To Restore a Clan

A Naruto crack thing

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: T (for now?)

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Sasuke U., Karin, Sakura H., Naruto U.; [SasuHarem, NaruHarem, crack]

Summary: There was no such thing as a Clan Restoration Act, to Sasuke's disappointment. But that didn't mean it wasn't technically possible to have multiple women give birth to his children. It was just... a bit more complicated. [SasuHarem, NaruHarem, crack]

Eternity was a funny thing. Even at its furthest edge, in that no-man's land between Time and the Timeless, there was considerable blending of past, present, and future. Sasuke glimpsed afar the most ancient humans, first to die, and his most distant descendants, the final offspring of mortal race at the end of days. Both he saw only as vague clusters of human shapes far away, farther away than the span of all the material universe.

But close at hand were his immediate family, his mother and father and brother, and this old stranger Hagoromo—a barely remembered figure of nursery tales from when he was young. He felt the pull of resurrection, and knew that he would return to life at the moment he was revived, along with many others who had died, but he lingered with the assurance that the "time" he passed here would not count outside.

He couldn't quite wrap his head around the idea of existence without time, of an infinite Present to which all the past and future of temporal existence were as a scroll unfurled that one might attend to in any order, going at one's leisure with no need to hurry. To make it simpler for himself, he decided to treat it like it was tsukuyomi, where he experienced a lot of "time" here for a very little "time" in the world of the living.

But this was not accurate. Rather, it was that when he consented to be revived, he would be dragged along a thread, the chain that waited even now to bring him back to life, and pulled into the precise moment whence that strand emanated from impure causality into the pure world of eternity.

So Sasuke was free to talk with his family for a while.

His mother lamented his use of the polygamy clause. Fugaku unenthusiastically echoed his wife's sentiments, though when he thought she wasn't looking he gave his son a thumbs up. This got him an earful from Mikoto.

"I don't see what the problem is," Sasuke said at length. "I'm doing it to revive the clan."

Mikoto gave him a despairing look.

"I'll always love you, dear," she said. Where this needed to be said, it might prove less than true, yet Mikoto was an honest woman. "But to say that so bluntly..."

She sighed.

"I don't see any problem with it," said Itachi, preeminently logical and blindingly idealistic.

"It's disrespectful to women," said Fugaku, not sounding like he really believed what he said.

Mikoto elbowed him.

"Let's be clear. If you have to do it, Sasuke, I can understand," she said. "But I hope you and your little friend don't forget to look after your wives. If you boys aren't worthy husbands to each and every one of them, you will have your mothers to deal with when you come home. Kushina agrees with me wholeheartedly on this matter."

"Who?" Sasuke said.

"Oh, that's your friend's mother," said Mikoto. "We actually used to be fairly good friends, ourselves. She still comes to visit now and then, in between greeting deceased ancestors and descendants. Although this language isn't quite accurate to the reality... but I suppose it's the closest I can get to how you might be able to understand it."

"Sure," Sasuke said, not parsing any of that. "I'll take care of my wives."

"Don't mistake me," Mikoto continued. "I've welcomed many of them into the afterlife, already. Or I will welcome them, from your perspective. Or I am always welcoming them. Like I said, mortal language really is insufficient for speaking of a timeless reality. But as I was saying, I've met many of your wives, and they all seemed very happy. I just want you to remember not to take them for granted. Tell your friend Naruto, that, too."

"Will I remember all of this?" Sasuke asked.

"Not much, as I understand it," Fugaku said.

"Outside the world are visions shown, forbid to those within," said Itachi. It sounded like a quote, or a snatch of song. "A lot of the knowledge you gain here will be forgotten when you return. Like waking from a dream, you might remember only bits and pieces. Except that it will be more like the forgetfulness of reality in one who dreams, remembering not the world from which they have really come until they are finally at sleep's end and ready to awaken. That is what the living (those amnesiac, somnambulatory shadows of men) call death."

"... ... ...and is any of that actually useful for me to know?" Sasuke asked dryly.

"Useful?" said Hagoromo, speaking up and causing Sasuke to remember his presence. "If the world is your chief concern, then the use of such knowledge is limited. But for one who looks beyond the world, such lore is worth all things that are within creation."

"I don't think I'm the latter sort of person," said Sasuke honestly.

"No, I do not suppose so," Hagoromo said. "If you were, the survival of your clan would seem a petty matter. But I do not condemn you, Indra."

This led into another discussion.

Hagoromo informed Sasuke of some important things, telling him how he was the reincarnation of his eldest son, and something about the world's history and the foundation of Ninshu. There was long debate involving these matters, and all of them participated in the discourse to some extent. But the path of the discussion wound on, and eventually Sasuke felt that he would soon need to return. Or however one might express this in a language with the concept of timelessness.

"You say you regret giving the inheritance to your younger son," Sasuke said, permitting the chain to start winding. "That you think giving it to me, now, might fix things?"

"It cannot correct the past, nor reverse the griefs that have been felt already," said Hagoromo. "I do not know if it was truly a mistake, either. But you seem to have mended the spirit of Indra, or to have tamed it. Perhaps it is time to try another path."

"You already know the outcome, though, don't you?" said Sasuke wryly. "Waiting here outside of time."

The Sage of Six Paths smiled.

"Foreknowledge is not predestination."

And with those cryptic words, Sasuke was bidden farewell by the sage and his family.

When he opened his eyes, it was to find his face buried in Konan's chest.

Not a bad way to wake up.

"I see the error of my ways, now... Naruto. I acknowledge you as the superior pupil, and the child of prophecy. Moreover... I acknowledge you as the head of our clan. Take my eyes and keep them safe from those who would misuse them. And take these two, who died because of Akatsuki... I can manage only the two of them, in addition to all the rest. But these two will serve you best in reviving the clan. Farewell, brother..."

So passed Nagato Uzumaki, entrusting the fate of his dream, and their clan, to his enemy and fellow pupil, Naruto. He gave his life to perform the Rinne Tensei, moved to regret and repentance, accepting his enemy as the one who would carry his legacy. Nagato died, atoning for evil deeds committed in the search of good.

At his motionless feet lay the stirring, awakening bodies of two women. One was blonde and mature, modestly curvy and dressed all in black. The other was slender, dark, and green haired, dressed in a rather scanty fashion. According to Nagato, they were former jinchuuriki.

Naruto uneasily wondered why Nagato had had their bodies just lying around.

But deciding to see out his cousin and fellow pupil's final wish now before he forgot, and seeing that the girls appeared drowsy and not yet fully aware, Naruto walked over and plucked out Pain's rinnegan. It was a gross affair, and he shuddered at how it felt to insert his fingers into another man's eye socket. He thought he was going to retch when he scooped the eyes out, and he couldn't bring himself to watch it, shuddering unpleasantly enough at the sensory feedback of touch and smell.

Nagato stank. It was the vulgar, undignified pungence of death, a mixture of intestinal putrescence and metallic blood smell. But Naruto forced himself to look at the eyes, once he had removed them. He stared long at the now sightless orbs. These had once been a man's eyes, he thought to himself. They used to see, and they used to be filled with power. But now they were blind and empty, devoid of both life and potency.

Dimly, Naruto remembered something Kakashi-sensei had once said about hunter ninja destroying their target's bodies to keep secrets from getting out.

Without even pausing to consider the potential utility of these eyes—indeed, having no real conscious notion that doujutsu could be transferred from one person to another, aside from maybe a vague idea that Kakashi-sensei owned a transplanted sharingan, and therefore not even imagining that these eyes could be of any use to him whatsoever—Naruto closed his fist and squeezed.

He shuddered and tasted bile at the sensation. He blanked out his mind to keep from thinking about how warm, or wet, or squishy it was.

Still, he felt a little nauseous.

Naruto automatically wiped his bloody hand on his pants. He immediately regretted this.

"Oh, ew!" he groaned, feeling the pulpy wetness soak into his pants. He gagged. "That's so gross!"

One of the girls lying on the floor rose, blinking and looking confusedly around.

"Wha..." said Yugito, former jinchuuriki of the Two-Tails. "Where am I?"

She turned and saw Naruto dancing around like a jackass, trying to get the remains of Nagato's eyes off of his pants. Then she saw the gaunt, emaciated corpse of a man hooked up to a painful-looking amount of tubes and machinery. His empty, eyeless sockets gaped at her.

Yugito, being an experienced kunoichi and quite accustomed to battle, was more surprised by Naruto than by the dead body. She looked amusedly at the writhing young man who dropped his pants and kicked them away, leaving himself in his boxers.

It wasn't a bad view to greet a woman.

She felt a stirring beside her, then, and she turned to see a younger girl, Fuu, the former Seven-Tails jinchuuriki, sitting up to look at the bloody and sweaty blonde.

"Huh. Should we go take a bath?" Fuu said, speaking up and addressing the boy, who looked to be about her age. "You look like you could use it, and I want one too. We can share, if you want. How's that sound? Wanna be friends?"

"I have a feeling we're intended to be more than just his friends," said Yugito dryly, perceiving a faint compulsion in the back of her mind.

Fuu, who had been in the process of stripping to match Naruto, turned to look at Yugito.

"You say something, auntie?"

Yugito twitched.

"Auntie? Just how old do you think I am...?"

"Pretty old," said Fuu. "Thirty?"

Yugito winced.

That was only a little more than her actual age. Not that this was really old, but...

"Right. Fair enough," she said weakly.

Fuu laughed, by now quite naked.

"Come on, then!" said the verdette. "Let's go find a bath!"

Naruto stared, his face red. Yugito spied a respectable bulge.

"Maybe you should put your clothes back on, first."

"NEVER!"

Konoha was in shambles. Most of the village center had been destroyed in Pain's attack. Defenses were devastated, infrastructure was torn to shreds, and countless people were rendered homeless. Although rebuilding was to begin as soon as possible, and tents were being set up as temporary shelter, many people were in a bad way. Deaths from the attack itself counted at zero, thanks mainly to some diplomatic wizardry on Naruto's part that convinced the very man who destroyed their village to revive those people who had died in his attack.

It was considered a miracle by many of the laypeople. Even most ninja were amazed and delighted by the survival or revival of all those whom they had thought to have died. Naruto was thusly hailed as the village hero, and he was praised and placed at the highest place in the esteem of his people. Although there was much hard and weary labor before them, much doubt and uncertainty and fear yet to be overcome in rebuilding their home, still for the time being people were happy just to be alive, and only the worst and most spiteful muttered about the hero's late arrival or the destruction of the city.

Lives were worth more than buildings, after all. A good building might last a few generations, but a life was much harder to gain or replace.

So the people rejoiced, and they sang the praises of those who had fought valiantly in the village's defense. People like Iruka Umino, and Chouza Akimichi, and Konohamaru Sarutobi, and Kakashi, and Team Taka, and Sasuke, and the Hokage—but Naruto most of all.

Karin turned a chipped stone ear over in her hand, sitting next to Sasuke. Sakura was next to her, looking very weary from all her labor in the healing of the hurts of the village people. On the other side sat Anko, who was giving Sasuke a vaguely respectful look. And Konan sat between those two, her Akatsuki cloak burning in a fire. Evening had fallen at the end of a bloody day, and night was quickly darkening.

"You guys had a lucky break, huh," said Anko, looking from Sasuke to Karin. "It's hard to believe you escaped alive from a fight with one of those monsters."

"Who, me?" said Karin. She put a hand to her stomach, remembering Gakido's heavy foot. "Maybe. It wasn't just luck, though. We fought for every inch. And escaped with our lives? Honey, we killed him."

She presented the stone ear in her hand, a trophy from the spitefully smashed rubble that had once been one of the Paths of Pain.

Anko smiled.

"So you say," she said. "Maybe I can believe it, and maybe I can't. But he's gone, and you aren't, so I suppose there's something to your account."

Karin sniffed. "There were witnesses, weren't there?"

"Witnesses who saw you and your friends get your shit stomped."

"W-We fought perfectly well!" Karin defensively spluttered. "Right, Sakura? You know Sasuke-kun wouldn't team up with incompetent weaklings. I did just fine. Maybe Juugo and Suigetsu got beat up, but not me."

"I don't know anything of the sort," said Sakura, reclining with a look of contentment past exhaustion. "Still, I'm sure you did just fine, Karin."

She gave her fellow bride-to-be a comforting pat on the shoulder. Karin twitched, and she turned to look at Sasuke.

"You know we beat that guy, right, Sasuke?" she implored.

Sasuke inclined his head. He was pale and wan, and there were bags under his eyes. He didn't look like he had slept or eaten properly in a week—a consequence of so heavily overusing tsukuyomi. The smile he gave Karin was tired, but also sincere.

"Yeah. I know you did," he said quietly.

"Are you okay?" asked Sakura, giving him a concerned look.

"Huh? Yes, I'm fine." Sasuke shook his head as if to wake himself. "Why do you ask?"

"You look tired."

"It's just chakra exhaustion. I'll be fine with a bit of rest."

Sakura was silent for a moment. She glanced sidelong at Konan, who looked at Sasuke as if he was the only thing she could see in the whole wide world. Her expression was filled with a slowly nurtured love for the man, and something not unlike a hint of fanatical devotion. Sakura wondered what on earth Sasuke had done to make this woman look at him like that.

"If you say so..." Sakura murmured. She addressed Konan, next. "So I hear you're going to be Sasuke-kun's wife, too?"

She couldn't keep a hint of exasperation out of her voice.

Konan blinked as if stirred from a trance, and she looked at Sakura like she was seeing the girl for the first time.

"Yes," she said thickly, a glad smile curving her lips. "He proposed to me, and I said yes. I can hardly wait. I've waited for this so long..."

Sakura puzzled briefly at this wording, then shrugged. She had only a vague notion that Sasuke had spent a very long time in tsukuyomi with Konan—the same genjutsu that had once put him and Kakashi-sensei in comas. She wondered if they were okay.

"Maybe. But I'm sure I've waited longer," Sakura said dryly.

"To marry Sasuke?" said Konan. "Perhaps. And I don't doubt you'll do him great service as a wife. You have good hips. You should be able to bear children very well."

Sakura blushed at this remark, remembering similar words spoken to her no more than a week prior. It had been so little time since then, really, yet it felt like so much had happened. Things were moving very fast.

"I wonder if the ceremony will be pushed back," Anko remarked, interjecting. "Seeing as how the village is in such bad shape."

"I don't know," Sakura said. "I could see that happening, I guess..."

She looked at Sasuke.

"I hope it doesn't get pushed back," said Karin.

She, too, eyed Sasuke.

He smiled and let out a tired laugh.

"It won't be delayed, if I can help it," he said. "But there won't be much ceremony. It's mostly a legal affair."

"That's a pity..." Sakura said wistfully.

"Is it?" said Anko. "I've never cared for fancy to-do's. A simple civil union sounds best for all parties. Or easiest, at least."

"I agree," said Karin. "A big, fancy wedding might sound real nice and romantic, but that kind of thing would take a long time to plan. The sooner I can consumate, the better."

She grinned, and the lenses of her glasses flashed so that they seemed opaque white.

Sakura blushed. She couldn't exactly disagree with this...

"I suppose you're right," she said. "And a big ceremony might seem tasteless, after all that's happened here today. We'd have to put it off a long while, probably, if we wanted to do it in any traditional fashion."

"Exactly," said Anko. "Best to get it over with quick, I think."

"I wish we could relish it, a little," said Konan, adding her two cents. "But I also do not wish to delay our union. But what do you think, darling?"

She looked at Sasuke. So did the other three. Their eyes were bright and intent.

He could feel their glances piercing him.

"...Well, all that's really needed to finalize it," Sasuke said slowly, "is for you girls to express your consent before the hokage. For Sakura, Karin, and Anko I've already done the paperwork. A war wife like Konan doesn't even need that much—just to be written into the clan registry."

Konan smiled at this.

"That's all that's left?" said Anko. "But that might be difficult. The way I understand it, Lady Tsunade is presently comatose."

"Yeah..." Sakura sighed. "She used too much of her chakra healing the people in the village, during the attack. Spread herself too thin. She's suffering from severe chakra exhaustion. They don't know when she'll wake up."

She paused and gave Sasuke a meaningful look.

"Wait," said Karin. "If the Hokage's comatose, then who will finalize our marriage?"

There was a silence.

"Oh, wow. What happened to Konoha?"

Kankuro shaded his eyes against the morning sun, a line of fire that rose in the east. He looked down at a crater and a ruination in the midst of what had once been the Hidden Leaf. Walls were torn down, and shingles were piled in heaps as after a great storm, and tents dotted a landscape of rubble and dirt.

Temari looked down at the village, feeling a twinge of dismay. She still hadn't really reconciled herself to the idea of marrying Naruto Uzumaki, but she had at least been able to accept the idea that a tightening of the alliance between their villages could benefit Suna. Now, though...

"Has there been a disaster?" said Gaara, walking up between his siblings and bodyguards. "It looks like the village was struck by an earthquake or a landslide. But the mountain appears intact, and I don't believe Konoha is near any geological fault lines."

"Maybe there was an enemy attack," said Kankuro reasonably.

"Don't be absurd," Temari replied. "What enemy could do that? I mean, okay, maybe a bijuu could, but..."

"Ah," said Gaara.

There was a brief silence. The sand siblings exchanged looks of nervous epiphany.

"Uh..." said Kankuro. "You don't think Naruto..."

"Oh, heck," Temari muttered. "I hope not. That would be too awkward for words."

"...maybe we should go down and see what happened," said Gaara. "I wanted to give Naruto my congratulations, anyways."

Temari twitched and gave her brother a somewhat dirty look.

Congratulations on what? she wanted to say. Getting handed my ass on a silver platter?

She then blushed a little at this mental phrasing, and at the images it conjured.

It wasn't really inaccurate, she supposed.

A/N: I am inordinately pleased with the second scene, heheh. Half because of Naruto crushing Nagato's eyes, and half because of naked Fuu. She's probably one of my favorite of the jinchuuriki, and not just because I personally think she's one of the sexiest. Imma sucker for both tomboys and skimpy clothing. X3

Also, saw the first episode of the Boruto anime the other day. From previews I'd assumed Denki would be a girl, haha. Mostly because the only shots I remember seeing of him had him blushing at or around Bolt. And it says something about acclimatization that calling him Bolt now feels so much weirder than calling him Boruto. But the anime seems decent, so far.

Also, also, I'm feeling a bit drowsy and headachey today, so that's a thing.

Updated: 4-7-17

TTFN and R&R!

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