Pre-Chapter A/N: Here we go with another chapter, coming in right on time. Next four chapters on my patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga)— same username as here and link in bio.
His newfound speed was, of course, not enough to take him to the point where I would reasonably worry about losing. I could beat him still, but as he approached, I allowed my Strength of a Hundred Seal to slip open once more. I noted that I would have to spend a few hours meditating in Grandfather's forest to fill it back up after all this exertion, but that was a small price to pay. The goal here was to send a message.
Yaga the Beheader was famed for his use of Iaido. Some said that he could behead a man in less time than it took the same man to blink. By the time the head was hitting the ground, the blink would just be half done, leaving the head in a state of conveniently closed eyes. Iaido was hampered some by his loss of an arm, but he had opened six gates already.
His movements, a blur to most, were not enough to fool my senses. Not now. He drew the blade at the moment when he was the perfect distance from me—where the blade would pass through the space my neck occupied right at the apex of his swing.
I waited for the swing to reach me, and then lifted a single hand, catching the sword between three fingers. I buried the urge to smile, but could not quite help the quirking in my lips. Aizen must have been wilding when he pulled this off.
Yaga strained, pushing forward with all his strength, but it was not even close to a fair fight. I increased the amount of nature energy flowing into my body to shift the ratio and then punched out, hitting him in the chest and shattering his ribs. He hit the ground, but the gates were one hell of a boost. He shot back so fast, it was like he bounced against the ground. I tossed his blade into the air, sending it into the clouds and snapping my head backwards to avoid a punch. I slammed one foot into his left leg, smashing the knee to pieces. He twisted, his weight refusing to be held by the leg. But he bounced on his single solid one and punched out again.
I grabbed the wrist, wrenched the arm out of the shoulder socket and allowed the dislocated limb to drop. He flipped, hitting the ground with his shoulder and kicking out. I was smiling as I stepped back to avoid it. The motion continued as he flipped onto his good leg, and then came out with another punch. He'd popped the arm back into place with that motion just now. I Spartan kicked him several feet back to where he was coming from, burying half his body in the ground.
And then I turned to those around me. My foot stomped on the ground, and his watching men began to sink as my mud grabbed them, tendrils reaching out to secure each man as they sank to their deaths.
Yaga watched it all from his new position on the ground. He looked almost graceful as he rose on a single foot, and then his chakra calmed as the gates closed. He hobbled over and picked up the ryo coin. I quirked an eyebrow.
"What is your will, Hokage-sama?" he asked. Good. His sword came crashing back down, landing blade first right in front of me, burying half of its length in the ground. I grabbed it by the hilt, ran my chakra through it and pulled it out, walking towards him. All the men my mud had taken began to rise from the ground again.
When I reached Yaga, I placed his own sword at his neck. He did not move. His men did nothing either. The few that seemed about to move were stopped by his own inaction, it seemed.
"Is your life mine, Yaga?" I asked in a detached tone that carried.
"Yes, Hokage-sama," he said.
"Good." I took the blade off his neck, twirled it and offered it to him hilt first. He accepted it in his single good arm. A clone appeared by my side in a whisper of smoke and stepped forward with green hands.
From the mud that held the Ame shinobi grew several carbon copies of me, each of them working the medical ninjutsu necessary to save what lives could be saved.
"I promised Ame to all of you, and I do not go back on my word. But as you all witnessed earlier, there is a threat that no one was aware of before today. Madara Uchiha lives and has set his sights on Ame. If it were just him, then you would have your home, I swear. But as some of you could sense, there was a greater threat. The Sage of Six Paths was real. He walked this earth just as you and I did, but the race he hails from have set the earth as their target for sins committed by his mother. They will come for us. So before we claim Ame, we must defend the world from those that would seek it," I said, not surprised that most of the eyes that looked at me had doubt in them. I doubted most shinobi would believe in the Otsutsuki threat until the men by their sides were being killed by aliens and they had alien blood on their blades. I just hoped that they managed to do more of the latter than the former.
I turned towards Kushina and the rest of my team and sighed. Two clones split from my back, each one filled with Kurama's chakra more than my own, shown in the red eyes and whiskers that their faces sported.
When we reached the team, I first spoke to Toad.
"See to it that they are brought to Konoha. Provisions will be made for their accommodations," I said. She made to say something.
"I understand the danger of housing so many foreign shinobi, but worry not," I said, nodding towards the healing going on. She saw what I was pointing out and nodded. She didn't look all that convinced but she accepted it.
"When you arrive, Shika will liaise with you on their housing and provisioning," I said, and then I went to Minato and grabbed his shoulder.
We appeared back in the office, the six of us—the three copies of me and my students.
"Was that true?" Minato asked. I flicked my wrist, drawing a scroll and tossing it to him. I walked towards the desk and opened the way to the secret lab beneath my office as I dispelled my clones and heard a thud as something hit the ground.
"What the—" Kushina cursed as the Otsutsuki body appeared on the ground.
"Sensei, maybe let us know when it's a corpse in there before handing it over," Mikoto said, tone deceptively calm when compared to the absolute murder in her glare.
"That's not the important bit, Mikoto. He has horns," Kushina yelled, pointing at the body.
"Can one of you seal it back in and come down here? We need to have a talk," I said.
-- ONE HOUR LATER--
"So what do we do if this is real?" Minato asked. He had been the only one of the three to be silent throughout my explanation as I told them about the Otsutsuki even as I studied the corpse on the table. His skin was thicker than a human's. The same was true about his flesh as well. Chakra scalpels could still cut through with ease, but a blade with no chakra in it, or no enhanced strength behind it, would easily fail to penetrate.
The bones were denser as well. And the muscles were thicker. Both of which were so much enhanced that it pointed to a gravity at least a few times higher than what we were dealing with on earth. We would have to deal with people who would be moving much faster than they would otherwise be capable of. But then we could expect a few of them to be off-balance as a result.
"We let Ishiguri carry out his plan, of course," I said. There was silence. I looked up from the arm I was peeling apart to see all three of my students giving me suspicious looks.
"What?" I asked.
"There's no way," Kushina said.
"No offense, Sensei. But you don't tend to be the type to let other people do the planning," Minato said.
"I mean, he does know the Otsutsuki threat better than any of us. His people have been watching both the earth and the Otsutsuki home world for generations. They should know what they are doing," I said.
"So we will really stand by Kumo and Suna and Kiri?" Mikoto asked.
"Of course. Even Madara himself when the time comes. Ishiguri's plan requires unity," I said.
"And you'll just go along with it?" It was Kushina's turn to sound doubtful.
"Well, if you must know, we will be working to secure Konoha primarily, but yes, we will work with the other villages. At the same time, we will use the chance to gather information on their forces, their strengths, their weaknesses, that sort of thing," I said.
"Now, enough doubting your sensei. Time for the three of you to make yourselves useful," I said.
"What can we help with, Sensei?" Minato, always ready to please, asked.
"Firstly, Minato, I will need you to speak to Retsu. Have her call a meeting of the Council. Kushina, speak to Grandma. I need her to work on something for me. She might need your help, but do not get in her way. Mikoto, you will shadow me. I need your eyes. The three of you will begin attending Council meetings starting today, so I need you back in the room in thirty minutes," I said, and after doing so, I took a scroll from the shelf and handed it over to Kushina. She and Minato left together.
"Okay, so Mikoto, I chose you for this because you are the only one of your teammates with the stomach for what we are about to do," I said, and then I grabbed her shoulder and used the Flying Raijin to take us to a chamber even below Root. Letting Mikoto find out about this now was no longer as big a risk. Madara was alive. Madara was alive and in a body at the prime of its life, so all my efforts restricting the development of a jutsu that would have increased Konoha's combat potential were a waste.
Uraume had provided the prisoners but had no idea what they were going to be used for. Shiba probably would figure it out in time, but I could trust his discretion. We passed several rooms filled with people placed in chakra comas that kept them unconscious, silent, and alive.
"What is this place?" she asked as we walked through.
"A secret," I responded when we reached the final room. This one as well was filled with bodies. Some of them were prisoners from Iwa's fall, or even the destruction of New Iwa. Others were shinobi taken from minor or even sometimes major villages through bounties and intermediaries.
I sent some chakra into two bodies and ended their comas. One of them rose with a jolt. I tapped him once on the chest and brought his life to an end. The other, I caught with the kanashibari jutsu, restraining his motion. I weaved the long line of seals required and said the words.
"Edo Tensei," I tried, and the man caught with the kanashibari started to scream soundlessly as his body was devoured, but the other man lying on the table did not return to life.
"Attempt Number One. Failure. Mikoto, record it and tell me what your eyes saw," I asked. She nodded, her face not betraying any unease.
"It felt like a summoning jutsu or something like that. Like you were trying to summon something, but it failed halfway. Instead of blood and chakra fuelling the summoning though, it was like it was the man's life doing it. What sort of jutsu is this?" she asked.
"S-rank Kinjutsu, Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation. It aims to bind the soul of a dead shinobi to the corpse of a living sacrifice. My Granduncle invented it. Our goals are twofold. First, we must each learn the jutsu. Second, we must alter the jutsu such that the revived shinobi is brought back in their own body," I said. She nodded.
"Next?" she asked.
-- THIRTY MINUTES LATER--
I left Mikoto behind to keep working on the jutsu. I'd spent on and off time on it for years and managed nothing of note. At this point, it was either I just had no talent with it, it was a hard enough jutsu that even I had no shot of getting it without putting in some serious effort, or what I thought more likely, I had a mental block. I struggled to do the visualisation involved. Whenever I did, I thought about what it felt like to be dead.
Mikoto had sent a shadow clone to the meeting while I had left a shadow clone with her to keep watching and helping however I could. But considering she'd made more progress in ten minutes than I'd made in months, I was confident she would be up to it. And if she ever managed to get all the alterations to the jutsu I needed, then she would be a terror on the battlefield. I could just picture it in my mind's eye.
Killing an enemy and then using their death to power an Edo Tensei jutsu to bring them back to life. That would require her to reach a level of mastery with the technique that not even Kabuto had managed, but she had the advantage of the Sharingan and Byakugan to help in optimising everything she needed; add in her own genius and my fuinjutsu ability, then there was a chance. A slim chance, but a real one that we could do it.
Kagame was the last to walk into the room, and when she did, her gaze fixed on my team at their position behind me. They weren't members of the Council, so they would not get seats, but we had gotten to the point where I'd rather they were kept up to date in real time.
"Everything that happens here will be an S-rank secret," I said to the gathered group. They all straightened up. Toshiro looked drained on account of having just arrived not too long ago, but even he was sitting up straight as a board.
I unsealed the body in the middle of the table. They all managed to suppress their reactions even though Reiji let out a muttered curse at having the man's head just next to him. The head had tilted, gazing at him with empty eyes.
"Inoken, I need you to display my memories to everyone here," I said. He nodded, and then Minato unsealed a screen that was made with much the same procedure that had been used to make the giant screens that had been used in my Chunin exam all those years ago. It felt like a lifetime or two had passed since then.
When Inoken placed a hand on my head, I felt his chakra reach out for mine. I consciously relaxed all my fuinjutsu defenses and allowed him in, guiding him to the right memory.
----
The room was silent when I left the trance-like state that having one's memories examined had put me in. Even Minato and the others were giving the screen puzzled looks now. I guess it was one thing for me to tell them and another for it to be shown to them.
"How can we trust anything this Ishiguri has said? It seems mighty convenient that he was able to conjure an alien from nowhere right when he was asked for proof," Kagame said, hand on her chin.
"I agree. While the story is convincing and would mean that the world itself is in danger, we can not ignore the reasonable concerns such a story raises," Uraume said next.
"Is there a chance he'd be working with Madara? He did only intervene when you and Uzume had the upper hand." Reiji next.
"Let's just say I believe him. I know it's farfetched. Aliens and all that. But I knew about Kaguya already. Both the Senju and Uchiha clans have records that tell of something similar going back to the Sage," I said.
"All lies have some element of truth in them," Shika pointed out, but still hadn't taken a side in the debate.
"To what end though? If he was working with Madara, he had Sensei at his mercy already. Letting everyone leave seems like the kind of thing that you only do if you're being honest there," Minato said, drawing all the eyes in the room to him.
"I agree with the kid," Kagame said now, having risen and stood next to the alien body.
"You were expressing doubts just a second ago," Retsu pointed out from her position taking notes.
Kagame's glare made my usually unflappable secretary redden and put her head back down.
"This body isn't human. While we could make something inhuman with enough effort, something like this would be impossible to make. And to be honest, anyone who could just make things like this to sell a lie would have no need to lie in the first place. They'd just take over the world the old fashioned way," she said.
"So what do we do then?" Uraume asked.
"First things first, the civilians. If the planet is in danger, we have to look into alternate locations for them during the fighting," I said.
"Alternate locations? Like outside the planet?" she scoffed, only to pause when I did not share the mirth.
"Something like that, funny enough," I said.
A/N: And so we get another chapter into the system. How's it going, kids? Next chapter comes on here by Sunday night. Next four chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.