Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next three chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
We appeared back in my office. Me, none the worse for wear, but Nagato, still unconscious and now lacking a good amount of the reserves that had made him so formidable in the first place. Taking the chakra from him was an inefficient procedure, so quite a lot of it was wasted in transit, and then there was the cost of using flying raijin for another person across the distance we were working on here. He'd lost about half his chakra in one swoop.
Of course, it wasn't like he was going to be using his chakra for anything anytime soon. He was now stuck in the grasp of Konoha, and would be enjoying my hospitality for the foreseeable future, which at this point was the rest of his life. I would get the story of how he had ended up in the Mist, and then I would toss him in the deepest darkest hole I could find with no hope for him to escape. His genetic material would be useful, yes, but I would never forget what he had done in canon. Not Orochimaru, not Obito, not even Madara had posed as great a threat to my Grandfather's dream as this man had in canon.
And for that—to prevent the risk of it happening in this world as well—there would be no mercy as well. I rose, leaving him on the floor, and went to get the seals that I could use for someone of his strength. I felt a strong chakra interact with Nagato's and whirled around, but then the second I turned around, his body exploded in smoke. He was gone.
I had only been able to feel what had happened for about a second or two before it did. And that felt like a summoning. It was similar to when my students had reverse summoned themselves to their summon realms. How interesting. So either Nagato had an animal summon that just knew when to summon him, or something even scarier had happened.
I knew all the powerful summon kingdoms more or less. And not even the oldest of the Whales had felt that strong. Not just the strength even. There had been something unmistakably human about it. I should have been frustrated, but I just found myself curious.
Because there were only two known ways for a human to summon another human in this world. The first was that they be members of the same animal summons clan and then that the summoning be aided by said animal summons clan. I considered that unlikely. The second was, of course, the more famous example. The Rinnegan.
I'd searched the Land of Earth all I could at the end of the last war, and I hadn't found a whiff of a hair of Madara Uchiha. Nothing about the Ame Orphans when I killed Hanzo either. Something I'd done in the past had changed the shape of reality such that Nagato ended up in the Hidden Mist, never received the Rinnegan, and with what I'd seen so far, probably worked for whoever did get Madara's Rinnegan. I couldn't lie. I was intrigued.
Of course, if it ever did come to blows, I would win. There were no two ways about it. I had grown stronger than ever with each day that passed. My control over natural energy sharpened to the point where I could push the ratio even further than I had ever imagined as possible. My bond with Kurama had deepened so much that even though he spent most of the time watching movies or reading books from my memories of my first world, I knew I could rely on him to carry his part of the burden. And beyond either of those things, I had sharpened it all: ninjutsu, genjutsu, taijutsu, even fuinjutsu in terms of battlefield applications.
I had reached the point in my development where if I was a more arrogant man, I'd call myself the god of Shinobi. But I wasn't. Hashirama had been a different level of monster. He and Madara, reincarnations of gods that they were, were just a tier too high. Things like summoning a meteor from the sky, or turning a whole nation into a forest were still beyond me. No matter how much I trained. Some natural advantages were just too strong to overcome so quickly.
But the good thing was that I had decades before Madara's Eye of the Moon plan would come to fruition. And there was every chance that I'd change so many things that it ended up being impossible for him to be brought back. After all, I'd destroyed every record of the edo tensei as soon as I could. I'd learned the jutsu first just in case, but still had made sure no one had any chance of learning it other than me. Hiruzen knew it, but he would not be sharing it with anyone.
Orochimaru was loyal in this world, and if he proved himself not to be, then I had thankfully marked him with the flying raijin seal already. No matter where he was in the world—he could even jump dimensions and it would not matter—I would be able to find him and kill him.
Madara's only way back now was the Rinne Rebirth, but that needed a Rinnegan user. That was part of why I'd searched for the Ame Orphans so seriously. But even now that Nagato was gone, I had a lead: Kiri. I would kill the Rinnegan user the first chance I got, and destroy those eyes once I did so. No Madara, no Kaguya, and hopefully, no Otsutsuki threat coming on the heels of that. And if I ended up not getting to the Rinnegan user before they brought Madara back, then that wouldn't be much of a problem either. Rinne Rebirth would bring him back as he was when he had died. An old Madara that could barely walk wasn't going to be a fight worth having. It would be my win no matter what.
Whatever was going on behind the scenes didn't matter. I'd already won.
But then why did everything still feel so wrong?
This pervasive feeling of wrongness just refused to go away no matter what I did. No matter what I tried to turn my mind towards, I kept coming back to the feeling of that chakra. The one that had taken hold of Nagato, and the one that I had felt through that ring. The one at the heart of Kiri. I hadn't had my byakugan active so I hadn't seen it for sure, but I was almost certain that they were the same. They felt too similar to my senses to be anything but.
And if that was the case, then Michizane had been talking about the new Rinnegan wielder as if they were on the same level as Hashirama and Madara. Of course, the man had been so weak that just because he felt someone was strong did not mean that was the case. But then...
"Retsu," I called out.
"Hokage-sama?" she asked, head poking into my office.
"Cancel the rest of my day. I have something to look into," I said, drawing a shake of the head from her.
"You have the final fitting for your wedding outfit and a meeting with the Uchiha clan to finalise the contract later today," she said.
"Tell them something came up," I said.
"Uchiha-sama will kill me."
"You're exaggerating. Uzume doesn't have a murderous bone in her body. Now do as I said. There's a chance I make it back in time, but do be sure to cancel if it becomes clear that I won't be making it back." She sighed and slumped in defeat once she could tell I would not be budged on this.
"And where do I tell your betrothed that you have gone?" she asked.
"Tell her Kiri. I want to look into something," I said, and decided that was enough. Flying raijin took me down to my workshop.
On the wall was the latest version of my armour. This one had been remade to take account of recent growth, and now that I had fully come into my own, it had all the things I needed and nothing I did not. For one, its protection was minimal. Instead of overlapping plates of steel worn in Hashirama's style that I had used for the better part of the last decade, it was a composite weave. Most of it was Aburame silk, with some regular cotton in there for some areas where the lighter material would not work.
All of it came together in a single unibody suit that only differed from the one Might Gai wore in canon because of its colour, material makeup, and tightness. It was formfitting as I did have a form to be proud of, but it left at least some parts of my anatomy to the imagination. The Aburame silk would work well in all sorts of temperatures and also would not wear too much from my own high speed movements.
Over the unibody suit, I wore a flak jacket that was a gleaming white. Its pockets were filled with tiny sealing scrolls that contained all sorts of things. More things than I could ever need. This flak jacket was my own way of ensuring that I would always be prepared. It had some minimal padding over my chest, but that was the extent of the armour. My manoeuvrability mattered more to me than whatever limited protection armour could grant.
Anything strong enough to do real damage to me that Kurama's chakra would not be able to heal was unlikely to be stopped by any armour I could reasonably walk around with. And once I managed to figure out that one thing, durability would never be a problem again.
Once the outfit was on, I tried to focus on a place in Kiri to teleport to. Spies had placed flying raijin marks in all the major villages. I'd tried not to advertise that fact to anyone that did not absolutely need to know though. A trump card was only a trump card if your enemy never saw it coming.
Decision made, I took a deep breath.
XXXXX- MINATO NAMIKAZE
She stopped what she was saying and froze. She tilted her head like she was listening to a voice only she could hear. Minato gave Kushina a look out of the corner of his eye. If their enemy was going to give them such a clear opening, then no one could blame them for taking it.
They came in from either side. He body flickered to the left and in a second, his kunai was buried in her neck. Kushina came in from the right. In her hand, one of Gakuganji's scythes. She swept it through their opponent, cutting her in half from the waist.
But neither of those proved fatal as their opponent's body turned into paper in what had to be the most unique substitution jutsu he had ever seen. Her body just disassembled into multiple sheets of paper that just parted in the wake of their attacks.
"I'm sorry," she said to them from her head that still remained intact even as the rest of her body turned to paper.
Minato began looking around for the original, but Kushina caught on quicker. She formed two seals in quick succession and breathed out a whip of fire that just barely managed to catch some of the floating bits of paper, the rest of them flying off even quicker almost as if to avoid the attack.
"It's not a substitution," Kushina said, and it finally clicked.
But it was too late. The paper came together to form the upper half of her body farther down the hallway. But something had changed now. Her eyes had become purple and ringed. It couldn't be. Impossible. She moved with a stilted grace that had not been there before but her hands still weaved seals with all the expected speed. Summoning jutsu. He could recognise those seals anywhere.
"Formation Delta," he primed Kushina, already weaving seals of his own.
Whatever she was going to be summoning would find itself in for a nasty surprise.
"Kuchiyose no jutsu," she said in a voice lacking any emotion.
"Water release: Exploding Colliding Wave."
"Lightning release: Shocking Dance," he and Kushina intoned their own jutsu in unison.
There was an explosion of smoke from her end, and at the same time, Kushina spat out a tsunami that Minato's jutsu electrified in no short order. There was enough voltage in that combination to kill anything it touched for longer than a few seconds.
The electrified water crashed against whatever it was that she had summoned and seemed to part around it. Whatever it was should be long dead now. Minato just had to wait for the smoke to clear. Kushina hit him from the side, grabbing his wrist and then slamming into the wall next to them. Gyuki's chakra cloaked her right before she hit it and she crashed through it.
Minato did not struggle. Whatever she had sensed had necessitated this, and Minato knew better than to doubt Kushina's senses. A chain extended from her body, stabbing into the wall above them and reeling them into a higher floor. Before they could crash into this one, a rasengan formed in the hand Kushina wasn't holding him with.
Through this wall they went as well.
Two chains from her lower back tore through the storm of paper in the room before reaching out to grab Mikoto. She looked pale—paler than usual. It was not clear what had happened to her. Was this why Kushina panicked?
"We need to get out of here. Now," she told him before her chains reeled Mikoto over to them. Minato nodded, grabbing hold of Mikoto and following Kushina's lead, jumping out of the tower for the second time.
He took hold of the wind around them, pushing them forwards so instead of landing on the ground, they landed on the rooftop of the closest building which was still several feet away. Kushina did not stop and kept running so Minato followed her lead still.
"What's going on?" he asked after they had jumped their way past four different buildings. Kushina growled in irritation before turning around.
"No point running. He's too fast," she said.
"Who? Who is—" he started, but then he sensed it. And once he did, he wondered how he could not have felt it earlier.
It was suffocating, all-encompassing. More chakra than anyone other than Kushina had. More than Sensei even. But it was not the amount of chakra. It was how it felt. Pure malice. It was almost like it was the very embodiment of it standing in front of them as the man landed in front of them.
Red armour, coal black eyes, that face framed by a disdainful smirk that looked at them like insects beneath its foot. It was the same face on the statue at the Valley of the End. Madara Uchiha.
The thief hadn't been lying, he thought. And then almost chuckled at what his brain decided to focus on when he had the Ghost of the Uchiha in front of him. When he had the shinobi who he had been taught had been killed by Hashirama in front of him looking just like he did when that fight took place. He looked like he had stepped out of that statue just as he was. In one hand the famous gunbai, and in the other a kama. Both of them were connected by a chain.
"He's too fast to run from. He wasn't chasing earlier, but he still got here too quickly," Kushina whispered to him. He nodded, accepting their circumstances. There was only one thing to do. But if he could get some information before he did so...then that would be useful at least.
"Who are you?" he asked. The appearance and chakra were damning indications that the thief was right but Madara was supposed to be dead and everything he had read about the previous Hokage said it was unlikely that two of them could have been fooled by something like a genjutsu at the same time. Even fooling one of them would be near impossible. The First was a Sage, and the Second, a genius without peer.
"Do they not teach history anymore in Konoha? I always did say that Academy was a bad idea. Look at how far it has fallen that its products do not know the name of their own village's founder," he said. So he was claiming to be Madara then. It did not sound like he was lying. But then that meant nothing. They were shinobi. Lying was their bread and butter.
"Madara Uchiha is dead, try another one," he said.
"And yet here I stand in the flesh. Come closer and I can show you just how alive I am."
"But how did you—" he began before being forced to jump backwards out of the way of the kama as it was tossed in the air and then dragged downwards by the chain. The sickle's blade buried itself into the roof of the building they stood atop. Madara was wearing a smirk now.
"I tire of the questions. Your sensei took a tool from me. So either you call him to come here with Tobirama's jutsu to answer for his offence or you can die and then I take an eye for an eye," he said. Minato flicked his gaze towards Kushina. Whatever had happened to Mikoto meant that she was not going to be any good for this fight. It would just be the two of them. He drew one of the prisoner transport seals from his jacket and spread it open before dropping Mikoto into it. Madara did not seem to be bothered by that as he did not react at all.
"I think we'll try our luck. You know, just check to see if you're worth Sensei's time and all. If you really are Madara Uchiha then you must be one hell of a geezer behind all that makeup, so let's be sure if you can still dance," he said, picking up the scroll that contained his teammate and pocketing it before taking his stance.
A/N: This has been in the works for what feels like forever. I'm so happy we're here now. As for chakra capacities. In the story, the ranking (without including tailed beasts) is: Hashirama—Nagato—Madara (as he is now)—Kushina—Mito—Shori—...everyone else. Shori has a lot of chakra, but not the most in the verse by any means. Of course, it's not about how much load you're packing, but how you use it. Next chapter comes on here by Sunday night/Monday morning most likely. Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.