The Final Awakening: A Demigod's Inheritance

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Madara heaved a sigh of relief as his Divine Genesis: World of Trees grew to have roots across the whole supercontinent. The purpose of this technique was so that everyone enjoying the infinite dream would receive sufficient energy for eternity. Their minds might have been in a world of bliss, but their bodies weren't. Their physical selves still needed food and water, and this big ass tree would provide the necessary nutrients at a steady level so that the entrapped wouldn't die of infection via their own waste. The tree would also protect from germs, bacteria, viruses, and all maladies.

The blinding light coming off the Moon faded as the Infinite Tsukuyomi completed its purpose, and Madara felt the most contentment he had ever felt in his life.

'Hashirama, Izuna, everyone…it's done…it's over. The world finally has peace. Now, let's see what had Zetsu so agitated.'

Descending back to the ground, Madara found his Will calmly waiting for him, a shapeless blob of black with a couple of yellow balls where his eyes might be, Obito having been disposed of via the infinite dream.

"Zetsu."

"Lord Madara. It brings me great pleasure to see you alive and well again."

"Yes, I am happy to see you again, as well. Now, not that I am complaining, given our success, but what had you in such a rush?"

"Shin'en Yūrei," Zetsu said gravely in that rough, gravelly voice of his.

Madara arched a brow. "Abyss Ghost?"

Zetsu proceeded to give the five-minute version of the demigod, leaving Madara deeply impressed.

"Interesting. I would've very much liked to fight such a man."

"It would've been a very tough fight. I might even go so far as to say you would've lost."

"Oh, really? Even in this form?" Madara struck a bit of a pose, a confident smirk on his face.

"Yes, even in that form. However, I know someone that could certainly defeat Shin'en Yūrei."

Madara tilted his head. "If he's as powerful as you claim, and you think that I couldn't beat him, even as the Ten-Tails Jinchuuriki, then who are so certain of?"

"Mother."

"Moth-grk!"

The Second Six Paths looked down at his chest to see a black shape puncturing through.

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If Zetsu actually had organs, he might've experienced a sexual climax as everything was finally coming together after almost a whole millennia of planning. So many variables, so much adjusting and compensation, so much nudging and moving, so many close calls, so many lies, so much effort and patience and split hairs and panic…but it was all over.

Massive plumes of chakra erupted from the ground, being drawn from literally all over the world, from literally everyone in the world, everyone bound to the Divine Tree, anyway, which was everyone, including all of the animals in all the lands. The icing on the cake was that there was even a bit of Shin'en's chakra in this humongous mix, which was akin to a lake of Everclear in this ocean of beer.

With all this chakra surging into his body uncontrollably, Madara fattened and inflated in a horribly grotesque and humiliating manner, eventually transforming into a humongous blob.

And then the blob was simply gone, and in its place was her.

Finally, after a thousand years had passed, Kaguya Otsustuki was reborn, the chakra of the Ten-Tails, the chakra of the world, and just a little bit of Shin'en's chakra, all comfortably circulating through her body.

"Mother," Zetsu cooed, a huge, toothy grin on what could be considered his face.

"My darling," Kaguya cooed right back, stroking her child's head in the most loving of manners.

It was rather morbid. For all of his cunning, that deep, rough voice of his, all of the turmoil he had caused in the world, all of the wars he had started, all of the blood that had been shed thanks to his efforts—hell, the very state of the world itself could be safely laid at Zetsu's feet. For all of Zetsu's evil…he was just a pathetic momma's boy.

Zetsu slinked up into the confines of Kaguya's massive sleeve, and as she began to simply glide along the earth, her massive locks of hair trailing several dozen feet behind her, he began to regal his mother with a millennium's worth of stories. Kaguya, with her otherworldly powers, was not only able to listen with rapt attention to her child's tales, hanging on to every precious word, but she was also able to reminisce.

Zetsu talking to her in such an excited way reminded her so strongly of Hagoromo and Hamura when they were little, scampering around and exploring every little nook and cranny of their Momma's world.

Thinking of her first two sons got Kaguya thinking about their father.

Eating the chakra fruit of the Divine Tree brought about attention Kaguya hadn't known existed, since she was a being not of this world, and therefore not privy to its gods. After bringing peace through force, unleashing the elements and demonstrating her mastery of life and death, causing her to be revered as a goddess in some circles, a demon in others, and in yet other circles, as a demon goddess. It didn't take long until an actual god showed up, lovestruck by her beauty, power, and tenaciousness.

Izanagi, the father of the gods.

Through her, the first two demigods were born, their twin sons, Hagoromo and Hamura.

Amazingly enough, Kaguya didn't have to start beating away other gods with a stick, nor did she have to worry about a vengeful Izanami coming up from Yomi to get her or the children. However, Izanagi did retreat back into heaven, and Kaguya hadn't heard from him since. Not that she really cared; he might have been in love with her, but she had only allowed him to sleep with her out of the prospect of children.

And then those little snots had betrayed her after all she did for them, feeding them, clothing them, cleaning them, wiping their own filth from their butts, wiping the drool from their chins, washing their laundry after they decided to go traipsing through the mud, they still had the balls to take up arms against her after they learned about how she brought about endless peace, and the scary part was that they won the battle, even after she merged with the Divine Tree and became the Ten-Tails.

Perhaps what really cost her the battle was that, despite how much she had hated her sons in those days, she was still their mother and couldn't truly bring herself to hurt them.

Oh well.

They were both dead and she was alive again, and the world, her precious nursery, and all of her little ones that resided here, was finally at peace.

Truthfully, there wasn't much for Kaguya to do. Everyone in the world was dreaming, and she had been in the moon, watching the proceedings from her prison. She knew the locations and names of everything that had transpired since her Sealing. She knew her nursery was round and mostly water, with all of the land being concentrated in this one humongous area. There really wasn't anything to explore.

Before the rabbit goddess knew it, she was in the ruins of the contemptuous Hidden Leaf. She didn't like this place, and it was a toss up whether she dislike the Leaf, the Mist, or the Cloud more for what they had done to her most precious little one—other than her Zetsu. Kaguya looked up at the oddly shaped cocoon wrapped snuggly in the branches of the Divine Tree, and she began to walk to it.

Not walk as in across the ground with the intention of floating up, but walk as in using her godly chakra and her godly control over it to bring together the air particles into enough of a solid base in the same respect as the water-walking technique.

Reaching her destination, Kaguya gently reached out and reverently stroked her hand across the dreaming Shin'en's head. She had been watching him for years; ever since Susano'o had brought her little boy to the Land of Water, she had followed this new demigod. She had watched him crawling across the ground, squirm and giggle on the changing table, and learn how to use the toilet.

Kaguya had seen everything that had happened in her precious baby's life, and her heart had broken for him many times.

But now it was alright; now he was at peace…

And then there was light so luminous that the rabbit goddess' retinas were fried. There was heat so intense that her hair and clothes were burned straight from her body, and her skin crackled and melted. There was sound so voluminous that her eardrums exploded. There was force so great in magnitude that her skeleton fractured, and she was sent away, feeling as if she were being squeezed through a hole the size of a finger.

Unbearably long seconds passed, so much force being exerted on her body that she couldn't reorient or call upon her powers. Then it was all over, and it was very, very cold. Her body started to mend, her bones mending, her skin repairing, her eyes and ears healing, and her clothes and hair growing back. It was dark where she was, with thousands of twinkling little lights all over the place.

Kaguya realized she was in Space.

She realized that whatever had happened down there, that explosion, had been so powerful as to knock her clean from the planet's surface all the way out beyond the exosphere, causing such extensive damage to her that she was still regenerating herself. The fact that so much damage had been done to her in the first place, with all of her incredible power providing incredible protection—i.e. the fact that she was in the vacuum and wasn't being torn apart—was testament to the power of whatever had hit her.

What had hit her?

Kaguya had to flip around a few times to get her bearings, a glowing green something periodically entering and leaving her vision as she tried to find the Earth. A fear grew in her that she had been knocked so far out into Space that she couldn't see the Earth, but that fear turned into terror when she realized what the glowing green something was. Kaguya righted herself in the void, and her jaw fell open and her eyes widened.

Her nursery, her precious, precious nursery was on fire

Raging, emerald fire.

The whole Pangaeic landmass was ablaze.

Kaguya attuned herself, opening up her senses, and was startled to find that the fire had a chakra signature at its epicenter, the same spot that she had been blasted from. Her Little Abyss was going nuts and had effectively killed everyone on the planet, the fire spreading across the branches and roots of the Divine Tree that had its grasp on everyone everywhere, meaning that he had killed his remaining two family, Killer Bee and Yugito, and he had most certainly killed his wife as she had been in his arms, and with her, their unborn children.

Heartbreaking and tragic as that was, Kaguya found herself far more concerned with her nursery and the fact that it was being rapidly destroyed by a brat with abandonment issues.

She needed to put a stop to this—actually, you know what? Fuck it.

Kaguya could find another nursery. She could make one, actually, since she had the power of Rinnegan in her forehead, granting her the ability to make something out of nothing. She didn't even need to make a new planet, really, since there were so many others in this Solar System that she could simply terraform. However, it was probably best that she leave this particular system and made way for somewhere else in the galaxy.

Preferably on the other side, far, far away from the temper tantrum that so very close in universal distance.

Kaguya turned away from Earth, and was just about to execute the Amenotejikara to cross through space-time to bypass the vast distances of Space when she was suddenly racked with a pain similar to birth contractions. Despite her tolerance to pain in this incredible new body that was bolstered by the power of Shin'en, the Ten-Tails, Izanagi's seed, and her own power that stemmed from eating the Chakra Fruit directly, Kaguya still let out a groan.

No…

She heard the simple word somewhere in the very back of her head, and she knew the voice.

No.

This time it was louder, stronger, and firmer. Kaguya was left reeling at how this was even possible.

No!

The rabbit goddess let out a strangled syllable as she began to bloat.

I did not watch my family die, lose my best friend, bury my own brother, bring about war and bloodshed in the name of peace, and finally accomplish that life mission just to have it all ripped away from me by a coward with enough hair to blanket a mammoth!

Kaguya screamed, but here in Space, no one could hear her. Her body expanded in a horribly grotesque fashion, and the burning, fiery, hate-filled, self-righteous will of her current adversary completely and totally incinerated her own, and Zetsu was subject to this fate but a mere instant later.

And then Kaguya was gone, her will and consciousness destroyed by that of Madara Uchiha.

He was back and looking not all that different. His skin was its healthy tan, his hair long and spikey as it had been, but now it was white as snow. On his body was his favored clothing, but instead of his long, split mantle, pants, and gloves being a dark purple, they were all a deep black, and his formerly crimson armor was now just as white as his hair. Behind him floated ten black orbs, knowledge seeping into his brain as to what they were and how to use them.

In the center of Madara's forehead was a wide-open, red-glowing Rinne-Sharingan, and in his eye sockets were his own eyes, glowing red with the pattern of his Eternal Mangekyou.

This new body of his was packed with power, more than he ever had, and probably more than he was ever going to have again. The power of his Uchiha bloodline, the power of the Ten-Tails, the wench herself, the chakra of all the people and animals of the Earth, the power of a literal god, and the power of a demigod. To put it in slang terms, Madara was packin'.

And his world of peace was damned.

All of his efforts, all of his sacrifices and those of others, the sins he had committed for this ultimate, final end…all for nothing.

The people he loved dearly, the people that with his power he had a responsibility to look after and love and protect, were all ashes now thanks to this temperamental brat with abandonment issues. The world that he cared about and had devoted his life saving was going up in flames.

Madara's face contorted into one of absolute fury and loathing. He had a demigod to kill.

He shot forward, going so fast that he could've beat Minato to anyone of the man's teleportation markers. He entered the atmosphere and became wreathed in fire, but the wind and the air served to provide to resistance to the crusading Uchiha as he flew hard and determined into the heart of the emerald inferno. When he saw Shin'en through the flames, and Shin'en looked back at him with a demonic, broken expression, Madara began to have doubts about his chosen course of action.

Those doubts were solidified when a fist to the face sent him back out past orbit, and through something big and hard. When Madara righted himself, he realized that he had just been sent from the planet's surface, into Space, through the Moon—breaking it nearly in half—and had kept going just a bit further past.

A bit of lunar debris floated past the last Uchiha, and where he idly noted that despite taking such a powerful fist, his nose was only slightly inflamed, but he was in deep, deep shit.

This sentiment was proven when there was a flash of green light from Earth, and then Shin'en was right in front of Madara.

The demigod was crying.

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He knew this place.

A cliff with a large oak tree providing shade, the ocean softly washing over the rocks below, the salty smell in the air. A quaint wooden cross was stabbed into the ground there before the edge, and before the cross was a stone, a bouquet of roses upon it. The stone's surface read:

In memory of friends

Asteria Jackson

Annabeth Chase

Shin'en's legs wobbled and he fell to his knees. A large hand gently settled on his shoulder, and he looked up into the eyes of Killer Bee, the man smiling.

"See ya' round, kiddo."

Shin'en made to grab him, but he was already gone.

A pair of arms settled around him from behind, and soft, motherly lips touched his cheek.

"I've always loved you as my son, and I always will."

A pained whimper left him, and his arms came to grip Yugito's, but she too had move on.

He turned around to find her, but all he saw was Naruko, gazing sadly down at the grave marker for Asteria and Annabeth. Naruko looked at up from there and to Shin'en.

"We'll see each other again, Percy….In another place…in another time."

And before he could reach her, she was gone too.

Everything went up in fire after that.

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The emotional trauma of what he had done in the Infinite Tsukuyomi and the trauma of what he had just seen and what it meant culminated in one final, devastating Awakening.

Emerald chakra bearing the consistency of an inferno exploded to life around Shin'en. In his arms, his pregnant wife was destroyed by his own power—his own children. The branches of the Divine Tree rapidly moved to rewrap him, but the power was too much, and they were burned away—the whole tree was burned away, and everyone in its branches was burned away.

Yugito and Bee.

The emotional shock of these events triggered a transformation with the same principle as the awakening of the Mangekyou Sharingan.

Hagoromo and Hamura, born directly of Izanagi, were much closer to the acquisition of this latent power in them, and they inherited it after they learned just how much a tyrant their beloved mother was. The shock of the betrayal, on top of so many kind and loving memories, was enough to push the brothers into activating the power that Shin'en had been working up to since he was six. At eighteen, it was finally his, twelve years later.

Six-Paths Sage Mode.

A divine state that could be granted to others by those had achieved it, such as Hagoromo with Naruto, but to achieve, one had to be of Shinto divinity. As Hagoromo and Hamura were as divine as you could get without actually being a god, they both had this power, and were able to get to it without as much strife as Shin'en due to them being direct children of Izanagi. The reason it took Shin'en over a decade and so much suffering to achieve this great power was because he was effectively only adopted into the pantheon.

Susano'o was his foster father, and the chakra coils that ran inside him were created by the god, and it was the fact that he had pulled some of the god's own chakra out of his body, as a newborn, and into his own that allowed him to qualify, if only in part, as a member of the Shinto pantheon, and as a Shinto demigod.

To strictly speak, Shin'en was a Shinto legacy, but these technicalities didn't really matter, did they?

As this newly awakened divine state rolled through him, he underwent a physical transformation.

Shin'en's eyes became typical of his Demigod Mode, with his pupils shifting into the shape of the Omega. His hair stood straight up in a crown of thorns. Twin bulges formed along his hairline, and horns sprouted. Another bulge grew in the center of his forehead, blood seeping through the skin before it split open vertically to reveal a green Rinne-Sharingan, the pupil dilated and the tomoe spinning wildly. On Shin'en's right cheek appeared a black tattoo of the lowercase Greek character Alpha, and on his left appeared the character Omega, symbols of his connection to natural energy and his heritage.

His clothes changed, becoming charged with chakra that altered the appearance. His blue pants turned black and became baggy like hakama pants, and were frayed at the bottom. His sandals turned black. The Akatsuki cloak changed the most; it became completely black, no more red clouds and no red interior. The sleeves shortened to the wrists and became tighter, almost form-fitting. The collar also shorted, going from above the lips to around the Adam's apple, turning stiff and tight. The whole upper half of the cloak now fit like a military uniform—tight and crisp. The bottom changed as well, no longer fitting around the whole body. Instead it was trimmed at the waist, cut into three distinct coattails, two at the sides and one at the back, that went down to his ankles.

Glowing emerald green magatama appeared across each of Shin'en's collarbones, and the same phenomena happened across his back. In between his shoulder blades was a glowing emerald Rinnegan symbol, and below that were nine magatama arranged in a square, also glowing with the same dark green hue.

This all sounded cool, of course, new powers, new appearance, kind of like the Power Rangers, but what was happening was anything but cool.

Shin'en was screaming and sobbing in a way that only a baby could manage. So much chakra had erupted out of him, bringing with it so much heat and intensity that he had incinerated the whole Divine Tree and its continent-spanning root system, effectively setting the world on fire and killing literally everyone on the planet…again. The emotional typhoon he was experiencing that stemmed from killing Yūrei, his own mother, followed immediately by killing Annabeth, Persephone—again, having killed another incarnation of her during the Titan War—and then Naruko, followed immediately by killing Naruko, Yugito, and Bee.

Also Ei and Cee, to a lesser extent, but their deaths added lighter fluid to a volcanic eruption.

Speaking of volcanic eruptions, all that emotional stuff Shin'en was experiencing, beyond just having lit the planet on fire, was causing him to rip the planet apart.

The supercontinent was splitting all over, massive lakes of lava pouring up from the mantle due to the breaking crust. The weather was out of control, the whole planet covered in a typhoon with heavy, slanted rain coming down so hard that it was impossible to see in the places that weren't burning away in emerald fire. Tornadoes and hurricanes swept the oceans on the other side of the planet, and on the side Shin'en was on, fiery twisters laid further waste to the world.

Not to mention the Dimensional Quake.

Once again, the Shinto gods found their extradimensional home being shaken to its foundations, and the Multiverse was being ravaged, with all the various Earths crashing and smacking into each other by the waves of power Shin'en was releasing. The Dimensional Hall was thrown yet again into chaos, doors getting blasted off their hinges left and right, lightning and fire wreaking havoc everywhere.

As for Shin'en himself…

There weren't words invented yet that accurately described how he was feeling, and so, in the energy of the English language words shall be made, right here and now.

He was feeling gertury, an emotion beyond the likes of anger and fury.

He was feeling sestorrow, an emotion beyond the likes of sadness, despair, and sorrow.

Those were the biggest ones, on top of feeling, empty, broken, and hollow. All of this was just going everywhere, being directed at everything, no mercy, no target. So, when Madara came rocketing into the scene at close to Mach 30, Shin'en finally had something to aim it all at. With a single strike to the face, the last Uchiha—effectively the last person on this planet was sent rocketing even faster away than he came in, out past Earth's orbit, and through the Moon, splintering the celestial body.

A blink later and Shin'en was in space, bringing with him the divine power of Demigod Mode, the further divine power of Six-Paths Sage Mode, the unbridled physical power of the Eight Inner Gates Formation—all eight Gates opened—and as pathetic an additive as it was in retrospect, thought the chakra fueling it did indeed make it a worthwhile additive, the Lightning Armor.

Bearing down on Madara at speeds greater than light and with power in the realm of the very primeval gods themselves was Perseus "Shin'en Yūrei" Jackson, a fully realized Shinto demigod, locked in an emotional state that was mirrored by no one across all of fiction, in a state of power so great that its name was expressed only as thus:

Omega Mode.

And for all the new power that Madara now had, he was like the Sun, humongous, bright, and powerful, but Shin'en was like a rampaging black hole.

The last Uchiha was instantly snuffed out.

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Elsewhere

"This is all your fault!" Izanagi screeched at Susano'o amidst the destruction of their palace due to Shin'en's now-unimaginable power.

"MINE!?" the storm god screamed back, tears streaming down his face. "I was going to drop him into the Leaf just in time for Kurama's Sealing! Perseus was meant to grow up as the Jinchuuriki brother of Naruko, adopted into the Namikaze house, surrounded by friends and family! You had me drop him at the orphanage, hoping he would die! You are to cause for all of this!"

And then it all stopped.

The shaking, the crumbling, the fires, the floods, the rain, the hail, the wind—all of it. Deathly calm settled over the Shinto house. In the corner, Hagoromo solemnly closed his eyes.

You don't…saaaaaaaaaay

The disembodied voice rolled over the land, starting off in a quiet whisper and then turning into a deafening boom that steadily faded back into a whisper.

Swallowing hard, Izanagi grabbed his sword, the Ame-no-Ohabari, the weapon he had used to kill his own infant son, Kagutsuchi, after the newborn fire god burned Izanami to death during the birthing, and his jeweled staff/spear, his naginata, the Ame-no-Nuhoko, the weapon he had used to form the islands out of the sea.

There was a massive surge in the throne room, and Shin'en was there, still in his newfound state of power, the head of Madara Uchiha in his hand. He was still very, very gertury and sestorrow, but right now it all being contained in a little personal bubble, if only barely, so that these few words could be shared.

"You do not know whom you are trying, boy," Izanagi threatened.

"I am the master of this house—the god of what is considered to be anime…and so much more. I am Alucard, Naruto, Goku, Meruem, Saitama, Kenshiro, Ichigo, Luffy, Kaneki, Eren Yaeger, Guts, All Might, Edward Elric, Natsu, Inuyasha, Yusuke, Kurosensei, Meliodas, Arceus, Akira, Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Seiya, and many more. I have all of their powers, but on the scale as the divine being. You stand no chance, no matter what power you awaken, or how much of a tantrum you throw."

"Tantrum."

"Yes, tan-"

And for all of that boasting of his powers, Izanagi was still too slow to block, dodge, or counter the fist that came across his jaw, and for all of that boasting of his powers, Izanagi's durability did nothing to stop the broken teeth that flew from his mouth, or save his jaw from being broken in such a way that it dangled grotesquely, the right side only hanging on to his face by a strip of skin and muscle. The blow delivered so much force to the god that he instantly achieved a speed twenty time greater than sound, but he moved no further than two feet from where he stood before another fist collided with his stomach with the same energy as the first.

Once again, Izanagi moved no more than so many inches at such incredible speeds before he was subject to more damage. A big fistful of his hair was grabbed, and his face brought forward to kiss an unforgiving knee that made him look worse than Izanami had looked when he tried to extract her from Yomi. With that grip still on his head, the god felt another about his leg as he was lifted and then forcefully brought down on a different knee this time, and he felt his spine turn to dust.

For the final blow, Shin'en brought Izanagi up, and impaled the god upon one of his new horns.

The father of the sun, moon, and storms gurgled and stilled, his body fading away as his spirit went to Yomi, where Izanami was waiting with a whole host of vengeful spirits.

Susano'o only watched and stood by silently as his father was beaten and subsequently killed. Shin'en made it look easy, but that was because everything that the boy had had gone into those five blows. No energy was wasted, and no amount of focus was elsewhere. A stampede of elephants could've gone thundering ten feet behind the son of Poseidon, and he wouldn't have known. Any energy that would've been expended in crying, screaming, in a halo of violent power, or in causing catastrophic weather was instead contained and released squarely upon Izanagi.

All of the energy that was burned through in the Dimensional Quake, and the Planetary Quake, was instead reigned in and given one single direction.

That was why it had appeared so easy—all of Shin'en's power, focus, and emotion had been directed at Izanagi and nowhere else.

And now it was over.

All of it was over.

Naruko and the unborn twins were gone, as were Yugito and Bee, the Akatsuki, and literally everyone else. The planet was holding together, but it was a fiery hell pit right now, volcanoes and storms ravaging the surface and the landmass broke apart, moved, reformed, and repeated. The Moon was still broken, Toneri having died when Madara had been sent crashing through the celestial body.

Jutsu to bring back the dead, like the Reanimation and the Rinne-Rebirth, sounded great on paper, and actually would've worked, but to use the Reanimation, the soul you were attempting to bind had to reside in the afterlife locale of the "Pure Land."

Naruko, Yugito, and Bee were not in the Pure Land; they were gone.

Shin'en had basically destroyed the dimension, and by proxy, the branch of the Pure Land that was tied to it. This was the kind of specifics that only the likes of a Shinto god or an ascended entity could know. Susano'o fit the god criteria, and Shin'en had ascended. With the Pure Land gone, there was no place for the good souls to go, and since there was no Pure Land, there was also no branch of Yomi for the bad souls either. With no place for good or bad, all were simply deleted and granted true, eternal peace.

At least, that was what the Kotoamatsukami had decreed when things such as souls and afterlives were created by them….

Susano'o gently stepped up to his adopted son, and placed an even gentler hand on his shoulder. Shin'en slightly turned his head, just enough to where his eye was visible, the last few tears he had left steadily dripping down his cheek. Susano'o brought the boy into his embrace, and Shin'en did not fight.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Manhattan

"All comfortable for the night, Ms. Jackson?"

"Oh, yes. Thank you, Hannah."

The nurse, Hannah, put on a strained smile, her eyes haunted.

"If there's anything you want to tell me, tonight is your last chance to say so."

"What do you mean?" Hannah asked, her brow furrowing.

Her answer was a small, sideways grin. "Don't worry about it. Tell me, what's on your mind?"

Hannah remained silent and still, then her eyes darted around, looking for any obvious listening device, and after determining that she was safe enough, sat in the wheeled chai that was customary to this room in the hospital/nursing home/prison/laboratory.

"It never sat well with me, what happened to you and the others, what's been done. God never wanted this, regardless of what President Nero claimed, and nothing that happened in the world was your fault, or any of the others."

A light chuckle. "As debatable as that is," just what that was supposed to be referring to was left to interpretation, "you have a good heart, Hannah. Don't worry about Nero or any of the others. They're all going to be taken care of tonight. I would make my peace with things while I still could, if I were you."

Hannah smiled sadly. "Ms. Jackson…you said that last night…and the night before…and every night now for the past thirty years."

"I have? Oh, well, then I guess I've been covering my bases just in case that one of those nights was the night."

"Of course, ma'am. Do you need anything else before I go home for the night?"

"Nope, I'm all good. Clean diaper, clean sheets, clean clothes, great food, and a nice, comfy bed, all thanks to you." The happy grin turned just a little sad for Hannah's sake. "Take my word tonight, sweetheart. Make sure you have no unfinished business. This night and never again."

"You've been saying that…" Hannah trailed off. "Goodnight, Ms. Jackson."

"Goodnight, Hannah. Turn the light off please, but leave my nightlight on. He likes his dramatic entrances."

"Of course, ma'am. I'll see you in the morning."

A sad smile. "No, you won't."

Hannah's parting smile was strained, but she did as asked, turned on the nightlight and turned off the main light, letting the bedroom soak in a dim glow that left dark shadows upon the corners. The door, a big, heavy, iron thing with only a small window, mesh wiring making it unbreakable, was shut and locked from the outside.

Fifteen ticks of the clock went by, and then she said, "Hey, Percy."

A pair of red lights flashed in the darkest corner of the room, and indeed, Percy came from the shadows. His hair was cut shorter than what it had been, but still pushed back over his scalp in many needle-like clumps. The cloak had also changed, no longer with a high collar, long, baggy sleeves, and a tube-like bottom. Now the ensemble fit like a military uniform, with the collar being lower around throat, and tighter. The sleeves were shorter, coming to the wrists, and were also tighter about the arms. The whole upper body was the same, fitting closer to the skin. The bottom of the cloak was cut differently, no longer wrapping around, but was now cut to leave the legs completely open at the front, and there were three distinct tails, two at the sides and one at the back, that went down to mid-calf.

It still had the red interior, and there was a single red cloud on the front, and one on the back.

Percy's pants were now black instead of blue, and the white legwarmers were red, and his sandals were black as well.

"It's been…longer than what I thought it has been, Persephone."

Percy's big sister smiled. "Yeah, it has been."

"You got old."

"I'm 95, you butthole."

"You don't look a day over 70."

"Awe, aren't you sweet?" Persephone smiled, her hair now short, white, and devoid of its once-silky texture. Her skin was pale and wrinkled, her body frail and weak, bearing many faint scars along her exposed arms, and many more under her gown. "Don't just stand there; come, sit next to me so we can catch up."

Percy moved forward and took a seat in the chair that the nurse had just occupied. Persephone held up her hand, and he took it firmly in his own.

"You're so handsome," Persephone said, her smile brighter than the sun, her eyes sparkling like stars. "Mom would be so proud of you."

"I destroyed my planet, killed my wife and our unborn children, and killed everyone else."

"But you're here. You pulled yourself together enough to come see me one last time."

Percy's lower lip trembled for a second.

"This is the last time. I'm tired Percy, and I've held on for the past seventy-five years for this day, so I could see my beloved baby brother one last time."

"But you can't go yet," Percy protested quietly. "I promised you that we'd spend at least a whole year together."

"Oh, Percy," Persephone smiled. "I release you of that promise."

Percy let out a shuddering breath, his eyes misting, but no tears fell. He didn't think he had any tears left.

"I'm gonna go now, Percy. Annabeth's been waiting on me for seventy-three years, and so has our little Estelle—we adopted her after Mom and Paul passed. That kiddo gets so cranky waiting on me to get back from work. I'll see you tomorrow, Percy. I love you."

Just before her eyes shut, Percy caught her in a genjutsu, and in that tenth of a second of eye contact, Persephone got to live that promised year, full of fun and adventure, with her, Annabeth, and Percy as spry teenagers together.

"Best. Year. Ever."

With that, Persephone's eyes shut for good, her withered hand slipping out of Percy's numb one to gently rest on the bed. Instead of the monitors going haywire with their long, unending shriek, they instead shut off completely.

Persephone's body faded away, her blankets and clothes rustling as they fell upon empty space.

Percy just sat there alone in the dimness, staring at where his withered, elderly, beaten, abused, and beloved big sister had been.

What followed should've been a somber, sacred moment. A time of silence and peace as he coped with the fact that now, finally, truly, everyone Percy had ever known and loved was dead. This was supposed to be a quiet moment as he mourned by his lonesome, but no. With Persephone's body gone, the monitors that were attached to her body no longer had anything to read, and so the machines thought that Persephone had flatlined.

The silence that should've been was instead replaced by a loud, nonstop scream.

It was but a duo of seconds later that the staff came rushing in with equipment, and that was the final straw for Shin'en.

His third eye opened and glowed as he wordlessly executed the anti-gravity jutsu that was the Almighty Push, releasing an invisible sphere of outward force with himself as the epicenter that easily pushed apart the asylum in the blink of an eye, and the rest of Manhattan but a few seconds later. Millions died without a clue as to what had happened, and trillions in property damage was caused as the mighty skyscrapers of Long Island were instantly and easily toppled.

In less than thirty seconds, the waters of the rivers and the bay were cascading in to fill up the massive, perfect half-sphere where civilization used to be, and a new lake was formed that day.

Did Shin'en stop to admire his handiwork, or pause for any kind of reflection? No.

He was already storming up to Nero in the last god-emperor's palace, completely bypassing all the magical protections thanks to the teleportation powers of the Rinne-Sharingan.

It was a truly despicable sight that Shin'en happened upon, Nero relaxing in a recliner, receiving fellatio from a boy that wasn't any older than ten, while a girl no older than fourteen stood next to Nero, grinding herself back and forth on the scum's outstretched hand while vaguely dressed as a dog—a collar and leash around her throat, a headband with large, floppy dog ears on her crown, oversized paw-like mittens on her hands, similar items on her feet, and a dog tail buttplug stretching her, the tail itself flopping about the backs of her legs and she was made to grind back and forth.

The reason for the recliner was so that Nero could watch a girl about six years old have her colon torn apart by a grown, hairy man. A gag was in the child's mouth, making her shrieks come out as muffled gurgles.

All of these people died as painless a death as you could when your heart suddenly explodes in your chest.

Nero barely had time to gasp before Shin'en stormed past, his hand coming down to grip a fistful of reddish hair. Nero squealed when he was just so easily yanked out of his comfy chair, slobber still on his erect member, his finger still slick with juices. His mind latched onto insanity as he realized who was dragging him.

Nero cackled madly, eyes unfocused, psyche splintered just by the mere sight of Shin'en Yūrei, but knowing that he was at the monster's mercy, knowing all that he had done to the monster's sister, knowing all that the monster had done already—knowing these things completely shredded Nero's sanity, and he just laughed and laughed and laughed.

Even when the ground fell away to reveal a place of fire and suffering, the sound of millions of damned souls, the smell of sulfur and brimstone, all rising from below, Nero still just laughed, foam at the corners of his mouth, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. Even when the Serpent, its body made of flame rose from this place of evil, Nero continued chortling.

He continued making incoherent sounds even as Shin'en tossed him into the air, even as the Serpent had him in his jaws, even as he was taken down, down, down….

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Did Shin'en find it strange or odd how easy it was to call up the Devil to come and take Nero, body and soul? Only at the back of his mind.

What good was killing Nero going to do? His spirit would just go to Tartarus, if not some other magically protected and set-up place, where he would reform and come back, and nothing would be different. Even going to Tartarus presented a problem, because it was right next door to the Underworld, the last mythological sanctum outside of Hotel Valhalla and select parts of the Duat. Being that close to Elysium would put Persephone's finally at-peace soul in terrible danger.

Torture didn't seem right either, because Shin'en couldn't think of anything painful enough to fit Nero's atrocities, if the god-emperor could even feel pain anymore. Even if he had, he didn't think he could put his heart into it enough to make it hurt.

Shin'en felt empty and hollow, with nothing left inside of him besides haunted memories.

As he stood at the top of the world, standing on the last few particles of air at the outermost reaches of the atmosphere, staring down at the dark side of the planet, the millions of dazzling lights of the cities below, Shin'en contemplated destroying this world, but he decided against it. Logic weighed in, telling him that if he destroyed the planet, wiped out the population like Asteria had at the end of her main story, then, just like in her world, the gods and all of their places would fade away with no left to believe or hear their stories and at least know about them.

The Underworld would fade away, and all of the good souls therein would be released to a place that Shin'en would never be allowed to go, not with how black his heart was.

Shin'en stared at the world he and his siter had born into. He had been taken from this world, from her, and damned to this life of constant, endless suffering, suffering that his sister had surpassed in her decades as Nero's prize slave. Shin'en wondered what to do with himself.

Did he go back down there and become the messiah, undoing Nero's evil to bring about a new, pure, golden age? Free the gods and restore their thrones? No. What was the point of sharing this paradise if his sister wasn't here to enjoy it with him? She was in paradise already, and everything she had gone through, Shin'en bring himself to be selfish enough to bring her back to life.

Her rest was earned and would be enjoyed until the Lord of Hosts decided it was time.

Shin'en recalled the Infinite Tsukuyomi, and how instead of it being a dream it was instead a portal for your consciousness to an alternate dimension, one that best fit whatever your dream was. That was a real, other place he had been to, a real, other him's body he had occupied and forced to do those horrible things. He could only imagine what was happening in that world, the sadness, the despair, the crying….Then again, maybe none. Maybe the unique and ultra-special circumstances allowed the gods enough leeway to bring everyone back to life like nothing had happened, and they got their happily ever after.

Shin'en decided to roll with that idea.

His thought then drifted to his sixteenth birthday, the day the Second Titan War came to an end, and he had been forced to fight the incarnation of his sister that had been taken from her world to live his life. He had killed that Persephone, after she had been right in the middle of the promised year with her little brother. That was two years ago now, yes, but time didn't move linearly through all the dimensions. The Percy of that world was probably still in bed, and would wake up wondering where his Persephone was at, unaware that she had been stolen away in the middle of the night and then murdered.

Shin'en owed it to his other self to give closure, and at least say sorry.

But not right now—not on this day.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Original Xenophobic Dimension

When he had left this place, the whole planet had been a volcanic hellscape. He had used Izanagi on a world-wide scale to temporarily make it a green and lush paradise as he held a one-man funeral for Asteria and Annabeth, right before he destroyed the traitorous Ryuk. Keeping up with the idea of non-linear time, it seemed that a number of years had passed since he was last here, in the physical sense.

There was natural green everywhere, the whole planet having undergone a similar metamorphosis as the area around Mount St. Helens, in which it was thought that millions of years would have to pass before life returned, following the eruption in 1980, but it had actually only taken hours in some places, and not even a decade in others for green to reappear.

Did Shin'en actually care? Not really.

As he sat against the oak tree, a cigarette slowly burning away in the corner of his mouth, he didn't care much for anything. He was burned out on caring, having cared so much after breaking the Infinite Tsukuyomi that he had barely shed a single tear after his sister passed away before him.

The wooden cross was still there, miraculously unwarped and unchanged in any way. The stone before it was altered. It now read:

In Memory of Loved Ones

Persephone Jackson

Naruko Jackson

Asteria Jackson

Annabeth Chase

Sukina Yūrei

Arashi Yūrei

Yūwaku Yūrei

Bullock Yūrei

Yugito Nii

Kill Bee

Ei

Darui

Cee

The Twins

Sally Jackson

And all the names of the orphans he had grown up with, and the matron, finished off the list.

Shin'en just sat there, smoking one cigarette after the other, his eyes completely and totally unblinking, body never moving, metabolism slowing to a crawl so that there was no worry about reliving himself, or being hungry or thirsty. Even if such needs arose, Shin'en was certainly sure he wouldn't have acted to eat or drink, and he was honestly on the fence about whether he'd put forth the effort to drop his pants to avoid shaming himself like a small child.

He was that broken on the inside.

He kept telling himself that Persephone had been hurt in more ways than he had been, the trauma involved in the split personalities included, and so he had no room or right to be brooding like he was. He kept telling himself that his suffering was just another story in an ever-expanding book, and that he was not special, and the world would not stop for him. He kept reminding himself of the times he had said such to others, the twins and the Assassin being chief in his memory, and that it was hypocritical of him to be acting this way.

Shin'en didn't care.

He wasn't fully human anymore, not that he ever had been in the first place, but there was just enough humanity left inside to where he had dragged himself to this hole, and couldn't yet muster the will to climb back out.

It was one thing to find Yūrei's head impaled on pikes in public, it was another to learn that he had had sold them, it was still another thing to learn that he had sold them out because he was betrayed by the Third Raikage. But it was an otherworldly thing to have killed Yūrei with his own sword, to have killed his own sister, killed Annabeth, and to have killed his own pregnant wife, Naruko, only to turn right back around and really kill Naruko, still pregnant, on top of Yugito and Bee, and then come home to find your sister an elderly mess that soon passed away after a lifetime of suffering.

Shin'en didn't think he'd ever be able to pull himself out of this, and he was just fine with sitting here and slowly wasting away, even if it took a hundred centuries.

Luckily, there were powers that weren't about to let that happen.

Shin'en heard a pair of footsteps behind him, both of them coming closer. On his right, the Leviathan gathered his cape beneath him as he sat down; on the left, Asteria sank to the ground, slipping her hand into Shin'en's.

"Why are you two here?"

"Why would we not?" the Leviathan countered casually.

You were there for us when our stories ended, and now we're here for you, Asteria thought at the boys.

Shin'en made a noncommitted grunt.

"You know that at the end of three days, I'm going to kick your ass, right?"

Another grunt.

I'll destroy your little monument here.

A loud crack filled the air as Shin'en suddenly gripped Asteria's hand so tight that her incredibly strong bones all snapped.

"Don't even think about it."

But Asteria's eyes slid over to meet his own as she turned her head, an evil little smile slowly spreading across her face, revealing the black gums and the pearly, translucent teeth. A vision pushed into Shin'en's mind, and he saw Asteria pouring her acidic blood all over his sacred monument, and it washed away, a cloud of gas rising with a sizzling hiss.

He let out a shout and made to crush Asteria's throat with his hands, but as he lunged at her, she threw herself forward, wrapping her arms and tail tightly around her brother.

Shin'en froze, his body going rigid. Then, slowly, the look of anger on his face melted away as his lip curled and his eyes shut. His outstretched arms came to close around Asteria, hugging her to him. A dam broke; what he had taken for supreme apathy and an uncaring disposition towards everything that had happened was actually a mental barrier that had been subconsciously erected to keep out any more pain.

But now…now that there was someone else here, someone to cry with him and help with the pain, Shin'en's subconscious mind could no longer handle it.

He started crying again.

A pair of massive, muscular arms came to gently settle around him from behind as the Leviathan joined in giving his support. Were it not that he was now a husband, and more importantly, a father, were it that he was still a deranged psychopath wandering from decade to decade, he would've scoffed at this weakness. But now that he had had to hold his crying wife, had to hold his crying children and let them now that he was there, he was their father, and that he loved them dearly, he was a changed man.

And so the Leviathan had no problem with making a public display of his love for his brother.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"I will never be the same again," Shin'en intoned as he stared at his monument. "I will never be able to love anyone like I loved you, Naruko, but I will not close my heart off and damn myself to a life of self-loathing and self-pity. That would be a dishonor to your memory—to all of your memories. All of you…I love you."

He dipped down to grab some dirt, and tossed it upon the stone.

What will you do now, Shin'en?

He turned to look at his brother and sister, at the Leviathan, Perseus, and at the Xenomorph Goddess, Asteria. He was serious now, focused, done with grieving and grateful that they had helped him heal so rapidly and so effectively, for he would never have been able to pull himself together without their help.

"There is work to be done," the Dragon-Ghost of the Abyss answered, eyes hard and meaningful.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Is this the end, then? Is this how Shin'en's story ends?

Not at all.

The Chaos War yet looms, though it's going to be looming for a while as I need to get back to my novel.

Is the sparingly mentioned RWBY crossover still on the table? Yes, but, once again, not for a while.

So…I didn't like how Kaguya just came in and stole the show from Madara, so I fixed that, and still had Madara wiped out anyway just to show that, for all that new, incredible power the Uchiha got, it was still nothing in the face of an emotionally charged, Omega Mode Shin'en.

Nor was Izanagi, who completely and totally ruined the second draft I had of this story, the first draft being a happy story in the Hidden Cloud with Karui and Omoi and Killer Bee and Yugito and etc. Yes, what I spent five years writing was the third draft, this dark, gritty tragic rendition.

Since this is the last chapter of this story, this your final opportunity for Reviews, your thoughts and opinions, your memories, and whatever else you have to say.

As the author of this trilogy, it's been an honor to tell this story, and I look forward to telling many more.

This is DelayedInspiration, hoping you're all happy and well, looking forward to the next chapter.