The Windmill Turns Both Ways

Dawn

*Additional warnings provided on request! Don't hesitate to ask, or to message me if you want to know if (insert content here) is in the story or to what extent.

This story contains: canon-typical combat violence; swearing; horror elements (suspense/surprise); canon-typical creep factors such as weird body stuff, weird eyeball stuff, undead people, everything that Kabuto and Orochimaru are, plant cell clones, blood, corpses, deaths on-screen as well as off, genjutsu-induced hallucinations, children in combat, war, torture (off-screen), and psychological manipulation.

This story does NOT contain: Sexual content of any variety; romantic content (aside from vague mentions--later installments may contain more); character bashing; f-bombs; or explicit depictions of Danzo.

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The Windmill Turns Both Ways

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One hundred thousand organic clones made from the cells of Senju Hashirama grew in the vast cavern, rustling and shifting beneath the unsuspecting earth. Kabuto looked down at them from the water's surface and cracked a sly smile.

Tobi brought Kabuto to this cavern after accepting him as an ally for the upcoming Fourth Shinobi War. But something had changed within Kabuto, and the alliance was no longer enough. That was why he was in this room alone, in secret, for the sake of his own ambitions.

Well, not entirely alone. He knelt down on the water to get a better look at what lurked below. The silence defied the sheer amount of life in this cave. The Reanimated bodies of Itachi and Nagato were standing behind him, still and silent as everything else, mindless puppets with blank eyes and vacant expressions. The one presence that Kabuto didn't take into account, however, was the one that watched him with suspicion.

Zetsu the original didn't trust Kabuto. Neither did Tobi, for that matter, which was why Zetsu was now keeping an eye on their new partner. His head was poking out of the wall high up in the dark heights of the cavern, watching Kabuto carefully as he looked down at Zetsu's thousands of weaker siblings.

"What an incredible source of life energy. Hashirama was a really remarkable man," Kabuto murmured.

Kabuto inclined his head toward the stem of the great plant, delivering a silent command, and Nagato walked forward and laid his hands on it.

And what does he plan to do with that? Zetsu wondered.

Nagato was absorbing chakra from the plant. His silver hair turned blood-red, and Kabuto grinned to himself again. He stuck his hand under the water and shot a stream of snakes down toward the mob. The Zetsu clones didn't react, not even when the snakes wrapped themselves around a single one and tore it away from its bretheren. It was dragged up to the surface and smuggled into Kabuto's voluminous cloak by the time Nagato came walking back to his side.

"Let's go," Kabuto said, and flickered away. Itachi and Nagato followed behind him.

Kabuto decided to abandon his alliance with the fake Madara for one simple reason. It was called the Time-Spanning Incarnation jutsu.

When Kabuto first discovered the hand-bound research notebook in a hidden room of Orochimaru's lair, he never expected the incomplete jutsu would become an obsession for him. Since the moment he discovered the seal and started piecing its missing elements together, it gradually wormed into his thoughts until he forgot everything else. The war, Edo Tensei—all of it.

At the time, he didn't question why. The idea was just too intoxicating to him. Why should he limit himself to stealing the fixed powers of shinobi that were dead and gone, if it were possible to take living ones—still malleable, still changing? To take them from a younger age, while their potential was still being realized? All it required was the summoning formula, the right power, and a compatible vessel.