The Blessed Realm

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Four: Disenchanted

The university's canteen was in some fifteen minutes' walking distance from the department for history. While they were walking and also during lunch they avoided talking about the history of the Uchiha clan; instead the Ph.D. Student made the boys talk about their life in Music Town, and they told him that they liked the place, but Naruto also said that his heart was still in Konoha, and that he longed for the day when he could end the oppression from Danzou. Only when they had coffee Sasuke had sufficiently recovered from the emotional uproar to ask the man about the international cooperation his project was part of, and the man told him about other people's projects. Sasuke had done some reading on world history, still it welt weird to hear of other people who had suffered a similar fate as his family. The man told some horrible stories, but to Sasuke they came as a kind of relief: he was not alone, there were others like him, and also it was comforting to hear that not only in Music Town but also internationally there was a consensus that what had happened to his family was a crime.

Together they went back to the department for history, as the boys had left some of their stuff there, but it was clear that this afternoon they would not continue the interview: Sasuke had to digest what he had heard during the morning before he could talk again. Also the boys had to return to the training center.

It was Naruto who spotted Madara standing on the sidewalk watching them. He pointed him out to Sasuke: “He must be very desperate that he approaches us in the center of town.”

Sasuke saw him too, and like Naruto he tried to behave as if he had not noticed him. Still the Ph.D. Student had overheard their conversation: “Who are you talking about?” he asked.

“Madara. He's over there, the man with the mask. He's only observing us, so it's least risky to pretend we haven't seen him.”

“Madara? Really? Now I see him too.”

He was definitely not a ninja, but a citizen of Music Town who did not know about fear because he did not know about danger. He looked straight at Madara, and then headed towards him. Sasuke and Naruto followed him, ready to intervene if anything should happen.

“Excuse me for approaching you like this, but I've been told that you are Uchiha Madara and if you are really him I'd like to invite you for an interview as I'm working on my dissertation on the Uchiha clan, and I need some information about what led to the final fight between you and the First Hokage in the Valley of the End, and what happened afterwards.”

Madara was startled: the Ph.D. Student had taken him by surprise. Obviously he was not used to people who were not afraid of him. When he had overcome his confusion he turned to Sasuke: “Who is that man? What have you told him about the history of our clan?”

“Nothing,” Sasuke replied, feeling very calm suddenly. “He's an expert in his own right. He has told me a lot about the clan's history.”

“But I only know the official version, the one that was written by the victor, Hashirama,” the Ph.D.student said. “It would be absolutely spectacular if I could turn up with a different perspective on events.”

Madara was still confused, and he still chose to ignore the young historian. “What business do you have with a man who meddles with the affair of our clan?” he asked Sasuke. “And why are you still lingering around in Music Town instead of avenging our clan?”

“He does not meddle,” Sasuke replied. “He's very clever and he has done a lot of research. He'll help me with my new plan: to make Danzou's crimes public so that the whole ninja world knows about him. It will be the end of his days as Hokage.”

“So you have given up on killing him, and you've forsaken your plan to take revenge against the population of Konoha.”

Sasuke had to think before he came up with what he thought was an adequate response: “The people of Konoha are sufficiently punished by having to live under Danzou's rule.”

“Really I need to talk to you,” the Ph.D.Student again joined the conversation. “I need to know about your relationship with the rest of the clan at the time of the foundation of Konoha, and I need to know about your role in the peace negotiations with the Senju Clan. What was your reaction when your clan told you that they would not nominate you as head of the delegation?”

Again Madara looked startled. It took him a couple of seconds to answer the question: “I was not interested in peace anyway. I did not care about being part of the delegation.”

“Why weren't you interested in peace?” Naruto asked. “Did you not offer me peace just a short time ago if I were ready to give my consent to Killerbee's death?”

Madara took some thirty seconds before he answered to Naruto. “That was a different kind of peace. The peace I offered you was the real thing. The peace between Senju and Uchiha was but a fake.”

Just like Sasuke Naruto felt very calm suddenly. Madara could not tempt him any more.

“But still you supported the negotiations, didn't you?” the Ph.D. Student said.

“I was head of my clan, and it was my duty to support them and to work for their wellbeing, even if I considered their dreams of peace with the Senju Clan ultimately foolish.“So did they make you step down from your position when you disagreed to their plans to negotiate a peace treaty with the Senju? Did you step down from your own accord? Or did they only name the head of the delegation the new head of clan when the negotiations started, to add to his authority and give him a better standing in negotiations? And how did the controversies among the Uchiha continue when the negotiations ended? Did those who had opposed the negotiations drop their objections when they saw that they had ended with a success? Were you the only one who retained his original position and continued to distrust the Senju?”

Sasuke thought it was a pity that the man did not know when to stop, and that he had never participated in any interrogation training. He wished he could tell him that a good interrogator might hint at what he knew about the person he was interrogating, but that he'd never display the full extent of his knowledge. If the Ph.D. Student had been more perceptive and less eager to get a positive answer to his request for an interview, he might have seen what Sasuke saw: that Madara took too long to answer his question. Sasuke would have liked to see the expression on his face beneath his mask: even the way Madara moved showed that he was in trouble.

“I always distrusted Senju,” he finally said. “I always knew that they were our enemies and would always remain so, and that the so-called reconciliation was but a fake. I refused to participate in that farce.”

“You know, I need to know about this because I need to know about the history of the tensions between Senju and Uchiha. I need to know whether there were people in the clan who remained loyal to you, and who retained the distrust towards Senju.”

“There were none. They were all fools! They did not see the danger Senju posed to us. I alone did not drop my guard. I alone did not forget that wood and fire will never be friends.”

He turned to Sasuke. “You should remember this too. Fire and wood will stay enemies for enternity. There will not be friendship between you and a man who's descended from Senju.”

On former occasions Sasuke had felt irritated and scared when he had met Madara. This time he only felt irritated, and also a bit angry.

“He's my lover, not my friend,” he said. “I told you already. You should accept and remember it.”

Naruto wondered whether Sasuke would dare to kiss him while Madara was watching. He would not, he thought: They needed to have an eye on Madara, after all. Then Sasuke kissed him all the same, though only on the cheek, trusting that Naruto would not drop his guard.

“Wait,” Naruto said. “My name's Uzumaki, not Senju, and my father wasn't from the Senju Clan either.”

“The Uzumaki were related to Senju,” Madara continued. “They intermarried frequently. Didn't you know this?”

“No,” Naruto replied flatly. “I think you're making this up in order to drive us apart.”

Madara didn't respond, but turned to Sasuke again.

“Nothing good will come from such a connection, just as nothing good came from the alliance between Senju and Uchiha that led to the foundation of Konoha. It's beyond your choice, and beyond your personal feelings. Senju and Uchiha have always been enemies and will always be. They've been enemies since the days of the Rikudo.”

"What's the Rikudo got to do with it?” Naruto asked.

“It were his followers who split up after the Rikudo's death, led by his own sons. They turned against each other, struggling for power and dominance, and both claimed the right to lead the Rikudo's followers, those who later became the heads of the ninja clans.”

Madara was less confused now than when he had talked to the Ph.D. Student, Sasuke thought, but he was still far from scary. He also felt that Naruto was not impressed at all.

“I've read about the followers of the Rikudo,” he said. “After the Rikudo's death there were a lot of conflicts concerning the correct interpretation of the texts he had left them. A couple of schools were established then, which perceived each other as rivals. The Rikudo's sons became heads of these schools, even though originally they had little to do with the Rikudo's teachings. He had left them when they were small kids, and never saw them again in his life.”

“The Rikudo had children and abandoned them?” Sasuke said, rather shocked, forgetting that they were talking to Madara.

Naruto did not forget it. He kept watching him, ready to fight if this should become necessary.

“They were raised as princes and their mother and their grandparents cared well for them. He could not take them with him when he travelled to the ninja countries in order to become a wandering priest. There's some scholars, mainly women, who criticize him for this.”

“They're correct,” Sasuke said. “He should have stayed with his kids – you don't plan to leave me to become some kind of wandering priest too, do you`”

“I don't,” Naruto said, caressing Sasuke's shoulder and his back. He had to keep an eye on Madara, as Sasuke seemed to be distracted. “The Rikudo's sons did not think highly of their father as he had deserted them, and also they could not understand why he had given up life in a place for a life on the roads. After his death, however, when they learnt that in the ninja countries he had become famous they followed him and became heads of two rivalling schools. They were received with open arms, simply because they were the Rikudo's sons, but they had no idea about his message. They managed to get along, and to keep at bay conflicts about the interpretation of the Rikudo's teachings, simply because they did not take any interest in the interpretation of his message, but their children broke up because of some argument about financial issues. Their followers got annoyed with them, they lost their position as heads of their various schools, and the office became non-hereditary.”

Sasuke listened to him, not knowing whether to believe his ears. Naruto noticed this, and smiled smugly: “You're not the only one who has been reading a lot of history books.”

He continued his story: “Only when the civil war started that ruined the continent in the course of fifty years the schools broke down. The Rikudo's teachings were forgotten except for a few small schools in the mountains or on some island that were not destroyed during the war, and some texts only survived in the Rikudo's home country. In the ninja countries themselves, only his chakra-forging techniques and the memory of the Rikudo's supernatural powers were preserved. They forgot that the true content of his message had been inner and outer peace,and only remembered him as a hero who fought monsters and tyrants. It's what happened in quite a few religions, which is why we need new priests and teachers and prophets every now and then.”

“You don't intend to become one of them,” Sasuke said. “You stay with me!”

“I stay with you,” Naruto said, still looking at Madara. “The Rikudo's sons have nothing to do with Sasuke or me. We won't split up because of them.”

Again he caressed Sasuke's hips and his back. There was a broad smile on his face. Sasuke feared he'd drop his guard, so he was more on his alert himself now.

“Senju and Uchiha are the fundamental forces of the universe,” Madara made a desperate attempt to gain the upper hand again. “They're order and chaos, they're the forces of destruction and the forces that create something new from the debris. They won't mix, and if they do, history will come to a standstill.”



“That's some natural mythology that's been mixed into the ninshuu religion while it got turned into ninjutsu,” Naruto explained. “It's got nothing to do with the original teachings of the Rikudo. There's no reason why Sasuke and I shouldn't be lovers.”

Madara seemed at a loss: he had run out of stories. Sasuke laid his hand on his wrist, ready to grip it firmly if necessary. It was as he had expected: Madara did not fight, he did not even try to escape using his space-time ninjutsu. Nonetheless Sasuke activated his Sharingan, just to make sure he could detect any technique Madara was going to employ. “It's over,” he said. “You won't be able to separate Naruto and me, nor to tempt me with any power you offer. No one listens to your stories. You lost your power.”

“You should be more respectful. I still provide over Madara's power.”

“So you aren't Madara, but only provide over his power?” the Ph.D Student said. “I guessed so. You pretended that you refused to participate in negotiations with the Senju clan. Madara however participated in them, though not as head of his delegation. You can find his signature on the final treaty, and it's also documented in the protocols.”

“You should give up,” Sasuke said. “You can't even use your space-time-ninjutsu any more, as there's nowhere you can teleport to. You should offer yourself to the police of Music Town. Here you'll get a fair trial. If the forces of the Ninja Countries find you in your base they'll simply kill you.”

 

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.