Desolation of the Caged Bird Chapter 37 - Deity Slaying Method, Part I

“Is everything in place?”

Uchiha Obito appeared beside her in a swirl of space, clad in a black spiral mask. Konan shot a glance at the man beside him, nodding only once. They stood atop the highest building in Amegakure no Sato, a building that overlooked the entire village. Above, in the air, a central platform made of stone hovered in place, and Jiraiya of the Sannin lay crucified above it. His hand stretched out, black rods hammered into his hands and feet, black rods that impaled his knees and joints.

The platform of earth hovering was created by the Deva Path, and Jiraiya, impaled atop, was positioned front and center, visible to everyone in the village. 

This was God’s Punishment, his divine wrath, the wrath of Pain, against the sinner, the one who had dared to infiltrate their village. The man’s head lay down, unconscious, as the rain pounded around them. On the ground, the shinobi of Amegakure sharpened their blades and readied their weapons. Civilians and noncombatants had been taken away because all were aware that Amegakure would become the ground zero of a conflict that would shape the fate of the world.

“They are.”

“Then we wait.”

Uchiha Obito vanished just as he came, and Konan glanced over the spot where he had stood only once, before her gaze went up to Jiraiya’s crucified, unconscious form. There was a pressure building in the air that made it hard for her to breathe. There was a tension, a heaviness, so suffocating that each inhale, every intake of breath felt like dragging soup into her lungs.

Konan, before today, had never doubted Nagato; she had never doubted his strength, his power, his abilities, which were truly, in nearly every sense of the word, godlike. 

However, whilst one was a proclaimed God, Namikaze Minato was a Legend.

The Yellow Flash, the Whisper in the Wind, the World's Fastest Shinobi, the sole man alive with a ‘Flee On Sight’ appellation in the Bingo Books. It was not an overestimation to claim that Namikaze Minato was the most powerful and dangerous Shinobi in the world. If nothing else, he was the most influential shinobi in the world.

Konan was uneasy. A part of her had never doubted Nagato, not once, not ever, but Namikaze Minato had no records of defeat, and no tales or accounts of loss. The sheer number of preparations they had done just to face him was all the proof needed to guarantee that the man was in an entirely different caliber than any other shinobi. 

Yet, this had to be done. For the Akatsuki’s presence to be felt across the world, for their plans to commence, for the goal and reason of peace to be spread, then the man whose actions brought about ten years of war, the strongest shinobi, the figurehead and leader of the first nation of shinobi, had to be the one to fall first.

If Namikaze Minato died, all the other Shinobi Villages, all the other Kage, would fall in line, one after the other. To kill the giant first, to eat the largest frog first, this was the path they had chosen. 

After all, as long as the Fourth Hokage was alive, Akatsuki's goal of gathering the Tailed Beasts could never come to fruition. The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox sealed in the man's wife all but guaranteed he and the Akatsuki were fated to come to blows sooner or later. 

They had simply decided it was best that it be done on their terms rather than on his.

Rain poured down on Amegakure no Sato, drenching her clothes and her hair, but in the ever-rainy land, Konan had gotten accustomed to it. Taking a long, deep breath, she closed her eyes and waited.

She did not wait long.

She felt a chakra signature, and she was certain Nagato would feel it too.

In the air, above the village, on the floating platform, a blond man appeared, soundlessly. His cloak, white, with red flames licking the edges, flickered and blew in the breeze and rain. His eyes, blue, like the sky, his hair, blond, like the sun, his beard, rugged, and in his hand, an infamous tri-pronged kunai.

He stared upwards to his teacher, crucified upon chakra rods, and said nothing.

Konan’s heart started racing. “Nagato… he's here.”

As they suspected, the man had a means to teleport directly to his teacher, which meant either Jiraiya was marked or carried some invisible marker on him.

Namikaze Minato had been suspiciously absent from battlefields across the decade-long war, and though they had details of his prior capabilities and information on his pre-war techniques, war was an endeavor that necessitated development and growth, and in truth, no one knew just what the last ten years had done to the man's skillset.

Nagato, using Yahiko, flew upwards toward him, towards the floating platform. One man stood in silence, in the air, as the rain and storm pounded and fell all around them, and the other, blond, stood on a platform, his features obscured by the heavy downpour. 

God and Legend faced each other in the Heavens. 

“So, you have come. Namikaze Minato.”

Minato didn’t look at him. His gaze was set on his crucified teacher.  “...Is he dead?”

“His soul remains with me. It will be returned to his body once our matters are settled.”

“I see,” Namikaze Minato ran his hand through his hair. He turned about and said, calmly, “You must be Nagato.”

“I am Pain.”

“Pain?” Minato chuckled. “Is that your edict? To bring pain?”

“Jiraiya must have imparted the same lessons to you. You know of the perpetual cycle this world is in. Suffering. Hatred. To achieve peace, true peace, Pain is needed.”

Pain extended his hands out.

“Every soul, every individual, every living being. They experience Pain, endure Pain, feel Pain, theirs, others. In bathing and drowning in that Pain, in drinking and eating nothing but Pain, they will come to understand its wretchedness. They will come to seek a world devoid of Pain… they will come to crave a world of peace.”

Minato laughed. His laughter reverberated through the air. Konan heard it. Perhaps all of Amegakure no Sato heard it. The laughter of the Fourth Hokage, high in the air, above the clouds.

“Do my words amuse you, Namikaze?”

“No, it's just…” Minato slowly shook his head. “I see now that… Sensei… maybe it wasn't the right thing he did to tell us about that prophecy. Both of us… all of us… so many of us, we're been chasing after the same ideal, but we have so many different ideas on how to reach it.”

“You are seeking peace?” Nagato’s voice was loud. “You? You, whose actions have led to a decade-long war? You, whose actions have caused hundreds to starve, thousands to mourn, given rise to fatherless children, motherless infants? You, whose name is synonymous with fear, you whose name parents invoke in Iwagakure to scare their children into good behavior, you whom the Daimyō across the world treat as a boogeyman, as a fable whose very whisper will lead to their demise… You expect me to believe you seek peace?”

Minato, oddly, smiled. “Yes.”

“Then, you must die, Namikaze Minato,” Pain declared. “You must die. For if this is the consequence of your attempts to bring peace, I dread the works of your hands that would arise should you seek to bring war.”

Nagato extended his hand forward.

“With your death, a new dawn shall arise over this world. With your death, this world…”

Chakra accumulated.

“Shall Know Pain.”

Lighting streaked across the sky.

“Shinra Tensei.”

XXXXX

Chiyo had lost her heart.

She had lost it, even as she stared at the line-up of these children, these innocent children. Fifty in number, skinny, with zealous, red eyes, all orphans, all who had lost parents and loved ones to Konoha’s blade. She had lost it, years ago, after word had come to them from that odd masked man in the organization called Akatsuki, as to how her Sasori had, all along, been there. She had lost it, as he learnt the truth, that just as Tsunade of the Sannin was her bitter nemesis, her rival stopping her poisons, Jiraiya of the Sannin was the man she could and would never forgive, because he had killed her grandson.

She had wept. She had wailed. She had rolled on the ground, covered in sand and mud, crying. Not even his body had been given back. Several times she had sent missives, pleading for the body, and several times she received no response. Her grandson was dead, and Konoha kept his body.

Chiyo had lost her heart.

“Are they ready?”

Fifty orphans stood behind her in silence, and Rasa stood before her, and as did the man cloaked in a mask, the man who told her of her grandson’s fate, the man wearing black robes with red clouds. 

“Do you have what you promised?” Chiyo asked.

The masked man reached out for a sealing scroll and unfurled it. In a puff of smoke, it came before her. A figure utterly motionless and lifeless, features frozen in place, with red hair.

Chiyo dropped to her knees and hugged it close.

“Ahh! My… grandson… Sasori… what did you… Why did you…”

“He converted most of his body into that of a puppet,” the Masked Man said. “Jiraiya of the Sannin had him with him on hand at all times.”

Chiyo said nothing. She simply held her grandson’s body, his corpse, the puppet, and held it close. She hugged it in silence.

Rasa tapped his foot impatiently. “Will they function? If all is to go as planned—”

“They… will, Kazekage-sama.”

Chiyo had gone to the Kazekage shortly after the information had come from the Akatsuki about the fate of her grandson, blood in her eyes, fury on her lips, and told him of their offer, and her plan, her plot, her secret, ultimate technique, one she created not only to one-up her rival Tsunade, but as the culmination of her life’s work and her life’s methods. The Kazekage had looked upon her with amazement, then, with slow amusement, and he had given the all-clear to commence her plan.

She had not known at the time that the Kazekage and the Akatsuki were already colluding. The information, the act of being given that information by the strange masked Akatsuki member, had been a loyalty test. A test she passed with flying colors.

Some would consider her a heartless monster, and many already did, and to them, Chiyo had nothing to say.

She had lost her heart.

The fifty orphans behind her were nothing but a sacrifice to receive the body of her grandson.

One’s Own Life Reincarnation. A technique that exchanged a life for a life. She had been amongst the pioneers of those who invented this technique, for the goal had been to imbue true life into puppets, but instead, all that could be done was to sacrifice one’s life to bring back another, drawing their soul from the edge of death.

Chiyo’s heart would have bled. It would have mourned.

However, Chiyo had lost her heart.

The Reincarnation Corps of those fifty were aware of what their tasks entailed. Not all of them had volunteered, but they were compliant all the same. They were young, but they were devoted to Sunagakure, they had nothing and they had no one, and though some of them were gems in the rough that would have given rise to newer, stronger shinobi in the future, their lives were used, cut short, reaped, for the sake of destroying the enemy of the present.

There had initially been a hundred members of the Reincarnation Corps. The remaining fifty not present were kept in reserve, Chiyo wagered, for the Kazekage and his son, Gaara.

The Fourth Shinobi World War was likely to be the last one Sunagakure no Sato fought, whether they won or lost. The existence of the Reincarnation Corps would make them the target of every other village. For indeed, it was fear that had caused this all to begin with. The Fourth Shinobi World War, they called it, and Chiyo wanted to laugh at the shamelessness of it. It was merely the entire world versus one village, Konohagakure no Sato. That was to say, the might of one village was capable of taking on the entire world. Had this many villages joined forces to take on any other, it would be considered a war, so much as it would be called a one-sided massacre, an inescapable genocide.

She had been there when the ‘Fire Extinguishing Alliance' was formed, and she was aware of the true reason why the other villages had joined forces as one to seek to destroy Konoha. She had accompanied the Kazekage and saw how the Tsuchikage, the Raikage, and even the Mizukage, who somehow found the time to attend such an event despite the bloodline purges raging, despite the Resistance force purportedly led by a red-haired woman once mistaken for an Uzumaki. She had borne witness to how they had received information provided by the Akatsuki that changed the minds of everyone.

"Konohagakure no Sato has mastered the lost Fuinjutsu Techniques of Uzushiogakure."

She had watched, in silence, as the Raikage, A, admitted that he had sent his shinobi to abduct the Hyūga Heiress years back, an incident that appeared as no more than a footnote in history at the time, and had made the discovery then. A summoning animal had been used as a witness, and the animal had narrated the entire events as it witnessed them, and spoke of an ‘Uzumaki Clan Barrier' that foiled the abduction attempt.

Such knowledge had been the straw that broke the camel's back. The stench of fear in the room had been stronger than urine on the sheets of a perpetual bedwetter. They were afraid. All were afraid. Uzushiogakure no Sato's mastery of fūinjutsu had been without equal, and that mastery had instilled a deep, resounding fear in other villages. Many had gathered to erase the Uzumaki out of fear, despite the village being nowhere near as strong as Konoha. 

Konoha was far, far stronger than Uzushiogakure. If they were to truly become a nation of fūinjutsu experts, truly to have mastered those terrifying sealing methods, what hope had any of them left?

Many had doubted, many had questioned, until the information provided detailed a terrifying barrier technique that could block any and all spacetime ninjutsu, block anything, block anyone.

A barrier impervious even to Jinchūriki. 

If even the Jinchūriki, the trump cards of nations, were useless… who could not know fear?

There had been a unanimous vote.

Konohagakure no Sato, like Uzushiogakure no Sato before it, must be destroyed.

That day, Chiyo wept tears of joy.

She was an old woman with nothing to live for, neither family nor students, destined to be forgotten, washed away by the sands of time, merely a footnote in the history of Konohagakure’s brightness.

She had refused, indeed, for the world to forget her, forget her sons, forget her grandson, for the world to ignore them, for her family to be but a backdrop, for her life, long as it had been, to be without meaning.

Today, they would remember her.

Today, her identity would reverberate throughout the Elemental Nations as the founder of the Reincarnation Corps of Sunagakure.

The Honorable Grandmother of Sasori of the Red Sands.

Chiyo of the Reincarnation.

Despite this, Chiyo felt neither joy nor elation, nor sorrow, nor grief. The one person she wanted to revive more than any, the sole person she wished she could bring back from the grave, she could not. 

Upon seeing his corpse before her as it was, Chiyo knew her technique would not work on him. 

There was nothing to revive.

Just like her beloved grandson…

Chiyo had lost her heart.

XXXXX

What… just… happened?

Nagato had unleashed his attack. Namikaze Minato held a kunai in front of him, a large jutsu-shiki spread out, and the attack, the all-consuming wave of pure gravitational force, the divine judgment that was the strongest offensive maneuver in Nagato’s arsenal, was simply gone.

The wave of pure gravitational force vanished as though it had never been there. Minato tossed a kunai directly in front of Nagato’s Deva Path, and the attack, the same attack, came from it, striking the Deva Path head-on, and sending him careening from the sky as though fired from a rocket, smacking into and through three full buildings, before cratering to the ground in an explosion of dust and debris.

He can… transport… attacks?

Konan’s mind was sent into disarray.

He can transport attacks.

Uchiha Obito had not mentioned that it was possible. He stated the Flying Thunder God Technique was primarily for transportation, to run away, to flee, to teleport himself, and occasionally others. But if that technique could be used for defense, if he could teleport attacks away…

“Nagato, should we send in the reinforce—”

“It is not yet time.”

Konan wanted to protest, but she held her tongue.

Namikaze Minato landed on the empty, tight streets of Amegakure, and four Paths rushed out, one after the other: Asura Path, Human Path. Animal Path and Preta Path. The Naraka Path was the sole exception, moving swiftly to restore the damage done to the Deva Path. The other four surrounded Namikaze as one. Namikaze stared for a moment in surprise.

“There are multiple people with the Rinnegan? No, that’s impossible. That would mean you’re all…”

Namikaze pointed with his tri-pronged kunai. 

“Those black rods… chakra receivers. I see. An advanced form of Sunagakure’s puppet technique, with similarities to the Mind-Body Disturbance Technique… one that allows you to control multiple bodies at once…”

Konan’s heart stopped.

The toad that went back to give the information of Jiraiya’s capture couldn’t have told him anything other than the appearance of the Naraka Path and the King of Hell, and perhaps the information of Konan’s body-double. There was no other source of information he could have had. Yet, from that alone, using only that and his knowledge of puppet techniques, in his first encounter with the Six Paths of Pain—

He figured it out with one glance?

One?

One? That was all it took?

Konan recalled Uchiha Obito’s warning.

“Sensei is a genius. A true, proper genius. I suspect that if I ever appeared before him to fight him, he would be able to see the weakness in my spacetime technique after encountering it just once. That’s why I won’t face him until I’m absolutely ready. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate his intelligence.”

From her location, watching Namikaze Minato, feeling the wind pick up, the rain pound, Konan’s blood pressure was rising, and she slowly balled her hands into a fist.

“Nagato—”

“It is not yet time, Konan.”

The Animal Path smacked its hand together, burying the area in a cloud of smoke as a giant multi-headed dog and a giant rhinoceros appeared. The Asura Path’s hands split open to fire a barrage of missiles against Namikaze Minato. The Human Path and Preta Path dashed forward in unison, one hoping to absorb his chakra, and the other, seeking to capture his soul.

The multiheaded dog opened its saliva-ridden maw and lunged to bite, as the giant rhino charged in perfect unity. It was a killing formation, a synchronized attack facing numerous opponents, facing an onslaught that left a normal shinobi with no recourse, nowhere to flee, and vastly limited all options. Konan herself could not say she could escape such a coordinated onslaught unscathed, nor could she say any Kage of any Shinobi Village could do so.

Alas, their opponent was Namikaze Minato.

He slammed a Kunai into the ground.

“Hiraishin: Tenchi Gōha Raisan-Shō.”

Flying Thunder God: Heaven and Earth Shattering Scattered Thunder.

A large, scrawling fūinjutsu jutsu-shiki, akin to those used in the Summoning Technique, extended from the kunai embedded in the ground.

The raindrops were gone.

The missiles were gone.

The summoned animals were gone.

The Animal Path vanished.

The Preta Path vanished.

The Asura Path vanished.

The Human Path vanished.

One instant, the jutsu-shiki had emerged,, and the next, everything that was not Namikaze Minato, everything that was not bolted to the ground, dirt, sand, gravel, rock, sound, disappeared.

Rain returned to fill the absent space. Sound followed. Namikaze dragged the kunai out of the ground, and the scrawling jutsu-shiki vanished. His cloak fluttered as he walked, ambled, and strolled to where the Deva Path had landed after being hit with its own technique.

Konan could hear only her heart pounding in her ears. The sound deafened everything else.

“Nagato…?”

“...He sent them away.”

“Away?”

“...The Human Path and Asura Path are at the bottom of the ocean… the Preta Path is at the bottom of a chasm… and the Animal Path and summons are… somewhere underground. Crushed into paste.”

Konan’s heart jumped into her throat.

“He intentionally put the Animal Path underground…… Did he suspect… He only saw it summon once, but yet...”

Nagato’s voice was unusually low.

“Konan.”

"Yes?"

“Send in the reinforcements.”