[The Renegade] Chapter 25 - A Cruel Fate (Patreon)

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Chapter 25 - A Cruel Fate

Previous chapter

The ninja of Kumogakure invaded his homeland and attacked his village. They came here to kill his people and destroy his home. He had already given them a chance to retreat but they did not take it. Now, he had no reason to hold back against the enemy anymore.

A cloak of red chakra engulfed his body as he raised his left hand in front of him and said:

“Shinra Tensei!”

⁂

Waves hundreds of metres tall were raised when an area of the lake two kilometres in width and over seven kilometres in length was suddenly displaced by an incredible pushing force that blasted away the water, the ice, and the thousands of shinobi on top of it, revealing the lake bed deep below.

His Sage senses were telling him that the Eight Tails Jinchuuriki had survived the overpowered Shinra Tensei that he had just cast and that he had managed to save over a hundred of his comrades by covering them with his soft, squid-like body. Similarly, another shinobi, a Lava-release user, had encased nearly fifty of his comrades in a sort of rubber ball, which saved them from the first impact, sending them bouncing all the way to the other shore of the lake. 

However, the larger part of the Kumogakure army was obliterated in one attack. That was the power of the Rinnegan. 

Holding the Raikage in the air effortlessly with one hand, he grabbed him by the back of his neck and forced him to watch the broken and mangled bodies of his people floating on the surface of the lake amidst the shattered pieces of ice. 

“Tell me, Raikage. Is that what you wanted?”

The Raikage didn’t answer. He was just putting up a struggle to get out of Naruto's grasp. But he had no chakra left, and Naruto’s physical strength as a Sage was not unlike that of a monster. It was futile. 

“How many ninjas does your village have? Fifteen thousand? Twenty thousand? You lost over 4000 of them today. Was it worth it?”

“Don’t think you’ll get away with this, Uzumaki!” the Raikage screamed, frothing at the mouth from rage. “You have made the whole world your enemy! You will pay for this! You will die a terrible death!”

“We are humans. In the end, death claims us all,” Naruto said calmly. “One day I will die too, but you won’t be there to see it… no… wait... I’ve just thought of something better.”

Naruto’s free hand turned into a short, thin, jagged blade as he activated his Asura Path. 

Raikage howled in agony as Naruto shoved his hand-turned-blade into his spinal cord.

“No! Kill me!” Raikage shouted through his screams of pain when he realised what Naruto was doing to him. “At least grant me a clean death!” 

Naruto sneered at him. 

“Why? So you can take the easy way out?.”

He twisted his blade-hand into this spine, crushing it completely. With how tough Raikage was, that wasn’t enough to kill him. However, he would be turned into a vegetable for life, paralysed.

“No. I’m not going to kill you. I’ll let you live with your failure and feel the weight of the four thousand people that you have doomed because of your greed for power.”

“You won’t even be able to kill yourself. You will be kept alive by your subordinates, all the while having to hear everyone blaming you for leading Kumogakure’s sons and daughters to their deaths.”

Carrying the paralysed Raikage by the neck, Naruto flew in the direction where he could sense the Eight Tails’ chakra. Arriving there, he saw that Killer Bee had come out of his Bijuu form and returned to his normal appearance.

Many of the people he had managed to save were knocked unconscious by the impact, but the rest, who were still conscious and able to stand, froze in terror when they saw the blonde with his Rinnegan eyes gleaming coldly stepping out of the blizzard. 

“All this could have been avoided if you had taken my offer and retreated when I told you,” said Naruto, throwing Raikage’s unresponsive body at them like a dirty rag. 

“I’m not here to kill you all. Take your kage and fuck off.”

He turned his back to them, clearly unconcerned with the fact that they could attack him from behind. 

“There will be no mercy for you if you attack us again,” Naruto said as his body disappeared in the blizzard. But his voice was still carried by the wind to their ears.

“Next time you attack Ame, I won’t just kill you. I will come to your village and put an end to you all. I will raze your village off the surface of the earth. This is my final warning."

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On the other side of Amegakure, despite the deaths they suffered because of the minefields and the volley of arrows and explosives fired by the Hwacha, the Iwa nins were relentless in their attack. 

The huge rampart raised by Squad 1 proved to be invaluable in limiting the amount of damage that the Hwacha dealt, but the problem was that the battle entered a stalemate, with both Iwa and Ame nins hiding behind their large walls. 

‘This isn’t good,’ the captain inwardly said as he observed the new development.

Normally, an army of 5000 Iwa nins would be enough to swiftly annihilate a minor Hidden Village like Amegakure, provided that they attacked by surprise. However, Amegakure seemed to have prepared for an invasion ahead of time; it was as if they had known that they were going to be attacked. Furthermore, their new weaponry had truly set Iwagakure back. What should have been a blitzkrieg had now become a siege. 

‘Well, no matter. Konan of the Akatsuki and the Nine Tails Jinchuuriki aren’t here. We still have the absolute advantage.’

Due to the terrible blizzard that didn’t let one see further than 20 metres ahead of them, the captain and the rest of the Iwagakure nins didn’t know that Naruto’s Shadow Clone was inside the village or that he had summoned the original body and Konan to Amegakure either. 

Iwagakure and Kumogakure’s invasion of Ame was based on the premise that Uzumaki Naruto and his Rinnegan were going to be absent from the village. With Uzumaki Naruto and Konan being in the Land of Iron, thousands of kilometres away, there would be nobody left in the Village Hidden in the Rain to stop them. 

A smile appeared on the captain’s face when he heard a large explosion in the distance, and he laughed evilly. 

‘Haha! Kumogakure’s troops are here too.’

The captain reckoned that Amegakure had placed most of their forces on the side of the wall that Iwa had attacked. He didn’t know that those hundreds of arrows weren’t fired by hundreds of archers but by less than 10 people, of whom half didn’t even know how to wield a bow. Therefore, Kumogakure’s arrival brought a smile to his face, thinking that Ame would now have to split their forces to deal with the new invader, thus making his goal of breaking through their walls easier. 

‘Once we breach their ramparts, they’ll be dead meat.’

The captain almost laughed out loud when he thought about the glory and riches that the Tsuchikage would bestow upon him once he returned victorious. He made up his mind to reap all the benefits by contributing the most to their victory. 

“I’m going to step out of cover and shatter their walls,” the captain suddenly said in a loud voice to make himself heard by everyone. “Squad 1, provide cover fire for me with Iwadeppo no Jutsu. Squad 2, prepare to launch your Earth Dragon Technique once their walls are down.”

“Understood!” his subordinates yelled. 

The Iwa captain made a snake seal with his hands, and his skin turned a very dark brown. It was one of Iwagakure’s most formidable defensive techniques, Earth Spear. In spite of what its name implied, the Earth Spear Jutsu was not an offensive technique; it was actually a rock armour jutsu that made the user almost invulnerable to all attacks except for the strongest lightning techniques. It was a direct counterpart to Raikage’s lightning armour. 

Once he covered his body in that earth armour technique, the Iwa captain made a hole in the huge rampart and broke into a sprint towards the tall and thick walls surrounding Amegakure. 

A hail of hundreds of arrows came from behind Amegakure’s walls, but he was too fast for most of the projectiles to reach their mark. Ame Shinobi standing on the top of the walls fired all sorts of water, earth, and fire techniques at him, but the Iwa captain tanked them all by lowering his head, crossing his hands in front of his chest, and running like a bulldozer straight ahead. 

At the same time, a hail of rock boulders was fired by the Iwa nins, forcing the Ame shinobi to take cover, thus lowering the number of attacks that the Iwa captain had to bear. 

The Iwa captain grunted in pain when some of the enemy’s lightning techniques managed to hit him, but those jutsu weren’t formidable enough to shatter his rock armour. 

An ugly grin appeared on his face when he finally reached Amegakure’s wall and placed both of his hands on it. 

“Doton: Earth Collapse Jutsu!”

Panicked cries came from the Rain shinobi and soldiers standing on the wall when it started to shake and crumble like during an earthquake. It took only half a minute for the enormous wall protecting the Hidden Village to collapse, raising a large and dense cloud of dust amidst the blizzard. 

“They're ours now!” yelled the Iwa captain. “Kill them all! For Iwagakure! For the third Tsuchikage!”

A chorus of thousands of battle cries rang as the Iwa nins charged towards Amegakure.

But then, nearly two hundred glowing spheres of blue light appeared in the cloud of dust, obscuring everyone’s eyesight after the collapse of the wall. 

Some of the more cautious Iwa nins stopped and quickly raised a mud wall to protect themselves, but most of them just charged ahead, blinded by their fury and desire to kill. 

Alas, regardless of whether they raised a mud wall to protect themselves or simply charged ahead, the result was the same in the end. Almost 200 Rain chunin and jonins jumped from behind the broken walls with a spiralling orb of chakra in their hands. 

“RASENGAN!” 

Mud walls crumbled like wet sand when their Rasengans collided against them, and those who were hit directly were blasted back, rotating uncontrollably, or they were gored out, huge chunks of their torsos missing. Not a single one of those targeted by Rasengans managed to survive.

Although there were over 4000 Iwa nins, the sudden, swift, and brutal attack of the 200 Rasengan casters abruptly halted their enthusiastic charge. 

The Iwa Captain threw himself at the closest Ame ninja, throwing a devastating punch empowered by his rock armour jutsu. However, instead of punching a hole through the unfortunate shinobi who happened to be close to him, the Iwa Captain’s fist was blocked by a wide and strange-looking weapon. 

His face turned pale with fright when his rock armour faded away from his body, and a feeling of vertigo came over him when over 80% of his chakra reserves were drained in one go. 

His opponent was a large and muscular shinobi, seemingly in his early forties. Despite his age, he had a head full of wild crimson-red hair, and his red eyes were filled with the vigour of youth as well. He was a Uzumaki. But the most eye-catching thing was the peculiar weapon in his hands. 

Nearly half a metre wide, and as long as the man was tall and covered in what looked like shark fins… …there was not a single shinobi worth his salt who hadn’t heard of it before. It was Samehada, the strongest sword among the 7 Swords of the Mist. 

“Samehada doesn’t like your chakra all that much, but at least the quantity was good enough,” laughed the red-haired man out loud. 

“S-Samheada…?! How?!” was the only thing that the captain managed to utter.

In the next moment, a loud wooshing sound was heard as a huge sword came flying to him and split his body in half from the waist. 

“What the hell is wrong with you, kid?! Why did you steal my kill?!” yelled the Uzumaki infuriated, all the while ripping an Iwa nin’s body to shreds with Samehada when he tried to attack him. 

The one who had thrown the sword was a young and skinny brown-haired boy no older than 16. It was unreal to think that someone as young and frail as him could throw the Kubikiribocho with such strength. But that was only until one took a look at his monstrous, demonic-looking right arm and realised that he was part of the infamous Ibaraki clan, the same clan as Sasuke’s former teammate, Jugo. 

“Oi, Suiron! Don’t ignore me, you little prick!” shouted the older Uzumaki. 

“You were taking too long to kill him,” said the boy blandly before grabbing his huge sword and throwing it like a tomahawk at two other Iwa nins who were protecting each other’s backs, killing them both in one strike. 

Alas, although they were momentarily cowed by Amegakure’s unexpected barrage of Rasengans, in the end, the Iwa army still had the numbers on their side. As hundreds of Iwa ninjas launched their Earth Dragon Techniques, the Ame nins were forced to pull back. 

Despite their formidable individual strength, the two elite jonins of Amegakure, wielding two of the famed seven swords of the Mist, were forced to retreat too under the Iwagakure army’s formidable offence. 

Nevertheless, the Iwa army was paying in blood with every step that they managed to advance. 

⁂

‘I think it’s time to put an end to this,’ Naruto’s shadow clone thought. 

He had let his subordinates engage the Iwagakure’s army in order to let them get a taste of what Rasengan’s power was like and give them the opportunity to build more confidence in their strength. 

However, Naruto’s clone had no intention of just sitting on the sidelines and watching how his people risked their lives while he was doing nothing. 

Making use of the clouds of dust raised by the walls’ collapse and the terrible blizzard raging outside, Naruto flew high up in the air undetected and let himself crash-land in the middle of the advancing Iwagakure army. 

Before the surrounding shinobi and kunoichi could react, he placed his hand on the ground and said:

“Kuchyose no Jutsu!”

An enormous plume of white smoke clouded the entire area, reducing everyone’s visibility to zero. 

Then, a roar like that of a primordial beast shook the skies. 

The clouds of smoke and dust were blasted away, and even the terrible blizzard momentarily stopped from the strength of that roar. 

Dozens of Iwa nins felt as though strength had left their legs and fell to the ground powerlessly when they looked at the titanic beast that had appeared in their midst. It was an eight-tailed demonic fox over 60 metres tall. 

“Give them hell, Kurama!” said Naruto, and Kyuubi roared in approval and excitement before an enormous torrent of fire came out of his mouth, reaping the lives of nearly 100 shinobi in one go. 

A one-sided massacre began as the bloodlusted bijuu started tearing, smashing, and incinerating all the Iwa nins in his sight. The fox was pouring out all his hatred for humans and thirst for vengeance into his attacks, getting back at Iwagakure tenfold for trying to seal him a few months ago. 

Less than two minutes after Naruto summoned Kyuubi on the battlefield, the surviving ninjas of Iwagakure turned tail and ran desperately for their lives. 

Initially boasting a number of 5000 shinobi, only one thousand and half managed to make it out alive, and even that was only due to Naruto deciding to spare their lives and asking Kurama not to chase after them.

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While the Village Hidden in the Rain was under the two-pronged invasion of the armies of Iwagakure and Kumogakure, things were very peaceful in a region of the Land of Iron that was close to the border with the Land of Grass.

All one could see with their eyes was a vast expanse of snowy mountains covered by coniferous forests. It was a peaceful and serene sight. Nobody expected that the Will of Kaguya, Black Zetsu, and the remains of Akatsuki had built an underground base in those mountains. 

“It appears that the second Kage Summit bore no fruit. It was just a glorified interrogation for Konan. The Raikage, the Tsuchikage, and the Mizukage were dying to find out what happened with the captured bijuu,” said a White Zetsu clone as he popped up from the ground. 

“Interesting. We might be able to use this to our advantage,” Kabuto said, smiling as a devious idea came to his mind. 

“What are you plotting in that devious mind of yours?” Black Zetsu asked in his usual grouchy tone. 

“Nothing for you to be worried about,” Kabuto said quickly. “I was thinking that we could use Iwa, Kumo, and Kiri’s help to destroy Amegakure if we revealed to them the fact that the bijuu are all stored inside the Gedo Mazo, which is under Uzumaki Naruto’s control.”

“As expected from a snake,” White Zetsu chimed in. 

“Hmm… more importantly, what is going on with Sasuke?” Black Zetsu asked and turned to look at the pod installed in the middle of the laboratory. 

Naked as the day he was born, an unconscious Uchiha Sasuke was submerged in a green liquid while a mask prevented him from drowning and supplied him with oxygen. But there was one thing that didn’t look normal to him. The right arm, the one where Kabuto had injected him with Hashirama Senju’s cells, was inflated beyond the proportions of a regular human, and it looked like it was in the process of transforming into a plant-like limb. 

“Nothing is wrong with him. Everything is going according to plan.”

Black Zetsu glared in his direction. 

“Was it part of the plan for him to lose control of the Hashirama Cells?”

Kabuto pushed the rim of his glasses higher on his nose with his index fingers as he smirked. 

“As a matter of fact, it was.”

Without warning, five wooden spikes burst from the floor underneath Kabuto’s feet, but he shunshined away before Black Zetsu’s jutsu could impale him. 

“You’re finally showing your true colours, wretched snake,” said Black Zetsu, his voice harsher than usual due to his anger. 

Kabuto just laughed as his legs turned into the lower body of a snake, and he slithered out of the room at great speed. 

“If you thought you could cross me and live because I mostly did scouting work for the Akatsuki, you’re in for a big surprise,” Zetsu said as he sank into the ground and started following Kabuto, who by now had already slithered out of their underground base, disappearing into the forest.

By the time Black Zetsu finally caught up to Kabuto, the humanoid snake was waiting for him with three coffins in front of him. 

Black Zetsu frowned as the coffins’ lids fell off, revealing the corpses inside: Nagato, Itachi, and Deidara.

But Black Zetsu wasn’t intimidated. Slapping his palms together like in prayer, the ground started shaking and cracking as a humongous wooden statue grew out. It was so large that it dwarfed even the tall and ancient forest, standing at over 100 metres in height, width, and length. It was a colossal Buddha statue with countless wooden arms. 

Kabuto laughed leisurely when the titanic Buddha statue moved its countless arms to attack him. 

“If I didn’t have Uzumaki Nagato on my side, I might have been worried. But your Mokuton is nothing in front of the power of the Rinnengan!”

As Edo Nagato raised his arms and activated the Preta Path to absorb all the incoming attacks of the Buddha statue, Edo Itachi’s eyes turned into his Mangekyo Sharingan, and he said:

“Amaterasu!”

A moment later, as Black Zetsu was engulfed by black flames, Kabuto controlled Edo-Deidara to create a large clay bird to mount, and then the two of them flew away, straight towards the laboratory. 

“I won’t let you get away with it!” Black Zetsu screamed. 

A plant-type kawarimi made him shed his previous body, escaping the flames of Amaterasu, and then his arms turned into two enormous vine-whips, which he threw at the flying Kabuto and Deidara. 

However, five rapidly-flying birds collided with Zetsu’s vine-arms and exploded with a great bang. 

Black Zetsu jumped off the enormous Buddha statue, intent on abandoning it,, but a voice was heard from below, and he suddenly lost control over his body. 

“Bansho Ten’in!”

Black Zetsu screamed in anger and frustration as Edo-Nagato cast his Universal Pull. His whip-like vine arms coiled around the Great Buddha statue’s arms in order to stop himself from being pulled off, but Nagato’s technique was so strong that Zetsu’s vine arms were ripped from the middle. 

“These insignificant and worthless-” he began to shout in rage, but his words were cut off midway when a glowing, ethereal orange blade stabbed through his torso. 

“What- … What is going on?!” he asked, more than a little shocked and with a hint of panic in his voice. 

When he raised his head and his eyes fell on Uchiha Itachi, who was surrounded by a gigantic, ethereal samurai of orange and red light, realisation dawned on him. 

“No-, is this? Nooo!” Black Zetsu screamed as he was sucked into Uchiha Itachi’s Totsuka blade, getting sealed away for eternity. 

⁂

“Sealing success!” Kabuto said, smiling, pleased at Edo-Nagato and Edo-Itachi’s success. 

In truth, he had never had any doubts that Black Zetsu would lose to Nagato and Itachi’s reanimations. 

‘I don’t know if I could win against those two either if they were to be alive.’

After all, Itachi’s Totsuka Blade was the big equaliser, and Nagato’s Rinnegan was simply too unfair to fight against as a ninjutsu specialist. 

‘Nevertheless, they are under my control now. And soon, so will be Uchiha Sasuke too.’

A long, snake-like tongue came out of his mouth as he licked his lips while looking at Uchiha Sasuke’s unconscious body submerged in the pod. He had carefully increased the dosage of Hashirama Cells that he had administered to Sasuke so that he would lose consciousness, but not to the point where the Hashirama Cells would take over his body completely. 

His snake tail enlarged until it became gigantic and smashed head-first against the pod, breaking through its outer glass and wrapping around Sasuke’s body. 

“The prize that Orochimaru-sama had been fighting to obtain for many years... It’s finally in my grasp!”

Kabuto closed his eyes and took a while to relish the moment of sweet triumph. 

“But I learned from Orochimaru-sama’s mistakes, so I will not repeat them.”

Two small snakes grew from his fingers and bit Sasuke’s face, gouging his eyes out. The eyes were left perfectly intact. Despite that Sasuke was unconscious, Kabuto decided not to take any risks. He was going to reimplant his eyes after he claimed control over the Uchiha's body. 

Once his two snakes slithered away and placed the eyes in a flask filled with medicinal liquid, Kabuto gave the flask with Sasuke’s eyes to Edo-Deidara and commanded him to wait outside the room. 

“Now. At last! I will fulfil Orochimaru-sama’s dream and get a step closer to achieving perfection.”

Getting the Mangekyo Sharingan was merely the first step. Kabuto was fully intent on making the Hashirama’s Cells in Sasuke’s body his as well, and awakening the Rinnegan too. 

Kabuto’s head turned into that of a grotesque-looking snake, and his mouth opened wider than humanly possible, wide enough to swallow a full human whole. Raising Sasuke above his head, Kabuto lowered him slowly into his mouth and swallowed his entire body in one go. 

Kabuto’s human form disappeared completely as he transformed into an enormous snake, who then proceeded to coil up and fall into a deep slumber. 

Outside the room, Edo Deidara, Edo Nagato, and Edo Itachi were standing guard emotionlessly, not saying a word. 

But that was only a facade due to Edo Tensei’s absolute control. Deep inside, Uchiha Itachi was seething with rage and vengeance at watching his little brother lose his life, falling prey to Orochimaru’s disciple. 

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AN: Kyuubi has 8 tails because one tail is inside Naruto’s body at all times, keeping him alive. 

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