AMEGAKURE – CENTRAL TOWER
The rain was a constant, gray veil over the hidden tower. Within its highest chamber, the air was thick with the smell of stale water, rusted metal, and the sour tang of decaying flesh. Nagato, little more than a skeletal wraith connected to a grotesque, wheeling apparatus of black receivers, gasped for breath. His sunken Rinnegan eyes were wide, fixed on nothing, yet seeing everything through the six Paths scattered across Konoha.
He saw the Asura Path being systematically dismantled by the Uchiha heir's ruthless precision. He saw the Animal Path's summons being scattered by the Nine-Tails jinchuriki's unpredictable, wide-area attacks. He saw the Human and Preta Paths neutralized, their specialized abilities rendered useless by seamless coordination.
And he saw the Deva Path—his primary vessel, his voice and will—trapped in a shimmering field of impossible energy, its almighty push met with a terrifying, beautiful fusion of sound and entropy that was slowly, inexorably, dissolving it.
Konan, her paper wings folded tightly around her, watched Nagato with growing horror. Not at the enemy, but at him. Sweat and rainwater mingled on his parchment skin. Every tremor in the Deva Path was mirrored by a violent spasm in his emaciated frame. The machinery groaned in protest.
Konan: "Nagato! The strain is too much! You have to sever the links! Recall the chakra!"
Nagato: (His voice was a rasp, each word a labor.) "No… can't… stop now… Jiraiya-sensei's village… the key… to peace… is within reach…"
Konan: "This isn't peace, Nagato! This is annihilation! And they are counter-annihilating us! That woman… her power isn't of this world! And the Uchiha boy who left… he's coming. I can feel the space around the tower… bending."
Before Nagato could form a reply, the air in the center of the damp chamber shimmered. Not with the swirl of Kamui, but with a clean, geometric fold. Space pleated open like the page of a book, and Indra Uzumaki-Uchiha stepped through. There was no fanfare, no aggression. He simply arrived, his dark clothes untouched by the rain, his Rinnegan eyes calmly taking in the dismal scene.
Indra: "Uzumaki Nagato."
Konan moved instantly, a thousand paper shuriken forming in a ring around her, aimed at Indra's heart.
Indra: He didn't even glance at her. He raised a single finger. "Spatial Law: Stillness."
The papers froze in mid-air, not pinned, but existing in a pocket of absolute non-momentum. Konan herself found she could not move a muscle. She was trapped in a snapshot of time.
Indra: "I am not here for you, Konan of the Paper. I am here to deliver a message. And a visitor."
He looked at Nagato, his gaze analytical, almost clinical. "Your philosophy is flawed because your data set is corrupted. You built a worldview on a foundation of deliberate betrayals and manipulated tragedies. You are a brilliant mind solving the wrong equation."
Nagato: (Struggled to turn his head, his Rinnegan blazing with weak defiance.) "You… the privileged one from the cloud… you know nothing of my pain!"
Indra: "I know its serial number. I know the faces of the men who manufactured it. Danzo Shimura. Obito Uchiha. They broke you in that gorge, Nagato. They took your love for Yahiko, your dream for Ame, and they weaponized it. You are not the architect of a new peace. You are the final, most destructive weapon of the old, hidden wars."
He gestured, and the space beside him folded again. This time, a smaller, less violent aperture opened. Through it stepped Naruto Uzumaki, covered in dust and a few minor scrapes, his Sage Mode faded but his blue eyes burning with an intensity that had nothing to do with battle.
Indra: "You share a name. You share a legacy of being a container for monstrous power. You share the experience of having your life shattered by the same old men. Talk to him. He has… a perspective you lack."
Then, Indra turned his back on both of them, walking to the tower's rain-streaked window, looking out over the dismal city as if giving them privacy. He maintained the spatial stillness on Konan, a silent warden.
Naruto stood in the gloomy chamber, the orange of his jacket a violent shock of color against the gray. He looked at Nagato—the living corpse, the manifestation of utter despair—and he didn't see a monster. He saw the end of a road he himself had almost walked.
Naruto: "Nagato."
Nagato: (A bitter, wet cough.) "The Nine-Tails jinchuriki. Come to finish what your master's new pets started?"
Naruto: "Jiraiya was my master too." The words were simple, but they landed with the weight of a shared history. "He believed in me. He believed in a dumb, lonely kid who had a monster sealed inside him. He believed I could change things. And… he never stopped believing in you."
Nagato flinched as if struck.
Naruto: "He talked about you. Not with anger. With… sadness. Like he'd lost a son. He said you were the smartest, kindest kid he'd ever met. That you had a chance to change the world."
Nagato: "The world cannot be changed! It can only be forced to understand! Through pain!"
Naruto: "THAT'S WHAT DANZO WANTED YOU TO THINK!"
Naruto's shout wasn't angry. It was desperate, pleading. He took a step forward, ignoring the grotesque machinery.
Naruto: "Don't you get it?! He used you! He used me! He used everyone! My pain? My parents died because Danzo told Obito where my mom was giving birth! I grew up alone, hated, with a monster in my gut that screamed at me every day because of him! The village despised me because of the orders he helped put in place! My pain… my loneliness… it has his signature all over it, just like yours!"
He was yelling now, tears mixing with the rainwater on his face, not of self-pity, but of furious, shared understanding.
Naruto: "You lost Yahiko because Danzo and Hanzo set a trap! You lost your dream because they were scared of it! They were scared of people like you and Jiraiya-sensei who wanted to talk instead of fight! So they broke it! They broke you! And you let them convince you that breaking was the truth of the whole world!"
Nagato was silent, his ragged breathing the only sound. Naruto's words were carving canyons in the bedrock of his conviction.
Naruto: (His voice dropped, trembling.) "The hatred inside me… Kurama's hatred… it's real. It's ancient. It wants to burn everything. For years, that's all I felt. That the world was just… hate. That everyone who looked at me with fear or disgust was just showing me the real truth. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to make them hurt like I hurt."
He clenched his fists, looking down at them.
Naruto: "But that… that was the easy path. That was giving in. That was becoming what Danzo, what Obito, what everyone expected me to be—just a weapon, a thing of pain. You took the easy path too, Nagato. You saw the worst thing imaginable happen to you, and you decided that worst thing was the only thing. You became Pain. But you didn't have to."
Naruto looked up, his eyes blazing with a conviction that was uniquely his.
Naruto: "Jiraiya-sensei showed me a different path. It's harder. It sucks. It means facing the people who hate you and not hating them back. It means believing in something even when everything tells you not to. It means looking at the monster inside you and saying 'No. We're not doing this their way.'"
He gestured out the window, towards the direction of Konoha, hundreds of miles away.
Naruto: "Down there… the village that let Danzo fester… they're changing. The Hokage is putting the rot on trial. They told me about my parents. They're trying. It's messy and slow and it doesn't erase what happened to me… or to you. But it's a different path. The one Jiraiya believed in. The one Yahiko believed in!"
At the name of his friend, Nagato's entire body shuddered. A tear, clear and human, traced a path through the grime on his hollow cheek.
Naruto: "You think the Daimyos getting killed proved the world is cruel? That was Obito! The same ghost who works for the thing that's been whispering in your ear! He did that to make you think the old order was irredeemable, to push you to act, to become the perfect weapon of chaos to clear the way for his own stupid moon dream! He used your pain again!"
Indra, from the window, spoke without turning. His voice was a quiet confirmation in the gloom.
Indra: "Thunderhead sensor logs and spectral analysis of the attack site confirm it. Kamui residue. The Daimyo massacre was a false flag operation, designed to radicalize the remaining traditionalists and push the shinobi world towards total war. It was a manipulation. Your 'proof' was staged."
The final pillar of Nagato's philosophy crumbled. The Daimyo massacre wasn't the natural, cruel state of the world; it was another deliberate act of cruelty by the same hidden hands that had taken Yahiko. His entire crusade, his godhood, was built on a series of lies sold to him by the very monsters he thought he was fighting.
Nagato's voice was a broken whisper, the voice of the orphan from Ame, not the god of pain.
Nagato: "I… I wanted to end the pain… the cycles of hatred… the wars that took my parents… that took Yahiko…"
He looked at his own skeletal hands, at the machinery that kept him alive to inflict suffering.
Nagato: "But I just… created more. I became its source. I looked at Jiraiya-sensei's dream… and I spat on it. I looked at Yahiko's hope… and I turned it into a weapon of despair."
The connection to the Paths in Konoha flickered and died. In the distance, across the mental link, they felt the Deva Path stop struggling. The Asura Path went inert. The Rinnegan glow in Nagato's eyes dimmed, leaving only exhausted, haunted violet.
Naruto walked forward until he was right before the withered man. He didn't see a god or a terrorist. He saw a broken, lonely man who'd been hurt too much and pointed in the wrong direction.
Naruto: "It's not too late."
Nagato: (A hollow, self-loathing laugh.) "Isn't it? Look at me. Look at what I've done. Konoha is in ruins because of me."
Naruto: "Yeah. It is. And you're gonna help fix it."
Nagato stared at him, utterly baffled.
Naruto: "Jiraiya-sensei's dream isn't dead. It's just… really behind on its homework. You're smart. You cared about peace once, for real. You understand pain better than anyone. So use that. Not to hurt people. To help them. To help stop the people who really want this—the Obitos, the Zetsus, the ones who think a dream world is better than fixing this one."
He offered a hand. Not in forgiveness—that was too soon, too cheap. But in offer.
Naruto: "Help us. Help me. The easy path is giving up, or burning it all down. The hard path… is trying to build something better with the broken pieces. That's the path Jiraiya-sensei left for both of us."
In the stillness of the tower, with the relentless rain as a backdrop, the god of pain crumbled away, leaving only a shattered, remorseful man. He looked at Naruto's outstretched hand, then at his own, skeletal, receiver-pierced claws. He didn't take it. He couldn't.
But he looked up at Naruto, and for the first time in decades, there was something other than despair or fury in his eyes. It was a fragile, agonizing sliver of… hope. The same hope he'd seen in Yahiko's eyes.
Nagato: "You… really are Jiraiya-sensei's final, greatest student." He closed his eyes, a wave of unimaginable fatigue washing over him. "The chakra… I used too much. For the wrong thing. There is… one thing left I can do. For his dream. For… atonement."
His Rinnegan opened one last time, not with power, but with a gentle, green-gold light. The light of a forbidden, life-giving kinjutsu.
Indra finally turned from the window, his analytical gaze assessing the chakra pattern. He gave a slow, understanding nod.
Indra: "The Samsara of Heavenly Life. The ultimate technique of the Rinnegan. You would sacrifice the last of your life force to restore the lives you took."
Nagato: (Nodding weakly, his gaze on Naruto.) "It will not bring back the dead of Uzushiogakure. It will not un-break the child you were. But it will give Konoha back its tomorrow. Tell… tell Jiraiya-sensei… I'm sorry. And tell Yahiko… I finally remembered what he was trying to say."
Naruto's eyes widened as the warm, immense chakra began to build. He wanted to protest, to stop him, but Indra's hand landed on his shoulder.
Indra: "Let him choose his end, Naruto. It is the first sovereign choice he has made in a long time. To create, not destroy."
The light filled the tower, spilling out into the rain-swept sky of Amegakure. In Konoha, miles away, a miraculous wave of green energy washed over the ruins. The dead, those recently slain by the attack, drew a breath. The mortally wounded felt their injuries mend. The broken village remained broken, but its people were alive.
In the tower, as the light faded, Nagato's withered body went still, a final, peaceful expression on his face. Konan, released from the spatial bind, fell to her knees beside him, her paper wings dissolving into silent sobs.
Naruto stood, tears streaming freely now, looking at the man who had been his greatest enemy and was, in the end, a tragic reflection of what he could have become.
Indra: "The talk-no-jutsu that worked. Not through naive idealism, but through shared trauma, factual rebuttal, and offering a harder, truer path. You did well, Naruto Uzumaki. You didn't just win a battle. You salvaged a soul."
He placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Now, we have a ghost to hunt. But first, we must bring your teacher home."
Naruto nodded, wiping his face with a dirty sleeve. He looked one last time at Nagato, then turned his back on the rain and the tragedy, stepping towards the future he had just fought so hard to protect. The path was still hard. But he wasn't walking it alone.
End of Chapter – 106.