Naruto: The Unwoven Threads of Fate

"It wasn't supposed to be this way." Shirokumo sorrowfully says to me. "It was never supposed to be this way."

We're both alone in an almost completely dark cave. The only light to shine in the surprisingly well kept and tidy circular cave is a luminescent spider web that's covering the ceiling. It spans the entire surface, throwing off a soft blue glow that is barely enough to see by. The walls are polished smooth, someone has devoted years upon years to perfect their shine. There are only two irregularities in the otherwise perfect walls, the entrance covered by dark blue curtains that put all of the Weavers best work to shame and a small soothing waterfall that falls into a pool on the opposite side of the entrance.

But the most impressive thing in this cave is the floor. It has a stereotypical spider's web carved into it but it has been shattered. Countless cracks run through the once beautiful piece of art that has been forever desecrated. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say something massive lashed out in anger right in the center of the web.

Which is exactly where I have been suspended from the ceiling. While upside down. And completely cocooned in webs.

"You just had to act impulsively." He starts to slowly circle me as I sway on a slight breeze. "You knew he was a Spider. Dammit Al you fucking new it! Did you really think that we'd just casually overlook you killing him? You should have checked with me before that at the very least!"

"And now you're Wrapped!" He shouts in rage. "Al if you fuck this up you're dead. You do know that right?"

I stiffly nod once. Shirokumo has some seriously strong silk, it took a lot of effort to force the small action to happen.

"I can't even help you." Shirokumo sighs in defeat. "Usually I'm here to cut off the flow of nature chakra if it starts to overwhelm you. But with the shit you pulled you're on your own."

I huff out a sigh of my own.

"Oh shut up you got yourself into this mess!" He accuses me and he's not wrong. He jabs one of his many legs into my chest and there's a spark of chakra that arcs through the webs. It greedily travels through every strand of the cocoon, running along them like a shinobi would a rooftop. Soon it will have nowhere else to go except into me. "We're going to have a serious chat when you get out of here, you hear me mister!"

I don't bother to attempt to stop myself from grinning, even if the cocoon of webs is blocking him from seeing my face. Even if I can start to feel the nature chakra leak into my own chakra pool. He thinks I'll make it.

~It would be a shame to disappoint him.~

Yes. It would be a shame.

Five Minutes Later

Shirokumo is sitting high in a tree, basking in what little sunlight penetrates the thick layer of webs strung throughout the canopy. He's barely moving, in fact all of him is stark still except one of his legs. It's idly plucking at a lone thread over and over. Each pluck is accompanied by a sharp twang as it oscillates back and forth before settling. He's alone, simply absorbing everything that happened in the last few hours.

Twang.

His personal Summoner broke one of their most sacred rules. Probably the Summoner that had - has - the most potential to bring fame and glory to the Spiders. One of the best Summoners that they've ever had.

Twang.

Not necessarily the most eager to use them in combat, that's for sure. But he's capitalized on what the Spiders are good at, making webs. And he has them making the greatest web of all, one that encompases the entire Elemental Nations.

Twang.

Alvarcus truly cared for each and every spider he met. He kept them all out of harm's way whenever possible. He makes use of even the most obscure spiders, it's been so long since a Summoner recognized the tunnel spiders as useful.

Twang.

Not to mention how close he came on his own to finishing the Trials. He breezed through them. It's supposed to take years, decades even, for a potential candidate to complete one. Alvarcus only had one left. One measly little Trial. All he had to do was ask. Ask to become a Sage.

Twang.

Instead it has been thrust upon him. Now he has no choice. It is either become a Sage or be forgotten. Even if he does manage to live it will take years to build back the trust he severed when killing Kidomaru. As of now, it is only Shirokumo himself that is capable of completely trusting the boy.

Twang.

"It is horrible, isn't it?" Arachne settles down next to the eldest spider. Her massive bulk doesn't bend the tree limbs at all, she's far too accustomed to moving through them to let that happen. "For Kyodaigumo to go to such an extreme."

Twang.

"Yes, I suppose it is." Shirokumo doesn't bother to look at the Mother of the Spiders. Instead he continues to stare at the mouth of a cave. The one sacred to them, the one where all of the Sages are tested. "Very few have lived through it. Less kept their sanity."

"Do you really think Alvarcus has any sanity left to keep?" Arachne dryly asks her friend as she shifts around in the webs for a more comfortable spot to watch the cave.

Twang.

"Ha." Shirokumo snorts out in mild amusement. "You may be right about that. Sanity has never been his strongest suit."

The two spiders let a silence form between them. This silence is tense, not because they don't get along but because they're waiting to learn Alvarcus' fate.

Twang.

Twang.

Twang.

"Will you stop that?" Arachne asks with just a little bit of a bite to her tone.

Shirokumo finally takes his eyes off the cave, well only half of them, to look at Arachne. He rests his leg against the single strand of webbing once more and pulls it taunt.

"Shirokumo." There's a distinct warning in her voice, she's daring him to continue.

Twang.

"For someone so old you can be such a child." Arachne sighs out, admitting defeat and letting Shirokumo continue his nervous tick. She probably never should have said anything, she can't even remember the last time he seemed so… off. "Do you think he will live?"

"If there's one thing I've learned about our Summoner, it's this." Shirokumo turns his gaze to the cave where he can start to feel the whirling of nature chakra. It's beginning and it will end in a few hours. These are some of the longest hours of his life. "He is a survivor."

With Alvarcus

~How interesting.~

'What is so interesting?' I mentally ask Sureddo. It's just the two of us now. Sink or swim. Kill or be killed. Sage or death.

~This chakra. It… itches?~

'It doesn't itch to me.' That's… weird. 'Hell how can you feel an itch? Can you even do that? Oh God are my human sensations rubbing off on you? Please say you won't start crying next, I really don't need that in my life.'

~Ha ha. Very funny. I don't know how else to describe it. It's like a mild burning sensation, not one that is painful but one that is just irritating enough to make you take notice. The closest thing I have is itching. How does it feel to you?~

'Like… hmm give me a moment.' I spend a moment to deeply analyze the slim amount of chakra that's worked its way into our shared chakra system. 'It reminds me of what I feel like when I'm livid beyond belief. It feels like rage.'

~Now that you mention it, it does feel like rage.~

'That's strange, I'm pretty sure Sages are supposed to be gentle. I think that was a thing? Shit was that a thing?'

~Well isn't that helpful.~

'Stuff it.' I sass Sureddo right back. 'We're in this together. Starting pointless arguments won't help at all. Let me know if it gets worse for you, alright? I'll think of something.'

~I will.~

A few minutes pass in silence as both Sureddo and I keenly watch the amount of chakra trickling into us.

~Host? Is it supposed to be this easy? It's just balancing chakra.~

'I have absolutely no idea.' I'm not lying either, it's one thing to know how something is supposed to work but another to go through the process yourself. 'Now that I think about it, we may be a little bit… uh... skewed? Yeah let's say skewed.'

~I don't follow.~

'Well to put it simply, you are my chakra system. You have been for over a year. It flows through you. On top of that you constantly balance the presence of five unique chakras. Do you really think that balancing two would be difficult for you?'

~That is a good point.~

'Not to mention that it's not really its own unique chakra, it's a part of every chakra. Every single person has the ability to become a Sage, to harness nature chakra for themselves. I've always thought it was because nature chakra is already a part of everyone. So technically you're just maintaining a single chakra right now. It just has a third piece to it in addition to the yin and yang. Kind of like a kid only playing with two toys that suddenly gets a third, at the end of the day they all go into the same toy bin. That was a really shitty analogy. Forget I said that.'

~But this had such a build up. It is supposed to be nearly unobtainable. A challenge that only those with a will of steel can pass. One that scarcely a few dozen have ever achieved! We're-

'Making it our bitch.' I smirk to myself. 'Which is really convenient for us since the only other practical - and saying practical is being very generous - thing I can think of to help us stand against what is to come is the Rinnegan. And well… I get the odd feeling that Nagato isn't too keen on parting with them. Plus there's the whole do I even keep them or squish them beneath my boot.'

~Alvarcus let's worry about one thing at a time. We can discuss what to do with the purple eyes later, right now we should be more worried about getting through this.~

'Fair point.' I'd nod my head in acceptance of Sureddo's logic but that would take too much effort. 'Not to mention what the hell I'm going to tell Orochimaru once we get back.'

~It's times like these I'm glad only you can hear me.~

Otogakure

"I feel much better." Orochimaru straightens up from his slightly hunched over position. He wanted to get a better angle as he tortured - ahem. Relieved some stress.

Lord knows he needed this.

"Pity though." He disappointedly glances back down at the crude operating table. The recently made corpse is a mash up of parts and pieces. The head and torso clearly belong together, there's nothing that would seem out of place between the two. But all its limbs are mismatched. The pigmentations are all slightly off color, the general sizes are not uniform and even muscle mass is drastically different. The left leg is a handful of centimeters longer than the right and the arms are on backwards. A left arm is on the right shoulder, and vise versa. "I thought… hm. What was his name? Oh well not like it matters, I'll call him Frank. I thought Frank would live longer. I managed to sever and attach all new limbs but he expired so soon! I could have had so much more fun!"

Orochimaru walks over to a sink, having to step over the mangled mess of most of four other corpses on his way, and begins to clean the various bodily fluids off of his hands. Miraculously nothing else on him is stained. Say what you will about the man but he's good at what he does.

"Is he back yet?" Orochimaru stretches out his senses, feeling for his child's presence. "No. Not yet. I suppose I should handle some business then, who knows when the Spiders will be done with him."

The Snake Sannin leisurely strolls over to his intercom system while stepping over the corpses yet again.

"Maiko, darling, could you please come down to my lab? I require your presence." He clearly and authoritatively speaks into the microphone.

Orochimaru sighs as he prepares for a short wait. Maiko doesn't disappoint, she arrives promptly when called. She knows to drop whatever it is she's doing whenever he asks her to even when told to come to his lab which is usually a very, very bad thing. Exactly like a good underling should.

Orochimaru has invested a lot of time and effort to make sure all his underlings respond exactly how she did.

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama?" Maiko asks with confidence but her ears give away her true feelings. They're pinned down to her scalp in terror. "You called?"

"Yes yes!" Orochimaru gestures her to come into the lab. "No need to worry about the mess, in fact that is why I called you here."

"Do you want me to clean it?" Maiko eyes the four corpses on the ground, all of which are missing vital things like arms and legs, and the one abomination on the table. "That could take a while but if you request it of me I will do so. If at all possible I would like to change first, I like this outfit and blood is so hard to get out of clothes. Only if that's okay though!"

"Nonsense, I have people for that." Orochimaru waves off her guess. "It's just I'd rather only make one mess instead of two."

The last thing Maiko sees in this world is a long piece of steel sticking out of Orochimaru's gaping maw and spearing into her chest.

"W-why?" She manages to sputter out as her lifeblood spills onto the ground, mixing with the already large pool.

"Because you might know my son's secret." Orochimaru grants the final request of his experiment, the only reason he's doing so is because she was a success. She served him well, no matter how briefly, so he will allow her this. "Cats have a nasty habit of sensing if someone has died before. I will not allow it to spread."

Maiko crumbles to the ground once Orochimaru withdraws the Sword of Kusanagi from her chest.

"There." Orochimaru turns to make his way out of his lab while stretching out his senses once more. "Still not back. How unfortunate, perhaps I'll make a quick stop by the prison and pick up a few things for him."

Unbeknownst to the legendary shinobi a tiny black speck, one easily mistaken for a clump of dust or even dirt, observed the entire thing. The worst thing about it is that the tiny spider isn't even surprised. In fact it has been warned that this might happen by Alvarcus himself.

After all, he did warn the cat that what she knew could get her killed.

With Alvarcus

~Alvarcus. It's getting worse. The rage. It's getting stronger. It's making me… squeamish. I don't like it.~

'Well shit. I figured that would happen. It's okay. I've got this. I've totally got this. The end has to be close.'

~Host it's burning now. It's very… uncomfortable. I really don't like it. It makes me want to lash out.~

'It's probably only going to get worse. Tell ya what, you're handling the chakra. Let me handle the rage.' I'm suggesting a divide and conquer approach.

~Is that a good idea?~

'Please, I got this.' I confidently say to Sureddo. 'You constantly do so much for me, let me do this for you. Trust me.'

~Okay. I'll push all the rage onto you and manage the chakra myself. But the moment I think you can't handle it I'm taking some of it back.~

'You worry about yourself. I can handle this.'

I hope.

Somewhere in the Elemental Nations

"Jiraiya-sensei!" A familiar boy with a mop of ridiculously blonde hair whines. "Where are we going now?"

"Kusa." Jiraiya distractedly responds. He's furiously scribbling in a notebook at finger breaking speeds. "I've got some snooping to do."

"You're going to snoop around in Kusa." Naruto flatly says to his teacher. "Why the hell are you going to do that? Kusa is one of our allies!"

"For new, yes." Jiraiya finishes his mad scribbling and snaps the notebook shut. "But with that stunt your friend pulled things have gotten shaky over there. Kusa is living in fear of an attack from Oto and war breaking out. So we're going to pop over there and casually remind the Kusakage that we have their backs while digging for any information that could hint at them turning on us. Orochimaru is focused on destroying Konoha and the Kusakage knows that. He could dangle one of our secrets in front of Orochimaru's nose to get him to not level Kusa."

"You really except that to happen?" Naruto's head wilts.

"Kiddo, I'm a veteran shinobi. I expect anything can happen." Jiraiya suddenly vanishes in a cloud of smoke, leaving Naruto behind and alone.

"HA!" Naruto shouts at the spot where Jiraiya once stood. "Bet you didn't expect that!"

With Arachne and Shirokumo

"I don't believe it." Arachne says in undisguised surprise as she stares at the mouth of the cave.

A lone figure is walking out of it, one still masked in the shadows of the cave. A measly two steps later the figure is squinting up at the sky with a raised arm trying to block out the sudden assault of sunlight to his eyes.

He is radiating an aura of doom, it's wafting off of him so strongly that the two spiders can feel it from their vantage point. The innocent looking boy, the one childishly looking around in slight confusion, has a cloak of rage whirling around him. It's so strong, so volatile that nature itself seems to surge in response to his mere presence. The wind has picked up, the ground has become harder, the flora and fauna present all seem to become rooted to the spot in fear of his wrath. No, not his wrath. Of the wrath he's throwing off, they simply can't comprehend this beast's fury. Because if his aura is this strong, then how potent is the wrath he himself feels?

Both spiders know exactly who it is, after all there was only one being inside the cave.

"He lived." Arachne breathily loses the words from her mouth.

Alvarcus' head snaps towards the two spiders, instantly zeroing in on their location.

She doesn't want to admit it to herself but she's feeling fear. Fear from her Summoner, fear from the boy before her. She never knew that a Sage could feel such malice. She's seen a few other Sages go on a rampage. She's watched as Shirokumo beat their senses back into them. She's felt what they were like, even the one that he had to kill to stop.

This is nothing like it. This is in a whole different class.

That terrifies her beyond anything else because if she had to hazard a guess about what made him feel such strong fury is the Spiders.

"For now." Shirokumo rises up from his spot in the web. "We've lost Sages to this madness before. I'll go confront him."

With Alvarcus

"I feel good." I purr out as I step further away from the cave and a stiff wind rushes past me, whipping my coat and hair into a localized frenzy. I experimentally flex my fingers, curling both of my hands into fists repeatedly. I turn them this way and that way to fully look at them. "Really good. So this is what Sage Mode is?"

~Host, are you okay?~

"I'm perfectly okay." I purr right back to Sureddo as I look away from my hands. "I wonder how easy it would be to crush stone with my bare hands? Like balling up paper? Could I warp metal with my sheer grip now?"

~Alvarcus! Keep calm! Think calming things!~

"Oh shut up I am calm!" I snap at the Jiongu.

Then a sudden all encompassing though thunders through my skull. One that shakes me to my core. "My ninjutsu just got upgraded to a whole new tier. That means my chakra strings are better. I have to test them out! Right now! This is going to be orgasmic!"

"Keep it in your pants Al." A familiar white spider appears before me, a good dozen meters away. He's wary of me. "You have got to be the weirdest person I've ever met."

"Hey Shirokumo. Or is it the Ancient One? Wait, there's something more important." I barely spare him a glance as I scour my surroundings for something to test my newly enhances strings on. "Are there any trees or boulders or anything around here that aren't important?"

"Personally I'd prefer if a fresh Sage didn't test out his new insanely destructive toy right next to our most sacred place." Shirokumo carefully chooses his words as if he's worried about setting me off.

"Fine. I'll see just how much of a boost I got later." I huff out in indignation as I stuff my hands in my pockets to Shirokumo's dumbfounded expression. "We gotta talk."

"You're… not going on a rampage?" He asks in great confusion. "The rage coming off of you is so strong. No other new Sage has ever felt like this before."

"Rage?" I snort out in dark amusement as I sit down right where I'm at.