Minato's wedding wound down, and the guests began drifting home.
"Tsunade-sensei." Natsuki turned to her, smiling. "Care to come by the Hokage's office?"
"What for?" She looked mildly suspicious.
"To go over that ninjutsu we discussed."
"Fine. Let's go."
Kushina and Nonou, hearing that, elected not to tag along.
Natsuki opened a doorway, and the two of them stepped through into the office.
"I've got a working version." He produced a scroll. "Take a look."
Tsunade unrolled it and read.
A minute in, something like genuine admiration surfaced on her face.
"Your technique design keeps getting better." She looked up. "This is finished. It doesn't need a single change."
"All thanks to your help, Tsunade-sensei." Natsuki laid it on shamelessly. "There isn't another kunoichi in the world who's this beautiful and this good."
"You did the actual work. I barely contributed." Tsunade rolled her eyes at him, though the corners of her mouth had turned up.
"Let's call it the Reverse Life Technique," Natsuki said after a moment's thought.
"Works for me." Tsunade rolled the scroll shut. "It fits."
"Tsunade-sensei." He walked over. "I built you the Reverse Life Technique. Is there a reward in it for me?"
"What... what do you want?" Her heart gave an unhelpful lurch.
Natsuki's gaze dropped, and he closed the distance without hesitation, lowering his head against her.
Tsunade's whole body went stiff.
But she was hardly a girl fresh out of the Academy. She loosened up again quickly, reached out, and ran her fingers through his hair with an expression that was doing several things at once.
"You really are just a child," she said quietly, after a while.
Natsuki didn't answer. He pressed his luck instead, and kissed the skin in front of him.
Tsunade's eyes flew open. Her hand came up to shove him back—
He caught her wrist first.
He worked his way up, along her neck, and then covered her mouth with his own.
She melted for the second time.
And compared to how hopeless she'd been the first time, she handled it a great deal better now.
More importantly, she didn't bolt.
"Satisfied?" Tsunade huffed, her face distinctly red.
"Thank you for the reward, Tsunade-sensei." Natsuki studied her mouth and smiled.
He was very close to having her completely.
"Go back to work." Tsunade pulled her composure back together. "I'm going to start training the Reverse Life Technique."
"If you hit any problems, come find me."
He leaned in and kissed her forehead.
Tsunade froze — but she didn't say anything. She turned and walked out.
[Congratulations! Host has unlocked Gojo Satoru's Template Ability 3: Reverse Cursed Technique.]
Natsuki gave a small nod and opened a doorway.
He came out in the Hidden Rain.
"Natsuki-sensei." Nagato was surprised to see him, but greeted him quickly.
"Nagato. Have you ever wondered where your Rinnegan came from?" Natsuki went straight at it.
"What do you mean?" Nagato frowned. "I was born with it. Wasn't I?"
"Try not to react too strongly to this."
"To what?"
"Your Rinnegan was transplanted into you." Natsuki's voice dropped. "By a man named Uchiha Madara."
"That's — that's not possible."
Nagato went blank.
He had spent his entire life believing the Rinnegan was a sign of the Sage of Six Paths' favor. Being told it had been surgically installed by a stranger was not something he could absorb in one breath.
"The Rinnegan is one of the most precious things in the world. Why put it in me?" He inhaled slowly. "And Uchiha Madara died generations ago."
"You're taking this better than I expected." Natsuki tilted his head. "He is dead, yes. But don't you happen to possess a technique that resurrects people?"
Nagato went still.
The Outer Path: Samsara of Heavenly Life.
"I've never met the man. Why would I bring him back?"
Reviving someone with that technique cost the user their own life. Outside of Natsuki, Yahiko, and Konan, there wasn't a person alive Nagato would trade himself for.
"That's exactly why I came." Natsuki spoke slowly. "I suspect he has a way to make you do it."
Nagato's frown deepened.
Beyond the shock, what he felt was anger — because it meant he had been tangled in Madara's designs since childhood.
But this world wasn't the original. Yahiko was alive. Nagato had never fallen, and he had certainly never grown arrogant enough to call himself a god.
Angry as he was, he held onto his reason.
"I want to use you as bait to draw him out," Natsuki continued. "Take more missions outside the village for a while."
"I'll start tomorrow." Nagato agreed without hesitating.
Because with Natsuki involved, he'd be fine.
"The moment he surfaces, I'll be there." Natsuki clapped his shoulder. "Stay sharp regardless."
Then he returned to the Hidden Leaf.
The next day, Nagato began taking outside work as instructed.
And every move he made was reported by White Zetsu back to Black Zetsu.
Black Zetsu recognized an opening when it saw one.
Taking Nagato wouldn't be simple, though. The core problem was Natsuki, who would arrive almost immediately.
Which meant Black Zetsu had exactly one attempt, and it had to land in a single instant.
That ruled out moving inside the Hidden Rain. It had no confidence it could seize Nagato and force the Samsara of Heavenly Life technique that fast — not with Yahiko in the village, close enough to get word to Natsuki.
Outside the Rain, matters improved considerably.
One week later. Land of Grass.
Nagato approached the gates of the Hidden Grass Village.
Today's task was a meeting with Mui to discuss Dawn Company's operations in the Land of Grass — chiefly livestock. The Land of Grass was nothing but open grassland for hundreds of miles. Leaving it undeveloped would be criminal.
Mui was waiting at the gate, and beside him stood a Grass Jonin Nagato didn't recognize.
Nagato walked over.
"Nagato." Mui raised a hand. "Let me introduce—"
Nagato's eyes went, automatically, to the Jonin.
A flash of scarlet.
The sheer weight behind that gaze stunned even Nagato for a fraction of a second.
And in that fraction, Mui collapsed into a puddle of black matter that surged up his body like water.
Nagato snapped back instantly — and found he couldn't shake the substance off. His whole body locked in place. The Rinnegan was already active and it made no difference at all.
Horror spread across his face.
Honestly, when Natsuki had first mentioned Madara, he hadn't taken it entirely seriously. He had the Rinnegan, after all.
Madara had just corrected that assumption in about half a second. There was always someone above you.
What he didn't know was that the thing holding him wasn't Madara at all. It was Black Zetsu.
The Grass Jonin, of course, was Madara's shadow clone — and at this moment, the clone was every bit as surprised as Nagato.
He hadn't expected a Rinnegan wielder to fall to Black Zetsu that easily.
There was no time to dwell on it. What came next was the part that mattered.
Dispel the clone. Send the memories home. The real body commits suicide, and Black Zetsu drives Nagato into using the Samsara of Heavenly Life technique to bring him back.
And then it would all finally be done.
Madara's hands came together for the seal — and stopped, because he suddenly couldn't move at all.
Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void!
Natsuki simply appeared.
A sphere of black expanded outward from where he stood, swallowing Black Zetsu, Nagato, and Madara together, and all three of them lifted off the ground.
Then infinite information flooded into Black Zetsu and Madara at once.
Poof.
Madara vanished into smoke. A shadow clone couldn't process that volume of input; it simply came apart.
Black Zetsu stayed frozen where it was. It hadn't lost consciousness yet, but it couldn't move a millimeter.
And because it couldn't move, its hold on Nagato broke.
Natsuki waved a hand and pulled Nagato behind him.
He studied Black Zetsu for a moment, then reached for a Sovereign Weapon.
Demonic aura poured out and condensed into a blade in front of him — the Void Sword. Its effect was straightforward enough. Whatever it struck withered.
At a thought, the Void Sword dropped out of the air and drove into Black Zetsu.
Black Zetsu convulsed violently. Terror flashed across it.
And then it was gone, without a trace left behind.
"Less impressive than advertised," Natsuki said, half amused.
Not that it was surprising. Black Zetsu's abilities were bizarre, but its raw power had never been remarkable — nowhere near Six Paths caliber. It was a rush job of Kaguya's, thrown together in a hurry. If it had genuinely been formidable, it would never have needed Uchiha Madara in the first place.
[Congratulations! Host has unlocked Saint Imu Nerona's Template Ability 2: Devil Fruit.]
The line drifted up while he was still thinking.
With that, the Imu template was fully unlocked.
Natsuki dropped the Domain, and Nagato got his body back.
He let out a long, unsteady breath.
That had been, by a wide margin, the closest he'd ever come to dying. A second later and he'd have cast the Samsara of Heavenly Life technique and paid for it with his life.
"Natsuki-sensei." Nagato glanced around. "Is it over?"
"Near enough." Natsuki sounded almost bored. "You don't have to think about it again."
Some of the tension went out of Nagato's shoulders.
"And keep using the Rinnegan." Natsuki smiled. "It'll do more good in your hands than it ever did in his."
"Understood." Nagato nodded hard.
The Rinnegan may have belonged to Madara, but he'd carried it for over a decade. Being told to stop using it now would have been genuinely miserable.
And Natsuki was right. He could put it to work protecting the peace.
"I'll send you home."
Natsuki opened a doorway, and Nagato stepped through.
Somewhere underground.
When the clone's memories came home, Uchiha Madara nearly blacked out. There was too much noise in them — an ocean of meaningless data.
Fortunately, he hadn't been inside the Domain himself, and he steadied within moments.
He pressed a hand to his forehead, and something close to despair settled over him.
Black Zetsu had been his last card.
With Black Zetsu gone, he had nothing at all.
And worst of all, his lifespan was almost spent.
Was this really where it ended?
Madara slumped to the ground, and for a long moment he had no idea what to do. His true body couldn't leave the Gedo Statue. His shadow clones couldn't touch Natsuki. What White Zetsu remained had barely any combat value at all.
Then his expression changed.
He looked up, and Natsuki was standing there.
"How—" Madara's pupils shrank. "How do you know about this place?"
"Will you concede on your own?" Natsuki's face was perfectly calm. "Or would you rather I killed you?"
"It isn't time for me to concede yet!"
Madara roared, and the ground heaved.
Behind him, the Gedo Statue moved.
A vast section of the underground chamber tore open, and the Statue itself came into view — the husk of the Ten-Tails.
Without the nine Tailed Beasts inside it, it was a shadow of what it should have been. But a diminished Ten-Tails husk still outclassed the overwhelming majority of shinobi alive.
Chakra Dragon!
The Statue's mouth opened and disgorged an enormous serpent — a construct that devoured chakra on contact — and sent it hurtling at Natsuki.
Sovereign Weapon. Heaven's Punishment Sword!
Natsuki swung an arm almost lazily.
The sword slammed through the dragon's body and pinned it to the ground, immobile.
Madara immediately drove the dragon to coil around the blade and drain it — and then his face went slack with disbelief.
The Chakra Dragon couldn't absorb it.
"It isn't chakra," Natsuki said, smiling. "It's demonic aura."
Madara didn't understand a word of that, and didn't ask. He attacked again.
The Gedo Statue shuddered and vomited out a torrent of chains, weaving them into a net with no gaps and dropping it over Natsuki.
In the original story, those chains had bound Tailed Beasts without difficulty.
Projection Magecraft: Rho Aias!
A vast shield unfurled in front of him. Every chain hammered into it and rebounded without accomplishing anything.
"What is that?" Madara's breath caught.
He recovered and drove the Statue forward, turning it to expose its back, and the chimney-like protrusions along its spine discharged an endless flood of electricity.
Forbidden Magic: Thunder Palace!
Natsuki opened both hands, and a swarm of lightning-natured chakra crystals streamed out, hanging in the air and shivering with brilliant light.
Lightning met lightning and locked.
For about a second.
Then Natsuki's tore through and drove straight at Madara.
"How is there Lightning Style like this—"
Madara threw the Gedo Statue in front of himself.
"Time to finish this, Uchiha Madara."
Natsuki's eyes shivered, and the Rinnegan bloomed.
He took the Gedo Statue's control in a single stroke.
"The Rinnegan?!"
Madara stared at him, dumbfounded, his head full of questions he was never going to get answered.
What he did understand was that he had lost. Completely.
Natsuki raised a hand.
All-Killing Ash Bones!
Two shards of bone flew.
Uchiha Madara crumbled into ash, and nothing at all was left of him.