I didn't know how long I hugged her close, feeling the heat from her body slowly cooling off and her blood drenching my entire body. This is not the first time I witnessed the death of a loved one. I had seen my mother murdered before my eyes, I had killed my father with my own two hands, I had seen Hanabi dying, but where the experiences of the above mentioned filled me with rage and despair more than anything else, the death of my godmother had let me experience a sense of hollowness and emptiness that I had never felt before. Yes, I am angry, and I despair at the fact that I wasn't able to bring her back and wasn't able to save her life, but more than anything, I just feel so empty.
This is what I truly feared. My worst fears had come true, that no matter how I tried, how I tried to protect those that I had come to love, they would still die despite my best efforts because to them, it is always the village first and everything else second. They will die on the orders of the Hokage and they will readily sacrifice themselves for a village that I had never called home, and I can do nothing to stop them but helplessly watch as they get themselves killed one after the other. The last time, it was Hanabi, until I pulled a miracle out of my ass to save her. This time, it is my godmother, who has been nothing but a loving and constant presence despite my flaws and bad temper. This time, I wasn't able to perform a miracle, and the price for not being able to was paid with her life. Who will it be next? My godfather? Naruto? Hiashi, Hizashi, Hinata or Neji? Sai? Obito? Rin?
This world is so, so fucked, and nobody seems to realise it.
After I finally snapped myself out of my funk after who knows how long, I destroyed her body as per her wishes and left no traces behind. We were taught very early on in our shinobi careers on how to dispose of the corpses of your fallen comrades to protect their secrets, just that I never had a chance to put it into practice until now. In the end, I decided to keep her forehead protector as a keepsake. Maybe Minato or Naruto would want it, to have something to remember her by. I already have the Shinigami Mask that she entrusted me with, the legacy that she entrusted me with, so it only seems right that Minato and Naruto get to keep something from her as well.
Besides, I need a spare forehead protector now that I have lost mine somewhere. I will wear hers until I get back to the village and return it to my godfather. He probably hasn't heard any news about us in however long we were here, probably believed that we were dead and with good reasons too. I don't want to imagine the emotional rollercoaster he had been through during that period.
With my emotions temporarily locked away within the figurative pandora box in the depths of my mind, I started to plan ahead. When I took my godmother with me to make our great escape I was forced to run northwards towards Kumo instead of southwards towards Konoha because the army of Iwa nins were in the way, and because I wasn't confident that my then chakra reserves could allow me to get us back safely. I am still running low on chakra, had used too much of it within the last twenty four hours trying in futility to get my godmother to stay alive despite popping six soldier pills and I will probably feel the side effects soon, which means that I need to quickly make a decision on how to get back alive.
I am currently stuck somewhere within the Land of Hot Springs, one of the two minor countries that are unfortunately sandwiched between the Land of Fire and the Land of Lightning. A little further north would be the Land of Snow and beyond that will be the Land of Lightning. Trying to make my way back towards the Land of Fire would undoubtedly be a massive headache with all the Iwa and Kumo shinobis between me and my destination. Can I really make the journey back like this, when even soldier pills are no longer able to give me the chakra that I so desperately need?
Feeling frustrated, I glared northwards in the direction of Kumo. For once, I wished that I was born an Uchiha so that I might have the powers to obliterate an entire country with just a glare, and then all of a sudden, something just clicked in my head.
Who says that I have to get back to Konoha?
I quickly mulled over the insane idea, considering the pros and cons of such a plan but could find nothing wrong with it. Oh, my godmother would definitely chew me a new one if she could see me from wherever she is right now. She did make me promise to not do anything reckless and I am breaking this promise just right after she departed. In my defense, I really hate Kumo, and she did leave me with what I need to make my maniacal plans a reality.
I took out the red scroll that she left me and opened it, the scroll needed to activate Edo Tensei and which also contained the DNA samples of those that my godparents had planned to resurrect in the very worst case scenario. However, like she said, I need to make preparations for this to work.
Now, I just need four living sacrifices, which isn't that hard to find when Kumo or Iwa shinobis are lurking just around the corner. I managed to chance upon a small Kumo team making their way towards the frontlines and as luck would have it, it's a small team of four. They are probably doing logistical support work, making supply runs between their village and the frontlines if their lack of any decent combat skills are any indication. In any case, I had easily procured the four needed living sacrifices, knocked them out, and all that I had left to do is to find a nice quiet spot to start the jutsu and hope that it really works as intended.
"Alright, Hokages, rest is for the wicked and you guys are plenty wicked yourselves, so no more resting. Rise and shine, it's time for you to start slaving for the village again."
I decided to forgo trying to imbue the reanimated corpses with the control tag since I don't see a need to, not when our goals are aligned and I am in no shape to try controlling them anyway. It was morbidly fascinating seeing how the dust enveloped the living sacrifices as they were quickly consumed by it and screaming in pain for the entire duration. However, I was soon standing face to face with four very familiar figures whose faces I had seen carved on the Hokage monument ever since I arrived in the village.
"Ha...ku? Is that you?"
The first Hokage to complete the reanimation process and open his eyes was Kizashi. I could imagine the shock he is experiencing; I don't exactly make a very pretty sight and I'm sure that I look like a mess right now. My long hair had come undone, the bindings holding it in place destroyed a long time ago during my fight with Roshi. My clothes are torn and almost entirely soaked in my godmother's dried blood, my skin is extremely pale, a sign of chakra exhaustion when it was already pale enough to begin with thanks to my Yuki lineage.
"Yes, it's me. Hello, Yondaime-sama. Ah, I see that you have joined us too, Sandaime-sama. How was the afterlife?"
No, I was not being sarcastic, I was being genuinely curious about the afterlife.
The old man blinked his eyes once, then twice, before realising that he really was back from the dead. He recognises me, I'm sure, because I had met him once or twice when I was really young and I did ask him a lot of questions about chakra during our short meetings which left a lasting impression on him from what I was later told. Sarutobi Hiruzen released a chuckle at my question.
"Unfortunately, my last memories were about the invasion and sealing my predecessors with the Dead Demon Consuming Seal, so I have no answers to your question. Is Konoha…"
"Still alive and kicking, but might not be for any longer," I answered just when the Senju brothers finished with the reanimation process and finally joined the conversation. My words seemed to get the Hokages' attention immediately.
"Explain," Senju Tobirama growled, probably trying his best to be intimidating but all the response it elicited from me were raised eyebrows and a very unimpressed look.
"Long story short, Konoha was invaded by Oto, Suna, and Kumo. Oh, I forgot that an old fossil like you wouldn't know what Oto is, or maybe Sandaime already told you what they are when you were being controlled to kill him during the invasion? Hey, how does it feel, to know that one of your wacky inventions was the direct cause for your student's death and for Konoha to lose a Hokage?"
It really wasn't wise to taunt a Hokage like that but I wasn't in the best state of mind. I was tired, angry, grieving, and I already had many prior disapprovals in regards to how Tobirama and Hashirama did things, especially on how carelessly Tobirama dealt with the jutsus he invented. As expected, Tobirama lunged at me for my impudence, and the only reason why I am still alive was because Hiruzen and Kizashi stood in between me and the Nidaime.
"I need you to calm down, Nidaime-sama. Haku here is a shinobi of Konohagakure as well despite his Kiri roots. I trust him with my life."
"And you are?" Tobirama growled at Kizashi, who merely turned around and pointed to the words printed on the back of the cloak he was wearing.
"Yondaime Hokage of Konohagakure, Haruno Kizashi."
"Oh, we have a Yondaime!" Hashirama finally joined the conversation with an overly joyful tone. "And Haruno? Haha, who would have thought? Who is the Godaime Hokage now?"
"Namikaze Minato, who is also this boy's godfather. The boy always had a knack for seals, trained by an Uzumaki no less, so I wasn't surprised that he was able to summon us with Edo Tensei."
"I don't have time for this," I cut into the conversation, suddenly feeling very woozy and I know that the side effects of crunching six soldier pills in less than a day is finally catching up to me in one huge crash. The summoning with the Edo Tensei had also sucked up almost whatever little remains of my pitiful chakra reserves and I'm running on an empty tank. "My dear Hokages, the village is under attack from the combined might of Iwa and Kumo and I am about to pass out anytime soon. Do you want to save Konoha or not?"
Finally, they shut up. Seeing that I had caught their attention, I picked up a stick and started to quickly draw a crude map of the Elemental Nations on the ground.
"It's been almost two months after the invasion. We are currently here, somewhere in the Land of Hot Springs. Don't ask me for the exact location, I'm not too sure myself. The village is engaged with Iwa and Kumo in a war right here," I pointed to the northeastern border of the Land of Fire with my stick. "There are too many enemy shinobis to get through for me to be able to go back, and I'm certain that I will fail to do so in my current condition, so that's when I thought of something crazy and decided to reanimate the four of you back to life. With me so far?"
Seeing that nobody raised any objections, I continued.
"Here's what Konoha is up against: the Raikage, the Tsuchikage and his Dust Release, the Yonbi, and in the worst case scenario we might possibly have to face the Hachibi and the Gobi too. Meanwhile, our jinchurikis are nowhere near maturity and already, we lost one of the two remaining Konoha sealmasters. I can only hope that either Fugaku or Obito can use their freaky eye powers to deal with the Tailed Beasts when it comes to that, but I'm not banking too much on that possibility because I know for a fact that they are no Madara."
"Wait, one of the remaining two sealmasters? Just-"
"My godmother, she succumbed to her injuries just a few hours ago. It was Onoki who did it. This is her blood that I am drenched in. She released your souls and left me with the Edo Tensei before she died," I quickly replied to Kizashi's question, surprised by how I am not experiencing any psychological feedback from how I had so easily answered him. Maybe I would feel the emotional crash later, I don't know.
I could see the look of shock and sorrow on both Kizashi and Hiruzen's faces. They know how much Kushina meant to me but I don't need their pity right now and I really don't have time left, I'm about to drop dead on my feet.
"So, this is what I propose. Instead of going here to assist the Konoha forces in a losing battle," My stick pointed to the frontlines as I said that before I pointed right at the Land of Lightning itself. "We do something stupid and utterly insane that nobody would expect us to do. The five of us, well, more like the four of you, will infiltrate and attack Kumogakure itself because now is when their village is at their weakest and at their most empty when most of their forces are being mobilised for war at the frontlines. If we succeed, we win the war by forcing Kumo to beat a retreat to save their village from total annihilation by the four of you and we would also get some petty revenge as a bonus. If we lose, then we would only lose one little boy who was never a part of the village in the first place. You guys don't count since you are already dead and technically zombies and the only thing to watch out for that might be able to stop you, as far as I know, is the Amber Purifying Pot and that is pretty easy to avoid if you know what to look out for. A win-win situation for the village, wouldn't you say so?"
"Haku, please don't say that you are an outsider-"
"But it is what it is, isn't it, Yondaime-sama?" I replied bitterly. "That was what I was told by someone I knew from the academy when I met him at the frontlines. He said, and I quote, No matter what you do Konoha just won't kill you, because you are lucky enough to have a unique kekkei genkai. When the day comes where you are no longer the only one in the village to have the Ice Release, they will find a convenient excuse to remove you. Nobody wants an unstable and unloyal shinobi in their ranks, outsider. You never belonged here, Kiri scum. I'll never acknowledge an outsider like you. Nobody will. That is the short version of it, do you want to hear the longer version? I am more than happy to oblige."
"While I would love to find out more about just what on earth is going on, if the current situation is as dire as the boy told us to be, we really have to start doing something," Hashirama interjected with his arms crossed before turning to face me with a beaming smile that reminded me of Naruto. "Haku, was it?"
"Yes."
"Your plan does have merit, and I can understand why you came to that conclusion and why you summoned us. That said, I'm all in for this so-called stupid and utterly insane plan. Like you mentioned, there is very little for us to lose even if this were to fail. Also-"
He reappeared in front of me with a blink, faster than I could react, and placed a hand on my head. Immediately, I felt my fatigue vanishing and my chakra steadily rising back to normal levels. Not too much because a sudden increase of chakra would do me more harm than good at this point, but enough for me to not immediately succumb to the worst effects of chakra exhaustion. Is that… some sort of chakra transference technique?
"You look like you need help. You said that you were an outsider, so I take it that you were not originally from Konoha? Kiri, was it?"
"I'm a Yuki."
"That explains the chakra I'm sensing from you. Should have made the connection sooner," Tobirama chimed in.
"We cannot change who we are when we were born, but Saru and the Yondaime acknowledged you as a shinobi of Konoha and as Hokage, it is our duty to protect our shinobis and our village. You've done well, Haku, and I thank you."
"You can thank me by razing Kumo to the ground, then we are even."
Hashirama let out a hearty laugh.
"You heard him, Tobirama, it will not be nice of us to disappoint the younger generation. Come on, let's get moving. It's not everyday I get to come back to life, do some sightseeing, and protect the village all at the same time. Onwards, Hokages! For Konoha!"
"He's just like Naruto," I cannot help but comment as the rest of us watched the back of the departing Shodaime Hokage disappearing in a flicker. Hiruzen chuckled, Tobirama sighed, and Kizashi just shrugged.
"I do see a lot of Hashirama-sensei in Naruto," Hiruzen agreed before turning to Tobirama. "For the record, Naruto is the current Kyubi jinchuriki and she is aiming to be Hokage as well."
"Doesn't feel very reassuring if she's anything like my brother."
"She will make a good Hokage," I said, something that I believed with all my heart.
"Let us go, or we will never be able to catch up to the Shodaime," Kizashi suggested before swiftly picking me up and piggybacking me on his back. At this point, I'm just too tired to object or care.
"I do have a lot of questions, but I can also tell that what you need now is rest. Get some rest, Haku, you've done well. Leave the rest to us."
I fell into blissful unconsciousness even before I realised it.
When I woke up, it was to the comforting presence of the cold and the snow. I'm still exhausted, but at least my mind is a lot clearer now.
"About time you woke up. Feeling better? Is it too cold for you?"
"No, I like the cold, I feel at home here," I replied from my position on Kizashi's back and it doesn't seem like he will be allowing me to get down anytime soon, so I just remained where I am. Right in front of him are the other three Hokages, racing across the snowy plains in a blur. At the speed the Hokages are going at, we will probably reach Kumogakure soon enough.
"Ah, I suspected as much, but it never hurts to get confirmation. We are currently in the Land of Snow and we should be entering Kumo's borders soon," Kizashi added before remaining silent for a short while for reasons I suspected to be related to his family.
"Last I checked, Sakura is coping well, if you were wondering," I decided to initiate the conversation and tell him what I think he wanted to know. "We… had a talk on the day you died. She wanted to grieve in private and wandered to the depths of the Hokage Tower where they locked the worst criminals. I believe she mentioned that she used to play hide and seek with you there when she was little?"
"Oh, that place," Kizashi chuckled before he frowned, or what I imagined was a frown since I couldn't see his face from where I was. "Wait a minute, why were you there?"
"Endangering the village by releasing the Nibi like that would warrant me a swift arrest, especially when a Sannin was the one to give such an order," I explained. "And… I really never thought that I had a chance to say this to you, but thank you for saving Hanabi. Really, thank you. Like what I told Sakura, I still don't like you, but I won't deny that you are a great Hokage."
Kizashi laughed.
"It's fine, being hated is part of the job description and you have a very good reason to, and in regards to saving Hanabi, I'm just doing my job as Hokage, you don't need to thank me for that but hey, thanks for the praise. It means a lot to me."
"It's just as Sakura said."
"Huh?"
"That if you heard what I told her, you will just laugh it off and say that everything's okay."
"Oh, she knows me well alright."
"I heard you killed Orochimaru thoroughly and just to double check, does being thoroughly killed mean..."
"To make things simple, I removed him from the cycle of life and death. I burned his soul with extremely potent Yang chakra until nothing was left. To my knowledge, there's no way he can come back to life, even with all his precautions with that Cursed Seal abomination."
"Ah, I like that."
"I know that this may not be the best time to approach the issue, but… if you need a listening ear, if you need anyone to talk to about Kushina, I'm here, until I dispel from the Edo Tensei and head back to the Pure Land."
"Everything was going well," I recounted. "Then, Iwa came from nowhere and the tide of the battle just changed. We secured a retreat route for our forces but suddenly, Onoki descended, separating me from her. I was forced to engage Roshi in battle. I managed to escape and by the time I found her she was already fatally injured."
"Roshi?" Kizashi was obviously alarmed at the name I dropped on him. "Haku, I don't know if you have heard of it before, but he was well known in the past wars for his contributions to Iwa in their battles against Kiri. At that time, the main protectors of Kiri was your clan, and Roshi single handedly reduced their numbers to the extent that he was known as the Yuki Slayer. He knows exactly how to counter your Ice Release and the best ways to kill a Yuki. I'm surprised that you came out of that encounter alive."
"Is that so? One more reason for me to kill him. He's going to regret allowing me to escape."
"I have no doubt you can do it eventually, but please don't be reckless."
"Why does everyone say that? I'm not that reckless-" Upon hearing the silence that I was greeted with, I sighed. "Okay, maybe a little. Just a little."
"You are coping better than I expected."
"Not my first time losing someone close to me. What should I say, that such things get better with practice? That watching your godmother dying before your eyes and breathing her last despite your best efforts to save her was nothing but for naught? That it is an experience not for the weak-hearted and to try it at your own risk? Look, I appreciate the thought, but I don't need the pity; I have enough of that. Hard to be disappointed even further when I'm disappointed in shinobis and this world from the get-go and my opinion hasn't changed."
"Disappointed in shinobis?"
"I guess it's not obvious to someone like you, who was brought up by shinobis and grew up learning to idolise them, but I will just ask you the same question I asked my godfather. I told him that his version of peace, peace attained where everyone can understand each other, will never come true, because it's simply impossible. It's impossible because we live in a world where everyone is forced to kill everyone else, because that is how our world works, that is what our world and society is dependent on to continue functioning and is how our economy is structured. Peace will never be attained in a system where promotion of senseless violence is encouraged and becomes a norm in our daily lives, where greed festers and runs rampant. Because of that, the shinobi system itself is flawed and as long as this system continues to exist, there will never be peace. People can never understand each other with the existing in place so my conclusion is that shinobis themselves are the biggest obstacle to the peace that they had been dreaming about. Tell me I'm wrong, I really want to be proven that I'm wrong, but how can peace ever come, if the people that are trying to reach for it are the very same causes of strife with all the killing they have to do on a day-to-day basis?"
Kizashi did not answer. I am sure that the Hokages in front had all heard the conversation we had ever since I woke up and none of them had an answer, not even Hashirama.
"The idea of shinobi villages really wasn't a good idea, even if it was an effective stop-gap measure at that point in time. Distributing Tailed Beasts wasn't the solution, it only exacerbated the wars that followed after the death of the biggest deterrence in the universe, Hashirama of the Wood Release. There are too many weapons distributed among the Elemental Nations in the form of chakra when chakra was never meant to be used in this manner in the first place. Chakra was intended for us to be able to understand each other on a level beyond words, not weaponised like a tool, that was what the Sage of the Six Paths intended it to be."
"Then, what do you think would be able to stop all wars?" Hashirama asked after a short period of silence, still looking forward as they continued their high speed journey towards Kumo.
"A war to end all wars, it's the only way left that I could think of. A war to unite each and every nation under a single banner, because there are no more differences when everyone is under the same flag and working for the same leader. You should know this better than most, Hashirama, that there were many clans in Konoha who were originally enemies before Konoha was founded, but look at them now, united as one when they are serving the same village. Imagine what it would mean when we unite all of the shinobi villages."
"There's nobody that can do something like that. Not back then, and I imagine it's still the same now, not even my brother when he was in his prime," Tobirama pointed out.
"He asked for a hypothetical solution, not a practical one. The practical one would be to let this world rot and die from the inside and continue to head onto the path of self-destruction as it already is because there's no saving it. I wouldn't even care trying to do anything to save this world because I wouldn't live long enough to see it self-destruct anyway."
"Your views are concerning, but yet I could not argue otherwise," Hiruzen stated. "Yes, it's true that there will be peace if the Elemental Nations were to be united under a single flag and leader, but nobody would agree to that, because such an outcome has to be achieved through force and unquestionable military might. A war to end all wars, there is no better description than that. It goes against everything that the village promotes, that the village always comes first, because you are forsaking the interests of the village for a much wider picture. For your view to come true, the hidden villages would first have to dissolve to make that hypothetical situation a reality."
"The twisted values that this world runs on is too entrenched into the minds of the people, so much that the world will need a genocide to understand the value of life, then would they understand and treasure how precious peace is," I argued. "For peace to arrive the world has to be cleansed, to be rid of the shinobi system and put in place a better structured economy system that does not run on bloodshed and violence. It's not something that can happen overnight, and I don't wish for it to happen gradually. For the shock factor to really hit the world hard and give it the wake up slap that it so desperately needs, I need an entire country, at the very least, to disappear off the face of the map in one blow. That is the kind of power needed to unite the Elemental Nations. Currently, the Tailed Beasts are the easiest and most feasible means to achieve that."
"You've really given this some thought," Tobirama said with a disapproving frown.
"Oh, it's not on purpose, it really was not my intention, but when you are trapped in a cold dark cell for hours on end awaiting your death sentence as a result for trying to save the person that mean the most to you, you have nothing but time on your hands and I assure you, that you tend to come up with the most insane yet brilliant ideas in such circumstances. I totally recommend it if you really need to get some creative thinking done. Hey, I know you are already dead, but it's not too late to start trying it now. Maybe you can start on creating new jutsus that don't accidentally endanger your village and kill your prized student this time."
"You impudent brat-"
"Tobirama," Hashirama warned, and Tobirama clicked his tongue in frustration before deciding to ignore me altogether.
"Shinobis bring nothing but pain and death. I know that the four of you think otherwise, but that is what I believe in. The Will of Fire? Never understood it, just a load of bullshit and propaganda in my honest opinion. Being a shinobi? I was never given a chance to refuse being one despite hating the very notion of it. So forgive me, esteemed Hokages, if I don't understand where you are coming from and probably never will."
"You have nothing to apologise for simply for having a different set of ideals and truthfully, I appreciate the honesty. It's not everyday I get to discuss something like this with somebody else who has a very different view on shinobis," Hashirama replied. "You remind me of Madara, very much so, he once dreamed of conquering the Elemental Nations to achieve peace too."
Oh trust me, he's not giving up on that dream anytime soon and he's so close to making it a reality.
"But I do hope that you will realise, Haku, that peace through bloodshed is not the answer and never will be, because there will always be people who remember the past of how you had hurt them just as you remembered how they once hurt you. They will cry for blood, they will scream for vengeance. We bring this one step forward and let's assume that you have succeeded, that you have somehow united all villages under one banner. I can assure you that one day, they will still instigate another war to undo what you started and the cycle will just repeat itself, all to fight for what they once had in the past. If you want to go through with your vision of peace, you need to address this problem too, this cycle of hatred. It's not as easy as you think it is."
"Peace is achievable if people can understand one another," I mumbled the belief that my unbelievably naive godfather had held to this day. "How does understanding take place, if we cannot put ourselves in each other's shoes and read each other's minds to understand each other's pain? Without understanding, how will there be peace?"
"I think that is really the crux of the issue here, isn't it? It's all about understanding. Shinobis, and by extension, the villages, don't trust each other due to the deceit and lies built up over the course of our long history spanning from beyond the warring states. But if we could understand each other, to discern the truth from lies and show our hearts to each other, to figure out what creates all the conflicts in the world, maybe we could finally take a progressive step forward in attaining peace."
"Jiraiya would love to have a discussion with you. This is the kind of talk that he would be interested in," Hiruzen added, flashing me a brief grandfatherly smile. Ah, that's right, the Sannin that died too early and I never got to meet, one of the many anomalies with this world that isn't supposed to happen.
"It's hard to imagine what it would take to kill a Sannin. No offence there, but the last time that happened, we sacrificed two Hokages."
"None taken," Kizashi waved me off with a laugh. In the end, it was Hiruzen who answered my question.
"It was during the Third War. Our forces that were vital in ensuring Konoha's continued survival were ambushed by Iwa, Jiraiya was there and he made the call to stay back, holding the entirety of the Iwa nins alone to allow our forces to retreat safely… Okay, it would be more accurate to say that he wasn't alone, Naori stayed with him till the very end and fought alongside him. From the reports I received it was just the two of them against the whole of Iwa. In any case, it was because of them that Iwa did not succeed in invading Konoha, but both of them never made it back alive. I sent a party to try and retrieve their bodies, but the battlefield was so utterly wrecked that it was impossible to make out which corpse was who. In the end, Minato confirmed his death through the toads when the toads told him that Jiraiya's name had disappeared from the summoner's contract. I never did get a chance to see Jiraiya for one last time."
I blinked, now utterly confused. I have been here for a long while now, and I'm sure that I'm forgetting many things about the series but this Naori, I had never heard of her before and have no recollections about the existence of such a person. Now, I fully understand that this world isn't solely inhabited by the main cast and the numerous side characters, but if this Naori is as powerful as Hiruzen hinted, why did I not remember anything about this "Naori" from my foreknowledge? Was she a very minor side character, or someone else entirely?
"Who is Naori?"
"Uchiha Naori, one of the best kunoichis the village produced, one of the few who could give the Sannins a run for their money just like Hatake Sakumo, but while she burnt brightly, she burnt equally fast too, and maybe that's why so few remembered her today. She died before being able to grow into her full potential."
"And why would she stay back with him? Are they close?"
"Very. They have known each other since their days in the academy and… I believe that she had a thing for him, or at least that was what I heard from Tsunade back then when they were still genins. Not sure if that puppy love lasted."
An Uchiha, and if this world follows the same logic as the canonical one, whenever an Uchiha is involved -whenever a stupidly powerful Uchiha is involved- there is always something to look for underneath the underneath.
She and Jiraiya were close and had known each other since the academy. To be considered to be on the same level as the Sannin, it should be safe to assume that she would have possessed the mangekyou at the very least. She stayed behind with Jiraiya until the very end to fulfil their duties as Konoha shinobis, their bodies were never recovered and whenever somebody's body wasn't recovered in canon, chaos ensued. Shisui's death triggered the start of the Uchiha massacre and his body was never found, and Jiraiya, whose body was also never recovered, was kind of revived in Boruto and that stirred up a lot of shit, didn't it? I didn't bother reading too much into the Boruto sequel so I couldn't remember, but that was the foggy impression I had about the consequences of Jiraiya's death. Obito's "death" was what he needed to become the mysterious Uchiha menace that sparked the Fourth Shinobi War. The common trait between all of them is that at the time when they are presumed to be dead, their bodies were never recovered.
Maybe I'm really thinking too much into things, but if I really have to go strictly by the stupid cliche anime logic that this world seems to follow, that the major body disappearances that I recalled thus far that were vital to the plot so happens to fall under either the category of "Uchiha" or "Jiraiya", and this event that Hiruzen spoke of just so nicely fit into both categories.
"What if… they weren't dead?" I cannot help but wonder aloud. "I know about the Uchiha Curse of Hatred, what would Jiraiya's death mean to this Uchiha Naori, assuming that she lived?"
"If an Uchiha succumbs to the Curse of Hatred, they would go crazy, doom the world to hell and back if it means getting their revenge that made them experience the loss that triggered the Curse," Tobirama replied without hesitation, probably seen it too many times with his own eyes throughout his life.
The Kyubi Attack and the Bloodline Purge was something that I could never reasonably explain ever since I found out that the entirety of Team Minato survived the Kannabi Bridge mission. I am making too many logical leaps here based on what little I know about the Uchiha Clan in my current reality, but Madara, if he's really as undead as he's supposed to be, would need another Uchiha puppet to carry out his plans, and what is a better time to pick up an Uchiha spiralling down into madness than an ongoing war? One that has known loss, is on par with a Sannin, and possesses a pair of mangekyo sharingan? That will be a far better candidate for a puppet to mold to his liking, he doesn't strictly need Obito. Yes, a younger Uchiha would be more impressionable and easier to impose his will upon, but it's also not everyday that you get to see a pair of mangekyou sharingans ripe for the picking from an Uchiha who was on the level of a Sanin.
What if… She is "Tobi" in my current reality? Then everything would make sense, wouldn't it? Everything would fall into place. Every single divergence in this world that I could dig up so far, the furthest I could trace it back to was Jiraiya's generation. Anything before that that I could trace and compare with what I know, they stayed the same as far as I could reasonably double check. However, Jiraiya's death was the first big divergence. No, it would be more accurate to say that he is the divergence. He wasn't supposed to take on Kizashi and Mikoto as his students if canon is anything to go by, that I am certain.
So, why Jiraiya? Why him? Is it because of his importance to Naruto, the future saviour of the world? If so, how would Madara know that it is him, specifically, that would shape the future of the world and somehow plant an Uchiha beside him to create his perfect puppet? He's not supposed to be able to see the future.
"Haku, you okay?"
"Yes… Okay, I'm not fooling anyone, am I? I'm not fine. Since when are shinobis fine? This line of work is not kind to our mental health."
I need to know more about Jiraiya, but now is not the time. I will have the time when I finally return and ask my godfather, he will be more willing to share and also less suspecting of my intentions. Then there is Orochimaru's notebook that I was given to crack the seals on it in my free time, maybe there would be some clues left in it too. Orochimaru seemed to be the sentimental sort.
There are a lot of questions that I have, and I have a feeling that I would need the answers.