Disclaimer: Naruto and all of its characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto. I own only the original characters I create.
Chapter 195: Return To Konoha
Raiken looked back, watching Kaguya, Madara, Kazuma, and other guards from the Otsutsuki Clan follow him.
Earlier, he had agreed with Kaguya, she wanted to see people on Earth, so here they were here heading to Konoha.
The moment the group touched down at the gates of Konoha, Raiken had already sent word ahead through a shadow clone he had dispatched before they left the moon. Even so, the reality of what was walking through the entrance of the village was something that no amount of advance notice could fully prepare a person for.
Sakumo had waited at the gates for about four minutes before they arrived. He had used those four minutes to compose himself, which he felt was a reasonable amount of time given the information the shadow clone had delivered. By the time the group came into view, he was standing with the posture of a Hokage, hands clasped behind his back, expression measured and calm.
Then he saw them and the composure required slightly more effort than it had a moment ago.
Raiken appeared first, and beside him walked a woman with white hair that fell past her shoulders and skin so pale it seemed to take in rather than reflect the daylight, her eyes were forward, and her bearing carried the particular quality of someone who once had owned every room they entered and had not entirely stopped. Behind her walked a man whose black hair and dark eyes Sakumo recognised from every historical record the village held, a face so embedded in the mythology of the shinobi world, that man is Uchiha Madara.
He is alive and hasn't aged at all. Walking through the gates of Konoha with his hands at his sides and his look carrying the specific neutrality of someone who had decided not to have any conversation at all.
Behind him came another figure that Sakumo did not recognise immediately, tall and pale-eyed in a way that triggered a familiar disbanded Hyuga Clan, those eyes were definitely Byakugan, but he didn't know who that man was. Furthermore, he brought several people behind him who had the same eyes.
They are Byakugan users but not from the disbanded Hyuga Clan.
'Impossible if they stole Hyuga Clan eyes, then they won't come here,' thought Sakumo
Or rather, the people from whom the Hyuga had come.
Kazuma, walking among them, let his eyes move across the village with the watchful attention of someone absorbing a great deal of new information at once. His gaze settled on a group of civilians and ninja near the entrance, then turned to the shinobi standing near the Konoha Postguard and then to the residential house beyond. It has been 10th years since the Otsutsuki visited the Hyuga Clan, and he had forgotten the clan leader name.
"Where are the Hyuga?" asked Kazuma, his voice showing genuine confusion rather than accusation. "I expected to see them."
"The Hyuga Clan was disbanded some time ago," replied Raiken simply. "They integrated into the civilian population and the name no longer exists as an active clan designation."
Kazuma was quiet for a moment.
"The entire clan," he said.
"The entire clan," confirmed Raiken.
Kazuma looked at the village again with an expression that had moved into something considerably more complicated than simple confusion. The Hyuga had been, from the perspective of the moon branch, the most direct continuation of Hamura bloodline on earth. Learning that they had disbanded themselves was the kind of information that required sitting with before it could be properly processed.
"We will talk about that," Kazuma said eventually, the most diplomatic response available to him given the circumstances.
Sakumo stepped forward.
"Raiken," he said, acknowledging him first before turning his attention to the rest of the group while trying to maintain his face. Shikajin were not here because, the moment he was noticed by Raiken, Shikajin were in his clan compound, so he brought a few guards with him.
"Hokage-sama," replied Raiken. "Allow me to introduce our guests, this is Kazuma Otsutsuki, leader of the Moon Branch clan or Hyuga main family. His people are descendants of Otsutsuki Hamura." He gestured along the group. "Uchiha Madara, who I believe requires no further introduction." He paused and then turned slightly toward the white-haired woman standing at his left. "And this is Otsutsuki Kaguya. Our ancestor, the origin of all chakra in this world."
The silence that followed was the kind that happens when a group of people all process something at once and none of them has decided what to do with it.
Sakumo looked at Kaguya, and Kaguya looked back at Sakumo with the calm assessment of someone who had looked at things far more formidable than a village Hokage and found them manageable.
Then she opened her third eye.
The eye on her forehead slid open slowly, the pale iris expanding as it oriented itself, and what looked out from it was something that shared a similar kekkei genkai with the Uchiha Clan.
The reaction from the Uchiha shinobi standing near the gate was immediate: who is this woman who has the Sharingan and Byakugan at the same time
Several of them activated their Sharingan without thinking, their red eyes flaring to life as their bodies responded to something their bloodline recognised below conscious thought.
"What," said one of the senior Uchiha near Sakumo, his voice stripped of everything except the question, "is that eye?"
"The origin of yours," replied Raiken simply.
The Uchiha guard knew Raiken well, so they didn't attack, only decided to inform their clan leader about this woman. Furthermore, what surprised them equally was the appearance of Uchiha Madara.
Madara, who had been standing quietly through all of this, let his eyes move across the village with an expression that was difficult to read. He had not been inside Konoha in decades, and what he saw bore only a partial resemblance to the place he remembered. The layout was familiar in its bones, but everything built upon those bones had changed, grown, expanded in directions he had not predicted and could not have predicted from a cave.
He said nothing about it. Sakumo turned to Raiken with the expression of a man with approximately forty urgent questions, carefully selecting the most important one.
"How long will they be staying?" asked Sakumo.
"That depends on several conversations we still need to have," replied Raiken. "But I would suggest preparing the large meeting hall. What Kaguya has told us about the Otsutsuki Clan and what is coming for this world is something the village leadership needs to hear directly and soon."
Sakumo looked at Kaguya once more, at the third eye still open on her forehead, which Raiken had introduced to him about Kaguya Otsutsuki and although he got the gist of it.
He really didn't expect that Raiken would release her and bring Madara too