Chapter Text
Fate was a bizarre, twisted thing.
Each time he thought he had a hold of his own destiny, something out there aspired to avert it and leave him scrambling to find himself and the road set before him once more. There was a moment like that too, which came once he thought he had set out everything he needed to for his successor. It came long after that, after he had come to the place he had once dipped his hand into. Death, he, and logic had an odd sort of competition going on – a challenge he had relished in, and part of him liked to think his opponents had as much fun as he had. There was joy to be found in knowledge, in logic, and he liked to think himself one of the few who had dived in without a second thought, right into the deep end.
There were those who drowned, but he – he had swum in those waters. He had survived, and he had thrived, dipping his fingers in many a taboo topics which had turned many a heads and made many more tremble in fear. He had danced with death, stolen from their domain and lived to tell the tale. At least until they came for him as they did for all. Time and death eroded away at all, no matter how one tried to defy them, the looming days of the end seeming to tick closer ever faster as the grains of sand trickled down the hourglass. He could respect that, and acknowledge his end when it came for it. He had a good death, if there was such a thing. He had died with a smile on his face, his goals as accomplished as they could be.
It was a bitter irony to find himself reclaimed from death’s domain by his very own technique, body remade, reformed, and breathed life into using the Uchiha’s greatest treasure. For that was the only way to explain why he could feel the brush of fresh air against his skin, biting and cold. The scent of blood and numerous other bodily fluids reaching his nostrils then. His nose crinkled, even as age-old instincts took over as the familiar flow of a fight registered around him.
Fire and brimstone exploded to his left, eyes darting over to where his once-rival-turned-comrade stood, alive as he, breathing fire towards those wearing different forehead protectors. He ducked under a hail of kunai, throwing a marked one of his own as he heard the tell-tale hiss of an explosive seal about to detonate. Residual chakra in the seal marking upon his kunai’s hilt flared then as he made the connection between that and himself, pulling himself over to its location in the tree branches above.
Sharp eyes narrowed, scanning the area they had seemingly been revived in, heart sinking at the sight laid out before him: a squadron of Konoha shinobi lain dead where they had stood. Something the other four had noticed that much quicker than himself, and had swiftly gotten to work. Soft and kind, his brother may have seemed to be, but he knew better than any how deep his brother’s rage could be when provoked.
Their attackers stood no chance against them, not even when he wasn’t participating in the battle, preferring to step back and observe as he always preferred to. It was then that he noticed it – that which had set him brother off, even as his companions, his fellow revivees went to chase down the remainder of the folk who had attacked them so. The barest applications of chakra had him flickering to the side of the corpse, agony and hatred stirring in him then at the sight, and he let out a shaky breath because though he had never met them he had heard what his brother had told him of, back when they were in those Pure Lands. Had he seen the sight sooner, then perhaps he would have delighted in chasing down those who had hurt them so – those who had caught his brother’s rage. And that of his wife too. A shaky breath escaped him, one which would go unnoticed except by all who knew him better than most.
Red hair was strewn on the ground, the locks varying between vermillion and a deep, dark red, but they were all shades which he knew and recognised so very well. It explained how the feat of reviving them had been accomplished. His mind ticked on though, a curl of something creeping into his belly as he wondered why. Why had they all been summoned and revived? What could possibly have resulted in all of them needing to be summoned back to the world of the living at such a heavy price?
He wasn’t sure of that, but what he was sure of was that he likely wouldn’t like or enjoy the answer to that at all.