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Birthright	By : sadfascist Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male Views: 3638 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own NARUTO, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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BIRTHRIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: “Hereafter, Part One”
The Sage of Six Paths came to the shores of Uchiha Castle with the storm.
He came with fire and lightning.
Fire consumed the warships of the Scarlet Fleet, lightning exploded the towers of the Birthright Imperial Palace. In a flash the entire world was burning. Fire Fan Bay was a maelstrom of flames, of great sailed ships, blood red and blazing gold, ramming each other to the death. Naruto did not know how the enemy fleet had entered the harbor. The Warlord had laid a thick iron chain across the mouth of the bay, but somehow the chain had been broken. The wind blew the fire north across the waves, leaping from sail to sail. Not like any fire Naruto had ever seen. It was so hot it was almost white, and even in the drenching rain of the storm it was not quenched. Chain lightning came down on the high city like a thousand crooked fingers. Sawara itself was burning in the unholy flames, in the screaming night sky.
“They are here,” said Uchiha Itachi.
A ship crashed onto the shore before them, as if in answer. It screeched against the rocks, wooden prow splintering apart on impact. A flash of lightning into the gloom, and Naruto saw the foremast topple, saw a billowing golden sail fall forward onto the beach. The sail had the Sage’s banner stitched across it, a spiraling eye within a six-sided wall. The eye seemed to make the ground shake, to make the wind howl and rip at their hands and faces and mouths. Naruto could barely stand.
“Gods!” Makoto Satetsu shrieked above the storm.
“Demons,” said General Hayate Gatou, and then, “Attack!”
Dark shapes slithered from the belly of the broken ship, running up the beach toward Uchiha Castle. Volleys of fire arrows flew across the gap, thick as the lashing rain. The first enemies dropped, but more took their place, more invaders from more ships. They were close enough that Naruto could hear them scream. “For the Sage!” they shouted. “For Kiyome! For Kiyome!” The two armies met in a deafening clang of steel. Samurai on horses clashed with swords, footmen ran each other through with pikes and spears. Thousands of them, teeming and swarming, attacking each other in waves, like two tides breaking on each other, and each time the water that tossed and sloshed was human blood. Smoke and rain and thunder flooded the air, the cries of desperate men, the thudding beat of war drums, agony and triumph and rage all churned together into one endless scream on the rock-strewn shore.
It sounded like death.
“Hold the line!” General Gatou shouted. The Blood Country defenders closed ranks, circling the enemy forces like a turtle shell. The line held, except in the very center. A small group of dark shapes mowed through all defense, aiming straight for the Warlord’s encampment.
Ninja, Naruto knew, Hagoromo’s elite warriors. They wore not robes, nor armor, but ninja garb, tight black cloth that clung to the curves of their bodies. Kunai daggers whirled in their hands, flashing out to cut the throats of any samurai that stood in their way. In the raging storm they were silent as ghosts.
The Warlord spoke a word.
“Suiton!”
A torrent of black water exploded from Uchiha Itachi’s hands. The magic wave swept over the attacking ninja, drowning them. When it receded, a dozen black shapes were crumpled against the ruined walls of Uchiha Castle. They had been flattened like a roll of dough.
Somehow most of the ninja had survived. “Doton!” one called, fingers flashing in complex patterns. He slammed his fist to the ground.
The earth shook. It convulsed, as if in pain, once, twice. Then it caved in on itself. Horses screamed as they toppled into sinkholes, taking their riders down with them. Naruto leaped away from the quaking earth, but the air was filled with spinning shurikens. Paper tags flapped in the hollow centers, burning with magic seals. Exploding tags, the Warlord had called them. They burst apart in the sky, ringing the remains of Uchiha Castle like a string of brilliant firecrackers.
Where they burst, the bodies of men burst too.
Naruto landed hard in a bed of long wet grass. He held his katana before him, rain beating at his face, drenching his robes. The Warlord’s command post had been secure only a moment before, but now all was chaos. The ninja were among them now, dark slippery shadows, fighting the Warlord’s bodyguards, his generals. Fighting the Warlord himself. Uchiha Itachi sliced his enemies from head to groin with the red Kusanagi blade, the edge so sharp it whistled as it cut through falling raindrops. Hagoromo is not here, Naruto thought. Where is he?
Where was Sasuke?
“Behind you,” a voice said. Almost too soft to be heard, in the raging storm, but it carried just far enough.
It was the Demon Fox.
Naruto turned. He could see the whites of the ninja’s eyes, all three of them. A white bandana was wrapped around the ninja’s forehead, and a golden spiraling eye stared out from the center, as if the Sage of Six Paths was staring out through it. Perhaps he was. Naruto didn’t know. He only knew the ninja’s real eyes, large and green, catching the light of the fires on the distant water.
He knew those eyes as well as he’d ever known anything in his life.
“Sasuke,” said Naruto. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“I won’t run, not any more.” The ninja wore no mask, and the wet hair that spilled around the bandana was gleaming silver. “Get out of my way, Naruto.”
“I cannot allow you to harm my master.”
“Your master murdered my entire family!”
“Good,” Naruto said.
He could see the shock on Sasuke’s face, twisting his pale features. The other boy raised his twin kunai in front of him. “You don’t mean that.”
“Of course I do. Uchiha Itachi is the greatest man that has ever lived, and your family was weak. They deserved to die.”
“Shut up!” Sasuke yelled. He charged, thrusting his kunai at Naruto’s chest. “I’ll kill you too, if I have too!”
Naruto met the thrust with his katana, but as he did so Sasuke’s kunai flashed with blue jagged streaks. Lightning! The lightning-chakra edge slashed right through Naruto’s katana, breaking the steel shaft in two. Too late Naruto tried to dodge. Sasuke spun around and kicked Naruto sideways in the head. His face slammed into a nearby granite pillar, sending lichen-cracked stones tumbling down on his stomach. Naruto groaned, struggling to get up. His nose was broken, and blood streamed down his mouth and chin, mixing with the rain.
“Stay down!” Sasuke yelled.
“I prefer to stand.” Naruto dug his fingers into the pillar, pulling himself to his feet. “If you don’t like that, you’ll have to hit me harder. I know you can.”
“I fear for your life.”
“Fear that I might keep it, you mean.”
“Do you really want me to kill you?” Sasuke’s eyes narrowed into slits. “After what you did to me, maybe I should. You betrayed me, Naruto. You said you loved me, but you broke my heart.”
His daggers swung down in a slashing arc.
Naruto blocked them with his sword.
The katana was shattered almost at the hilt, but a blade of burning chakra shot out from the jagged stump. A fire sword. Blazing red flames formed the shape of the broken katana, the edge of it strong enough to stop even lightning.
Naruto grinned. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”
Sasuke stepped back. There was wariness in his voice. “The Warlord has been teaching you magic.”
“And I’m just as strong as you.” A current of living heat surged through Naruto’s body. The chakra intoxicated him, it made his blood burn, as if it was not blood but screaming golden light. He was more than human, he was death itself. “Come, Demon Fox, and let us dance.”
Naruto came at Sasuke with his sword of flames. Sasuke met him blow for blow, twin kunai a blur of flashing silver. Sparks exploded where their weapons touched, fire and lightning, blistering Naruto’s exposed skin. But Naruto did not relent for even a moment. He drove the ninja back, on and on, deeper into the shattered maze of Uchiha Castle. Rain came down upon them in a curtain of tears. Water hissed against the edge of Naruto’s burning sword, turning into steam. The fighting was all around them, the clang of steel on steel. Wind rattled through the rubble like sharp frozen needles. Screams came with it, and the taste of mud and excrement and the sea. An enormous pillar of lightning crashed into the center of Fire Fan Bay, a white flash as bright as noonday, though it was the dead of the night.
Naruto saw Sasuke. In the glare the ninja was lit up like a torch, all muted colors, bleached white and gray. Only his eyes glittered. They were faceted jewels, round and hard as polished emerald.
The other boy saw him, too.
“Naruto,” he mouthed with his lips. Thunder crested the horizon, swallowing all sound.
Naruto swung his katana. The strike slipped past Sasuke’s kunai and down the ninja’s right flank, carving Sasuke’s flesh with fire. Sasuke gasped, stumbling backward. He was pinned against a granite wall. Naruto recognized the wall as part of the original throne room of Uchiha Castle. It was thick enough to support the weight of an entire castle, but now it was only as high as Sasuke’s chest. Beyond the wall, Naruto could see the harbor, roiling with burning wooden warships. The flaming masts of the Scarlet Fleet were like a forest of crosses, like the flag of the Blood Country, not black but orange red. A swarm of cinders rose into the storm, dancing over Sawara city.
Sasuke was breathing hard. “Give me the sword, Naruto.”
“Oh, I will.”
Naruto lunged again, this time attacking from above. Sasuke dodged to the side, and Naruto’s blow sliced right through the granite wall, right through the vines to the muddy ground. The dirt started to smoke.
“Stop,” Sasuke said. “You’ve lost, can’t you see that? Your army is gone. Sawara is gone. Stop fighting me!”
“I can’t.” Naruto raised his sword. “You are the enemy.”
“Naruto, please. I love you.” The words were edged in bitterness. “Even if you’re just a good little slave.”
“Still want to free me, Sasuke?”
“You stabbed me in the back, last time I tried.”
“I was aiming for your heart.”
“Damnit!” Sasuke shook his head in frustration. “Damnit, why won’t ya let me help you?”
“Maybe I don’t want your help. Maybe you don’t know anything about me.” Naruto attacked him, sword whirling, a hundred furious cuts of blazing fire. Sasuke parried every one. Sparks flew, and the force of it shot up Naruto’s arm and jarred his teeth together. He yelled in rage. “How can you love me, if you don’t know who I am?” Blood was ringing in his ears, in his burning eyes. “I’m a slave! I am Master Itachi’s perfect weapon.”
“You don’t have to be!” Sasuke shouted. “You have a choice!”
“There’s no such thing!” Naruto spun, striking at Sasuke’s throat. “There’s only fate.”
Sasuke turned aside the cut, and suddenly he was on the offense. The daggers were short but very quick; they slashed with blue lightning at Naruto’s face. It was all Naruto could do to keep his head on his neck. “We make our own fates!”
Naruto staggered back, panting. “What about love?”
“What?”
“Did you choose to love me?”
Sasuke hesitated, silent.
“Did you choose to love me?” Naruto said again.
“You dummy.” Sasuke’s eyes gleamed in the storm. “You asshole… is that you what you really think love is? That it’s like a shackle? Something you’d get rid of, if you could? That’s not love, Naruto! That’s your master, don’t you see that? True love is the most precious thing in the world. It’s what makes this damn life worth living. True love is a choice… and don’t you ever say that I didn’t choose you!”
“Is that all?” Naruto asked.
Then the slaveboy began to laugh.
“Naruto—”
“You’re a fool, Sasuke. Love is nothing more than a speck of dust. It is a grain of sand, washed away in an instant by the tides of fate. Only destiny remains.”
“Love can change destiny.”
“Can it?” sneered Naruto. “Sweet words, like perfume on a corpse. Your very existence puts the lie to the claim. Will you give up your revenge, because you love me? Would you choose me, over Uchiha Itachi?”
Sasuke did not answer.
“Have I shut you up at last? You dumb whore, did I cut out your tongue?” Naruto laughed wildly. “It’s no choice at all, when pushed to the point. And I’m just the same as you. I choose my master over love. Go away, Kitsune, lay down and die and be done with it!”
He struck with all the strength he had, but too slow. Sasuke rolled under him, coming up from behind.
“Bunshin!” Sasuke cried.
Naruto turned just in time to see the ninja make a chakra seal with his hands. Tendrils of smoke snaked from his body and twisted into human shapes. Three of them, just like Sasuke, identical even to the blood that trickled from the wounds in their sides. Magic clones, Naruto knew. They were illusions, nothing more.
Yet when they leaped at him it was hard to tell which was the illusion, and which was the real Sasuke. Naruto hacked at the two closest, taking their heads off. The clones vanished in a puff of smoke. At the same moment Naruto felt a dagger slash down his back. He yelled, stumbling forward. The cut was deep and very painful. He lost his focus, and his chakra sword flickered out of existence. Sasuke knocked the useless hilt from his hand. Then he knocked Naruto’s head into the mud.
Naruto groaned, face in the dirty wet grass. “Stay down!” Sasuke said.
He thinks I’m beaten. Naruto twisted suddenly. “Katon!” he screamed, fingers molding chakra that flooded up his arms and into his lungs and exploded out of his mouth.
Sasuke backflipped at the last possible instant. The fireball shot past him, crackling in the rain, bathing the collapsed throne room of Uchiha Castle in dazzling light. Naruto struggled to his hands and knees. When he looked up, the Kitsune was standing before him, a black-and-silver shadow against burning red flames, against the broken haunted towers of the place that had once been his home.
“Sasuke,” Naruto whispered.
“I said stay down!” Sasuke stretched his fingertips out at Naruto’s chest. And then, “Raiton!”
Blue lightning streaked from Sasuke’s fingers. The electricity arced through Naruto’s body, flashing across his bones. Naruto shrieked, and then he could not shriek, because he could not move. He could not feel anything. He collapsed to the ground, numb all over. What had Sasuke done to him? Naruto could not even wiggle his toes. I am as good as dead.
He could still see, though. He could see Sasuke’s feet as they ran past him, and hear his soft footsteps on the grass. There was a very loud roar to the west, in another part of the castle. A screech like a whirlwind. Sasuke was running over there. Master Itachi, Naruto thought. Was his master fighting Hagoromo? He wanted me to protect him.
I won’t fail! There had to be a way to counter Sasuke’s lightning jutsu. But how? Unless…
Naruto concentrated, trying to feel his chakra. Yes, there. It still flowed through his body. Naruto tried to push the chakra into his muscles, to restore their strength. It was like pushing against a wall of numb stone. Sasuke’s chakra blocked his every attempt.
I need to push harder. Naruto pushed until he thought his chakra points were going to explode. The tenketsu in his hands swelled, in his stomach and chest, and in his eyes. His eyes were burning. Pressure built up against his pupils, floodwater behind a cracking dam. His vision blurred, blinked in and out. One moment the world was vague gray shapes, the next painted in kaleidoscope color, sharper than he’d ever seen. And with each image came a stab of pain. Almost Naruto drew back, but then he realized pain was good. Pain meant his body was working again. Just a little more…
The numbness faded slowly. Naruto staggered to his feet. He could scarcely do more than walk, and barely that, lurching across the ruins of Uchiha Castle. He used crumbling stone walls for a handhold, and sometimes piles of warm corpses. The castle was strangely quiet; the dead far outnumbered the living.
When he reached the beach he saw why.
The Warlord Uchiha Itachi stood on the rocky bluffs at the edge of the castle, overlooking the mouth of Fire Fan Bay. Firelight from the burning city across the harbor made the plates of his dreamsteel armor glisten like black pearls. Rain poured from the sky, blown sideways by a tempest wind. Silver hair streamed behind the Warlord’s face, the same length as the white Kusanagi sword he raised over his head.
Water dragons came out of the sword and destroyed all his enemies.
Men in white armor landed on the beach by the thousands. The dragons screeched, vast snaking monsters of black liquid, and washed them all back screaming into the Endless Sea. “Hagoromo!” the Warlord shouted into the storm. “Hagoromo, where are you? Come and face me!”
“I’m not done yet,” said a feral voice.
It was Sasuke. Sasuke was picking himself out from under a heap of armor-clad bodies. Naruto recognized the corpse of General Hayate Gatou, and his brother General Hayate Inari. He recognized Makoto Tojuen, and Hyuuga Neji, and the Zen monk Maito Gai. All dead. Sasuke’s clothes were half stripped off, where a water dragon had hit him and torn the ninja garb apart. He was holding a hand to his chest.
Sasuke, Naruto tried to call, but the words tangled on his numb tongue. Nothing came out, and he could only watch as Sasuke ran at the Warlord.
Itachi flicked the Kusanagi at Sasuke. A black water dragon came screeching from the tip, too large to dodge. Sasuke threw a clutch of shuriken with exploding tags. The explosions connected, blowing holes of hissing steam in the dragon’s bulk. Sasuke leaped through and stretched out his hands. “Raiton!” he shouted.
Lightning flashed across the cliffs. Itachi blocked the attack with his sword. The electricity charged the Kusanagi and did not damage it. “Foolish little fox,” Itachi said. He flung the lightning back at Sasuke, who ducked just in time. “You cannot defeat me. Where is your master, slaveboy?”
“I’m not a slave!” Sasuke launched at himself at the Warlord. “You tried to make me one, but I never was.” He slashed with his kunai, Itachi parrying the thrusts. “I’ll kill you! I hate you!”
“Good,” said the Warlord. “Hate is good. Hate means you’re still alive.” He laughed, cruel and hollow. Then he struck at Sasuke’s head. Sasuke hissed as the Kusanagi opened his cheek like a overripe fruit. “Hate makes you strong. A week spent in my dungeons has done wonders for you, I think. You fight much better than before. After I kill your master, I shall be sure to put you back there.”
“Never!” Sasuke drew a fistful of shuriken from the waist pouch and threw them at Itachi’s feet. A dozen paper tags burned, erupted in blazing violence. Explosions rocked the rocky bluffs. In the billowing haze Naruto couldn’t see anything. What had happened? He stumbled forward, trying to will himself back to fighting condition.
Uchiha Itachi emerged from the haze. His armor had not a scratch. He held his sword before him, and Sasuke was impaled on it in the chest.
“Sasuke!” Naruto shouted. He felt his heart twisting, felt his eyes blur.
The bunshin vanished into smoke.
The real Sasuke rose behind the Warlord. Itachi turned, confused, but not fast enough. “I am an avenger!” Sasuke screamed. “Katon!”
The fireball consumed Uchiha Itachi at point blank range. It was immense, larger than any explosion Naruto had ever seen. It was an inferno of white heat, and when the roaring flames subsided, there was nothing left where a man had been.
“Master Itachi!” Naruto screamed.
But Sasuke was stumbling backward. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, it can’t be…”
From the white nothing, came the sound of laughter.
Itachi’s armor was gone. The black and crimson dreamsteel had boiled away. His hair was gone too. But the rest of him… at first Naruto could not see it, could not make it out. His master’s body was so white that it seemed he was made of snow.
Not snow. Bones.
Uchiha Itachi was covered in bones.
“A bloodline,” Sasuke gasped. “You’re…”
The Warlord laughed, turning his skeleton to face them both. “This is how I killed them all,” he said. A long curving bone grew from the palm of his hand. “This is how I fulfilled the Night of Blood. My power, my Shikkasaimyaku! No one can stand before me. Not you, not Otsutsuki Hagoromo. Not even fate itself.” Sharp white spikes burst from every joint on the Warlord’s body. “Now, little fox, you shall die as your family died, as your pathetic brother died, when I thrust my bones through his heart.”
Next: CHAPTER NINETEEN: “Hereafter, Part Two”
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Birthright