was definitely thinking it…"

"You stupid brat, sho-!"

"Right, I'm off." Naruto nodded, turning and walking right out of the void.

"What is the real reason you're here?" With Naruto gone, Kurama paid focus to Hagoromo.

The sage with all his might played for innocent, but it was a withering attempt.

"My, nothing gets passed you, my child." Kurama didn't even acknowledge the compliment to his intellect, maw set in seriousness. "FineIt didn't feel it the time to reveal such truths to him all things considered. I might have chosen to return… but instead… if you would pass on my message once this storm is weathered…"

Kurama listened to all he had to say.


(.0.0.0.)


"It's good that you came back," Winter seemed to hold much of what she wanted to say to herself, but still, she had to say this at least: "But what are you meant to do here!? What are we meant to do!?"

"Winter…" Amber warned against what the Schnee was implying. They all knew what was to on the horizon, but they had to believe that they could-

"Survive."

The huntresses three all broke focus from each other as they noticed him moving again.

Holes still in his chest, he stood, shouldering past the pain.

"Don't move!" Winter wrapped herself around him, legs locking around his waist and arms around his shoulder. "You need to rest!" She might cry for the fact that he's not dead, if not for him trying to get his arse right back in motion.

"Naruto!" Amber rushed his side, wrapping arms around his arm and clutching tight. She didn't bother to hold the tears, large globs of salty water pouring down his shoulder. "Please, listen. You need to rest."

"Tis but a scratch," Naruto spoke so jovial that he didn't seem like a man that was just nearly on his deathbed. He vacantly dug into his chest and clawed out the sizzling flesh…

Perhaps the most barbaric way to rid himself of the effects of the Truth Seeking Orbs…

But it proved effective.

The gory gaps sizzled up and then closed up entirely, leaving him whole once more.

"See I'm fine." He smiled toward Amber and then at Winter. "You can get off now."

"I don't wanna."

"Playing the role of the brat now, are we?"

"Hmph." She dismounted, if reluctantly. Drying tears, even as they threatened to pour.

Naruto turned from the Maidens and now to the new arrival. "Neo… you're back."

Neo brimmed, soft tears pouring down her cheeks. She was so happy to see him fine and healthy. She would hound Isshiki to her last day had he not survived.

She wordlessly hoisted out one of the weapons in her gripes.

"My bo!" Naruto chirped, gently taking it from her. "I thought I lost it!"

"There'd be hell if you did!" Amber cawed.

"Thanks," Naruto spoke softly and intimately, patting Neo on the head. The girl seemed to almost coo – if as much was possible – curling her unruly hair into his hand. "Thanks for coming back."

"Oh, she gets a 'thank you'!" Winter tantrumed.

Naruto let go of Neo and got a pout from her for the act, but he'd suffer her wraith later. He turned back to them, Neo move to stand beside him. "Thank you all. I need all of you… more than you can ever know…" The three of them all light up there. As he spoke in that low, rumbling voice… the implications might not be intended, but they were certainly felt. "For what I have planned. I'm going to need as many people as possible."

"Oh, and what's this plan?" Winter stepped closer.

"All of you touch my bo!"

"Naruto, not now-!" Amber's tan skin lit up until it looked as if sunburnt.

"Um, Amber…" Naruto, Winter, and Neo – all rather incredulously – stared at Amber and then back to the bo staff that Naruto was holding out.

"Oh," quite meekly, or as meekly as an Amber could, she reached out and grasp the staff as well.

Naruto closed his eyes and bowed his head as to focus.

"Uh, what are you doing?" Winter asked.

"Trying to figure this out!" Naruto grumbled.

"…You could do to trust them more…" He remembered the advice well.

"If some old timer can manage this then so can- there!" Power erupted from him and crashed into Neo and then Winter and then Amber and finally back to him.

'What's this!?' Neo felt powers myriad rushing through her veins, through every pour, it felt intoxicating, euphoric even.

"Is that what you sound like?" Amber asked and Neo looked up to see who she was talking to, but the Fall Maiden only stared at her.

'You can hear me!?'

"We all can hear you," Winter spoke, freeing her hand from the staff and putting it to her hip.

"Your voice is lovely, it fits you," Naruto spoke and she thought she'd faint.

'D-don't say that! You'll make me act up~!'

"Hold your horses, tots!" Amber warned with a glare to boot. It only held her for a second, and she soon rounded on Naruto. "What did you do?"

"Something similar to the old man from your story." And similar to Hagoromo as well, but he was one they were less familiar to. "I shared my powers with you, but more than that, I made a… um... closed relay of sorts… so all of our powers are cycling around each other."

"What's the point?" Winter asked, more out of mere curiosity than skepticism. Though some skepticism was still there. She'd not be Winter without it.

"Well for one, my chakra is refueling your life forces, to fix the damage y'all made…!"

"No regrets!" The two Maidens agreed.

They were the worse when they stood together.

He sighed, brushing them off.

"But more importantly, some people would call my actions rudimentary…"

'Ungabunga, Rasengan, Smash!'

'Shuddit!'

'Is that Kurama?'

'Kura-who?'

'Uh, why's he here!?'

'Ladies… Schnee.' Kurama paid notice to Amber and Neo and then Winter, respectfully. Old wounds were still untreated between the two.

"Everyone focus!" Naruto called. "Like I was saying, I gotta think outside the box… or at least bring more people into my box… so this is my solution. We'll move on the same beat now, nobody gets left behind again! Sounds good!?"

"Good to me!" Amber brimmed with joy from ear to ear. Fighting at Naruto's side was all she ever wanted.

"Your little gambit has split the time left until you exhaust everything you got to about a fourth of before, so end it quickly!"

"Doable!" Naruto assured.

'One thing?' Neo called. 'Can I still talk to you like this once it's all done?'

"… umm… I can leave some of my chakra with you once this is over… not sure about the Maiden Magic though-"

'That's fine! I have nothing to say to them anyway!'

"Hey, we're sorry, geez!" Amber apologized.

"Tensions were high and we might have gone too far… so sorry." Winter's apology came a far bit more reluctantly.

"Heads up!" Kurama's warning came with the sight of a fast-approaching Isshiki; he looked none too please to have been sent on Neo's concocted goose chase.

"Let's go!" Naruto ordered, golden chakra sparking into a cloak for what was the last time, better. He took charge, flying dead on for Isshiki, a clone sparking to life and then flying off to who's to say where.

Amber, Neo, and Winter joined him, cloaks of their own – each glowing in the color of their aura – coming into life around them. Each gain a set of Truth Seeking Orbs all their own.

Naruto and Isshiki clash, Naruto's staff swinging down at Isshiki, who pulled back far enough to cross his arms in a block. At the moment of impact, the elements erupted out of his staff – borrowed maiden powers running rampant. They battered Isshiki, but the Ōtsutsuki held firm.

"New powers!? No different, no better than what you already had! All futile!" Isshiki made to mock him, but Naruto only gave him a smirk.

"You missed the point!" He pressed on harder, leaning his head low…

… Just in time for Amber to arrive and smash her own bo into Isshiki's skull.

The ashen bastard stumbled back as Neo and Winter curved passed Naruto.

Winter with both sabers at the ready.

Neo's rapier drawn.

Winter slashed into Isshiki, chakra and magic cutting bloody grooves into his chest in an X pattern.

'X marks the spot!' Neo giggled, gleefully sadistic in how she drove her rapier in right at the point where the two slashes intersected. She slammed her heels into Isshiki's chest and kicked off, ripping her rapier free just before Isshiki could retaliate.

Fireballs the size of meteors rained down on him just as Neo and Winter got away.

He did well to bat them away, but as one ball of flame crashed into his arm, the limb shattered, the flame fluttering to reveal Naruto with his staff swung down in a gnarly arc. "Gotcha, Bitch!"

"Damn you!" Isshiki reached out with his free arm, but streaks of blue and pink dash past it, the limb falling away as Neo and Winter stopped just above him, weapons now coated in the energy of the Truth Seeking Orbs.

'Smart,' Naruto noted, now sheathing his own bo with a Truth Seeking Orb.

Isshiki flew back, knowing better than to gamble with two arms down and the odds unfair.

"Where is all this resolve coming from!" He roared, snapping – properly losing all his hinges – for the first time; sanity at it's end.

"You ain't seen nothing yet! You wanna see real resolve?! We'll show you resolve! You keep talking about being eternal, but unlike you, we're not afraid to die! We'll win!"

Naruto rushed at Isshiki, he summoned the mother of all Rasengans fusing every one of his Truth Seeking Orbs into it.

Isshiki, seeing the doom that would await him should such an abomination land, tried to evade, but the sheer gravitational pull of the technique dragged him in. Naruto's sided the Rasengan clear into Isshiki's torso, rending skin and flesh in radical fashion, a spiraling vortex of chakra erupting outwards and sending Isshiki scattering away.

Amber road the vortex of chakra right to Isshiki and once she was upon him, slammed the tip of her bo into her skull, lightning and gravity coming with the blow, sending his careening down to earth and pinning him there.

Four Crystalline King Taijitu – each more massive and more glorious than before – manifested above Isshiki's cratered mass. They mingled amongst each other – merging into one beast that would put the Yamato-no-Orochi to shame. They bore down with their fangs, each glowing with the energy of a Truth Seeking Orb.

Isshiki roared against gravity itself, forcing his way up and out of the way of the snakes' fangs.

Too bad for him that his trajectory sent him right into the path of innumerable Neo's popping into reality, they all pounced at him, falling down rapier first.

He did the best he could to defend, but forever Neo he shattered, two more would appear in their place.

And each of those rapiers were endowed with black chakra, tailor-made to disintegrate his flesh.

He couldn't last for long, tumbling back into the waiting fangs of the merged crystalline King Taijitu.

It bite into him with unbound vigor, rending each of his limbs from him.

"YOU… DAMNED… BRATS!" his flesh was mangled and full of holes, little more than head and torso, but Isshiki roared on, black ooze flowing free from each of his dismembered joints, springing him upright even as his ligament desperately attempted to regrow, making a bastardized tentacle monster of him. "IS THAT ALL YOU HAVE!"

"Nope~" Naruto's lips popped with so much joy. "An eye for an eye." He promised, and Isshiki found himself confused once more, but he knew by now to be on guard, so he looked behind him, to his sides, beneath him...

"I need not strike mine foe unprepared!"

… what?

He looked forward just in time to witness...

"INAZUMA SHINES ETERNAL!" A blade of purple lightning – unfathomable in scale – unfurled before and crashed down from the heavens.

It cleaved Isshiki in twine, carrying on and cleaving much of Vacuo into two as well.

"Hm, so that's what that does?" Naruto's Bunshin – supporting Ei at her rejuvenated rear – watched in awe.

"You… you… you…" Isshiki's separated skull continued to move – as disgusting as that seemed and as disgusting as it appeared – trying to voice his discontent at this turn of events.

"Shhh. Shhh, Don't talk… that's gross." Naruto said as he slammed down between the two halves of Isshiki. He placed his hands on the two sides of his stomach.

"What are you doing!?"

"I planned to take everything from you after leaving you a broken mess… I'll still do as much."

"No! No! You- You- Y-you damned ingrate!" Naruto sank phantasmal hands into Isshiki and then he tugged with authority.

"This is gonna suck… for him."

'Speaking from experience, huh!?' Naruto laughed, even as he exerted as much force as his exhausted body would give him.

"Shaddup!"

"Please! P-Please! Let's talk about this! We can still be great! Together!" Isshiki pleaded even as his skin lost its hue, shading back to a colorless white, even as he began to wrinkle and prune.

"Sorry! My friends are enough for me! So! GIVE! UP! THE GHOST!" With a final tug, Naruto ripped it away, stealing away the last of Isshiki's stolen chakra. "Your time passed long ago after all."

"please." Isshiki plead one final time even as Naruto kicked his mangled skull together, just for a good presentation. "Pl-"

Naruto stomped down with so much force.

The earth quaked as a hole formed under Naruto's heel, Ishiki's body tilted and fell, yet faded into dust before it could make the great descent proper.

"Is it over?" Amber flew down to stand beside him, taking a side long glance over to Ei and the Bunshin and finding herself distracted. "So that's where it went? You can raise the dead now!?"

"Nope," Naruto admitted. "At least I don't think so… but her body is different…" Like one of Sasori's puppets but more realistic – perhaps too realistic in some places – but regardless, she'd not get the reference anyway. "… She's more like a doll. Needed to just restore the missing parts and give a spark to the lingering soul."

"You noticed as much?" Ei asked, puzzled that he recognized her unique nature.

"Well, you don't clash blades with a lady without coming to understand her."

"Did we win!?" Further discourse was put off 'til later, with Winter and Neo rushing in to join them.

"I do think we did!" Naruto smiled.

"Is that…" Winter pointed to Naruto's palms, which were still grasping the coffered chakra, now his chakra now.

"It's all that Isshiki had, all that he took from my people."

"And you'll hoard all of it for yourself?"

Naruto gave her a pointed stare.

"I mean, as you should! But you know…"

"Yea… I do," Naruto sighed, he knew what Ironwood would give for his armies to have access to this. But chakra shouldn't be held by any one military power or person… not even he.

'Do you still '…Fear that people will use you and what's at your disposal beyond your own autonomy…', ya idiot,' Kurama asked, partly repeating the Sage's words.

Yea, that was still a fear of his, one that he had to let go of at some point, so how about now?

'… Regardless, of what you choose, you must be ready to face the myriad of consequences that come of it.'

'Are you just gonna repeat everything he said!'

'Wasn't me… Those were your own thoughts…'

'Ah right.'

"Naruto.'

"Naruto."

"Naruto."

He looked up and saw his three women staring at him; they gave him looks of reassurance. No matter what he decided, they'd be with him. He understood as much.

Ei and his clone were also there, but Ei just stared away blankly and his clone gave him a goofy smile and two thumbs up.

Naruto rolled his eyes at the sight, he hated his face sometimes.

'One last question, Kurama…' Naruto asked, locking his mind away from the huntresses.

'Hmm?'

'What Gramps told you after I left…' Naruto showed that even he wasn't fooled by Hagoromo's plow. '… That wasn't the last Ōtsutsuki, huh?'

'Might not even be the last we see of Isshiki, but we'll be good for a while, at least.'

'Then I know what I gotta do.' Naruto looked to Winter, quite serious now.

"Tell Ironwood that I'm doing this in spite of him! Not because!"

"I'll let him know every word!" Much to his chagrin, Winter mimicked his clone down to the toothy grin.

"… don't do that." He sighed, as he quartered over some of the chakra, enough to properly restore his lost supply and give them all a refresh.

For the rest, he slammed his hands into the ground and let it go. It radiated out in brilliant splendor, pulling Vacuo back together and healing it, melting the frost and revealing not sand, but lush green, that peacocked out into every direction.

But the vast majority spread off to the rest of the world, gracing the soul of every human and every faunus… well almost everyone, he paid notice to avoid a few... unsightly sort. It did not leave all in equal portion mind you – those native to Atlas might of gotten the short end of the stick – but everyone received at least a seed enough to nurture and grow.

He would lead them if he had to.

Gods he hoped doing as much via scroll would suffice.

He also paid attention to quarantine off enough for them.

'Naruto, do not-!'

"YAHOOOOOOO! FUCKIN' FREEDOM, BAY-BAY!"

"I get the rest… but why him!"

Naruto smiled so much even in the face of Kurama's despair.

Shukaku – and the other seven remaining Bijū – looming tall over them.

"ARE THOSE GRIMM!" Winter cried, drawing her swords.

"ORA! NARUTO-BOYO! WHO'S THIS WRETCH!? SHE LOOKIN' FOR A FIGHT!?"

'Nevermind! He can stay!'

Naruto sighed. His mind drifted elsewhere. He sent a message to them along with a nice package of chakra to boot. He'd hoped they get it in time.


(.0.0.0.)


Someone screamed.

It was not who one might expect.

Watts hadn't been prepared for what came after him – still thoroughly normal and hopelessly chakra-less – when Taiyang and Raven nearly blew the walls from Tai's house to get to him, he had nowhere to run.

They moved several times faster than they should have from the reports and they dismantled his every planned trick before he could ever launch it.

Only pain awaited him after that.

"WHOOOAAAA! GO, DAD! GO, MOM! KICK ASS!"

"YANG!"

"BED!"

Tai and Raven ordered together, sending the blond rushing up the stairs. They looked at each other for a silent moment and then burst into laughter.

They'd have to give Naruto their thanks... Raven perhaps more intimately – though Tai would best hear none of that. So Raven was prone to tell him anyway.

They dragged Watts violated frame into the house, where he'd be bound and later shipped to Ozpin with the aid of some hunters running the midnight shift.


(.0.0.0.)


'So what now!?' Neo chirped in his mind, happy to give her new manner of speaking a whirl.

With Shukaku sedated and the meeting of the Bijū over, Naruto collapsed to the ground. Neo promptly plopped herself right onto his gut. He grunted but didn't bother to make her move, even though the Maidens tried.

"Now, we get the people of Vacuo back home."

"Back home?" Winter asked. "Where are they now?"

"Atlas."

"WHAT! WHEN!" Naruto dug his fingers into his ears to stop the ringing. Winter really had some pipes on her.

"I sent some clones away to evacuate the place once shit started to hit the fan."

"Ironwood won't be happy about this!"

"You know, you're right! I'll leave them there!"

"Naruto!"

"Uzumaki," Ei broke into the conversation.

"Huh, Ei? You still here?"

"You did ask me to help, did you not?"

"Yea and you did, so… cya~!"

Ei was no longer a Maiden – the ramifications of which would be saved for another time – so she didn't really need to come along with them. She was a free agent.

"You did not say to what capacity that I should help. So I've so chosen to become your kagemusha – your shadow – until all your woes are ridden."

Naruto winced. "You really don't have to."

She crossed both arms before her bosom. "On the grounds of our honor duel, I must."

Ah, right that. "But Isshiki was the one to strike you down, so really…"

"Regardless, I yielded."

"You died!"

"To yield in death is still to yield."

"Urgh… find! Do what you will!" Naruto wouldn't force the issue. He just close his eyes and let sleep take him in the grassy plains of Vacuo.

He didn't see the faintest of smiles take her. Maybe one day, she'd mention how he reminded her of someone so dear, but that'd be saved for another time.


(.0.0.0.)


"Girl!"

Cinder stopped in her tracks, frozen, she looked around. Searching for him – her lord – but he was nowhere to be found. That voice. She knew that voice. But how...?

"Wherever you planned to go, turn from it now."

Much to her horror she realized... his voice was coming from inside her brain. 'But…'

"We have much to do, first of which is to prepare you for your glorious purpose."

She winced. 'But…'

"…Need I repeat myself?"

Cinder was wise enough to not follow the path that Isshiki now walked.

"Come!"

But she was wiser still not to disobey a direct order from her god.

She obeyed. Emerald and Mercury followed.

He ferried them away to places that their mortal eyes had not ventured.

A/N: READ THIS NOTE, WOULD YOU KINDLY?

There we go, long chapter. Ronin and I are both exhausted from writing this behemoth.

Remember! Embers Rule! If folks don't like this, it won't be continued and consigned to the plot bin.

So by all means, speak up! Raise your voice! Make yourself heard! Your reviews matter!

Time, and of course, the reviews, will tell if this story lives.

So in the Immortal Words of Atlas...

...Review Would You Kindly?

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