The borders of the Land of Sou trembled under the weight of countless armies.
Soldiers from all corners of the world stood ready, their weapons glinting in the moonlight.
These soldiers had been summoned by a cloaked man with a single promise: to slay the monstrous Rabbit Goddess .
The Land of Sou was nothing more than collateral damage in their eyes—a prize to be taken once their true goal was achieved.
A commander of the allied forces raised his sword high, his voice booming across the battlefield.
"Today, we kill the Rabbit Goddess and her spawns! For our brothers, sacrificed to that cursed tree!"
The ground quaked under a thunderous roar of approval. War cries shattered the stillness. The armies surged forward.
At the heart of the chaos, Hagoromo clashed with his younger brother, Hamura—his body possessed by their mother.
"Snap out of it, Hamura!" Hagoromo shouted, barely dodging the flurry of attacks.
But the ground trembled again. Screams echoed from the village of their birth.
"Why… why are we being attacked by this many humans?" Hagoromo muttered as his sensory perception confirmed it—tens of thousands were advancing.
A sharp blow struck his ribs, another to his jaw. Hamura had broken through. In an instant, dozens of precise hits landed, staggering the elder brother.
Teeth clenched, Hagoromo summoned lightning to his hand and, with a heavy heart, drove it through Hamura's chest.
"Forgive me… brother."
Hamura gasped, blood trickling as he clung to Hagoromo's hand.
But then—his spinning three-tomoe Sharingan twisted, spiraling inward. Purple rings bloomed.
The Rinnegan was born.
"Hagoromo! Use this!" shouted Gamamaru, emerging from the shadows and tossing a seal.
Hagoromo caught it mid-air, pressed it to Hamura's chest. A surge of chakra—Hamura's eyes cleared.
"What… happened…?" he whispered, staring at the healed wound.
"Thank Gamamaru later," Hagoromo replied. Six Truth-Seeking Orbs floated behind him, and a black staff formed in his hand.
"No time. I'll face Mother. You stop the soldiers—send them back if you can."
Across the battlefield, seated atop a platform of chakra, Kaguya Otsutsuki watched without emotion.
"Hagoromo. Look around you. These humans you cling to… they've come to kill us all. Still, you choose to protect them?"
"They're grieving, not evil. This can still be resolved peacefully."
"Then stop me, child," she said, rising into the sky.
From below, soldiers stared in awe and terror. Then someone shouted.
"Loose arrows! Fire!"
Thousands of projectiles rained upward. Kaguya didn't flinch. Every arrow halted midair, reversed—and massacred the frontlines.
Even then, the troops readied again.
"Shoot!"
Among the thousands, one arrow glowed golden, wrapped in dozens of seals. As it neared, it suddenly twisted—
—and became a man.
A cloaked figure with a scythe appeared in midair. His slash grazed Kaguya's shoulder—a thin line of blood appeared before he vanished.
Kaguya froze. She stared at the blood on her palm.
Her lips curled downward. She ascended higher, chakra erupting like a tidal wave.
Hagoromo's eyes widened.
"Mother, stop!"
His Susanoo roared to life—a blue titan towering above the battlefield, shielding the survivors and Hamura.
Kaguya smirked. The Rinne-Sharingan pulsed on her forehead.
Far away, a monstrous silhouette emerged—a beast as tall as the Susanoo. Its mouth opened wide.
A fully-formed Tailed Beast Bomb launched toward them.
The explosion that followed swallowed armies, forest, lake, and village alike.
Silence.
Ash rained from the sky.
"That… that was the Divine Tree," Hamura whispered, using his Byakugan. "Brother… we must stop her now."
The final clash began.
Mountains crumbled. Rivers dried. For days, the siblings fought, exhausting their chakra reserves. Yet Kaguya—and the Ten-Tails—never tired.
"Brother, one final move!" Hamura shouted, cleaving through a tail.
The two raced toward their mother.
"All-Killing Ash Bones."
Kaguya raised her hand—but stopped mid-gesture.
….
Her eyes widened in agony.
Elsewhere, in a dark cave… minutes ago
A cloaked man held a blood-stained scythe. He knelt, drawing a circle using Kaguya's divine blood. His lips parted in ecstasy.
Black and white stripes formed across his body.
"This divine taste… how exquisite!" he moaned, repeatedly stabbing himself through the chest.
Each stab echoed through the cave—and each one pierced Kaguya's soul from afar.
...
*Back on the battlefield*
Kaguya writhed.
Hamura and Hagoromo didn't waste the moment—they plunged their palms onto her.
"Seal: Twin Heaven Subjugation!"
But before they could finish—a hand shot through Kaguya's back.
Not hers. Someone else's.
A young man with piercing blue eyes. One bore the symbol "六".
"You…"
A surge of chakra flowed from her into him.
"Now, Brother!" Hamura cried.
"Catastrophic Planetary Devastation!"
The earth split apart. Massive slabs of rock encased Kaguya's body. The boy—Tenshin—backed away.
But a black mass slithered from her sleeve.
Tenshin reached to destroy it—when a fist came flying at him.
He caught it easily.
"Hamura, are you sure you want to fight in that state?"
"Why didn't you help us earlier?!" Hamura growled.
"Because… if I had, you'd never have grown strong enough to win," Tenshin replied, turning to Hagoromo.
"He's right," the Sage said quietly. "His interference… saved us."
"Then shouldn't you be thanking me?"
Tenshin smiled and pulled a black cube from within his cloak.
"What are you planning?" Hagoromo asked.
"To go far away."
In an instant, the cube pulled him in. He vanished.
Hagoromo and Hamura approached cautiously.
"Brother… I sense life inside. Tenshin… and something else."
Hamura touched it.
A blue flame engulfed his hand.
He recoiled. The cube began shaking violently.
Each side opened.
A blue eye peered out, shifting restlessly.
Hagoromo Stepped forward and covered the burning cube with one of his truth seeking orbs.
"I don't know what the youngest is planning, but if it endangers the world then I will be there to stop him." Hagoromo said as he moved back the truth seeking orb behind him.
The pair of brothers look at the destroyed battlefield and at the writhing ten tails that was shrinking in form back into a tree.
The captured humans in the divine tree were released from the illusion, stood in place thinking about the dream they just had.
After Hagoromo and Hamura escorted them away, they came back to the divine tree.
Hagoromo turned his rod into a spiral black sword and split the ten-tails into nine souls, each soul was a different beast with a corresponding number of tails.
"Looking at their form now, I can't correlate them with the ten tails we just fought." Hamura said with a smile looking at the nine newborn souls.
"I will make sure that instead of destruction, these tailed beasts will help and protect humans. I will raise them myself." Hagoromo said as he absorbed the nine souls into himself.
"When mother was controlling me, I felt her emotions. All she felt was fear, betrayal and pain, she felt the need to protect us from this world but was met with us retaliating against her wishes." Hamura said with a smile as he looked at the moon in the sky.
"I have decided to stay by mother, I guess in the end I still love her after all." Hamura continued as he distanced himself from his brother.
"Elder brother, I will always be watching over the world you create. So come visit once in a while." Hamura turned into a glowing stream of light and flew to the moon.
Hagoromo looking at his brother's departing figure didn't feel the change in the cube, in which his other brother was in.
One of the six eyes closed and a symbol appeared in the midst of each remaining eye, a '一' appeared
——
A/N
'一' means one, while '六' means six