The rain had always fallen for him - constant, heavy, penance made weather. But this time, it stopped.
Nagato blinked. One moment the map of the Hidden Leaf lay spread before him; the next, a blinding white swallowed everything — his metallic frame, the pain rods, the mechanical legs.
When the light faded he was standing. Actually standing.
His body felt… whole. His legs obeyed. The searing ache from the rods that had tethered him to the Gedo Statue was gone. His eyes… the Rinnegan — felt sharper, alive in a way they'd never been.
A salty wind carried a strange, bright smell. He tasted sea air on his tongue and looked up. Sky. Water as far as the eye could see. Wooden hulls sailed on a horizon that shouldn't exist for him.
"Where am I?" he asked, not because he expected an answer, but because the sound of his own voice felt foreign.
Alertness snapped into him — a conditioned reflex, ingrained into him throughout his life as a shinobi. He scanned for trickery. Nothing familiar. Then a human presence blocked his path, arrogance dripping from him.
A man in white silk approached, a jeweled bubble sealing his head like a mockery of a crown. Slaves trailed behind him, chains clinking. The man peered at Nagato with undisguised contempt.
"Why isn't this peasant kneeling? And why is he blocking my way?" He dug for a firearm, delicate as a toy, and leveled it at Nagato. "Those are some creepy eyes… I've decided you shall be my new slave!"
He pranced — ridiculous, grotesque. His guards flanked him and readied themselves.
Nagato's chest tightened. Something cold and old uncoiled inside him. The word "slave" tasted like ash.
"I do not know your name," Nagato said, voice flat. "I do not care to learn it. You have angered a god."
He raised a hand.
The Celestial Dragon jerked forward, drawn as if pulled by an invisible string. Nagato's other hand moved, slowly, he reached as if plucking a thread and, absurdly, something like a memory laid itself bare to him — images, warm and filthy, spilling from the man as if Nagato had reached into the man's chest and sifted through his life.
The guards lunged. They never finished the movement. A pressure folded space around them and crushed them to the cobbles like paper. Screams ripped through the crowd. Slaves scattered, sobs tearing from throats. Merchants and pirates and common folk fled; the plaza unraveled into chaos.
Nagato finished reading, and dropped the now dead body of the celestial dragon. He straightened, cold amusement barely touching his lips.
"This is not my world," he said aloud, mostly to himself.
He looked down at the dead man at his feet. Curiosity flickered into calculation. Killing a Celestial Dragon would pull the attention of the strongest law in this world — admirals or whatever name they wore here. A challenge, then. A testbed.
"Interesting," he mused. "A world where 'justice' sends its strongest to pick at one who offends the powerful. How convenient. I will use this place as practice — to teach true pain — until I find the way back."