Naruto: Mixed Heritage(Rewrite)

'Do I really have the right to interfere this deeply?'

Renjiro's mind drifted.

The boy still laughed like a child. Still tripped over his own feet during sparring drills. Still spoke of Hokage with a dreamy gleam in his eyes, as if the title were a crown made of sunlight. Still hopeful. Still foolish. Still whole.

And yet...

'Do I let him go through all of that?'

The question felt like glass in his throat.

'Do I try to protect him? Preserve him? Even if it means Madara chooses another Uchiha?

The thought made bile rise up. A worse alternative. A more obedient vessel. A colder heart. What if Madara selected someone else—someone with fewer doubts, fewer ties to humanity? Someone who didn't need to be broken because they were already hollow?

Would that be better? Or worse?

The Ten-Tails. The Infinite Tsukuyomi. Kaguya. He remembered them all too clearly—looming shadows at the end of the original timeline, each more monstrous than the last. If Obito didn't fall, someone else might. Someone even more unpredictable. Someone Renjiro couldn't outthink or outmaneuver.

Someone who wouldn't hesitate.

He clenched his fists into the dirt. Knuckles white, skin stretched over bone. The ground beneath him felt cold and distant.

"I don't want to make him suffer," Renjiro whispered. "I owe him that much."

His voice caught in the silence.

"His father... was my first squad leader."

A soldier's soldier. Gruff, competent, unflinching in battle. But kind in the quiet moments.

Renjiro had been young and inexperienced, but he had been there for him.

Would his father ever forgive him for breaking Obito? Would he curse his name from beyond the grave? Or worse—would he look at Renjiro and say, "You should've done more."

Would he ever forgive himself?

His thoughts spiralled. Again. As they always did. He had walked these mental circles before, carved them into the floor of his soul like prison bars.

Why was he here? Why this world?

Had he been sent to save it? To guide it? To break it more cleanly?

'Was I meant to fix the story? Or replace it with something worse?'

A wind stirred the broken grasses. The world felt quiet in the way old ruins do—haunted and hollow.

'What if I was meant to give them the future they never had?'

But at what cost?

Obito. Rin. Kakashi. Minato. Naruto. Sasuke. Every life he tried to preserve twisted the web tighter until he couldn't tell if he was saving anyone anymore—or just delaying the inevitable.

Saving them meant stopping Madara. Stopping the Tsukuyomi Plan. Stopping Kaguya. And to do that, he'd need to become something stronger than he'd ever been. Something monstrous.

He couldn't imagine facing a Rinnegan wielder. Couldn't imagine crossing blades with Kaguya. The Rasenshuriken had nearly torn his arm apart. His chakra control was still erratic, his body fragile compared to the monsters he knew were coming.

'Am I strong enough to carry all this?'

The silence stretched.

He considered it again: vanishing. After the Third War ended, he could slip away. Become a shadow. Guide the world with whispers and interventions, never staying long. Never drawing notice. Let the history books forget him. Let the world move on without the burden of a ghost.

It would be safer. Smarter. Less of a liability for Konoha.

But he hated the thought. Hated the idea of abandoning the village. Leaving Minato behind. Leaving Kakashi and Rin. Obito. The graves. The hopes.

Everything he'd come to care about.

He grimaced bitterly.

'If I want my plans to work... if I want to stop Madara, protect Naruto, and keep the world from burning in illusion and godhood... then I either need to become Hokage.'

'Or a weapon. A rogue shinobi'

There was no middle ground.

"Crack!"

A twig snapped.

Regrets buzzed at the back of his mind like insects trapped in glass. For every life he saved, another future unravelled. Another life lost somewhere else. It was a paradox he couldn't solve. A ledger he couldn't balance.

And one question haunted him, louder than all the rest:

'If I save too many people... what happens to the ones who were supposed to be saved by pain?'

He exhaled slowly, a sound somewhere between a sigh and a surrender.

"Maybe I was never supposed to fix everything," he murmured.

His eyelids fluttered shut.

"Maybe... I was just supposed to choose what breaks."

Miles away from Renjiro's contemplative stillness there lay a dying stretch of the borderland between Wind Country and Earth. The sands here were not golden, but ashen. Parched earth cracked in jagged veins beneath a pale moon, and the distant dunes stood still like slumbering beasts. The wind was quiet, almost reverent as if nature itself was holding its breath.

A single figure lay half-buried beneath dust and silence.

Gani.

The daughter of the Tsuchikage, the diplomat had turned prisoner. Her limbs twitched involuntarily, a spasm here, a sluggish flicker there. Her skin was clammy, her mouth dry, caked with fine grains of sand. Chakra still clung faintly to her, like dew on dying grass, but it was tangled—snarled and sluggish, like silk wrapped around thorns. She was conscious in the most tragic sense of the word: half-awake, unable to move, trapped between dream and nightmare.

Her vision swam. Shadows danced along the treeline. No... not shadows.

Something inside the trees.

A thin fissure opened along the gnarled bark of a wind-warped tree just ahead, soundless but sinister. It widened slowly, deliberately, like an eye parting after a long sleep. A white face slithered out from within. Humanoid, vaguely. But the proportions were wrong. The eyes were too round, too gleeful. The mouth curled in a grin that was all angles and no warmth. And the skin... bone-white and seamless, like polished ivory carved into a mockery.

Gani, or something resembling her, emerged from the tree-like mist, before coalescing into white Zetsu. His long fingers brushed the bark behind him, petting it like an old friend.

"Oh dear," he murmured, tilting his head as he looked at Gani.

He crouched beside her with unnatural grace, his knees folding outward, spiderlike.

"You've been such a helpful little bird, haven't you?" His voice carried a curious cadence—playful, almost sing-song, but with a rasp that scraped at the edge of her thoughts.

Gani blinked slowly. Her pupils were unfocused, but some part of her—buried deep—registered fear. Her chakra flared weakly, instinctually.

Zetsu grinned wider.

"Oh no, none of that," he purred.

A finger touched her forehead—just a light tap—and Gani convulsed. A thin veil of chakra pulsed outward as if it were peeling something off her skin. Her thoughts fractured. The trees around her began to bleed into one another. Sound distorted.

'What is this...?' She thought.

"Don't worry," Zetsu whispered, as if reading her thoughts, while cupping her cheek like a lover. "You'll forget."

Gani's lips parted as if to scream, but only a breath came out.

A second pulse of chakra shimmered through the air, this one tinted faintly violet. It struck like a whip of mist—fast, unseen—and slithered into her mind. The genjutsu wasn't flashy. It was insidious. Gentle. Persuasive. Not like a hammer shattering glass, but like water wearing down stone. Slowly. Invisibly. Fatally.

Memories began to rethread in new orders.

She remembered standing before the Kazekage—following the Tsuchikage's orders, even the awkward moment later. She remembered leaving under heavy guard. She remembered... success.

But none of it had happened.

"You will return to Iwa," he whispered, slow and rhythmic, like casting a spell. "You will tell your father the mission went smoothly. That you met the Kazekage. You will say this. You will believe this."

Gani's lips moved soundlessly at first. Then, quietly: "Yes..."

"Very good." Zetsu smiled, his voice silk over glass. "You're such a good messenger. So easy to repurpose."

He tilted his head again, eyes narrowing in amusement. "You see... the truth is sharp, and sharp things cut. But lies? Lies are soft. Lies wrap around people. Comfort them. Suffocate them."

He stood slowly, dusting off his knees.

"Now go."

Gani's body moved before her mind did. Her feet shuffled. She turned toward the northwest—toward Iwagakure—and began to walk. Her steps were uneven at first, like a drunkard's, but they soon gained rhythm. She walked with purpose now, the puppet strings invisible, the thoughts in her head borrowed.

She didn't look back.

White Zetsu watched her until she was just a figure among the dunes. The moon hung above like a pale eye, uncaring.

Then he laughed.

A quiet, chittering sound. More insect than human. It echoed strangely, as if the trees themselves were joining in.

"She's useful. Very useful," he muttered, before glancing over his shoulder at the darkened trail that led back toward Sunagakure. "And they're all still dancing... just like he wanted."

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