Chapter 92: Inherited Folly and a Mother's Silhouette
The philosophical debate in the Pure Land raged, a clash of ideologies from beyond the grave. Uchiha Madara's text pulsed with a cold, arrogant certainty.
[Uchiha Madara: The world is sick with compromise. Your 'balance,' Hashirama, is a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. True peace requires a surgeon's hand. A single, absolute will to reshape reality. To punish disobedience before it can even form.]
[Hashirama Senju: And that will would be yours, I assume? Dictatorship decays from within, Madara! It breeds resentment, rebellion! Shared power, mutual deterrence… that is the path!]
[Uchiha Madara: Your 'shared power' led to three world wars. My dictatorship would have prevented the first.]
Ren watched the dead titans argue, a spectator with a vested interest. He decided to tip the scales.
First Hokage, he thought, his mental voice cutting through the digital noise. Your heart was in the right place. But you made one fatal error: you assumed others shared your generosity. You gave away the ultimate weapons—the Tailed Beasts—like party favors, hoping for gratitude. You forgot about human nature. Ambition. Greed. Fear.
[Hashirama Senju: I… I wanted to build trust! To show we weren't hoarding power!]
You showed weakness, Ren countered, not unkindly. You showed them that the God of Shinobi could be appeased. That his power could be divided. The moment you were gone, the fear vanished, and the ambition you'd banked with each Bijū erupted. The First Shinobi World War wasn't an accident. It was the direct consequence of your distribution policy. And the Second, and the Third… they're just the aftershocks.
The words landed with the weight of historical hindsight. Hashirama's presence in the chat seemed to dim, a flicker of profound, soul-deep regret.
[Hashirama Senju: Three… wars? Because of me?]
[Tobirama Senju: Brother… he's not entirely wrong. The framework was fragile. It required a perpetual Hashirama to enforce it. In your absence… yes. Konoha became a target. The beasts you gifted were turned against us.]
[Hashirama Senju: Tobirama… you died because of my mistake.]
[Tobirama Senju: I died protecting what you built. There's a difference. And I'd do it again. For Konoha. For… the family.]
[Hashirama Senju: You always were the practical one. Forgive your sentimental fool of a brother.]
[Uchiha Madara: Sentiment is the root of all strategic failure. Absolute power, devoid of emotional compromise. That is the only logic that endures.]
On that point, Ren interjected, I find myself in agreement with Madara-sama. A unified, unchallengeable authority could enforce a brutal, lasting peace. No squabbling over resources, no clan feuds escalating. Just… order.
[Uchiha Madara: Hah! See? The boy understands! The clarity of purpose!]
However, Ren continued, smooth as oil, such a system requires the right person at the helm. Someone with the vision, the power, and the… detachment. Madara-sama, you have the vision and the power. But your methods, while efficient, tend toward the… theatrical. Perhaps a more modern, pragmatic approach is needed. If you were to entrust your techniques to someone who shares the goal but can execute it with more… subtlety…
[Uchiha Madara: …Are you attempting to swindle my life's work, you avaricious little magpie?]
Perish the thought! Ren projected an aura of wounded idealism. I'm merely discussing the most efficient path to your stated goal of universal peace!
[Uchiha Madara: The most efficient path is me, resurrected, holding the world in my hand. Now begone, you transparent hustler.]
Ren shrugged mentally. Worth a shot. The old ghost was paranoid, but not stupid.
In the physical world, the night deepened. The sounds of Naruto's frustrated grunts and Sasuke's sharp exhales as they repeatedly failed to master tree-walking were the only noises breaking the stillness. Sakura had long since retired, her success a silent rebuke. Ren remained at his post, a sentinel against the mist, his senses still lightly brushing against the cold, observant presence that had not moved.
A flicker of movement at the edge of the woods—not the watcher. Smaller. Clumsier.
Naruto, ever vigilant for any excuse to stop training, snapped his head around. "Sasuke! Enemy!"
He took off like a shot, kunai in hand, Sasuke a shadow at his heels. They cornered the figure against a large rock.
It was Inari, Tazuna's grandson, his small face pale in the moonlight, streaked with tears he was trying furiously to wipe away.
"You… you're the old man's kid," Naruto said, lowering his kunai. "What are you doing out here? Spying?"
"I wasn't spying!" Inari's voice was a choked whisper, thick with grief and a bitterness far too old for his years. "I don't care about your stupid training! It doesn't matter! You'll all die anyway! Just like my dad!"
The raw pain in the boy's voice halted Naruto's bluster. Sasuke's scowl softened a fraction, his own memories of loss stirring uncomfortably.
Naruto crouched, bringing himself to Inari's level. "Hey. Inari, right? Look, we're ninja. We're not like… regular people. We have ways of fighting you wouldn't believe."
"What ways? More knives? More men? They have more! They always have more!" Inari's small fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white.
Naruto scratched his spiky head, thinking. How to explain chakra, jutsu, the whole impossible world to a civilian child steeped in the brutal, simple arithmetic of gang violence?
"Uh… okay. You know magic? Kinda like that. It's called ninjutsu. Watch."
He backed up a few steps, his face a mask of intense, comical concentration. He was exhausted, his chakra reserves scraped bare from hours of failed tree-climbing. But he had enough for one thing. One simple, foundational Genin technique he'd somehow mastered through sheer stubborn repetition.
He formed the familiar hand seal—Ram.
"Keep your eyes on me, kid…"
Henge no Jutsu!
(Transformation Technique)
A puff of white smoke obscured him for a second. When it cleared, Naruto was gone.
In his place stood a woman. She was dressed in a simple, clean kimono, her posture weary but kind. Her hair was tied back, a few strands escaping to frame a face that was gentle, familiar, and etched with a love that transcended the crude illusion. It was an idealized, slightly goofy version—Naruto's imagination filling in the gaps from stories and a single, cherished photograph Tazuna might have shown.
It was Tsunami. Inari's mother.
But not as she was now, worn by worry and poverty. This was Tsunami as Inari might remember her from happier times, or as he dreamed her to be—a beacon of safety, of home.
The illusion was crude. The proportions were slightly off, the colors a bit too vivid. But the essence was there. The smile. The eyes.
Inari's breath hitched. His own tears, which had momentarily stopped, began anew, but these were different. Not of anger or despair, but of a shock so profound it bypassed thought and went straight to the heart.
"M… Mom?"
The word was a whisper, torn from him.
The transformed Naruto—Tsunami—smiled Naruto's own goofy, earnest smile, which on Tsunami's face became something wonderfully awkward and full of pure, uncomplicated affection. He/she reached a hand out, a gesture of comfort.
And in that moment, under the cold moon and the watching mist, the complex debates of dead Kage, the schemes of missing-nin, the brutal calculus of power—all of it fell away. There was just a boy who missed his father, seeing a ghost of his mother conjured by a knuckleheaded ninja who understood loss in his own, loud way.
Sasuke watched, his Sharingan unconsciously active, recording the crude transformation, the boy's reaction. He saw not a jutsu, but a bridge built from sheer, idiotic empathy. Something tightened in his chest, a feeling he couldn't name and didn't want.
And from the depths of the mist, the cold, observing presence… shifted. Not in threat. In something like… reassessment. The calculation had just introduced a new, unpredictable variable: not power, not skill, but this bizarre, disruptive heart.
Ren, still leaning against his tree, allowed himself a small, genuine smile. Not a manipulative one. A real one.
Sometimes, he thought, watching Naruto's terrible, wonderful transformation, the most absolute power isn't a Susano'o or a Thousand Hands. It's the power to make a crying child see his mother's smile one more time.
The night held its breath. The game was still on. But for a single, fragile moment, something else had entered the field.
Something no amount of mist could obscure.