A soft breeze embraced the cold and unwelcoming earth. A world dyed in red and tears, an unforgiving place of no return one which one had to learn to be the devil to become the angel.

 

Where the weak had no place and could seek shelter under the strong. The wind sought not to discriminate, it blew through everything equally, it healed and destroyed with balance. So, when a certain Uzumaki felt his control over rain shake under the touch of wind, he was flummoxed.

 

The Land of Rain was a world of never-ending rain as the name itself implied. He had made sure of that, his word was the equivalent of a God’s decree, he brought pain and suffering as a way of understanding.

 

Once a land which a certain poisonous salamander’s master had ruled, the Legendary Ninja, Hanzo, now it was a land ruled by an Uzumaki of all people. A man gifted with the eyes of the God of Shinobi – quite literally – who had given chakra to humanity.

 

• An omen! – Their words rang among the many;

 

• A sign of freedom… -

 

Nagato knew no such thing, and he was not going to let whatever affected the rain stand by. It challenged his authority and as the leader of Akatsuki he was not going to let it simply go past him. No dog could challenge a god.

 

He could feel it in the air, it was not his divine eyes that discovered what caused it, but his blood. It stirred, and a primal calling he had never experienced before screamed the truth out to him.

 

An Uzumaki; or as close as possible to him in most cases.

 

A descendant of the Sage of Six Paths, even with a thinned blood relation it was still worth something, as chakra was thicker than blood. But no, there was something more to it, it wasn’t simple the power of common chakra that he had felt.

 

Something… more. Even his eyes could not see through it. That was impossible, how could the eyes of the sage not see everything? There had to be a mistake somewhere.

 

The remnants of a clan long since forgotten by the annals of time, few even knew of their existence. Konoha used it as a crest, to show a friendship long since lost, but their own shinobi rarely knew the meaning it.

 

Heh, his teacher came from a village of hypocrites and vultures. That was fine, Konoha was going to be destroyed in a few years, let them enjoy whatever peace they have left.

 

It was time to collect the human vessels. A new world would soon emerge and become a utopia… A world of pain… A world of understanding.

 

It was time for the Akatsuki to move.

 

 

XxX

 

Ren wouldn’t lie; he knew that something like this could’ve happened. Did it mean he was enjoying it? Not at all.

 

It was something even their jounin teacher couldn’t avoid having them do. Sure he made up for that by training them after the missions, but it was still annoying.

 

He knew that genins were practically required to take at least a few dozen of D-rank missions before they were even considered for C-rank ones, but this was just ridiculous in his eyes.

 

Team 7 had shown perfect teamwork in several occasions and had shown no considerable flaw in Ren’s eyes, so why…

 

Why did they have to do so many D-rank missions?!

 

Fine, then he was not going to stand still as this happened. If the village wanted it to continue like this; to waste the time and potential of valuable shinobi, then he would not let it run like this. He was going to intervene in a way or another.

 

It was another summer day in Konoha as Ren walked around the village with seemingly no aim in sight. The breeze was light and comfortable and the villagers of Konoha were enjoying every moment of it – unlike a certain redhead.

 

Today was a day-off for team 7 after a week full of D-rank missions. They weren’t even allowed to use shadow clones to do them, that was the worst part of all of it!

 

Who the fuck cares about plucking sweet potatoes or finding lost cats?! They were shinobis, not caretakers.

 

They were meant to fight and not do silly miscellaneous oddities like this. It was getting on his nerve, and if he was this bad, imagine Naruto and Sasuke. The former expressed his annoyance at any time possible and the later hardly had words to counter Naruto.

 

Even Kakashi was helpless at their rantings, after all he was the one who had told them their teamwork was amazing, so how could he argue that D-rank missions were something necessary?

 

And so, Ren headed towards the Senju Compounds with one clear goal in sight; using the vast library of the clan.

 

Kakashi had told him that while he had several techniques he could teach him, it was better to first get a gist of them through the many scrolls the techniques were contained in, as his teaching method could get violent at times.

 

First was understanding and then came learning. Or so he was told.

 

‘Knowing that his most infamous technique is literally a very-well known assassination one, it does make a lot of sense.’

 

Or it was just an excuse to get team 7 off his neck for a while – which it probably was to be honest.

 

The Senju Compound was a pretty impressive territory overall. Although it was a clan which relied on past glory, it still was one of the two founding clans of Konoha and no one dares to allocate it elsewhere.

 

There were no walls surrounding it, unlike the Uchiha Compound. That was because there was no attempt to isolate an already decaying population of the Senju. Similarly, to the Uzumakis, history had made sure to wipe out the ancient clan in a way or another.

 

It was extremely odd. No more than a hundred Senju had participated in the First Great Shinobi War, in the second only half of them had done so and in the third merely twenty-five. All twenty-five had died from different causes soon after the war and not due to the war itself.

 

It was pretty obvious someone had intentionally sought to get rid of the Senju and they had done a pretty good job. The question was; just who had done such an insane thing and why had the Third not done anything about it?

 

Upon entering in the compound, the first thing he noticed was that it was no longer as empty. Sure, the houses still look desolate, but there was undeniable proof someone had thoroughly explored every single one of them.

 

And there was only one other person who could’ve done such a thing, and that was his cousin Senju Tsunade. The one woman he had never meet before as she hadn’t been in Konoha in ages and purposely been avoiding him for the last two years or so.

 

His interest was piqued.

 

His aim had been to originally go through some fire-based techniques or even try to decipher one of Mito Uzumaki’s highly-complicated seals, but he might as well his cousin – No.

 

‘If she doesn’t want to meet me, why should I go out of my way to meet her? I’ve been fine not knowing her for the last twelve years after all.’

 

He wasn’t being stubborn he just had no reason to meet someone who clearly didn’t want to meet him either. Who knew the reason behind it?

 

Did he remind her of the past, a clan she had abandoned years before, a duty she had decided not to uphold or she simply didn’t care about him?

 

Perhaps it was all of the above, perhaps it was none of the above; who knew the true reason besides her?

 

In the first place, she had put the descendant of her lover before her own blood, and you know what?

 

He could respect that, their blood relation was pretty thin in the first place, so why would she go out of her way to take care of a brat whose parents she probably did not know at all?

 

Ren smiled to himself before shaking his head and continuing on his way to the library.

 

The library was located near the main branch’s headquarters, where the main family had once resided. A family which had disappeared from the annals of history and had no descendant remaining, Tsunade Senju excluded.

 

His footsteps were soft as he opened the wooden gates of the library, a building with three floors of medium size. The moment he stepped inside, he could see the many bookshelves filled to the brink with books and scrolls…

 

All left to collect dust.

 

“So, it was you who I felt enter the compound.”

 

 A soft but feisty voice spread across the long room.

 

He abruptly turned around and saw his dear cousin, a woman who was easily in her late forties but had looked not a day over twenty. Her blond tresses spread over her back easily let him identify her, if not the mark on her forehead.