Nagato's gaze grew stormy, a flicker of disgust surfacing when he looked at the two men.
Jiraiya sighed, at a loss for words.
Continue.
Nagato lifted a hand.
Konan's paper rose again, whirling into a new scene.
It was a night of rain.
Yahiko stood at the fore. Nagato and Konan were just behind him.
As Vincent watched, the memory he knew too well assembled itself. In the original flow of fate, this was the turn that shattered Nagato's heart.
They had seen the churn of life and death and still Yahiko wanted to change the world. He founded a small organization that dreamed of ending conflict without force. The dream was so pure that Hanzo of the Salamander granted them an audience.
They met on a night like this, in a deserted place.
They arrived to find Hanzo and Danzo waiting in ambush.
Amegakure's warlord allied with Konoha's schemer to crush three idealists.
All at once the trio panicked.
Hanzo moved with a speed worthy of a man called demigod. Konan was seized in an instant and left dangling in his grip. His eyes were flat and cold.
On the paper stage, Hanzo smashed two punches into Konan's stomach, then tossed a kunai that clattered and stuck half deep in the mud.
This man wanted my life in exchange for Konan's, Nagato narrated.
Onstage, Yahiko turned to Nagato. Even without sound, it was plain. He wanted Nagato to choose Konan.
Nagato froze.
He staggered forward and picked up the kunai.
Yahiko sprinted.
The blade slid through him with a wet hiss. It was his choice.
Nagato stared, empty.
The scene lurched. Hanzo snapped an order. A storm of kunai tore toward Nagato to finish the job.
Nagato lifted a hand.
The knives halted a foot from his skin and hung there, trembling.
He bounded to Konan's side. Hanzo sprang back. Seals exploded beneath Nagato's feet.
The blast rolled across the stage.
Jiraiya winced. He had heard fragments of this story and had believed the three had died. Watching his students crushed by a rigged parley reopened a wound he had never fully admitted.
When the smoke thinned, a battered Nagato stood. The tags had hurt him badly, but he still placed himself between Konan and the world.
In the shadows Danzo gestured. Leaf shinobi leapt to kill. They had seen the Rinnegan and knew which of the three was the true threat.
Nagato's eyes went lifeless.
His hands flashed through signs and slammed to the ground.
The earth split and something vast hauled itself up from the dark.
The Demonic Statue of the Outer Path.
Jiraiya whispered it, dredging up what little he knew.
The statue opened its maw in a soundless roar. A titanic black receiver shot from its body, not at the enemy but at Nagato himself, stabbing into him and drinking his chakra. His strength drained visibly. Still his hands moved.
The statue's jaws yawned wider. A violet dragon of chakra launched forth, shrieking across the field. Leaf ninja crumpled as their souls were torn free.
In a heartbeat the battlefield was empty.
The dragon coalesced and came to float before Hanzo.
Across the way, ravaged by the drain, Nagato roared. The dragon answered, curving in the air, and dove.
The stage shattered with the impact.
A kunai scratched a long gouge across a metal forehead protector. That scar was the last image to remain before the paper dissolved.
Yahiko died. I took command, Nagato said softly when the tale was done. I had grown stronger, yet still I could not protect them.
Self reproach threaded his thin voice. Then his eyes hardened.
As long as people exist, hatred exists. In this cursed world, true peace does not exist.
He looked at Jiraiya's troubled face.
You told me a fiction of peace collapses before reality.
Nagato.
Jiraiya ground his teeth. He had not grasped the totality of this boy's suffering. A child who watched his parents die. A friend who died on his blade. Any one of those burdens could break a life.
Without warning Yahiko stood behind them.
He held a small black sphere that seemed harmless. In the same instant he used Shinra Tensei and slammed the sphere into Vincent's chest.
Ha.
Gravity flexed. Stones ripped free of the floor and slammed into Vincent from every side. He wrestled and found himself trapped as the rocks fused, dragging him and the orb skyward.
Chibaku Tensei.
Jiraiya stared up, stunned. He turned on Nagato.
What are you doing.
Nagato's face was calm.
Jiraiya-sensei, after all you have seen, do you still cling to that airy dream of peace.
His voice was weak, but the challenge in it cut like a blade.
----------------------------------------------------
The deeper he goes, the more the truth unravels. Don't wait read ahead and witness Vincent's rise before the world catches up!
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