It was all strange.

The crunch of dead leaves underfoot. The musk of rotting foliage. The chill of the morning breeze on her undead flesh. Even with the years that had passed, Mito found that little had changed. The sky was still blue and men still warred like childish fools. To imagine that decades after her death, she would return to find the shinobi world still rife with conflict; unsurprising, still, Mito couldn’t be any more disappointed.

Surrounded by a circle of towering ancient trees, their bark tagged with barrier seals, the former jinchūriki, clad in a simple white kimono, held a scrying orb in her hands. It shimmered with a translucent, opalescent light that revealed the unfolding war that raged in the village. Being so physically removed from the conflict Mito could almost delude herself into thinking all she saw in the orb in her hand was false. An illusion. A lie. Birds still chirped ignorantly in the dense canopy and nought a tremor rippled through the earth.

With a piercing gaze, she watched as a squad of shinobi burst into the room she had been bunkered in just five minutes ago. Quick thinking on the part of the ANBU tasked with guarding her ensured she had been reverse summoned from the scene long before the decapitation force could close in on and hinder her. Mito gave an unimpressed sniff as she stared at the doomed group, wondering to herself what the enemy commander must have been thinking to send in weaklings for such an important task.

Fools, the lot of them.

Dismissing the thought her attention returned to the battle raging above ground, eyes flickering to pick out casualties from among the tangle of foilage and rubble. Her chakra pulsed as she transmitted information regarding the locations of a few trapped civilians to the closest medic squad in the area. The encoded message was imprinted into an unfurled scroll in her hand before being beamed forth to the concerned party.

Sighing, Mito turned her sights away from the casualties to more pressing issues. There was little more that she could do for them far away as she was at the moment. Instead, she quickly went to work dismantling the insidious sealing barrier surrounding the village. Positioned as she was, it was easy to see what the enemy's objectives were; divide, isolate and conquer in quite the most literal of sense. An inspired, yet equally horrifying plan.

Slowly, her chakra wormed through the barrier's internals; in its wake, she left a chain of parasitic seals poised to erode the integrity of the technique. Her efforts did not go unseen though. The barrier’s creator soon took notice, then offence as they fought back intending to evict her presence. Wild and lacking in grace it was clear to Mito that her opponent, while skilled, was no fuinjutsu master.
Inexperienced.

Miles away, the barrier flickered, poised to collapse before another will made itself known; this one much more worrying than her prior opponent. The newcomer’s will blitz through the barrier’s internals, quickly repairing the damage done. The ancient Uzumaki frowned, not at all appreciating the ease with which her opponent undermined all her efforts.

There was a brush of intent and the faint perception that someone was watching her before Mito quickly cut the connection.

“What’s the matter—” one of her bodyguards began only to falter as two figures appeared out of thin air just outside the barrier that was supposed to conceal their location. Mito’s frown deepened as stared at the dark-haired Kunoichi across from her. Crouched before said Kunoichi was a shinobi. He had auburn hair, dark eyes and a chiselled face set into a stern frown. The fellow carried a small canister by his side from which gold dust leaked onto the ground, slithering beneath him like some sentient amorphous blob.

“Raza,” the dark-haired kunoichi intoned, her features expressionless. “Be careful. The old lady is quite the Fuinjutsu expert so it would not be much of a surprise if this place had already been heavily fortified. I would hate to have to redeploy someone else to handle this just because you carelessly got yourself killed.”

“I can handle it,’ the man said without inflexion. And with nought even a nod of approval the kunoichi disappeared leaving him behind.

“Magnet Release: Gold Dust Imperial Funeral!” the shinobi declared as the growing blob beneath him surged forth like a tidal wave.

“Adamantine Seal: Yin Consuming Maw!” Mito replied. The head of a spectral red-furred monkey rose from the earth to consume the wave before descending back into the forest floor. Her opponent stared, stunned, at his greatly diminished gold wave before making a “tching” noise.

“Annoying,” he murmured much to Mito’s agreement. Who was that Kunoichi? she wondered to herself not at all happy to find someone capable of matching her skill as her ANBU bodyguards surged forth towards their opponent.

***

Behold, as the sun, that fiery charioteer of day, ascended the heavens with a solemn grace. The morning mist, like the breath of samurai awaiting their fate, dissipated in the face of the advancing luminary general. Each one, now kissed by the amber fingers of sunlight, stood as a soldier in the grand army of the leaf. The dewdrops on their flak jackets, like tears, shed in the quietude of the night, glisten as if mourning the inevitable clash that awaits.

Nuibari, moistened by the tears of heaven, gleamed in the crimson light. Mangetsu stared as a drop of dew gathered at the tip of the needle sword, seemingly ignorant of the shinobi amassing around him. Eyes dead, he looked away from the legendary blade in his hand to face his opponents, his short silver hair billowing in the wind.

“Rude,” he said, flicking the blade to the side and sending a drop of dew shooting at the konoha-nin attempting to ambush him with a tendril of darkness. The compressed drop travelled at tremendous speed before detonating on the shinobi’s chest, flinging him off the cliff he stood into the abyss below.

Nuibari twirled in Mangetsu’s grasp even as his body liquefied to allow the barrage of Kunia and shurikens to harmlessly pass through him. Two water clones split from his amorphous mass before disappearing into the mist emanating from beneath his feet to hunt for prey.

Mangetsu was not certain how or why he was here, but he was certain he was itching for a fight.

A fight these konoha-nin seem all too willing to provide.

Lips curling into a soft smile that showed his serrated teeth, he summoned Shibuki, the explosive blade, in his other hand. This should be fun, whispered an errant thought in his mind as he also faded into the mist.

“...Silent killing.”

***

A squad of ROOT operatives stood silently before the barrier as one of their ilk weaved a summoning jutsu before slamming his palm on the floor before him. With a rumbling noise, a stone coffin rose from the earth. The coffin’s lid fell to the ground with a muted thud and a figure stumbled out on stiff limbs.

Shisui expressionlessly stared at the barrier across from him, his mind awhir as he wondered what was going on. Beside him, one of the ROOT operatives tasked to act as his handler retrieved a tagged kunai from a pouch by his waist before immediately inserting it in his head, dispersing the Uchiha’s thoughts before they could even fully form.

“Your instructions are clear,” the fellow said as steam emanated from Shisui’s body, cementing the Jutsu’s hold on his soul, “Destroy the barrier, neutralise Sasuke Uchiha and return immediately for further instructions. Ignore or bypass any obstruction to this directive. Don’t try to play smart. Now, go!”

Shisui said nothing as his body blurred forth of its own volition, charging towards the barrier. He felt his chakra pour out, coalescing and hardening as a Susanoo took form around him. Great wings sprouted from his back as he raised a great drill-like lance before slamming it into the barrier. The weapon bored into the barrier that in turn strained valiantly against it, glowing brightly before faltering in the face of the divine weapon.

With an explosive bang, the barrier shattered, its fragments flickering out of existence as a great plume of dust rose from the malformed earth. Heedless of this, Shisui felt his Susanoo fade away as he Body-flickered toward the earth-shaking battle ahead; in a matter of moments he was at the battle. Appearing above the other Susanoo, his reemerged with its lance poised to pierce through its spine. Shisui ignored the mauled sand tanuki pinned beneath his fellow Uchiha, as well as the second and third Hokage trying their hardest to bring the twelve-legged monstrosity to the ground as he brought his weapon to bear.

His target, seemingly distracted, did not react to Shisui appearing above him right up till the moment he dissuaded him of that notion; three of his blade-like tails speared upwards through Shisui’s Susanoo, the tails piercing through hardened chakra to skewer his undying body within. Still, the undead Uchiha was unsurprised to find that his suicidal ambush had succeeded.

The lance smashed through the larger Susanoo’s spine and it pinned it to the earth.

Seizing the opportunity, the Hokages rushed towards the boy cocooned within the gigantic construct, seeking to decisively end the fight. They were intercepted however by a dark-haired figure clad in a homely turquoise kimono.

“...Fugaku?” exclaimed Lord Hiruzen, his expression warping in stunned surprise

A screaming fireball was the clan head’s only reply.