The Pein of Aang

His head thrummed, achingly. The world around him was spinning out of control. The last thing he could remember was giving his life to restore everyone in Konoha for Naruto's sake. Now, he was here on a battlefield. Or at least it appeared to be a battlefield. There were pockmarks everywhere. However the damage was not as impressive as most ninja battles were. Whomever it was that caused the destruction had not been ninja.

Slowly, Pein rose to a sitting position. His eyes ached, as did his legs. Taking a moment to assess himself, Pein came to the realization that he was once more alive! Taking a deep breath, he extending his senses, searching for any signs of life. As he waited, an errant strand of red hair crossed his vision.

"But, how?" he questioned. The last he remembered, he had aged nearly a hundred years restoring everyone to life. He had seen his own hair for white before the light left his eyes. "What is this?" he asked, taking a lock in his hand.

His sensory sweep pinged in distance. Pein looked up and noted his actual surroundings for the first time. He was in the middle of a desert; everywhere, extending as far as the eye could see, Pein saw only sand. High in the sky was the sun, shining its blinding light down and heating the exposed skin of the thin man.

A twitch caught Pein's attention. It seemed almost foreign, but his peripheral vision had caught movement in one of his legs. His attention became rooted on his extremities. "Move," he commanded, his voice like that of a god's. His demand was met by the same stubbornness he had always been given. His legs would bend to his will today. Slowly and with much unease, Pein felt his legs unfurl.

(In the distance)

Zhao was beside himself. Zhao at current, was a high ranking soldier in the Fire Nation; he stood at an average height and had a hardened, chiseled figure. His very nature and attitude always demanded the highest level of respect, and he was not ashamed to look down on any others that he outranked.

His black hair was pinned down, defiant in the brunt of the onrushing wind. He had a strange feeling that someone else was out here in this desert. Someone he should be vary wary of. He took the time to look left and right, but saw no one. "It's not like there's much of a place to hide," he thought aloud ruefully.

Continuing on his journey, Zhao came across the crest of a tower. What appeared to be the watch tower of a castle was jetting out of the ground, the rest of whatever it was a part of was buried beneath the sand. "Finally," Zhao called out, as his gaze was upon this structure before him. "I knew one day I'd find this library. Now time to get down to business," he stated as he clambered through the window, tying off a rope to lower himself down.

Though Zhao was the only man to reach the tower and the only man to climb inside, he had not started out this way. When he had first ventured into the desert, he'd been accompanied by two dozen well-trained Firebenders. A combination of the Sun and the desert knocked everyone else off, leaving only the devout soldier to finish the quest.

Zhao reflected on this fact and the series of events leading to it as he dropped lower and lower down the shaft. The sound of shuffling, almost like the sound of feet on the floor echoed throughout the building. Pausing, making nary a sound, Zhao called out. "Hello? Who's there?" he demanded. Silence was all that greeted him.

Hearing no verbal reply, Zhao assumed he'd been suffering from dementia due to heat stroke or just exhaustion. So saying, Zhao gave a graceful shrug of the shoulders and continued his descent.

(With Pein)

Nagato was beside himself with joy, ecstatic in the fact that he was able to stand on his own two feet. Even moreso that he seemed to be in full health. He no longer felt the strain of over-aging, no longer had the feel of brittle bones and creaky joints. He no longer was confined to a walking machine.

However, try as he might, Pein could not sense anyone near him to explain where he was. The closest chakra signature he felt was some ten miles distant from him. "Well, I guess..." Pein let the words hang in the air as he heard a voice he hadn't heard in several year. It was the voice of a child. But not just any child. It was his child voice.

Pein looked down at his youthful hands, free of wrinkles and affliction, and only now did he realize that they were smaller, and that of a child. Before he had been too excited about being alive to have really realized his current situation.

Pein looked skyward, enjoying the feel of the sun on his skin, no longer forced to hide away. He smiled merrily and as the sky darkened, growing enriched with chakra-coated rain-clouds, Pein reflected on his last moments with Naruto. Slowly the rain began to pour down, saturating the desert around him for several miles.

"Here," Pein began, "is where I will begin to make Naruto's dreams my reality. Fate saw fit to give me a second chance, and I owe you one, Naruto-sama."

(Elsewhere)

A young boy and a young girl were dressed in wolf pelts and playing in the snow as their father arrived. Their father was a tall, string man with a hardened, yet kind face. Everything about the man shouted out that he was a warrior. He wore a necklace with a fang on it, dangling in the center. His black hair was pulled back and tied off in a ponytail.

"Katara, Sokka," the man called out, smiling in rapt joy at the sight of his two children. "Me and the other hunters are going to be leaving soon. Come give your papa a big hug!"

Wasting little to no time, the two children bound across the clearing to besiege the older man. "Aww, dad! Do you have to? You guys just got back!" cried the boy, though no tears ever reached his eyes.

The father nodded, hefting both kids to his shoulders. "Don't worry, it's only for a few days."

End Chapter