Naruto: Starting as the Third Hokage with Tears in His Eyes

Hiruzen Sarutobi's unique forbidden technique for communication and resonance was activated at this moment.

Om-!

In an instant, the world spun around, as if an invisible giant hand had grabbed my soul, violently pulled it out of my body, and then thrown it into an unknown abyss.

Yagura's consciousness was swallowed up by the extreme darkness.

When he managed to gather his scattered thoughts, he found himself suspended in mid-air.

Not in the air, but above a black ocean as viscous as crude oil and as silent as an ancient tomb.

There is no light, no sound, and no direction here.

Stripped of all five senses, all that remains is a bone-chilling cold and a loneliness that can crush the soul into powder.

Directly in front of him, or rather, in every direction of this black world, a crimson single eye, several times larger than the Hokage Rock of Konoha, was silently gazing at him.

It is the Three-Tailed Fox, Isobu.

Yagura instantly realized where he was.

This is the spiritual world of that legendary tailed beast.

But unlike the imagined chaos and destruction, there was only emptiness and silence that had been frozen for countless years.

The next moment, countless shattered images and shrill emotions, like a tsunami bursting its banks, rushed into his mind without warning.

He saw it.

He saw a chaotic mass of chakra aggregates, which opened its single eye in bewilderment amidst the desolation of the primordial world.

It doesn't understand good or evil, joy or sorrow; it only possesses the pure instinct to chase, tumble, and sleep.

But when humans first saw it, their eyes revealed fear.

They screamed at the calamity, the monster, and attacked it with their weapons.

It didn't understand; it simply turned over and triggered a landslide and a tsunami.

Thus, the seeds of hatred were sown.

The images flow.

People clad in ancient armor bound it with countless enormous chains shimmering with runes, sealing and controlling it in the name of a weapon of war.

Without exception, those people cursed it with the most vicious language, regarded it as the source of the curse, and used every means to suppress and torment it.

Countless years were compressed into a single moment in Yagura's mind.

He saw it treated as a commodity, circulating between different villages; he saw it used as a strategic deterrent, imprisoned at the bottom of a sunless lake; he saw countless ninjas wage war for its power, resulting in rivers of blood.

It was controlled time and time again, only to regain a brief moment of freedom after death, only to be imprisoned again in an even more secure manner.

No living being has ever attempted to communicate with it.

Not a single look in their eyes was not filled with fear, greed, and hatred.

The pain of being rejected, betrayed, and exploited by the world for countless years, and the eternal loneliness, are no longer abstract words at this moment.

It transformed into a tangible sea of ​​ice, instantly surging towards Yagura's soul.

The boy's breath hitched, and he couldn't utter a single syllable.

He empathized with her.

Because in that endless torrent of hateful memories, he saw himself.

He realized that because of his short stature, no matter how mature and composed he appeared, or how correct his decisions were, there was always a hint of disdain hidden deep in the eyes of the elders and Jonin.

"Yagura is still young after all."

"Let us old folks handle this kind of thing."

Those words were like invisible needles, piercing his heart.

He saw himself in the prime of his youth, yet forced to imitate those seventy or eighty-year-old men, suppressing all the emotions of youth, learning to cross his arms and adopt a deliberately profound posture to conceal his inner unease and the restlessness of not being recognized.

On countless deserted nights, he sat alone in his cold room, facing the crushing burden of the crumbling village, feeling an unspeakable loneliness.

His loneliness was loneliness in the crowd.

Its loneliness is a loneliness that is at odds with the entire world.

In essence, there is no difference.

That dark sea of ​​spirit began to surge violently, as if the Three-Tailed Isobu had sensed his emotional fluctuations and that his suppressed violent instincts were about to resurface.

But Yagura did not retreat.

He didn't utter any grand pronouncements, nor did he attempt to preach any profound truths.

He simply guided his consciousness, slowly floating before that enormous, mountain-like single eye.

The figure stretched out its hand, which seemed insignificant in the spiritual world, but in the face of the world-destroying crimson, it was as insignificant as dust.

Then, I gently applied it.

It was a gentle touch.

"after,"

Yagura's voice rang out for the first and only time in this world that had been silent for countless years.

"I'll stay with you."

It's not a promise to help you get revenge or to give you freedom.

It is just a tiny life offering the simplest, yet most extravagant, companionship to another enormous life.

The tyrannical aura that swirled around the massive body of the Three-Tailed Isobu, capable of tearing the spirit apart, slowly dissipated at this moment, like ice and snow warmed by the sun.

Its enormous single eye silently watched the tiny human being before it, who wasn't even as big as one of its teeth.

For the first time, a barely perceptible crack appeared in the deepest part of those eyes, which were filled with tyranny, hatred, and destruction, where the eternal, unyielding ice of loneliness had remained.

A sliver of light quietly shone inside.

……

The real world.

On the island.

Under the watchful eyes of several people on the shore, the massive body of the Three-Tailed Isobu, which had been surging and creating towering waves, became eerily quiet.

The ominous chakra surrounding it receded slowly like a tide, perfectly revealing its true form, which resembled a moving island.

"What...what happened?"

Hozuki Kaigetsu's fingers tightened unconsciously; he couldn't immediately understand the situation before him.

One second it was a berserk tailed beast capable of destroying the world, how come it suddenly... became as quiet as an object that has been unplugged?

Could it be some kind of super-advanced genjutsu from the Hokage?