IZUNA

5

What changed?

The future was never set in stone but now it was beginning to shift from anything she had previously imagined. Her decision to keep Madara's training with Hashirama a secret changed the timeline critically.

She often wondered about the timeline.

Hashirama and Madara are still friends... she thought to herself, but how will this affect the future I wonder? Canon Izuna died around the time just before Madara signed a treaty with Hashirama. Can this fate be avoided? Has it already been avoided?

Izuna didn't want to die.

Not—-

(Notagainneveragainithurthurthurtsomuchithurtmorethananythingpleasedeathnonodeathnevernotagainpainpainpeacepeaceforgeteverythingandjustgiveintopeaceandsleepsleeppeace)

—again.

She shivered.

She would not fall into thoughts of death.

She could not.

Not now.

Not while she was one of the living.

(But was she really?)

(Or was she a corpse walking?)

"Am I Izuna?" She whispered, "or am I a ghost who has possessed his or her body?"

(We are Izuna.)

She shook her head.

(We are Izuna.)

She was Izuna.

She was Izuna.

And she was no one else.

(And she was afraid, very afraid, for deep inside herself she felt the longing for a peace so permanent that only death could grant.

Part of her wanted to die.

And for that reason, she was terrified.)

::

Her fingers flashed through hundreds of hand seals everyday.

Today was no different.

"Water style: water dragon jutsu!"

She spat and her spit twisted and contorted into the shape of a lean water dragon. It was nowhere near the size of Tobirama's but it was large enough.

It was like a viper compared to his dragon.

It winded through the air and let out a feral cry as it crashed towards a great bolder, splitting it down the centre.

She rushed through another series of seals and breathed out large stream of fire.

There was a loud hiss as steam filled the training grounds.

The key to fire style was in the breathing. It was breath and control. Discipline. Mess up and you'll get burned.

The key to water style, however, was the spitting. Spit wrongly and you'll drown.

What the two had in common was the shaping of the mouth.

It's like whistling, she thought, change the mouth shape to change the pitch... only in this case it's the pressure behind the attack.