Desolation of the Caged Bird Chapter 39 - Deity Slaying Method, Part III

When last was it?

Namikaze Minato parried a bone spear aimed at his midsection, dodging beneath a triple-bladed scythe, as he countered the jagged scales of Samehada with the dull end of his tri-pronged kunai. The sound of steel clashing against scaly flesh rang out into the air.

The last time… Kushina-chan and I…

Orochimaru’s leg whipped out like a snake; at the same time, a strong gravitational pull drew him in. His attempt to evade the pull with the Flying Thunder God Technique failed. Instead, he used the leaf-sticking exercise to grab onto the scythe-wielding man and send him forward as a human shield.

The last time… we really, truly… just…

Music played from a flute. A genjutsu momentarily caught him, entering his ears. He lunged forward towards the red-haired woman responsible, a Rasengan forming flawlessly between his hands. Samehada interrupted him, draining away the chakra in seconds, the scales nearly piercing his skin. He leapt back, skidding across the surface of the water, only to roll to the side as the bone-man lunged at him from behind, catching onto the man’s neck. He tried to twist, only for the spine to emerge sharp, jutted, bony spikes, demanding his course of action be averted.

When was it…

Clay birds and paper flowers bombarded him from above, and from below, mirror-like structures of ice were formed, as a woman moved rapidly between them and fired a barrage of senbon. Orochimaru teleported to his right, and the man wielding Samehada appeared at his left.

Peace… The peace I wanted… the Peace I’ve been so desperate for…

Minato watched each and every single attack coming towards him and performed his technique. Yet, the technique failed. Again, and again, and again, he performed the technique. The technique failed. With each failure, he narrowed down the potential causes for failure and understood that the source of the repetitive failure came from Orochimaru. 

Wasn’t it… for that…?

There was a crackle of lightning.

Minato touched the surface of the water, sending lightning natured chakra surging outwards to everything and everyone connected to it. All the attacks landed in unison. An explosion rocked the surface of the lake, sending waves of water over twenty feet into the air.

Under the cover of the explosion, having evaded the use of a Lightning Shadow Clone and the Substitution Jutsu, Minato skidded across the surface of the lake, his thoughts moving quicker and quicker, and time slowing down to a crawl.

The peace I really… truly wanted…

The dream… I truly wanted…

Orochimaru appeared directly in front of him, a legion of snakes extending out of his sleeve. Minato avoided them all, tossing his kunai towards the man’s forehead. Orochimaru’s head bent backwards at a two-seventy-degree angle. His tongue extended out of his mouth, caught the kunai as it flew overhead, and flung it back towards him. Minato tilted his head, allowing it to soar off into the distance, the explosive tag he’d planted on it detonating behind him in a ball of fire that cast out a long shadow.

“SHINRA TENSEI!”

Gravity struck.

An unspeakable force struck his body, a force that shook his bones and rattled his skull, a force that sent him flying head over heels, skipping as a stone atop the surface of the lake, and soaring back towards the direction of Amegakure no Sato.

Minato righted himself mid-air, wheezing and coughing. He coughed a small glob of blood, feeling his organs trembling from the resounding shockwave of the attack, and his vision doubled as the cloaked figures surrounded him again.

I see.

Minato ran his hand through his hair.

No time to gather enough chakra to use Senjutsu, and I’ve never used it in actual combat before. That sword is Samehada… it will eat my chakra… and render ninjutsu fruitless…

Taijutsu is a problem due to the one whose body is made of bones… a Kaguya, as well as Nagato. Long range is a problem due to the one using clay explosives with the slashed Iwagakure headband, the one using ice mirrors, and Konan, who uses paper… There is no time for fūinjutsu… summoning the toads will only end in their deaths…

Individually, I have a method to handle each and every one of them even without the Flying Thunder God Technique, but together… facing all of them…

 Minato couldn’t help but smile.

Yes… people are always stronger together…

Minato let out a breath.

The Flying Thunder God Technique… Orochimaru is inhibiting it… and the way he’s doing it…

He gripped his kunai hard.

Five seconds…

I have five seconds…

He lunged towards Orochimaru.

“Orochimaru-sama!” 

The white haired Kaguya intercepted him, leaping in between himself and the man. The bone-manipulating man pulled his spine from his back and swung it forward with such force that waves were created on the water beneath their feet.

“Tessenka no Mai: Tsuru!”

Dance of the Clematis: Vine!

Minato avoided the attacks, weaving between the whips, his eyes locked on Orochimaru, the Snake Sannin. He leapt into the air, landing on the whip itself, lunging forward, as his right hand formed a Rasengan, and he added wind nature chakra into the formation.

“Fūton: Rasengan.”

Sharp slicing winds sheared into flesh like meat in a blender, then met solid, hard, steel-like bone, before it began slicing even that, pushing the bone-man away with the force, and spiralling him towards Orochimaru.

Orochimaru evaded the flying bone-man, vanishing in place and reappearing beside him, his right arm moving like rubber, whipping forward for a clothesline that Minato evaded at the dying second, sliding on his knees across the surface of the water, before hopping on one hand, and cartwheeled backwards.

“Orochimaru-sama!”

The red-haired girl lunged forward and began playing sharp, jarring notes with her flute. A barrage of sound-wave-like attacks lunged at him with each note she played, sharp, cutting waves of sound that sliced the air around him, forcing him to dodge constantly, with a soundwave nearly slicing a portion of his hair as he ducked underneath it.

The red-haired girl changed the tune of the songs she was playing, creating a sonic blast that nearly deafened his ears, and one that had the sneaky workings of a genjutsu layered underneath.

Minato slapped an explosive tag on a kunai as he tossed it straight forward. She jumped to the side, but the explosion shook the lake, the shockwave sending her blasting to the left, where he was waiting with a kunai aimed for her jugular.

Orochimaru appeared, intercepting his attack and cackling. The Snake Sannin reared his head backwards, and slammed it forward as if it were a hammer, as if it were a stone fired from a trebuchet, and Minato replaced himself with a lightning clone at the last moment, the force of the impact sending shockwaves that blew his hair back, and created a massive, gaping hole in the center of the lake.

Water rushed quickly to fill the hole and wild waves surged high, Minato glided atop one of them as though he were surfing, using it to retreat away from Orochimaru’s onslaught, away from the encirclement, his mind racing, thinking, and analyzing.

I see.

Multiple times, he attempted to perform his technique, the Flying Thunder God Technique, but multiple times the technique failed. Yet, Orochimaru performed the technique just fine, using it against him.

He’s inhibiting the third stage.

No one other than him was more familiar with the Flying Thunder God Technique and how he improved it. The technique worked by sending the user to a Dimensional Void, before manifesting them at the location of a specific marker, the Jutsu-Shiki. 

Thus, it had three stages: detect current location, enter the void, and exit at the destination.

Orochimaru was right in that it needed to account for time in the third and final stage, the exit at the destination stage. It not only accounted for time, but also allowed one to make microadjustments to their momentum, velocity, and even position, allowing one to decide when and where and how they arrived at the destination.

It was how he could toss a kunai while running, and appear in the air catching the kunai, either conserving his momentum or killing it entirely.

Orochimaru was interrupting his ability to use the third stage and forcing the technique into its first stage, relying on the fact that he was also a user of the technique, and inputting a false-positive to the technique’s time detection. A false-positive, which said there is already a user of the technique at the destination. 

To avoid complications of two users of the technique accidentally teleporting to the exact same spot at the exact same moment and killing each other, if the technique detected both individuals attempting to exit at the destination at the same time, it would destabilize and revert back to the enter the void stage. However, to prevent trapping its user in that void, a failsafe was built in, a failsafe which would instantly send the user back to their last stored location, i.e., revert to the detect current location stage.

Which meant he was stuck at the ‘detect current location’ stage. His attempts at teleporting were working, but by all means, it appeared as if it was ‘failing’ because the technique was detecting his location, sending him to the void, detecting an anomaly claiming that there was already a technique user at the destination, and instantly sending him back to his last stored location.

Minato understood that this meant he could not escape from this battle if he wished, and he could not flee from this battle if he wished. He also could not teleport to any other markers he had set down, nor could he teleport attacks sent his way, because all attempts would give back that false-positive that the thing he was trying to teleport away was already there.

He really is a genius.

Orochimaru had countered the Flying Thunder God Technique; he was likely the first and only person alive to do so. Minato was certain that if given an adequate amount of time, he could devise a suitable, safe counter to Orochimaru’s counter, one which would disable the false-positive, but he did not have the time to do that.

In the middle of battle, fighting against the Akatsuki, he did not have the leisure. Which meant he was going to do the one thing that every fūinjutsu book warned one to never do, and that both Kushina and Mito, his daughter, would strangle him if they learned he did.

Mito would probably scream until her face turned blue… she’s always had the most surprising set of lungs…

The Akatsuki regrouped. All of them surrounded him again.

“Do not allow him to separate us,” Pain, rather, Nagato, declared. “Attack as one. Not even Namikaze Minato can handle all of us at the same time.”

Minato could only chuckle as he grabbed a set of his kunai, four, connected them with a string of lightning-natured chakra, and dropped down a cubical area around him. Within seconds, the jutsu-shiki spread. Larger and larger. 

“Kukuku… what’s this? A final desperate struggle, Namikaze?”

Minato closed his eyes.

Peace… I said I want peace… but really… what I wanted…

His body ached from the force of Orochimaru's initial onslaught and the devastating gravitational attack that was unleashed on him. He felt pain he hadn't felt in years, since he was a Genin. It was refreshing, and the fact that such a thing was refreshing was almost laughable, but yet, it was the furthest thing from laughable.

What I really wanted…

Minato felt the wind. He felt the rain. He felt the breeze. He felt rough waves created on the surface of the lake by his battle.

Kushina and I… on a beach… lounging in the sun… Jiraiya-sensei, under an umbrella, peeking at the women in bikinis, writing his latest novel... Kakashi-kun buying ice cream for a nice girl… someone he’d bring around to introduce…

Naruto… playing volleyball with his friends… Mito-chan… making sand castles with her sister…

Chōza grilling barbecue, Inoichi and Shikaku playing Shogi beside him under the shade… Fugaku searching for treasure in the sand with Itachi, Sasuke, and Mikoto cheering them on, Shiba applying sunscreen on Tsume, who would complain… and whine… about other men being too scared to do so…

What I really wanted…

What I… desperately wanted…

A world… where we don’t need to kill each other… kill at the whims of others…

A world… where we aren’t… what we are… where we… don’t have to be what we are…

Shinobi… Kunoichi…

Killers… tools…

All I wanted… was that world…

That world…

But…

Minato opened his eyes.

This world is not that world.

Minato slammed his hands together.

“You…” Orochimaru’s eyes widened. “Don’t be a fool! If you use such a technique, if you disable the technique’s location detection, you’ll—!”

“Quiet.”

Minato said.

“I’m sick of listening to your voice.”

Orochimaru snarled. “Stop it! We must stop him! Quickly!”

Nagato clapped his hands. A small black sphere emerged between them.

“Chibaku Tensei.”

Minato clapped his hands.

“Hiraishin Ōgi: Mugen Hiraishin Kaihō.”

Flying Thunder God Secret Art: Unlimited Lightning Rod Release.

A black orb flew out towards him, and at the same time—

Minato removed the limits of the Flying Thunder God Technique.

Boom.

The scenery changed. Everything connected to his Jutsu-shiki, himself, Orochimaru, that black orb, and the Akatsuki, vanished. For a brief second, they were in a soundless void.

“What have you… done?”

Boom.

The scenery changed. They were no longer in Amegakure. The air was hot. Acrid. Dry. Sand was everywhere. Shinobi were startled. Akatsuki and Namikaze Minato appeared in the center of Sunagakure. The black orb began ripping through the village, lifting sand, objects, people, and things towards its core center point. Screams echoed. Bodies were attracted. Minato dove forward, grabbed the closest Akatsuki member, the bone-man, and kicked him away.

Boom.

The scenery changed. Iwagakure. Stone and rock. Unsuspecting Shinobi. Alarms ringing. Cries. The black orb gathered more material. Bodies and bodies attracted to the centerpiece. Bodies ripped. Bodies torn. Bodies shredded. Minato lunged at another Akatsuki member, the man wielding Samehada. He kicked him towards the gravitational tug.

Boom. 

The scenery changed yet again. A cliff. A deep chasm. They appeared upside down. Minato lunged at the red-haired girl, grabbed her, and performed Might Guy’s Strong Fist Style Front Lotus. Spinning down, he crashed into a stalagmite. The stone pierced her head and split her body in two on impact. 

Boom.

The scenery changed. The bottom of the ocean. The crushing pressure nearly blacked him out. He kicked away the dead woman's body. 

Boom.

The scenery changed. Kumogakure no Sato. They appeared all as one, soaking wet, disoriented. Minato lunged, kicking another member of the Akatsuki forward, the man wielding the triple-bladed scythe into the growing orb. The orb had become a miniature moon made of bodies and bone, flesh and rock, steel and sand, growing larger and larger by the second.

Boom.

The scenery changed. Kirigakure. Rain. Water. Bodies. Bodies. Bodies. Minato struck Konan, sending her soaring away.

Boom.

The scenery changed. 

Disorientation, devastation. The battle between Namikaze Minato and the Akatsuki waged across the entirety of the Elemental Nations. Many were caught in the crossfire. Chaos. Deaths. Fire and smoke, explosions and bone. Across the world, they teleported and across the world, they appeared and reappeared, causing unspeakable harm and vanishing as though they were a flicker, an illusion, a devastating bolt of lightning striking down from the heavens and vanishing.

This was the result of shattering the location sensor on the Flying Thunder God Technique. A forbidden method that removed the limit, the restriction of needing a jutsu-shiki to teleport, which made it so lightning struck everywhere without a lightning rod to attract it.

Minato was no longer in control of the technique.

No one was in control of the technique.

Everything connected to it at that moment he performed the Secret Technique, would keep teleporting, constantly, randomly, to different locations, without markers, until the chakra of those linked to it ran dry.

In this chaos of random, uncontrolled, endless teleportations, only Minato could react fastest; only he had the presence of mind, the understanding of his environment, to immediately dispatch or incapacitate his enemies in the confusion before they could gather their wits.

Fugaku had been his rival for the longest time, and even he, with his Sharingan, could not compete with Minato’s sheer reaction speed.

That was what it meant to be Namikaze Minato. 

The Fastest Shinobi in the World.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

The scenery changed. 

All members of the Akatsuki were gone except for two. Orochimaru. Nagato. Above them, the moon-shaped satellite. Orochimaru was the first to understand what was happening, the first to roar and scream. Nagato only grasped it a moment later.

“NAMIKAZE!”

The three of them engaged in Taijutsu. A brawl. Fists clashing, hands locking, kicks flying, as they vanished and reappeared and vanished and reappeared. Hundreds of teleportations occurred within a second, then thousands, within the next, then tens of thousands, in the following minutes.

All across the world, scenes would be seen of three men, randomly appearing and disappearing. Deserts, grasslands, tundras, forests, savannas, chaparrals, rainforests, shrubland, badlands, dunes, jungles, mangroves, mountains, mushroom fields, oceans, lakes, ponds—

In the middle of living rooms, in the middle of parties, in the middle of bedrooms, in the middle of the sky—

Vanishing and reappearing and vanishing and reappearing.

Minato, Nagato, and Orochimaru fought with the world as their battlefield.

Until—

Minato’s chakra was empty.

Nagato’s chakra was depleted.

Orochimaru’s chakra ran dry.

Boom.

They returned to their initial location.

Amegakure no Sato.

They returned to silence. None of the three men had even remotely enough chakra left to so much as stand. Above them, at last, Nagato’s technique caught up. The giant moon, the size of a meteorite, held in place by heavy gravitational forces, began to descend, as though it were a comet, as though it were divine retribution.

“Damn… you…” Orochimaru rasped. “This won’t kill me… Namikaze… this… won’t—”

“It’s over, Orochimaru.”

Minato exhaled, closing his eyes. His chakra was spent, his nerves were fried. This battle had taken more out of him than any battle he had ever had in his life. He was ready to drop, to collapse, and it took every iota of willpower he had just to remain standing.

“It’s… over.”

“Yes, sensei. It is.”

Minato froze.

That voice—

He tried to move, tried, his mind was alert, his mind, willing, but his body, was weak. Exhausted. His reaction time, his greatest tool, was just a fraction of a second, too...

Slow.

A hand tore through his chest and emerged on the other side. Minato coughed up blood. His eyes widened. He stared down at the hand in his chest… the hand, cloaked in a thin film of lightning chakra. He turned around, slowly, to see a scarred face, a scarred face, wielding a singular Sharingan Eye.

Minato could not breathe.

No.

It… can’t be.

A ghost from the past. A regret. One of his greatest regrets, and greatest failings. It could not be possible.

Yet, it was.

“...O-Obito?”

Uchiha Obito looked into his eyes.

“Give my regards to Rin.”

And ripped out his heart.

XXXXX

Nagato was wheezing and coughing, deep within his secured chambers. His body was trembling and covered with sweat, and he could barely lift a bone, let alone a single muscle. Yet, he had confirmed it. Uchiha Obito had arrived at last and put an end to the greatest foe Nagato had ever faced.

Namikaze Minato… What a terrifying man…

Konan had been sent somewhere during the chaos of the uncontrolled teleportations, and Nagato could only faintly recall that it was Kirigakure no Sato. He did not doubt that she would be able to find her way back to Amegakure safely, but it would take some time.

The total tally of deaths, even he was not sure. Hidan, likely, due to his immortal nature, would survive, but the others, Kisame, Deidara, and Kimimaro, he was uncertain about. The redhead, the one who had joined with Kimimaro, called Tayuya, was certain to be dead, and he was uncertain of the fate of the one who had joined, called Haku.

The Chibaku Tensei… has left my control…. What did Namikaze do?

The miniature moon that had been formed was about to collapse down on Amegakure no Sato, and Nagato could not allow such a thing to happen, but the technique was no longer in his control, and his chakra was depleted. Namikaze’s technique had depleted it.

I have to stop it from colliding… I’ll need to—

A white tree-like branch pierced his chest from behind, and Nagato’s eyes widened. Blood pooled in his lungs, his lips, his mouth, and he turned behind him, unable to understand how, or why—

“Z-Zetsu…?”

“I applaud you, and the entire Akatsuki.”

Nagato’s thoughts were racing. Speeding. Running. Zetsu had stayed away from the main fight because the plant-man admitted he was useless in such combat situations, because his expertise was in information gathering. Indeed, it would have been a major loss to the Akatsuki’s intel operations if he had died against Namikaze, so Nagato had not thought much of it. 

But this… this betrayal…

Finding his real body… how did he—

No, why?

Nagato did not understand why. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he sought to understand it, he could not grasp why. Zetsu had been the most loyal member, the most devoted member; he had been with them for a truly long time, he had never shown any traces of having ulterior thoughts, ulterior motives, nor had he ever given Nagato or Konan any reason to believe his interests were not Akatsuki’s interests.

Had it been Uchiha Obito, that one, had it been him, this betrayal would not have come as a shock, no, it would not even be considered a betrayal by Nagato, because he would have seen it coming, anticipated it, and it would only be par the course. 

But coming from Zetsu…?

“W-why—?”

“Prudence. That’s all it is. That man, Namikaze Minato, I doubt I could have killed him alone. It took all of you pushing him to the limit and an ambush to do the deed. I doubt I could have killed you alone either, with Konan always at your side, and you always being so cautious. Two enemies… two strong foes. How does one slay two men who think themselves to be gods? The answer was simple…”

Zetsu pulled the sharp tree branch out of his chest. Nagato coughed up globs of blood as the man whispered into his ears.

“You pit them against each other.”

Zetsu grabbed his head and stabbed his throat with plant-like, sharp vines.

“Thank you, Nagato.”

“Zet…su—~!”

He reached out towards his eyelids, slowly opening them, before vines crept deep into the space between them, dug deep behind them, and pulled.

“I’ll be taking these back.”

XXXXX

On that day, several casualties were reported, and reports of a fight that spanned the entire world reached the ears of every major shinobi village, every town, every city, every tavern, inlet, and bar.

The injuries and wounded were recorded to be in the thousands, and the total death count was still unknown.

On that day, an earthquake of the sort that had never been seen before was felt, and word reached all major powers that Amegakure no Sato, the Village Hidden in the Rain, had been destroyed by the impact of a moon-like meteorite. It was said that the impact had devastated the surrounding area, created a massive crater for kilometers, and all those who had evacuated from the village prior, in preparation for a fight, even tens of kilometers away, had been in the blast radius.

Amegakure no Sato was wiped off the face of the earth.

There were no survivors.

On that day, as the entire world reeled from the chaos, as many grieved and mourned, word traveled that Konoha, the Land of Fire, had been the only region, the only area, untouched by the devastating battle caused by teleporting shinobi.

Yet, Konohagakure no Sato would join in the grieving, in the loss, because on that day, word came, confirmed by the Hokage’s Wife and Daughter through a special technique to monitor close relatives, that the Fourth Hokage, the Whisper in the Wind, the Yellow Flash, the Fastest Shinobi in the World…

Namikaze Minato—

Had perished.