A Lewd New World

Chapter 50. Prelude to Apocalypse

I do not own this story. It originally belongs to EvilFuzzy9 which was republished by Fpsroxas.

Naruto Shippuden belongs to Masashi Kishimoto

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For a moment, Naruto wondered what it was about that name that felt so painfully familiar to him. The sound of it, the aural shape and texture of the way Mari spoke that name, at once conjured a flash of... something... in some far and dusty corner of his memories.

"Madara... Uchiha..." he mumbled, feeling his muscles involuntarily tense as he said it. He felt like there was something important connected to this name, a world of very practical firsthand meaning that should have been immediately evident to him.

Perhaps it was the way her eyes bored into his. As long as he could remember, he had never seen someone look at him with eyes quite like that...

There was respect, but not of the deferential, reverent fashion shown to him by most. A certain faint fondness also he could detect, not so direct as most, but rather almost as if he reminded her of someone she knew. And similarly he sensed a hint of bitterness... almost something like slight resentment.

What really threw him off though, was the near absence of something he had become so used to... something he had started to take for granted, that he had seen for all of his life in some fashion or other as the only man alive.

She did not lust for him. Not directly, not in any conscious or willful fashion. He saw a sort of appreciative glint in her onyx pools, an intellectual appraisal and acceptance of his form as something that would be considered sexually attractive, but it was remote and almost dispassionate.

There was no visceral, instinctive smouldering of desire behind Mari's eyes. Not anymore.

Madara Uchiha

That name niggled at the back of his mind. He felt like he was forgetting something, something of the utmost and direst importance.

He looked into Mari's eyes and searched their clear, intelligent depths.

Something glinted in those onyx orbs, and a part of his mind reflexively reeled back, a portion of Naruto's subconscious almost fearfully recoiling from the woman's gaze. Without the doujutsu masking her eyes, an iron shutter over the windows of her soul, Naruto could perceive something strange and almost alien inside of Mari.

Dimly, he was aware of his ANBU guards' eyes on him, as well as Shizune and Tsunade and Miraiya's. He glimpsed Obi out the corner of his eye, and thought absently that something about her expression seemed awfully bittersweet, almost sad.

"Wha... the heck is this...?" Naruto mumbled, weakly shaking his head. He brought a hand up to his brow, clasping his forehead as if suffering a terrible headache.

It felt like he had something right on the tip of his tongue. He felt like he was this close to remembering something, the name of Madara Uchiha triggering something deep inside his mind.

"Uchiha... Uchiha... Madara Uchiha...!" Naruto groaned. "Dammit, I feel like I KNOW who that is... somehow, I'm sure it should be something I'd remember no matter what..."

He trailed off, looking into Obi's eyes. She was smiling halfheartedly at him, her left eye closed. Her hand was clasped carefully around something small.

Blood colored her fingertips, and trickled down slowly from her closed eye.

"We remember it perfectly..." she said softly, her sharingan changing, transforming into a mangekyo pattern. "...our names and our pasts. That is the blessing... and the curse... of the Sage's doujutsu."