Chapter 1 – Discordant Spots

The freezing touch of the Death God electrified his newborn soul in a cacophony of euphoric pain. Memories of a life long past flashed before him like a tidal wave of crushing emotions.

"Nii-sama…don't grieve for me…I can be your light now…" A vague man-like shape promised while dying in his arms, holding up two bloody round balls of flesh to him like an offering to a deity.

He screamed silently into the night with wide unseeing eyes. His senses were an incomprehensible storm and his mind was a song of screeching colors and spots of empty night.

"The longer you live the more you realize reality is just made of pain, suffering, and emptiness…Listen...In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows!" His own raspy virile voice rang out in the candlelit cave and the shadows swayed in the darkness as if dancing to the illustrious Truth.

His spirit heaved and groaned as black ether burst forth from the cocoon of the baby soul. An august form emerged, filled with the peerless force of transcendent Yin.

In that moment, his vision cleared and all his senses came into harmony to bring him the perception of the material world once more.

But just as soon he grasped on to the realization that he was somehow alive again, blazing pain blasted through him as a fiery red chakra tore into his body drowning him in an ocean of mighty Yang. At his navel a searing heat etched arcane symbols that bound the Yang to him with the unbreakable form of the Eight Trigrams.

Deep within the mental location of the chakra war, a tall man with long black hair in traditional clan era shinobi armor stood with his forearms covering his face against the torrent of chakra buffeting him. Majestic black bars held back the titanic form of the Nine-Tailed fox in a cage.

The beast roared with insane fury as the sight of the man before it, calling all of its considerably diminished powers to bear. When the Nine-Tails had recognized the plan of the blond man to seal him and lost his other half to the Death God, he thought he would have to bide his time to influence his new host to eventually give him freedom. But upon his entry into his vessel, he was shocked by the familiar chakra of the monster in human skin who had enslaved him long ago. His rage overtook him and he railed against his cruel fate.

"Nine-Tails! You are just an unstable coalescence of energy that was once a single, ultimate form! A being without sapience like you requires a guide to show you purpose, as I did so long ago! Recognize the futility of your resistance, and acknowledge me as your master, for the tailed beasts are nothing but slaves to those with blessed eyes! Obey!" The man shouted vehemently with a mad grin as he pulled his arms back to reveal his deathly obsidian eyes and surged his dark chakra forth.

The Nine-Tails eyes gleamed with panic as he shook his head vigorously and let out an unearthly wail of despair as the chakra covered him in the shroud of endless darkness.

"NO!" he roared, as he slumped down, defeated, submitting to his fate as he cursed his father for giving the damned Uchiha this unholy power. It wasn't fair! He was the Nine-Tails, the greatest of the tailed beasts, a being of such majesty that no puny human could even hope to compare. He was a force of nature, immortal and wise, yet this scum dared to claim that he was a mindless beast that needed a guide.

Wait a minute.

Wasn't he supposed to actually be a mindless beast now after succumbing to the control of the Sharingan?

He gathered his wits and chakra and exploded with the realization that the Uchiha had failed to control him!

The man lost his grin as he realized too that his technique didn't work, and the familiar power in his eyes was torturously missing.

"Madara Uchiha! Where are your blessed eyes now, huh? You are just an insect without your precious Sharingan! Not worthy of guiding anything, let alone the mightiest of the Tailed-Beasts!" The Nine-Tails insulted gleefully with manic bloodshot eyes.

Now it was Madara's turn to roar with insane rage as he cursed the cruelty of fate to give him another chance at life only to rob him of his greatest treasure.

"This changes nothing! Learn your place, Nine-Tails!" He bellowed even while his rage gave way to calm analysis of the situation as he rapidly processed all the information he had gathered from his physical and chakra senses earlier.

Yin and Yang fought in a vicious whirl as a deadly miasma leaked out from every pore of the baby's body.

"What's happening? Did something go wrong?" A woman's voice cried out, even as her life force was quickly disappearing.

"I don't," a man in robes that prominently declared his status as the Fourth Hokage forced out between heavy breaths, paralyzed by the weight of the Nine-Tails' Yin chakra and the Death God's hold,"…know. The seal is…unstable…" He tried to pour more chakra into the seal, but it had little effect.

"Then I'll help!" The woman struggled forward on the ground to touch the baby and concentrated, creating ethereal chains of pure chakra which she sent into the baby's body.

"Kushina…wait! You have to save some chakra for me to seal inside Naruto!" The fourth Hokage warned before gritting his teeth as he felt his soul slipping away to the Death God.

"Minato, you idiot! What use is meeting me years in the future if Naruto won't survive today! This is all your fault! You should have let me seal the Nine-Tails back into myself!" Kushina cried helplessly, thinking of the pain her baby would go through as an orphan.

Minato gasped as the Death God wrenched one last time, and he whispered in despair, "Sorry, Kushina…I love you, Naruto," before his body slumped down to the ground lifelessly.

Kushina's tears fell on Naruto's whisker birthmarks as she stared painfully at the wide blue eyes which stared back with an eerie intelligence. "Oh Naruto...I am so sorry you have to carry this burden…the Nine-Tails' hatred is a terrible thing, but you can fight it with love…so make sure you make friends…you don't have to make a lot, just a few that you can really trust..!" She closed her eyes with the herculean effort of speaking and suppressing the Nine-Tails' chakra at the same time. "And as for women, I'm…a woman…so I don't really understand, but…anyway…there are only men and women…so you will find yourself interested…just don't fall for a weird one! Find…a woman like your mom…!"

The spirit within the body of Naruto completely grasped the situation. Somehow, he had been reincarnated inside the baby of the fourth Hokage of Konoha and an Uzumaki. He now had the blood of the younger brother flowing through him, rather than the elder. To top it off, his new mother was the former jinchuuriki of his weapon, and it must have gotten loose when somebody —his student, no doubt — took advantage of the seal's weakness during pregnancy.

The situation was horrifically ironic, given the plans he had instructed his student to follow. However, it was still salvageable…perhaps even a blessing. Although he had no Sharingan, and he could no longer be revived in his true form as planned, he was nonetheless alive again, and still possessed his deadly trademark chakra. Indeed…his chakra could now be considered a combination of Uchiha and Senju…so perhaps there would be opportunity to pursue different avenues to reach his ultimate goal.

He felt deep inside himself for the distinct chakra of the new body. Using his Sharingan memories of Mito Uzumaki, and the sensations his new mother was producing, he called forth the Sage's secret technique.

Inside his mindscape, Madara started to rapidly form hand seals as he mixed his unique Uchiha chakra with the Uzumaki chakra of the baby body, ending on the Snake seal.

Pure white chakra burst out from Madara's mental body and from every wall. With a wild grasping gesture, Madara commanded the chains to converge upon the form of the Nine-Tails, who was stunned by this new turn of events. The fox struggled with all his might, but all he could do was to stare incredulously as the chains started to absorb his chakra, which not even his former host Kushina could do.

The metallic bars that formed the Nine-Tails' Cage dissolved into shining dust. Madara's body began to glow, with powerful chakra flowing through the chains from the Nine-Tails to cover him in a shroud with six magatama markings around his neck and the design of his Eternal Mangekyou appearing on his stomach. Various seal markings appeared through the length of his chest and arms when he shifted to the Ram seal and gigantic Torii fell and trapped the Nine-Tails.

"It can't be…Rikudo?" The Nine-Tails uttered in shock as he witnessed the transformation of his cage.

"It seems I was wrong, Nine-Tails. You don't need a guide. You can just be my battery instead," Madara laughed as he put his hands on his hips.

"Damn you! I will not forget this…!" The fox growled.

On the outside world, the toxic miasma receded and Naruto's body glowed with a heavenly light. Upon seeing this, Kushina stopped the flow of her chakra to Naruto and smiled reverently. "That's my boy! You'll make me proud someday…I wish I could be there…there's so many things to teach you…you'll face many hard times ahead, but just be yourself and follow your dreams…I love you…" With a contented smile, the vitality of the Uzumaki finally left her as she closed her eyes for the last time.

Young Naruto stared unblinkingly at the corpse that was his mother. Inexplicably, a tear fell down his face, but he didn't notice, too busy weaving plans within plans to take advantage of the opportunity he now had.

Yes…the world would tremble before him once more, and he would deliver its salvation. He was the savior, the one would bring heaven to earth and end this hellish nightmare of endless hatred.

There could be no doubt — it must be his destiny, for if not, why else was he reborn in this god-forsaken land?