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.
It took four days in the end. Once A came in on the second and shook Ishiguri's hand before proceedings began and then proceeded to back every single one of his suggestions, it became a formality. Bunpuku as well had been swayed. I was on his side already, and Madara just did not seem to care about any of it, so he offered no opposition to the rest of the planning. The minor village leaders came in one morning and suddenly found that all the major villages had come to an accord of some sort, and they found themselves floundering.
I enjoyed the way smug smiles shifted to frowns as A backed everything, Bunpuku did the same, I followed suit, and then Madara just stayed silent. They had expected to be able to use the traditional fighting between the great villages to their advantage to extract some sort of concession or favour for bringing the votes to get the ideas confirmed.
But now Ishiguri did not need them, and he did not need their votes either. Sure, everyone had one vote only, so even if the four of us Kage voted together, the minor villages would have the advantage, but that only mattered if we needed to pass things by voting. If we moved ahead with a plan and didn't carry them along, they would end up being the losers at the end of the day.
It was pointed out to them all the more clearly when Rock's leader, Kakehashi, had proven particularly obstinate around the prospect of sending his army to join Suna's in defending their village, and Ishiguri had grown annoyed and said the man was free to leave if he wanted. The barriers that would cover the rest of the earth to force the Otsutsuki to certain spots would just exclude the Village Hidden in the Rocks, he had said. And the man had deflated like a popped balloon; no one could pretend that that wasn't a threat. But it said something about the landscape by then that no one spoke out about it. And so the days went on, until now.
I looked at the final document. It contained the goals of the alliance, its terms, all that would be expected of every member nation, the duration spelled out to be when, by the agreement of a simple majority of parties, the Otsutsuki threat had ceased. With a more peace-craving group, I would have worried that something like this could end up with me and Konoha at large being tied down to a perpetual alliance that never ended, but I knew this lot would be straining to get out in weeks. They'd be more likely to end it prematurely than keep it around for too long. The final part of the extremely long scroll had the signatures. I was one of the last to pen my name and mark to it, and after reading again to be sure that I hadn't missed anything, and having received the go-ahead from both Shika and Uzume, I spun my brush with a flourish and signed.
I passed it to Miya Katsura at my side, and she began the same process of reading that I'd just finished. I looked around the table now. There were some smiles, some blank expressions, and some frowns. They were all subtle, of course, but the Byakugan laid bare the world to me. Most interesting of them all was Madara. He'd signed without reading it, seeming not to care what had been put down. Some might have seen it as a display of trust in Ishiguri's people, but I knew it was because he didn't care what the scroll said. To him, it wasn't even worth the paper it was written on, and he would most likely treat it like that when the time came. He would play ball while it suited him, and when it no longer did, he would damn it all.
Hopefully, I'd end up being the one with the chance to kill him when that happened. Kurama might have raged about it less, but even now I could feel his hunger for revenge stoking my own hunger for battle.
Ishiguri's clap drew my attention to him. Everyone had signed.
"Thank you all. Truly. Now we can get to work stopping the Otsutsuki from turning this planet into their next meal. Zetsu will reach out to work towards implementing the terms, and we will meet again closer to the time of the invasion," he said, bringing the meeting to a close. Madara was first to rise, and he just left. Not the room or the building, but the village. He covered ground at speed, and his ANBU and Nagato did a good job of keeping up. If Ishiguri was bothered, he said nothing.
People began to form small groups and speak to each other. I turned to Uzume and Shika, signalling them that it was time to go once A and Bunpuku had left as well.
"Cousin," Ishiguri called before we could leave. I turned to look at him. The minor village leaders had come together from all their small gatherings into one larger group now, and all their attention turned to us.
"Cousin," I said, meeting those unnerving blue eyes that seemed to see everything there was to see about me and then some. When he reached me, he pulled me into a hug and whispered.
"Thank you." His words were pressed into my ears from the lips he'd placed next to them. I noted how soft his skin felt with our cheeks touching the way they were. It was oddly comfortable, this contact. Not in a sexual way, of course. If I didn't know better, I would have called it familial. But the genetics were too distant to make sense.
"No problem," I said. With anyone else, I would probably have pressed the debt, but I knew the best strategy with Ishiguri was acting like we didn't need to count favours. He would do more for me than I did for him in the end. I would make sure of it. I just had to decide what I needed from him.
"Here you go," he said, pressing something into my grip as we pulled apart. I looked down, and catching the flash of red in the vial he'd given me, I sealed it in my wrist seal instantly. Well, that was one way to answer the question of whether he knew about the super ninja serum and our experiments with it.
"For you. Only you," he said, meeting my gaze. I nodded. The other Otsutsuki was too weak to give me a meaningful boost, but Ishiguri was levels above that one. He was stronger than Madara, Uzume, and me at the very least. His blood was valuable.
"Thank you," I said again, and then when he nodded, I was off.
The excitement burned in my chest as we left. I wondered how it would feel.
----
"It's compatible with you. Scarily compatible," Kagame said, referring to the blood the original had given her to work with. Considering the original would be using this himself, he felt it prudent for me to be here to monitor every step of the process. We trusted Kagame, of course, but we were well aware that if Orochimaru wanted to take us off the board easily, then this would be one of the best opportunities he would ever get.
"Why scarily so? Isn't that a good thing?" I asked.
"It's scary because it makes no sense. His family have been on the moon for at least a thousand years. Even assuming they inbred themselves into insanity while up there, I know you weren't doing the same down here. No matter how many jokes people tell about the Hyuga, you aren't actually as inbred as you tend to look," she said. Thanks? Was that even a compliment?
"It makes no sense. It looks like the two of you might as well be brothers," she said.
"Hagoromo and Hamura were brothers, and Hagoromo gave birth to the Senju, Uzumaki, and Uchiha clans. Hamburg birthed the Hyuga. I'm Senju and Uzumaki on one side, and Hyuga on the other. It makes sense that the genes have aligned enough to make us similar, no?" I said.
"No, no, no. Genetics don't work like that. Not over a thousand years, for certain. The Senju have interbred more than almost any other clan in the world with the other clans around it. The Uzumaki haven't been shy about getting other clans into their gene pool as well. That famous red hair comes from a clan from the Land of Water from around the founding of Uzushio, you know? So no. There's no reason other than alien genetics being funny for it to be like this," she said.
"Oh, okay then. But it's still a good thing, yes?" I asked, just to be sure.
"Yes, it is. You'll probably get even greater effects from serum made with his DNA than you would from one made from an Otsutsuki with twice his power, simply from how similar you guys already are," she said.
"That is, of course, assuming that the other Otsutsuki is more similar to Subject A than to this sample. If the other Otsutsuki had a similar genetic makeup to this sample, then the greater power would tell more strongly," Orochimaru said. I nodded. I got that, at least. At least, I thought I did.
"Should synthesising the serum take much longer?" I asked.
"No. You should be able to call on the original in a few weeks," she said. I made a clone and then popped it to get the message back to the boss.
--
I took the influx of memories with the ease of someone who had been using and abusing the Shadow Clone Jutsu for decades at this point. Well, decades if you added the experience my own clones had with the technique to my own. Less than if you just went by how much time had passed. Either way, I was able to return my focus to the matter at hand, and my partner in this was none the wiser of the shift that the information I had just received had created within me. A power boost sounded almost too good to be true, but I'd seen how it had worked for everyone else, and I couldn't deny feeling some excitement around the prospect of getting even stronger.
Especially when I knew Madara would be doing the same right now, and that Ishiguri was so far beyond us that he did not even need to really try anymore. Competing with those two meant I had to advance things farther and faster than I otherwise would have preferred. Not just them, of course. The Otsutsuki were coming, and that didn't exactly encourage restraint.
"Try again," I asked when the attempt failed, but this time it had come closer than all the rest. Mikoto looked back at me before nodding. She tapped the skull of the prisoner, sending a jolt of lightning chakra through his brain that ended his life, and then began to weave the seals for the Edo Tensei.
"Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation," she intoned. But even as the man lay dead in front of her, he did not return. There was no rising from him. His body jolted to show that something had actually happened, but it was not enough to bring him back.
"Attempt two hundred and thirteen, unsuccessful. Jutsu still refuses to work in a self-contained sacrificial loop. Recommendation: Abandon course and move to other endeavours," she spoke, and her words appeared on the scroll at the other end of the lab. But I knew those last words were not for the scroll. They were for me. And she might even have been right. There was every chance that this was all a waste of time, and if she never managed to make it work, then these would be hundreds of deaths on her conscience with nothing to show for it. But then, I also couldn't deny that there was something there. I could see it sure as day in the way the body jolted, a brief spark of something. It was impossible to ignore. And if it meant that we were closer to success than to failure, then was it not my duty to ensure we kept going?
Something of my thought process must have shown on my face, because Mikoto spoke next.
"Please, Sensei," she said. Her voice had a small hitch at the end, and once I heard it, there was no choice in the end.
"You're right. We have enough," I said, stepping up and placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Thank you," she said, breathing a heavy sigh as I pulled her away from the bodies. A clone started taking care of them. It was a shame that we didn't end up figuring that out, because it would have made the jutsu even more useful in combat, with the prospect of reviving your allies as they were killed, but we had pushed the jutsu pretty far regardless. I wouldn't consider Mikoto a master of Edo Tensei in the same way that Kabuto was, able to decide what version of a person to bring back the way he'd done with Madara. But she was at least capable of everything we'd seen Orochimaru do in canon and then some.
----
It took two weeks for Kagame and Orochimaru to finish making my serum. My clone watched every second of the way to ensure there was no foul play, and I was practically vibrating in my seat when I finally received the call to come to the lab. It was empty but for the three of us. There were samples and all sorts of things on the walls, and in the middle was a giant computer, the best that the world had been able to produce so far to allow Kagame to make the projections that made her experiments achievable in anything resembling a reasonable time period.
I appeared in their midst, and my clone dispelled itself. Kagame stepped forward with the canister. "You will have to inject this into a vein and then sleep for a night, and by the next morning it should have started working, so expect to see some effects. Allow for anywhere between 72 and 96 hours for the full effects to take root, however," she said. I nodded, already knowing all this.
"And remember that you are not to exert yourself in any way for the next 72 hours. That means no sparring, and no shadow clones," she said. I nodded. I wouldn't like being confined to a single body for the first time in years, but for a change that could mean the difference between life and death not just for me, but possibly all of humanity, there was no second-guessing it.
I sat at her direction and then took hold of the needle. It wasn't that I didn't trust Kagame. I just preferred to do certain things myself. I found the vein and inserted the needle, part of me marvelling at how this was something that would have sent the me from my first life into a fit—having a needle put in. I pushed in the glowing blue serum and felt a burst of pain as it flowed into the vein, but that was to be expected.
It was like acid flowing up the vein and straight to my heart. It burned for a moment, a sharp feeling, but faded quickly, leaving only a light itch behind.
"Good. Now, begone with you. I have seen too much of this face recently," she said, and I tried to hide my smile as I stepped towards her before lunging into a hug. She either wasn't quick enough to react or just let it happen.
"Thank you," I said, and then I turned to leave, walking through the halls of the hospital for the first time in months at least. I couldn't use Flying Raijin for fear of disobeying Kagame and ending up with suboptimal results, so I walked the whole journey back to the clan compound like a civilian.
XXXX- MINATO NAMIKAZE
He took a deep breath and then flashed across the training ground. There were twelve markers on the wide field. And in the forest that adjoined it were another twenty-seven. That made for thirty-nine markers. He could feel each one with that sixth sense that wasn't quite a sense that the seals gave him. He could tell the orientation of the marker, where it was, and what the state of things was like for a few centimetres around it, so he never flashed into a space too small for him. Sensei reckoned it would just return him to his starting point. Minato reckoned that he never wanted to find out.
He clicked the stopwatch to start, and then flashed across the markers. A seal he'd placed on the kunai would cause a small vibration on one of them at random until he had touched them all. He had experimented with true randomness, but that hadn't worked as well, so now he went with a sorting matrix that made it so any he touched was removed from the group that could be pinged.
He went through, and when he finally rose back where he started and clicked the stopwatch again, he sighed. Even without looking at it, he knew it was too long. He checked. Twenty-seven seconds. Just barely under a second per kunai. Too much time. It was taking him too long to register the next ping and flash to it. He sighed and prepared for another attempt, when he felt danger. He flashed to a kunai to the side and got a front-row view of Sensei appearing where he'd just been and kicking out. The kick passed through where Minato's head had once been, and generated enough wind that it blew his hair backwards even this far away.
"Good. I've been spoiling for a spar," Sensei said, and then pushed off at him.
A/N: And so we go with the chapter. Next chapter comes on here by Sunday night. Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), you can support me there and read them early.