The Omnipresent Shinobi

4

He saw the Shinigami, the God of Death, sitting impassive on a throne of bone, watching the panic of his brethren with an unreadable, ancient calm.

His vision tore away, plunging into the spaces between worlds.

He saw Kaguya’s dimensions. An acid world where corrosive seas churned under a poison-green sky. A world of crushing gravity where mountains were flattened into plains of dust. An ice dimension locked in an eternal, frozen twilight. He felt the lingering, insane will of the Rabbit Goddess, a primal loneliness that had festered for a millennium.

His sight then coalesced onto the silent, barren surface of the Moon. He saw not a dead rock, but a hollow world within, lit by an artificial sun. There, a pale, blind boy sat alone on an ornate throne, surrounded by an army of silent, unliving puppets who served as his only subjects and friends. He felt the boy’s crushing, absolute solitude—a mirror of his own, but twisted by a misguided, ancient decree. He felt the pulsing, stolen power of a thousand stolen eyes, a great orb of energy called the Tenseigan, waiting to enact a terrible, misunderstood judgment upon the world below. The boy's name was Toneri.

His vision shifted again, not to one place, but to two, perceived simultaneously. He saw a place of profound, unending peace: The Pure Lands. It was a serene, white expanse, filled with the gentle light of souls at rest. There, he saw a woman with vibrant red hair, her spectral form radiating a warmth that transcended death. Her eyes, filled with an eternal, loving sorrow, were fixed on a world she could no longer touch, her gaze directed at him. His mother, Kushina.

And in the same instant, his awareness plunged into a realm of utter darkness and despair: the stomach of the Shinigami. It was a chaotic void filled with tormented, warring souls. And among them, he saw a man with sun-kissed blonde hair, his form locked in an endless, silent struggle against the very entity that had consumed him. His father, Minato.

He saw them both. His mother in paradise, his father in damnation. Together in his perception, yet eternally, agonizingly apart.

The joy of seeing them, the agony of their separation, the tranquility of one realm and the torment of the other—it all merged with the fear of the gods and the madness of Kaguya. It was a cacophony, a deafening symphony of existence flooding his young, unprepared mind.

The pain in his head became an unbearable scream. He clutched his temples, curling into a ball on his bed, tears streaming from his eyes. It was too much. Too much information, too much sensation, too much being.

He was drowning in the ocean of his own omniscience.

"Stop," he whimpered, the word a choked sob. "Please, make it stop..."

Instinct, or perhaps a whisper from the divine consciousness within, guided him. His trembling hand reached out, not for comfort, not for a weapon, but for the only thing in the room that felt as real as the chaos in his head.

His fingers brushed against the smooth, cool wood of the umbrella's handle.

The moment he touched it, the screaming torrent of information did not stop, but it focused. The chaotic flood became an ordered library. The gem on the handle glowed with a soft, internal golden light, and the umbrella acted as a conduit, a lens through which he could perceive infinity without being shattered by it.

The headache receded to a dull, manageable throb. He could still feel the other realms—the fear of the gods, the loneliness of Kaguya, his mother's loving gaze, and his father's silent struggle—but they were now like distant rooms in a vast house, no longer crashing down on top of him.

He sat there for a long time, clutching the umbrella, his small body shaking with the aftershocks.

He finally understood. The gods had tried to kill him. They had seen the power within him, the thing he was only just beginning to comprehend, and they had been afraid. Fujin wasn't a monster attacking him for no reason. He was an executioner, carrying out a sentence born of terror.

The old Naruto, the boy who lived in the forest and scraped for every meal, would have been consumed by rage. He would have sworn revenge.

But this Naruto, the boy who had felt the suffering of the entire world and had just touched the edge of infinity, felt something else.

A profound, weary sadness.
A
They were just... scared.

He slowly got to his feet, the umbrella held firmly in his hand. He walked to his window and looked out over Konoha. The villagers were going about their day, unaware of the cosmic war that had almost been waged, unaware of the divine execution that had taken place. They still saw him as a demon, a nuisance, an outcast.

His new awareness saw them differently. He saw their hopes, their secret fears, their quiet loves, and their bitter griefs. They were all so fragile, so beautifully, tragically limited.

He looked at the umbrella in his hand. The Parable. A shield and a sword. A shadow and the light.

The Voice had asked him what he would do. Would he shatter the scales of balance? Would he defy the way things are?

He didn't have the answer yet. But he knew one thing.

He had to get stronger. Not to fight the gods. Not for revenge.

He needed to become strong enough to shoulder this immense power without breaking. Strong enough to understand it.

Strong enough to show them—the villagers, the shinobi, even the terrified gods—that they didn't have to be afraid.

His life was no longer about survival. It was about shouldering the weight of existence.

And it had just begun.