It was possible that Naruto had been a little too understanding during the visit to Gaara.
That understanding, that gentleness, that easy permission he had extended -- you can use that puppet however you like -- had stirred sothing in Satsuki. A quiet jealousy that swelled into a kind of confidence, and from there into sothing stronger.
Sothing dominant.
Satsuki had been particularly assertive lately. In every private mont between them, in every space they shared, she made no pretense of holding back -- taking, claiming, staking her ground with an openness that made her intentions unmistakable.
Naruto, as the one on the receiving end, found this sowhat tiring. He accepted it anyway.
Because beneath that assertiveness was Satsuki's feeling for him -- her possessiveness, her need to declare, without words and without ambiguity, that he was hers.
Worth being tired for.
Now, Naruto stood on Konoha's outer wall and looked at the tens of thousands of pale figures below that had encircled the village in every direction. In the moonlight they moved like a tide, like sothing alive and singular.
He had heard what they were demanding on the way in.
Hand over the new master.
Naruto knew exactly who they ant.
Uchiha Satsuki.
Her newly awakened eyes were the source of the White Zetsu's awakening. They had felt a presence capable of commanding them -- a master -- and every one of them had surfaced from dormancy, rising from the ground, converging on Konoha from across the land.
He had assud that without soone to serve, the remaining White Zetsu would simply sleep underground indefinitely.
He hadn't anticipated that Satsuki's Rinnegan would wake them all up.
"Jiraiya-sensei. Third Hokage." Naruto turned first to the two older n flanking him, their expressions grim. "Don't engage. They aren't exactly our enemies."
Jiraiya and Hiruzen both went still.
Then they looked at Naruto with questions in their eyes. "Naruto, you an..."
Jiraiya was already connecting the pieces -- he was sharp enough to do that quickly. "You know who their master is? What exactly do these things want?"
Naruto nodded. He didn't elaborate.
He disappeared in a flicker of Flying Thunder God light.
Less than a second later, the light returned. Naruto was back.
Standing beside him now was Uchiha Satsuki.
Her expression made her feelings about being brought here extrely clear. The look on her face was the specific irritation of soone who had been interrupted at an inopportune mont.
She had been doing sothing she enjoyed, and it had been interrupted, and her temper was running accordingly short.
She didn't particularly care what the white tide below her was. Enemies, presumably. If they were enemies, the solution was obvious.
Her eyes began to shift.
The left deepened into purple. The right held its crimson. Six Tomoe Rinnegan. Nine Tomoe Rinne-Sharingan.
She raised one hand, chakra beginning to gather at her palm --
"Satsuki. Wait."
Naruto's hand ca in from the side and closed gently around hers.
He looked at her, his expression carrying a quiet note of patience. "Do you feel it?"
Satsuki paused. "Feel what?"
She asked, and then she felt it.
Below them, the White Zetsu who had been clamoring, surging forward, building toward an assault -- had gone completely silent.
Every sound. Every movent. Every restless stirring. Gone in an instant.
Tens of thousands of pale faces had turned to look in one direction.
At her. At Uchiha Satsuki.
This was the White Zetsu's nature at its most fundantal.
No emotions. No individual will. No self. But sothing was carved into their existence at a level deeper than any order or instruction -- an unconditional obedience to one instinct above all others. Follow the one born of Rinnegan eyes.
"If I'm reading this correctly, Satsuki."
Naruto stood on the wall above that vast, silent army, watching them watch her. He spoke carefully, feeling his way through the words. "Use the natural summoning that cos with your eyes."
He turned to look at her. "After that, this should be over."
"The summoning from these eyes?"
Sothing moved across Satsuki's face as she considered it. Then she rembered.
In the mont she had awakened her eyes, information had poured into her consciousness unbidden -- everything the Rinnegan carried with it. Six Paths ocular techniques. The power of the bone-white bloodline. Almighty Pull. Almighty Push. Planetary Devastation. And one other thing.
A summoning contract.
One she had never used. Because the honeymoon had consud them both, because those weeks had been entirely their own world, because there had been no situation that called for it -- the contract had drifted to a corner of her mory and stayed there, forgotten.
"Understood."
Satsuki nodded once, without hesitation, and stepped off the wall.
She landed lightly on the open ground below, moonlit and exposed.
Behind her, Konoha's wall, and the ninja standing tense upon it.
Before her, the White Zetsu -- an endless pale army, every face turned toward her, waiting.
She raised both hands and began forming signs.
Summoning signs. The sa as any summoning jutsu, familiar enough in shape.
But when she sent her chakra into them, she felt it -- sothing far away beginning to respond to her call. Sothing enormous, and old, and sleeping.
"Summoning Jutsu --"
Satsuki's voice rose into the night.
"Gedo Statue!"
BOOM.
The earth shook.
In the open ground directly before her, the surface split into a web of fractures, as though sothing imnse were struggling upward from deep underground.
A hand broke through.
One enormous hand, every finger as tall as a person, the color of dead wood, the texture of old stone, every joint radiating an aura of age and wrongness.
Then the arm followed. The shoulder. The torso.
The whole colossal form rose from the earth in stages, piece by piece, until it stood fully above ground.
A roar split the air.
The sound of it was geological. Buildings across the village trembled in their foundations. People stumbled where they stood.
Everyone saw it.
A body the size of a mountain -- grey-brown, the color and texture of ancient dead wood -- covered in patterns that looked like they had been carved into the material of the world long before human mory began. Ten pillar-like spines rose from its back. Nine eyes occupied its face.
The Gedo Statue.
The husk of the Ten-Tails.
It stood without moving, like a mountain that had simply decided to stand upright. Its silhouette blocked half the sky.
Satsuki stood at its feet and looked up at the thing she had summoned.
She could feel it -- her chakra connected to the Gedo Statue, a thread between her and this colossus. The sensation was strange. An invisible bond, tying her to this ancient shell.
But -- what now? How was she supposed to use it?
Satsuki blinked, and looked past the massive form to the wall above, where Naruto was standing. Her eyes asked the question she hadn't said out loud.
Naruto caught the look.
But he was, at that mont, dealing with sothing else.
"Kurama, it's fine, it's fine --"
He was speaking inwardly, his attention split between the wall and the sealed space within himself.
Inside that space, the Nine-Tails was huddled in a corner. Its fur was standing on end. Its enormous eyes were wide with sothing very close to terror.
"That thing --!" Its voice was not steady. "How is that thing out here --?!"
It was the Nine-Tails. One of the nine great Tailed Beasts. A fragnt of what the Ten-Tails had once been. No creature alive understood the Gedo Statue better, and no creature feared it more.
Tailed Beasts could survive most things. They could be killed. They could be sealed. They could be extracted. Given enough ti, they always recovered.
But if the Gedo Statue absorbed them -- there was no coming back from that. Not ever. That was the one true end.
"Don't worry, don't worry." Naruto's voice reached into that inner space, gentle enough to be coaxing a child. "I won't let Satsuki use the Gedo Statue to absorb you. I promise."
The Nine-Tails stayed curled in its corner, fear still lingering in those enormous eyes. But the trembling slowed.
"You..." it muttered. "You better keep your word."
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