Never Forget

Nagato

Hello again! It's probably been over a year since I last updated. I greatly apologize. If you can't tell, my interest in writing this fanfiction wavers a lot now that I'm mostly past the Naruto fandom. But I'm determined to eventually finish this story! Sorry about that.

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Chapter 22

We reached Naruto just in time to see him crash to his knees, and Kakashi gently pushed me out of his arms. I extended my wings and made toward Naruto as fast as I could, catching him just before he hit the ground and completing my swoop into the air with him in my arms, not unlike how Kakashi had just carried me.

His eyes fluttered open. "Kira-sensei?"

"Hey, kid," I said, gently lowering myself back down to the ground. I figured he wouldn't appreciate a sudden drop. "You did well, huh?"

"Well, I discovered that Pein is actually a pretty nice guy, and he said he'd bring back all the dead – "

He turned pale suddenly, almost jolting out of my arms to stare at me.

"Is – Is he – "

I answered his unspoken question by putting him down next to Kakashi. Naruto's blue eyes lit up immediately upon seeing the previously-dead man (that was a weird thought), and he exclaimed,

"Kakashi-sensei!"

Kakashi smiled at him. "Well done, Naruto."

Naruto was absolutely bursting with happiness – not unlike how I'd been myself – and Kakashi loaded him onto his back as we made our way back to the village. Naruto was too tired to talk about it, but I re-opened the mind link on the way back to ask him what had happened and then relay the information to the other Kages.

Apparently, after failing to suppress his half-transformation into the Kyuubi, Minato-sensei had appeared to him to explain why he'd sealed the fox in baby Naruto. After this understanding, Naruto had found the power and the peace to suppress this chakra (which had already reached the eighth tail), and was able to take down all of the orange-haired men.

"It made a lot of sense," he said, "in regards to what you said about the puppetmaster. Because somebody was controlling them, and his name was Nagato – one of Jiraiya's old students."

Nagato's explanation of his painful life story allowed Naruto to understand why he wanted to change the world (though perhaps not in a very good way), and refused to kill Nagato. He explained to Nagato that Jiraiya had believed the world would be okay, and that the main character – whose name was Naruto – would bring peace. After promising to become Hokage and bring peace to the shinobi world as well as Amegakure – the land Nagato was from – Naruto was essentially able to change Nagato's way of thinking, and the latter promised to "believe in" Naruto and brought everyone back to life with his Outer Path. And so Konan, the only remaining one of the original trio, left the Akatsuki and took Nagato and Yahiko's bodies with her.

After that "simple" rendition of what had happened, as the village was busy partying over Naruto's success and their narrow avoidance of death, I found myself lying on my bed, discussing the advantages and disadvantages to Plan VIAG – Voldemort Is Actually Good.

It felt like we were ten years old again, irritating the librarian with our loud arguments, except that Kakashi was seated on the floor beside my bed.