🌊✨Over Again✨🌊

🌸✨Chapter One✨🌸

I choked on phlegm-like blood as another hacking cough racked through my body. I sighed as my back slid down the rocky cave wall, and onto the cold, damp ground.

Ah, fuck.

Was this really the end of my life? The end of Naruto? Spending my last hours in some disgusting swampy cave, covered in would-be fatal wounds and battle-torn clothes?

The earth was barren, all Five Great Nations empty of any human life. Just hours ago we fought tooth and nail to win against Kaguya, our hundreds of thousands, reduced to tens of thousands, and those reduced to mere dozens of Shinobi.

I remember looking back as the wet squelch of the katana slid through Sakura's torso. I recall vividly as Kakashi-Sensei slipped into a coma from chakra exhaustion, only to be crushed under falling rocks from another of Kaguya's attacks.

An ironic end.

I remember standing back-to-back with Sasuke, my family finally, finally complete, my brother at my side and for one calm, rare, lull in the battle, I thought, it's going to be ok, nothing can stop us now!

What a fucking joke.

Not a second later his head was bashed in, his raven locks mixing with his dirtied blood, a small stream leading to the ocean of red covering the battle ground.

The war continued to rage on for hours, more wounds then skin on my body. My comrades, my friends, my teachers, dead. Dead. Dead.

It was like a drunken haze, attack after attack, bijudama after bijudama, rasen-shuriken after rasen-shuriken, eventually Kaguya fell. I was all that was left, checking the non-existent pulses of my friends, even my enemies.

I can't remember if I cried or not.

But I probably did, at some point.

And then I was in the cave. To shield myself from the infection-inducing air of the outside? To hide in the darkness, pretending that I was dead too? Who knows.

I drifted in and out of sleep, Kurama and the other biju in my head might have tried to say something, to convince me to bandage my wounds or slit my wrists, I don't really know. I was content in dying there, drifting off to sleep and then death.

But fate wasn't done with me yet.

I blinked awake to the chirping of birds.

Birds? There were no birds on the battle field, or in the cave. So why? Am I in heaven...? Could I hope for it?

I blearily opened my eyes, my vision swam. Green.

Green?

My sight cleared, tall trees covered my view. Grass; soft, green, bumpy ground. Cool earth beneath my fingertips, light breeze, the sweet scent of sunshine, light filtering through canopies and onto my bruised, bloody lap. I think this must be heaven.

I shakily stood, my legs quivering from the pain. I quickly entered Sage Mode and, sure enough, not far from here were tens of thousands of chakra signatures. People! A village? And looking around at the view I knew so well from my youth, I knew I had to be in the Land of Fire. Probably only a couple of miles from Konoha!

I turned towards the village, my ruined jumpsuit sticking to my body where the blood had dried, my untamed hair whipping in the gusts of wind.

But then I stopped.

"Kit."

A voice in the back of my head demanded.

"Huh, Kurama?"  My broken, cracked voice asked back.