𝐃𝐢𝐞 𝐀𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐚𝐲||𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐑𝐔𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐃||

Chapter 16:Dust And Light

Now I am become death.

The destroyer of worlds.

I have resigned an entire village to death, knowing that innocent lives would be lost, and for what? For my family. For peace. For myself. I wasn't ordered to do this-I went beyond my orders and took matters into my own hands. Yes, my initial mission had nothing to do with this. I told myself that I was in the right, that I was doing it to prevent retaliation. I acted. Spirits preserve me I set that creature loose on Iwa while I ripped apart Onoki as if he were a bloody paper bag. I can still hear their screams, see them glaring at me, accusing me with dead eyes, crying out for my head.

The blood of an entire nation, on my hands.

Nothing left of it but dust and light and rubble.

Do the ends justify the means? I'm doing this for peace, or so I tell myself, but will my actions simply give rise to another conflict? Another threat? Another war? Some would call my actions a deterrent. Once, I might have agreed. Now? I'm not so sure. With Sarutobi using me like a blunt hammer, its so easy to see everything as a nail, something that needs to be hammered into submission. At some point, I gave up trying to save the world, and focused on saving what was closest to me; those I've come to care for.

Instead...

...I'M! FUCKING! EVERYTHING! UP!

Just look at what I've done!

Mikoto, Kushina-my own mother!-Karura, Hoshi, and Pakura, to name a few besides! Don't even get me started on the voice in my head!

Fucks sake, I'm probably going to end up siring more than HALF of my friends at this rate! How fucked up is that?! But I can't change it anymore than I can change the way I feel. Can't go back, I can't fix it, can't undo what I've done. I have to live with it, live with THIS. What I've done. What I've seen myself become. I'm not sure of anything, anymore. These last few days the questions hound me like angry vultures, picking at me as I sit in the rubble of this village, waiting for survivors and stragglers, finding none.

Am I losing myself?

Have I lost my way?

Am I becoming HIM?

Am I in danger of becoming the very thing that I hate?

Would the old me have done this?

Purged an entire village?

I'm marked now, changed forevermore, altered in ways I can't even begin to understand. Mentally...

...and physically as well.

Once, before I became...this, I would've balked at such a thought and refused to go through with it. A part of me still does. Balk, that is. But that wasn't enough to stop me from committing genocide now, was it? I was there. I let Alduin loose, I WATCHED as he swallowed the entire village-all their souls!-whole in a single breath. I didn't turn my back. I watched. Had to be me. Someone else might have gotten it wrong. Someone else might've botched the assassination, or worse, they could've been captured and then where would we be?

I know what I am now.

A man.

A monster.

I understand what my enemies see me as, what they think I am. I've become this world's darkness; their boogeyman, the thing all men fear. I am the Black Death. Naruto. Uzumaki or Uchiha...what does it matter now that I've done this? Let them hate me. Let them fear me. It will keep them in check in this game of chess. If that fear is what it takes to set things right, if I have to smash the board, then I'll happily take up the mantle. Until Madara is destroyed. Until I've set everything right. Then I'll accept whatever sentence the world throws at me.