Naruto: The Unwoven Threads of Fate

"Good, we're all here." Minato says as he takes the time to lock eyes with everyone, one at a time.

He spends a brief moment on the Akimichi and the Aburame, no doubt he's familiar with them and trusts them. His eyes rest for a fleeting moment on Sasuke, like the less time they rest on him the better. Probably because he's an Uchiha who is not wearing Konoha's symbol. They linger for a while on Kakashi as Minato weighs how the youngest one here must be taking all of this. They practically gloss over me, pausing for only a fraction of acknowledgement of my presence. Lastly, they fall on Naruto. Nothing gives anything away, Minato is far too skilled to let personal emotions get in the way.

Yet there's still a tenderness to his look, one that wasn't there with anyone else.

"Our mission is simple." Minato continues to speak once his eyes stopped roaming. He straightens up, squares his shoulders and clasps his hands behind his back. He's no longer Minato Namikaze. He's no longer the idol of all Seal Users. He's no longer a gentle soul who helps those who might turn out to be enemies. He's standing as a true leader. A leader of shinobi.

All of us are paying rapt attention. It would be an insult to do anything less.

"The Third Hokage caught wind of a mysterious figure, Anrokuzan." Minato calmly yet forcefully speaks. He's not yelling or barking out orders, but his words carry a weight to them. "He appeared out of nowhere six years ago and ascended to the position of Minister of Roran. That places him in direct proximity to the Queen, Sara. Previously, her mother was Queen but she had an untimely death and her young daughter had no choice but to take her place. Since the late Queen's death, the people of Roran have been… acting strangely."

"You call this strangely?" Sasuke cuts in. He has his arms crossed as he's leaning against a tree with a bored air about him. "While you two went off and did the seal stuff, the rest of us did something productive. We scouted the city, tried to find its people and investigate what's going on. There are no people, they've been replaced by puppets. All of them."

"You are correct." Minato smoothly addresses Sasuke. "The people have been either subjugated or outright killed. We've been here for a few days, there are some left but the numbers are so low that barely ten percent remain of Roran's population."

"So the mission?" Naruto steps forward with a look of determination. His fists are curled into balls and the veins on the back of his hands are bulging from how hard he's squeezing. "Are we supposed to find the people and stop this Anrokuzan?"

"In summation, yes." Minato elegantly nods once towards Naruto. "While not expressly stated, I want to find out what happened to the populace and save them if we can. I believe that they're being used as a labor force."

"Makes sense." It's my turn to speak my mind. "I know from personal use that maintaining concentration over such a wide scale is difficult. This… Anrokuzan is commanding all of these puppets so his attention has to be spread thin. It's likely that he only uses the puppets in sections or zones. The bunch used to repel invaders that he used against me. The puppet parade that you spoke of previously, Sasuke. But those two facts means that he doesn't have time to build up such a vast store of puppets. So-"

"He's using the people of Roran to do it for him." Sasuke picks up my train of thought. "Underground, no doubt. Such massive quantities of metalworking would require a giant forge, possibly several of them. To maximize production he probably has an assembly line of sorts, which again is a massive production line. It would make no sense to have all of that be on the surface, doubly so when Anrokuzan doesn't want people discovering his puppet slave labor force. If we take into account that he has to spread his attention throughout all the puppets-"

"Then sometimes they're inanimate." I start pacing back and forth as Sasuke and I continue. "He could leave scores of puppets to 'oversee' the prisoners but only have one or two active to watch. Same for the ones he used to attempt to repel me, an invader. Have a massive force on standby to activate when necessary but otherwise it justs stands there. And if they're inanimate-"

"We can trap them." Sasuke's coal black eyes are tracing me as I wear a path in the dirt. "Or rig them to explode, we do have two Seal Masters on hand. Going around and trapping the puppets that are deactivated would give us an edge, especially if we're attempting to save the populace. We don't want to be loud as this goes down, we need stealth. Yet the best way to be stealthy-"

"Is to have a distraction. People can't help but look at an explosion." I snap my fingers once for extra emphasis. "Don't rely on hoping his attention will be elsewhere, make it go somewhere else of your choosing. Control the battlefield and you will win the battle. While he's focused on stopping the distraction the guard around the prisoners will be severely lessened, maybe even completely gone. Even if they're not, as long as the stealth team rigs up the inactive ones before engaging the active ones they'll be fine. The bulk of the fighting force will be removed by the traps. Systematic destruction at its finest. I do enjoy our pre battle talks, Sasuke. We should do this more often."

"You're very optimistic if you think we will have time for pre battle talks." Sasuke blandly points out. "Usually we just dive right in. It's rare we get to plan anything."

"It's a good plan." Minato praises us. "But we can't use it."

"And why not?" I look at him as my brow scrunches in confusion. "I don't see any issue with it. Distraction team and a stealth team. Tada, another government toppled."

"Because Konoha can't have her shinobi be seen openly attacking another city." Minato clarifies for us. "Even with our faces masked, our moves would give us away. Obviously me, the Yellow Flash, would be recognized in an instant. Both the Akimichi and the Aburame would be the same once they used clan jutsu. Even if the city has brought this on itself, Konoha has a reputation that we must maintain."

"I might have a work around." I shoot Sasuke a glance for his opinion. He shrugs in response. Good enough for me. "Sasuke and I will be the distraction team, everyone else the stealth. We're Oto shinobi, not Konoha shinobi. Doesn't matter if the Village doesn't exist yet, neither he nor I belong to Konoha."

"Again, that won't work." Minato shakes his head. "He's an Uchiha, Konoha or not. The whole world will assume he's from Konoha no matter what forehead protector he's wearing."

"Then give me one of your masks." Sasuke demands. "I will refrain from using the Sharingan and if my face is hidden no one will be able to identify me as an Uchiha. Black hair and pale skin is very common, nothing that specifically links me to my clan."

"We don't have any to spare." The Aburame points out. "We can't reveal our own faces during our part of the mission and cannot lend you our masks."

"Here." I tug off my brilliant red scarf and thrust it into Sasuke's hands. "Problem solved, just wrap it around your head and leave room for your eyes. It doesn't have to be a stylized animal mask, anything will suffice. Hell he could probably just hold a henge the entire time and be fine."

"This will work." Sasuke holds onto the scarf for now, waiting to tie it around his head until he needs to. I don't blame him, it's nice not having to wear face covering stuff.

No one responds immediately. Despite our large number, no one has something witty to say back to the Uchiha to rebuff the latest ploy to get him to help me. Instead all eyes except for Sasuke's and Naruto's are locked on me.

"Oh come on really?" I groan out with a roll of my eyes. "Yes, I've had my head cut off. No, Minato it's not from you. No, Minato you weren't the first one. No, I will not tell you when, where, who or how I got it. We all have scars! Get over it!"

"So." Sasuke takes this moment to stop anyone else from making the stupid choice of asking me a question. "Alvarcus and I will handle the distraction. Everyone else will infiltrate and rig the puppets that are there to explode."

"I feel like I'm being left out here. Why can't I be on the distraction team too?" Naruto speaks up. "Why can't I just take off my forehead protector? No one here knows me, I'm not from a clan, and I wouldn't be wearing any village symbol."

Minato doesn't respond, instead he looks at me. He doesn't speak, he doesn't do anything overt. He's wordlessly asking my opinion, asking for my approval.

"That won't work." I immediately dismiss Naruto's idea. "You're Konoha trained, to any observer worth something they'd piece together where you're from. You heavily rely on techniques and jutsu that are Konoha specific. Like the Kage Bunshin." Or the Rasengan. I really doubt the world is ready to deal with that.

"Then you and Sasuke can't do it either." Naruto points out as he points to me with a pointy jab of his pointer finger. So much pointing is happening all at once. "You're Konoha trained like me."

"Sasuke and I may have been forged in Konoha, but we were tempered in Oto." A sinister smile plays on my lips. "I'd have no problem with Sasuke and I being the distraction team. It'll be good to cut loose. Neither of us have caused wide scale destruction in an urban environment before. It'll be fun!"

"And the mystery of how the city turned to ruins is solved." Sasuke mutters to himself.

"Well…" Minato looks once more from person to person. "It's better than anything we had."

"Cool." I start stretching in preparation. I know I don't have to, but it's kinda fun to go through the motions every once in awhile. "How many seals do we need?"

"As many as we both can make." Minato says as he rummages around his vest for a scroll. "Shall we make it a contest?"

"Oh hell yeah!" I slam my two fists together and pull out my own scroll full of sealing supplies. "How many tags did you bring?"

"Two hundred." Minato boasts with a smirk. "I plan on using them all in the next hour. Think you can keep up with my speed?"

"Pfft!" I snort out as I retrieve my scroll. With a hefty flick I unfurl it and unseal its contents. Eight crates pop out in a cloud of smoke. "Two hundred in an hour? Let's see, if I can do a single seal in five minutes and hold a hundred brushes at a time that means five hundred seals per five minutes. Sixty minutes to an hour, so sixty divided by five get me twelve. That means five goes into sixty five times, or rather I'll produce twelve rounds of five hundred seals. Or six thousand. Yeah? I hate math. 5 minutes * 100 brushes = 500 complete seals. 60 minutes / 5 minutes = 12 rounds. 500 complete seals * 12 rounds = 6000 complete seals. Yeah! I'll get six thousand done by then!"

"I call bullshit." Kakashi speaks for the first time. The fact that he held his tongue until he spoke out against me kind of irks me, but I'll put that aside. "There's no way you can out do Minato-sensei, let alone by that many! It's impossible!"

"Wanna bet?" I stick my hand out to him to shake on it. "If I win, I get to see your face. If you win, uh, I'll buy you an orange book."

"An orange book?" Kakashi asks in bewilderment. "What kind of idiot makes an orange-"

"NO NO ABSOLUTELY NOT!" Minto shouts out, breaking his shinobi leader persona for the first time.

"Is this how he got that habit?" Sasuke mutters to himself once more. "And to think Alvarcus was complaining about time paradoxes before. Hypocrite."

"Trust me Kakashi!" I put on my best innocent smile and wiggle my hand at him. "You'll love the book when I lose!"

"Sure." Kakashi thrusts his hand into mine. "I could always stand to broaden my literary selections."

"Alvarcus please say you can make those seals." Minato asks with a dash of worry. "Please?"

"Pfft not an issue. I've got this." I wave off Minato's concerns.

"Thank God." Minato's shoulders sag in relief. "So fuinjutsu?"

"Fuinjutsu."

One Hour Later

"Consider me bested." Minato nods approvingly as he places his brush down. He observes me, well everyone does, as I wrap up my final round of seals. It's a truly mesmerizing sight.

Precisely one hundred brushes are moving in unison as they lightly drag themselves across their own unique tag. The tags are arranged in a ten by ten grid to make things simpler, and I'm sitting cross legged with an intense look on my face as I will the brushes to move to my design.

"I genuinely can't remember the last time I lost in a competition of seals." He praises me once more. "Never mind by such a large magnitude."

"This method only really works well with simple seals." I speak as I direct most of my attention to the ever swaying brushes. "I slow down when I work in bulk, it takes more focus. Sure I can churn out one hundred explosive seals at a time, but they're the easiest ones to make. I'm sacrificing efficiency for quantity, there's a certain point when it's faster to make the complex seals one at a time instead of in massive quantities."

"It's still an impressive accomplishment." Minato assures me. "Have you given any thought as to what you'll do if you can't return to your time? Where you'll go?"

"That's something we want to discuss in private." Sasuke cuts in to answer for me.

"What?" Naruto asks in confusion. "Just come back to Konoha. It's really the only choice."

"As he said, it's something we want to discuss in private." I speak this time to reaffirm Sasuke's stance. "Plus I'm not too sure that Minato has a strictly pure heart when asking what we do next. He just saw me make thousands of explosive tags. Who in their right mind wouldn't suggest that I join them? Imagine what any Village could do - Big Five or not - if they had a way of mass producing explosive seal. I can literally make enough explosive seals to level a small town in hours."

"But what else would you do?" Naruto asks a difficult question. Despite all my experiences, despite all my knowledge, despite all my skills, I have absolutely no idea what to do next. "And you know that Konoha wouldn't abuse you to make seals! We're not like that!"

"That depends on who you ask." I stand up as all my brushes orderly stack themselves on top of a sealing scroll. I've finished. "We're thinking too far ahead. We have a puppet army to draw out then destroy. Good place to begin."

"Talk and walk?" Sasuke suggests as he gestures towards the city.

"Sure." I fall in step next to him as we make our way back to Roran.

Moments After Sasuke's and Alvarcus' Departure

"It must be hard for you." The Akimichi places a reassuring hand on Naruto's shoulder. "To see your friends transferred to a different Village and not want to return. You should try to understand where they're coming from, the world is full of countless unique individuals. While you prefer the forest, they might rather be sailing on the seas."

"Transfer?" Naruto asks in confusion. There's been a lot of that today. "Shinobi can transfer to a different Village? I never knew that."

"But then…" The Aburame monotonously drones out as an ominous buzzing noise wafts off of him. "Traitors."

"They're not traitors!" Naruto insists as a tinge of anger bleeds into his voice. "They're just misguided!"

"Missing nin are supposed to be put down." Kakashi firmly states while glaring at Naruto with disapproval. "Personal relations and past friendships do not stand above the law."

"They are risking their lives to help you!" Naruto shouts at the youngest one here. "The two of them just walked off to face an army for you! They have no reason to do it! Do you really want to kill people who would do that?"

"They're only doing it because Alvarcus wanted to repay Minato-sensei." Kakashi crosses his arms. "That or maybe because they knew that in a real fight Minato-sensei would flatten them in a flash. They have a higher chance of survival if they pretend to help."

"You don't know them! They're good people!" Naruto insists yet again, but he would have better luck convincing a wall.

"This is a subject best left for later." Minato says and the argument is immediately put on hold. "We have a city's people to save. I'll decide what to do with those two after we complete the mission. Grab the sealing tags and let's go blow up some puppets."

In the City, Distraction Team

"Hey Sasuke." I open up conversation with my friend as we walk down another empty street. We've been looking for puppets and haven't been hiding at all. We're hoping to simply bump into a couple and let everything spiral out of control.

"Yes Alvarcus?" Sasuke - with my scarf wrapped around his head - responds as his eyes scan the buildings for any signs of movement.

"I'm getting really tired of nothing happening." I point towards a random building. It stretches five stories tall with many windows and a multicolored paint job. Each floor has a different color. It's also one of the smallest buildings we've seen so far. "Can I light it on fire?"

"No." He instinctively denies me. He did it so quickly that there wasn't even a brief pause from the end of my sentence to his. "Wait. Yes, go ahead. We want to cause a scene. That will draw at least a few towards us."

"Sweet." With a ridiculous smile and just a tad too much enthusiasm, I let both my wind mask and my fire mask extend out of my back. They sweep over my head on the black tentacles on threads and take aim at the building. With a blisteringly hot gout of wind enhanced fire, half of the building ceases to be while the other half topples to the ground in a flaming heap. "Huh. I thought I could do it all in one shot. Guess I need to try harder."

"Has anyone told you that you're terrifying?" Sasuke comments offhandedly as we both watch thick black smoke billow upwards. "You just immolated half of a building."

"Well it did take a high leveled combination jutsu where the elements feed off of each other." I point out as the flames lick ever higher. "It's easy to avoid if you know where it's coming from, just dive underground. Or put up a wall of some sort. A really strong heat resistant wall."

"That's not even your strongest jutsu. It's not even close." Sasuke points out as we continue waiting. "I've seen you command ten elemental dragons at once."

"Yeah. I excel at wide scale combat." I start impatiently tapping my foot. "I'm a unique kind of ninjutsu shinobi. I'm a horde breaker."

"That's a nice way of saying you're good at genocide." Sasuke bluntly says to me. He's completely right too.

"It is." I nod my head in agreement. "Given enough prep time and if no one can interrupt me after I've started my jutsu, I could potentially flatten this entire city. It would take time, hours upon hours to flatten it, but I could."

"How would you do it?" He asks me to kill more time as we wait.

"For this specific city?" I sift through my jutsu library. "Fire of the Heavens. It's what I did to destroy a Kusa outpost, rain down flaming boulders from a distance until nothing is left. I can have Sureddo do it so I could fuck off and do something else."

"Genocide made easy." Sasuke snorts out in morbid amusement. "I'm surprised you didn't suggest something like that since you know that there's no one in these buildings. Why not just start blasting away at part of it until the puppet army comes?"

"Because I've got a new toy. I want to play with it." I lovingly pat a metal cylinder that's hanging off my belt. "And I figured you could give me some pointers. Let's face it, I'm shitty at kenjutsu and you're damn good."

"I suppose I could give you a tip or two." Sasuke says as he draws his own sword. His eyes are locked on a few dark specks moving along the horizon and an air of excitement settles over us both. "Here they come."

"Want to see who gets more?" I eagerly say as my Void Swords surges to life. The inky black blade seems to remove light from existence as it sways in the air.

"What is it with you and competitions today?" Sasuke idly flicks his wrist to send his own blade slicing through the air.

"Dunno. I guess I'm in a playful mood." I roll my shoulders as the black specks grow larger.

"That's not concerning at all." Sasuke lowers himself down, he's ready to spring into battle. "What are the stakes?"

"Loser has to wear a dress for a day?"

"PFFFT!" Sasuke fails to completely suppress a laugh. "Only if ninjutsu kills don't count!"

"What? Why no ninjutsu!" That's so not cool! "That's taking away my best tool!"

"Oh? Are you scared you'll lose?" Sasuke smirks as the puppets finally have reached us.

"Fuck you I'll win this without ninjutsu! Just you watch!" I promise him as I leap forwards towards the few puppets that came to investigate.

"And so it begins!" Sasuke eagerly leaps into the fray with me.

Stealth Team

"A vast majority of the puppets have left." The Aburame says as a few dozen beetles scuttle around his palm. "They say that a few have stayed behind that are active, but there's warehouses full of inactive puppets."

"We have our work cut out for us." Minato says as he goes about divvying up the explosive seals. "How many warehouses?"

"Twenty five." The Aburame replies nearly instantly. "I shall lead us to the first one."

"We'll have to be careful as we do this." Minato speaks as everyone in unison makes their way to the first warehouse. "It's likely that as the Distraction Team takes out a large number more puppets will be activated and brought out to fight. We'll have to be aware that they might 'turn on' at any moment."

"We've got this!" Naruto declares as he hefts a whole crate onto his shoulder. "You picked the right guy for the job! I can get this done super fast!"

"Excellent. I look forward to seeing you at work." Minato says - slightly softer - to the out of time Konoha shinobi.

Distraction Team

"Twelve!" I shout out as I stab a puppet. Space seems to distort around my blade as the wooden and metal construct is drawn into the hilt and placed in another dimension. "What are you at?"

"Fifteen." Sasuke says as he weaves between the spinning blades of a claw puppet to slice it in two pieces. He smoothly slides into his next attack, using the leftover momentum from his first swing to turn his blade upwards and block a hammer descending for his head. "Falling behind already?"

"Shut up I'm still adjusting to swords!" I cleave straight through the cannon part of a cannon puppet and leap away as the damage causes it to explode. "I barely know more than the sharp end goes in the other guy! Thirteen!"

"Better learn quickly! The key is to have one move lead into the next, you want as little wasted movement as possible." Sasuke jumps up just enough to clear a blast of chakra from a cannon. While mid air he pulls out a shuriken and flings it directly into one of the many barrels of the puppet that shot at him. With a whine of building up energy, the puppet explodes. "Like that! Sixteen!"

"I can't just watch and learn something!" I shout back at the Uchiha. Fucking dick. I bisect another puppet and bat away a few kunai that one of them launched towards me. "Fourteen! By the way, if they group up in a sphere around us get near me. They'll launch a fuckton of kunai at us and I'll blow them out of the air."

"I think they'll need more puppets before that's a viable tactic!" Sasuke points out. He stabs one somewhere critical, causing it to fall limp. As he wrenches his sword out of the back of the puppet, he slams the butt of the hilt into one who got behind him and cracks its chestplate. "There's only ten left! Sorry, nine! I'm at eighteen by the way!"

"Just wait! There's going to be more!"