Chapter Text
They were crouching in what once had been the ruins of Uzushio, the great city of Uzumaki reduced to skeletons and rubble after the second Shinobi war, and right now the only thing capable of protecting them from the assault going on outside of the sealing barrier they had been able to get up again.
But it wouldn’t hold out forever, after everything that had been going on, and how exhausted all of them were, they knew at some point their last safe haven would fall too, just as Konoha and all the villages had fallen, one by one.
After the incident where they had wrongly thought they had sealed Kaguya, and managed to release the Eternal Tsuyijomi, they had believed it all to be over.
Only for the Rabbit Goddess to appear at the same moment the Sennin had send all the edo tensei revivals home, leaving only team 7 and the Bijuu to stop her - or stall her long enough to make sure everyone else got out.
In a last act to protect them, the Sennin had sealed all the Bijuu into Naruto, making the blond Kaguya’s main target in her assaults. They, meaning he and Sasuke, were able to drive her off every time.
Plus it helped that the full moon had passed, so she hadn’t been able to capture anyone else in the worldwide genjutsu again. But that didn’t mean anything, without Zetsu there to guide her, the woman had become ruthless in a way none of their opponents had been before.
She had gone for the leading bodies of the world, and had managed to get the Daimyo of each and every nation of the world and disposed of them, leaving only shinobi ruling bodies as a result.
While the Kage had taken control, in a fit to get every abled man and woman into the field, to make sure that their world would keep on existing, as Kaguya didn’t seem to mind if it perished or not.
The tinning of their numbers went fast, with civilians and genin being the first to not make it out of any confrontation they had with Kaguya, and after she mustered enough chakra, the Juubi - they were outnumbered against a being that was essentially 9 bijuu meshed together. While the larger part of their chakra was in Naruto, that didn’t stop her from accumulating the slivers of chakra still present in corpses and strengthening herself that way.
when the Juubi roamed around again, it was able to leach all of the chakra out of anyone it came into contact with. Genin and even chuunin were killed like that, not strong enough to avoid her, and not strong enough to keep her, or the beast, at a distance to get away from it.
With the villages able to keep being a support to shinobi everywhere, she went after them next, launching several assaults, always paired with close ranged bijuudaima’s, as soon as word reached them, they knew that whoever had been in the village at that time, wouldn’t have made it back out.
They had lost good people that way, but the one that hurt all of them the most had been Iruka, when the academy teacher had been teaching the next generation of a mixed village class, some of the few who had survived this long.
All gone, all because of a legend of old, who couldn’t let go of whatever was happening.
she had done the same to every other village, be it hidden or not, so they wouldn’t have any place left to hide. Until Naruto had remembered the ruins of Uzushio, and with Kurama’s help, he had been able to repower them, giving them some space to actually relax and heal.
It wasn’t the best solution, but it withstood a bijuudama on close range, as she had tried to go for that assault the moment she had known where they were. But it had held, and for the first time in years, the people that survived had a little bit of hope.
But it didn’t last, as it never does, people that went outside the barrier, to look for survivors, or even for food, rarely returned, and when they did, most times it was to die within the next few days because of the chakra exhaustion they suffered.
It took Tsunade leaving, and returning without the chakra needed to uphold her seal, that they found out that Kaguya was poisoning the air outside of the barrier with spores from the shinju, meaning that the moment someone left, they would get infected and lose their chakra to spores that entered their bodies from the air they breathed.
Losing Tsunade had been a hart hit, once again, to the members of team 7, to most of them she was family, or at least a very favoured family friend. Only Obito and Sasuke were more distant to the Senju Princess, mostly because of generations of hatred between their own clan and hers.
But still, they too mourned her loss, especially in the way she had been forced to leave, without the seal, she looked like the older woman she was, the spores inside of her draining her of any last bit of chakra she still had inside of her - giving her a long, and painful death.
But the funeral was even worse, with them not being able to bury her in fear of giving the spores something to hang on to, they had taken to putting their death on rafts, pushing them out to sea and having one of the katon users light in on fire. It was a crude way of saying goodbye to their loved ones, but it was the only way they had come up on short notice.
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After Tsunade, one by one the Kage offered to go outside, taking what they found back to the settlement, but choosing not to enter again, just smiling sadly as they were eaten from the inside out, in an effort to get whatever was needed to their friends and family.
But even so, it didn’t last long before their people were starting to thin out too much, so they didn’t leave, banned anyone from leaving, in an effort to try and sit this one out. Even if all of them already knew that they would be dying here. If Kaguya had proven anything, it was that she had endless patience, she would get to all the Bijuu, and would wait for Naruto to do so.
She would wait until every human was dead, and she had all the chakra under her command, letting the Shinju grow again and taking the fruit it would sprout away to wherever she had come from.
When one of the remaining shinobi had developed a jutsu that would give them their own air bubble, protecting them from the spores still in the air, travelling outside the barrier became a solution again. Yet, it didn’t last long, before Kaguya found out about that, and made sure to either wait for them or to have something else waiting for them, thinning them out even more.
After so much time together, it didn’t matter which village they initially belonged to, right now they were all nakama, and losing one of them hurt as much as it hurt to lose a genin teammate.
The first death that hit that little bit closer to home, after Neji, had been Kiba, the Inuzuka had gone out with Akamaru to find them something to eat, but he had never returned. Only Akamaru had, carrying Kiba’s headband in his mouth, before he too succumbed to his wounds and the spores in front of Hinata and Shino - both on the other side of the barrier.
It hadn’t stopped there, which brought them back to this moment, where the only ones alive in Uzushio was team 7, the barrier above their heads was showing cracks, all of them knew what was going to come. So, they were enjoying any time they had left.
Kakashi and Obito were wrapped around each other, with Sasuke and Naruto in a similar position on the other side. Sakura was in between them, wrapped up in Kakashi and Naruto’s arms.
All of them had tears in their eyes, as they were trying to keep remembering the simpler times, the happy times, the times where they had friends, and family, and a village to come back to. Instead all they had was the chill of an abandoned ruin, filled with ghosts of the past, all the while they knew that their end was coming too.
Naruto felt a nudge from his seal, and followed it, knowing he had to probably release the Bijuu, so they would have a fighting chance out there.
“Don’t think about that, kit.”
Looking up, he saw a sad smile on Kurama’s face, as his main partner looked at his siblings, before looking at the blond kid that he had hated once upon a time.
“We found a solution, but you’re not going to like it.”
Naruto already started to shake his head, “if I won’t like it, then why tell me. I won’t do anything that hurts the few precious people I have left, so whatever it is, if it’ll hurt you, I don’t even want to hear it.”
Kurama sighed, “Naruto… you know we can’t just let it end like this. The moment that barrier breaks, you all have 30 minutes, if that, before you’re all dead. You can’t want that for the people out there with you! I know you, you want to do this right, so let us explain how you can do that.”
Naruto stubbornly shook his head, keeping his gaze to the side, so he wouldn’t have to look in Kurama’s eyes.
“Naru, kit, this is a courtesy, as we already started with the plan we hatched, there is nothing you can do to stop us from doing this. We want to save this world as much as you and the others want. So, don’t take this away from us and listen.”
Naruto gaped, looking around, and saw all the Bijuu looking tired.
“Why are you all looking tired, you don’t get tired. Hell, none of you need sleep, as you’re chakra constructs. Kurama!”
The fox grinned, “We are pure chakra, so we can give that away to someone else, to you, and Sasuke, Sakura, to Kakashi and Obito, to make sure you have what you need and to use it to transport you back to a time before all this.”
Naruto went back to shaking his head, “Kurama, no.”
The fox smiled sadly, “I never thanked you for being my partner, for breaking my circle of hatred with your, how did they call it - your talk-no-jutsu - thank you, Naruto.”
Tears ran down the blond’s face as he kept shaking his head, until he suddenly was back outside his seal, Kakashi sitting next to him, a hand on his seal as it began to unravel.
“Naruto, what.”
The blond shook his head, “they… they are killing themselves to give us a chance… to get us back to before. I… don’t…”
He wasn’t able to form a correct sentence, but the looks on his team's faces told him that they understood what they were trying to tell them. All of them looked at the seal that was unraveling on his stomach, the ink dripping and forming a different seal around them.
Finally a voice whispered to them, “We wish you all the best of luck, sorry for the pain that comes in a moment, and enjoy your new looks.”
With that, Naruto let out a mournful scream as the last of the ink fell off of his stomach and the seal around them began to glow, the light becoming too bright for any of them to keep their eyes open. The pain, as they had been warned, over took their senses after that moment.
When the barrier broke, all that was left of the last people on earth was a smear of ink on the inner plaza of Uzushio, no bodies, no living people succumbing to the spores, Kayuga screamed as now the fruit would never grow for her - all because of the last ones that did manage to get away.