Hollowed Martyr - Naruto X RWBY

Semblance Of A Martyr

Madara sat behind a waterfall in a cave, meditating. His eyes were closed and hands positioned in deep concentration. He had removed his shirt and gloves, allowing the face of Hashirama and his Zetsu arm to breath the fresh air.

It had been about a week since his mission to Ronoa, and he had been training hard ever since. Upon his return to Beacon, he had explained to Ozpin the happenings of their mission. He left out the titanic grimm encounter, as explaining that would require explaining how he had defeated it alone. He had also come to find out that he had caused several small earthquakes from the shockwaves of his jutsu, resulting in thousands of broken windows in Mistral alone.

Oops.

Soon after, Ruby and her team had retuned from their mission as well. Madara had expected to be immediately barreled into by a cheery and excited Ruby, wanting to share every last detail of her mission with him, but that's not quite what had happened.

Team RWBY had arrived back in a heap, with Weiss carrying a heavily wounded Ruby in her arms. Madara remembering his nerves flaring and eyes widening at the scene, reminded of when he had carried Souta's body back to the Uchiha hideout. It had taken a fair amount of restraint for him to not immediately rush towards the group, but he had been held at bay by both the still hopeful faces of the three conscious girls, and the feeling of Ruby's life force from his Sage Mode. Therefore, he had made the decision to approach them later to get the details.

It turned out that their mission had been anything but simple and easy, and that the girls had faced off against a powerful telekinetic named Terra. Weiss had explained to him that Ruby had faced the woman alone for the most part, only being assisted in the tail end of the battle by the three of them. Madara smirked at the memory, relishing in the idea that his pupil had come so far.

However...

Weiss had also explained to him the source of Ruby's state, having pushed the heiress out of the way of what would have otherwise been a fatal stab. Thankfully, the crimsonette had only been struck in the shoulder, but it had still been quite the nasty wound. The idea of his friend so willingly risking her life to save another was... interesting.

At first, Madara had wanted to bring punishment to Terra, and it would have been easy too. She had been imprisoned in Vale, and it would have been a piece of cake to break in and take her to a hideout so he could do what he had done to Neo... but something Weiss had told him had made him pause.

It seemed that during their battle, Ruby had seen some sort of good in Terra, and had wished to at one point resolve their conflict peacefully. Of course, it hadn't ended like that, but it still made Madara think. Ruby reminded him so much of Hashirama and Naruto, bleeding hearts that would forgive anything.

But the truth was, Madara could relate to Terra's story as well. The feeling of inadequacy was not foreign to the Uchiha, stemming directly from his relationship to Hashirama. To be inferior, to be second best, to try so hard to be the strongest yet to fail nonetheless. It was a maddening feeling, one that he knew could drive one to darkness. That, along with Ruby's alleged sympathies for the woman, made him hold out on anything drastic for now. For now, he would let Terra rot in prison, and perhaps address the issue in a month or two.

'How funny, that I, the great Madara Uchiha, am waiting for the opinion of someone else before acting...' After Izuna had died, Madara had nothing left. He had lost the one person who really knew him, and could trust no one else. The world was full of liars, cheaters, and monsters. Trust didn't exist, so he wouldn't pretend like it did. But now... he had found someone to trust again, however odd they may be... and he would wait for her input before doing anything drastic.

He could feel his body tingling with nature energy, the purity and peace of the air around him like a soothing breeze. It had taken a while, but he had learned how to filter out the negativity in Remnant's landscape, and was able to ever so slowly begin absorbing nature energy. Again, it was a slow process; although he was good at using using senjutsu chakra for jutsu, he had never had to actually practice absorbing it himself.