Chapter 87: An unforeseen meeting

Riku felt a hard ground beneath him but not only. He also felt cold water submerging him. Not much. Only a couple inches. Three at best. That was a curiosity. He clearly remembered, before passing out, landing on the floor of his Botib and the panic shout of his name from Karin. Less clearly and more fuzzy was seeing red. A beautiful shade of red. His favorite color after dark purple. So he was pretty sure she had reached him before he could die from the wounds he sustained while fighting Madara.

Yet he wasn’t inside his Botib. He couldn’t mistake it. He and Ino had fucked enough time on every surface of the place to know just by the feel of it where he was. Hard floor with inches of water? Not inside his creation, that was for sure.

Opening his eyes, he was confronted with darkness. Not a total one, there was a faint source of light coming from the front of his feet. That light made it possible to see that the darkness looked like an unending and limitless emptiness.

Deciding to know what was happening or more simply where he was, he stood up naturally and without any difficulty.

The first thing he saw, looking in the glow’s direction, shocked him a bit. There above the water was an old man drabbed in white robe, holding a thin but long staff. So far that could be considered as normal. What wasn’t was numerous.

First off, the most obvious of things was that the old man had horns. Something that could be put on chakra influencing a body. If some people could control the density of their bones and use them as weapons by removing them, then horns were possible.

The second anomaly was the man's eyes. He had three. Two positioned normally like for everyone and a third on his forehead. Next was the fact that all of them were Rinnegan with the third one being bright red instead of the pale purple shade with six tomoe swirling in orbit of the iris.

Riku would not lie to himself. It freaked him out. Albeit it was more because of the third eye itself than the rinnegan. It meant that he may not have a need to steal them back from Obito or for Madara.

‘For being the eyes of the sage of the Six Paths said to emerge only for the end of the world there sure are a lot of people having them,’ he thought to himself.

Lastly, the old man was sitting crosslegged in the air. Floating around without a care in the world. Briefly, Riku wondered if that was because of the nine floating black balls under the guy’s ass which were also floating.

It seemed that the man was done waiting as he spoke up. There was however no impatience in his voice. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Tilting his head to the side, Riku took a moment to reply. “You’re the one who brought me here. Shouldn’t you be the one to speak first? An introduction, perhaps?”

A low chuckle escaped the man’s lips. “Indeed. I’m Otsutsuki Hagoromo. Sage of the Six Paths.”

Riku waited for more but since nothing else was being said, he understood it was his turn to speak. “Yeah, I kind of figured out the last part. The rinnegan, the clothes, the staff and the well trimmed and long beard.”

This time Hagoromo smirked. Raising a brow he asked a simple question. “Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”

“I’m Riku. Shinobi of the leaf but you already knew that.”

The sage ignored the last part of Riku’s words, choosing to focus on the first one. “Just Riku, shinobi of the leaf? Not Senju Riku? Not Rokudaime Hokage of Konohagakure?”

“Nope.” Riku popped the ‘p’ sound of the word. “Senju is a meaningless name to me and Hokage is just a title. It tells what I am, not who I am.” He shrugged his shoulders. “At least I see it that way.”

The smirk on Hagoromo’s face turned into a genuine pleased smile. As if it was the answer he had wanted to hear.

“What do you want from me? No offense but I’m a bit busy at the moment.”

“I’m well aware.” The sage raised his staff a tiny bit.

Riku felt the chakra emanating from it and saw with his own eyes materialize up in the air between him and Hagoromo. Soon enough it displays something. Him on the ground of the Botib, Karin’s wrist in his mouth. His body was surrounded by the green aura of her healing chakra. Very slowly, almost as if time had stopped, his body was healing.

“Well, that answers the ‘where am I?’ question. Somewhere between life and death or a dream induced by a delusional coma? The result of my traumatic wounds.”

“Yes.”

The answer was a non-answer. Or perhaps a lie but Riku doubted it.

“And of course, Time exists and doesn’t here.”

“You’re correct, Riku.”

Sighing, sat down on the flooded ground, his hand serving as support as he leaned back. “Go on, sell me your speech, Hagoromo-san. What do you want me to do?”

“What makes you think I want you to do something? I may have brought you here to punish you. It would be well deserved after what you did to Iwagakure.”

Riku’s answer was logical and on point. “Mandara, Obito and Orochimaru are not here. I razed a village in seconds. The inhabitants suffered little. Those three? Competitors for the monster of the year award. I may have killed more people but I’m a baby compared to them.”

“That… Is true.” Admitted Hagoromo. “I brought you here to give you a warning.”

Riku was unimpressed by what he was hearing so far. “About the end of Humanity?” His guts were telling him there was more to it.

“Yes but not from the source you believe.” the Sage’s expression turned serious. “You were correct in your assessment of the Uchiha tablet. The Infinite Tsukuyomi is a lie. It does exist and it does do what you believe it does but it isn’t the Uchiha’s salvation. Nor the world’s.”

Riku wanted more information but refrain from asking questions. There was no point as he was pretty sure he would get the answers by simply staying silent.

“The real danger comes from the liberation of my mother.” There was an edge to Hagoromo’s voice.

“Your… mother?” Riku blinked a few times, his mind not really computing.

The answer he got was more than a simple nod. “Otsutsuki Kaguya, Mother of all Chakra. All began-”

What came next was the most unbelievable story Riku had ever listened to. And he had listened to Naruto and Jiraiya both. This time at least he didn’t lose any brain cells, which he was grateful for. Yet, what Hagoromo talked about seemed plausible. There were hard facts, like chakra being distributed to the world by the sage. It made sense to Riku as only humans and a few summoning clans had a chakra network or chakra. Why not more? Why were so few people able to have more than a sliver of chakra and use it? This explained it.

Then there was information which fit the missing pieces of puzzles Riku couldn’t quite complete. The sage was the progenitor of the Senju and Uchiha clans. He already knew they had a common ancestor from the study of the DNA of people from both families.

The tale went on and when it was over, Riku stayed silent for a moment, organizing the information in his mind to resume it. Hagoromo was quite the compelling story teller but it was obvious he wasn’t a Shinobi. He didn’t get straight to the point and the retelling was full of unimportant moments about the man’s life.

“Sooo… Let me have a moment to see if I understood everything.”

Hagaromo nodded and waved an inviting hand. “Go on.”

“Your mother came from… well… space. From a clan that seeds a tree on a planet. A tree that grows by absorbing all the nature energy until there is nothing left, killing the planet in the process. The tree makes one single fruit with the power of… basically a god and the people from her clan eat it to get stronger.”

“So far, so good.”

“How stupid that is to kill a planet with life instead of nurturing it for a longer supply of food aside. She found she liked humans and chose to live among them. She married the king of a country and used her powers to stop all wars. Then of course there was some asshole who wanted that power, shenanigans ensue, her husband turned against her and she ended up eating the fruit that wasn’t ripe for the taking. That gave her untold power and basically made her a goddess. Did I get that right?”

“Yes.”

“She gave birth to you and your twin brother. The first two beings naturally born with chakra in the world. You were raised like sheltered princes and were unaware of what your mother was doing outside the lands you lived in. It turned out she subjugated all of humanity with the infinite Tsukuyomi, freed a bunch of people to serve her and to live while the others were turned into white Zetsu for… For what exactly?”

That was a good question that the Sage was more than happy to answer to. “My brother and I never quite knew. We believed that she was making an army.”

“For what purpose? She was at the top of the world and nobody could do anything about it. She had no enemies.” Riku got confused.

“The Otsutsuki clan.” Hagoromo revealed.

“Ha.” Only then did that part make sense to Riku. “The fruit wasn’t for her to eat but for someone higher up on the hierarchy. Got it.” Then he came back to the original topic. “You and your brother fought your mother who had turned a bit insane. She turned into the ten-tails losing all reason and tried to take your chakra. You sealed her soul into the moon you made with your rinnegan and you became the first jinchuriki in history by sealing all the remaining chakra in the beast’s body into yourself. Without any proper seal.”

“The Uzumaki have always been one of my favorite people to observe.” The Sage smiled pleasantly. “Their way of life but most importantly their fuinjutsu was brilliant. Very entertaining.”

“You preach to a convert.” Riku grinned. He sure loves his wife's mindset about family and fuinjutsu. “Your brother went to live on the moon to make sure your mother wouldn’t escape and you created ‘Ninshu’ the art of using chakra to let people communicate without falsehood by letting them read what’s in each people’s heart. All for the sake of peace. That led to a religious movement that spread with you wandering the world.”

“At first. People came to me afterwards when I settled down.” Hagoromo corrected.

Riku nodded, accepting his slight blunder and went on. “You had twin sons. The eldest got basically everything in terms of genetics, with the sharingan and all while the second got your… personality. You grew old and chose your second son as a successor because he believed in understanding and compassion while your eldest was a prime candidate for the ‘Might is right’ movement. He didn’t take it well and when you passed away they started to fight each other, making their own clans in the process. The eldest created the Uchiha and the youngest the Senju.”

Once again Hagoromo intervened. “Not quite. Their descendants renamed themselves, but yes.”

“Your eldest threw Ninshu away and created Ninjutsu instead. Since then the two clans have waged war against each other. For so long that they forgot they were cousins, why they fought to begin with and shaped the past thousand years of history, leading to the Warring Clan Era then the Shinobi Village Era. Alright this, I got.” Riku paused then to organize the rest of the story. “Back to you. Before dying you released the ten-tails chakra, creating the nine bijus. Excessively unequalled in power.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be that way.” The sage explained himself, regret in his tone. “I admit at first it was ill-thought. I didn’t think of the consequence of an unbalanced chakra repartition. Quickly, I tried to subvert it but Kurama already had half of the chakra.”

“I’m not taking a dig at you. I am stating facts, everything else is irrelevant.” Riku replied. “You taught them to be good and helped humanity. Excepted humanity is very flawed and hurted them, a lot, for their powers. Even more so the past hundred years since being Jinchuriki was discovered as a possibility because of my great grandmother. Now comes the very important part for the current situation: you need the rinnegan and the power of the nine bijus to free your mother from her prison starting anew the infinite Tsukuyomi. Did I get everything right?”

“Yes.” The sage nodded. “You left some details alone but they are that, details.”

Riku took a deep breath and exhaled through his mouth. “So Madara is someone’s puppet. Probably controlled by his hubris and not aware of the end goal. And you, you want me to stop him before it’s too late.”

Hagoromo shook his head slowly. “Not just you.” Riku raised an eyebrow in puzzlement. “As we speak other versions of me are talking with other people.”

That was interesting information to Riku. Not asking if they were almost dead like him, knowing it wouldn’t help with the situation at hand, he looked Hagoromo straight in the eyes, waiting for answers about that tidbit of information.

“Your half-brother and his rival.”

“What about them?” The young Hokage's head tilted to the side.

“They are the transmigration of my sons.” Riku’s eyebrows raised up to his hairline when he heard that but he said nothing as Hagoromo continued explaining. “For a thousand years, my sons transmigrated into new individuals of their blood. Perpetuating the cycle of strength versus compassion. I had thought that with Madara and Hashirama the cycle would finally be broken…”

“But your hopes were dashed when Madara had had enough. More importantly, he somehow broke the cycle.”

“Yes. He wasn’t supposed to develop the Rinnegan. It’s only possible when both of my children’s chakra are combined to… get mine.”

“So if you’re speaking with Naruto and Sasuke, right about now, then you-”

Hagoromo raised a hand to stop Riku’s line of thought. “No.” That was effective as the young dirty blonde man paused. “I do not support them or their ideals. I used to. Your brother mostly. No more. Well... I still do but I saw an opportunity to finally break this cycle for good."

“Me.” Riku realized the sage was talking about him. Which explained in his mind, why he was brought here. “Naruto is full of compassion and understanding. Sasuke is full of hate and revenge believing in strength above all. The perfect poster boys for Senju and Uchiha.” Follow current novels on novel·fire.net

“And you,” Hagoromo said gravely. “Are right in the middle. Kind and understanding when you can. Decisive and swift with strength when you can’t. I took notice of you as you spent time with Naruto. I listened.” He sighed. “You remind me of my mother before she lost her sanity. She was harsh but she was fair. She understood the people’s plight. Extending a hand at first then displaying strength if it didn’t work. You’re more nuanced in your mindset but it’s mostly the same. There needs to be a balance between strength and compassion. One can’t go without the other.” he chuckled as if the idea was the most amusing thing in the world. “A thousand years and I understand this now.”

“But you still don’t agree fully with it or you wouldn’t be meeting Naruto or Sasuke.”

“Yes.” The sage nodded. “As the end draws near, I believe it’s up to the three of you to make the decisions for your own future. I’m a very old man, not even part of the living world anymore. I shouldn’t have a say in what’s happening in it nor my sons. However, it doesn’t mean I can’t give you the tools to avoid the worst. If anything… I’m curious about which one of the three of you is right or rather which one will define the new era.”

“It matters not if we don’t stop Madara and your mother is freed from…” Riku stopped talking right here and then, a straight thought crossing his mind. He looked at the sage and his eyes narrowed.

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you use ninshu on your mother? No offense but your whole spiel about your philosophy is compassion and understanding, yet you fought your mother and sealed her away. That was strength.” Riku pointed out the hypocrisy of the sage.

Hagoromo sighed dejectedly. “I tried. There was nothing in her when I did. No emotions.”

“How can that be?” Riku couldn’t understand that. “She raised you, despite having part of her chakra, didn’t she? That’s care. That’s love.”

“From my understanding, eating the fruit when it wasn’t mature started the process of turning her into what she became.” The sage revealed.

Riku thought about it for a moment. The chakra fruit was made from nature energy. And while nature energy was all around it was heavily influenced. A remote place like Shikkoku forest? Wild and peaceful without any human contact? The nature energy was the purest he had ever felt. In contact with humans constantly wagging war? Corrupted.

The realization made his eyes widened in shock.

“What did you understand?” The sage inquired.

Riku raised a single finger. A sign for Hagoromo to stay silent while Riku was thinking.

“How was your mother able to influence Madara? Not just Madara but everyone. The Uchiha tablet… Its false information, clearly someone was trying to push the clan to awaken the Rinnegan. But there was only you, your brother and your mother during that battle and I doubt either of you would share the knowledge on how to free her and she was sealed.”

“You’re correct.” Hagoromo said, not quite seeing where Riku was going with this. “Neither Hamura nor I noticed until recently but when we sealed our mother a part of her separated from herself. A manifestation of her will. Every ounce of evil she had in her was canalized and condensed into this being. You might know it as Black Zetsu.”

“So that guy had been working behind the scenes for a thousand years to get where we are today. But… If all the ‘evil’ in her is now in the world… Doesn’t that mean that she’s currently back to her original self? From what I understand, she turned evil from the tainted nature energy contained in the fruit. Perhaps the maturity of it is the cleansing of that taint, perhaps not. The point is: did you speak to your mother for the past thousand years? Checked if she was back to sanity? At the very least, a family visit even if she probably hates your guts? She’s still your mother.”

Hagoromo’s jaw dropped in one go. It was clear he had never considered this. To him, his mother had been lost eons ago and there was no way for him to reach her. It was a done deal.

“I did not, no.” he said a bit embarrassed if not down right ashamed.

“Then maybe, you should start with that. No offense but everything that is happening now is a bit of your mess. While I don’t mind helping clean it up, in no small part because I and my loved ones are now involved in this, I think you should be directly involved. If not for the sake of the world then at least because she’s your mom. I mean… I get she needed to be sealed but leaving her alone in isolation for a thousand years? That’s a bit of a dick move.”

A mirthless chuckle escaped the Sage lips. “You’re right. There is no guarantee it would work though.”

Riku gave him a flat look. “You spent a thousand years persevering, hoping that the cycle would end in the favor of compassion. Are you telling me you’re not determined to fix things with your mom because it’s difficult or would take time?”

This time the small laugh Hagoromo let out was one of amusement. “No, no. You’re quite right. If there is a chance to make peace with my mother then I should seize it. I must do what I preach after all.”

“Good. That means we have another option to save the world. That still leaves the problem of Madara. I’m outmatched.” There was no bitterness in his tone. Just facts. “Naruto and Sasuke are too. Yet you brought us here and I’m sure it’s not for a history lesson and a warning.”

“You’re correct.” Hagoromo was very pleased to talk with the young man in front of him. His conversation with the other two wasn’t as entertaining nor as smooth. “I gave half of my power to Naruto and half to Sasuke. The power of the sun and moon respectively. To you, I gift-”

“No”.

Riku’s voice had cut clean through the Sage’s speech. His voice had been cold and devoid of emotion. There was no misunderstanding here. Riku’s refusal was final and there was no discussion about changing his mind.

“No?” Hagorome repeated in bewilderment.

“No.” Riku paused after insisting again. “I will not receive a power up. I will not get any hand me down. Everything I am, everything I have, I worked for it and earned it. Kekkei Genkai bullshit? No thanks.”

“You would refuse the power to allow you to fight Madara when the fate of the world is at stake?”

Riku shook his head. “I refuse the power being handed to me. If it exists, I would attain it by myself through hard work. After all, what kind of example would I be to the next generations if I don’t progress by myself?”

Hagoromo’s face stayed stoic for a moment but a grin splattered on it. “Then be ready to learn.”

Standing up from the ground, Riku straightened his posture. Raising one hand, he signaled Hagoromo to give him his best.