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Manji looked down at the two figures pressed flat against the stone, trembling like foliage in a hurricane. Then his gaze wandered to Matatabi, who was nuzzling against his sleeve with the most pitiful expression a giant spectral cat could manage.
He'd never intended to kill them.
These two were Indra and Asura's first reincarnations. The thousand-year contest had barely begun. If he cut them down now, the opening round would end in a pointless draw before either side had scored a single mark.
But Matatabi had been hurt. She was his student. A teacher who let that slide without consequence wasn't much of a teacher.
"Considering that both the Senju and Uchiha clans have faithfully maintained my shrines for generations, I'm willing to overlook today's offense."
Senichi and Shūichi jolted like they'd been hit with a defibrillator. Color came back into their faces. For one glorious second, they thought they might actually survive the afternoon.
Then Manji's tone changed.
"However. You beat my student half to death. That requires some form of restitution, wouldn't you say?"
The relief froze on both their faces mid-bloom. They understood instantly.
Pardoned from the death sentence. Still on the hook for damages.
Shūichi hit the ground first, forehead cracking against stone. "Tailed Beast, I, Senju Shūichi, as head of the Senju Clan, offer my sincerest apologies! If you want to hit me, curse me, whatever it takes to settle the score, I accept it all without complaint!"
Senichi's jaw worked. Pride and survival instinct fought a brief, violent war behind his Sharingan. Survival won.
He bowed stiffly. The words came out like he was chewing gravel. "Tailed Beast. I was wrong. Do what you will."
Matatabi glanced up at Manji with a quick, conspiratorial blink of her feline eyes.
Master understands me.
She'd been with Manji long enough to lose her taste for real violence. She didn't want anyone dead. And knowing these two were Indra and Asura's reincarnations made killing them doubly pointless.
Might as well have a little fun instead.
Matatabi stretched languidly, padded forward on velvet paws, and raised one enormous spectral foot above the two kneeling clan heads. Her voice came out sweet and playful, with just enough edge to keep things interesting.
"Well then! Since you're offering, how about I give you boys a nice back massage? Loosen up those muscles!"
The shadow of her paw fell over both of them. Their eyes went wide.
That paw is bigger than a horse cart. A "massage" from that thing would—
Both men tried to dodge on pure reflex. Their legs coiled, chakra sparked through their nervous systems—
And hit a wall. An invisible binding force, courtesy of Manji floating serenely overhead, locked them in place as firmly as if they'd been nailed to the ground.
"AAGH! OW OW OW OW!"
"Easy! EASY! Please, Tailed Beast, a little LIGHTER—!"
The sounds that bounced through the forest for the next several minutes would haunt nearby wildlife for generations. Matatabi's paw came down again and again—not hard enough to break anything, not soft enough to be painless. The perfect calibration of someone who wanted to make a point without crossing a line.
When she finally stepped back, looking enormously satisfied with herself, both clan heads lay in shallow craters of their own making, groaning.
They swore their oaths on the spot. Didn't even need to be asked.
"I, as head of the Senju Clan—Uchiha Clan—swear that neither my descendants nor I will ever raise a hand against any Tailed Beast! If this oath is broken, let heaven strike us down!"
..............
Sunset spread across the sky in bands of copper and gold. Two battered silhouettes limped along a forest path, leaning on each other like a pair of drunks leaving a bar at closing time.
"Uchiha Senichi. You told me we were going after some reclusive old man. At NO POINT did you mention the old man was the SAGE OF SIX PATHS."
Shūichi's voice bore the specific flavor of exhaustion that only comes from being cosmically deceived.
"How was I supposed to know?? You think I planned this?? 'Oh yes, let me deliberately pick a fight with the founding deity of our entire civilization, that sounds like a wonderful Tuesday!'"
Senichi winced with every step, one hand pressed against his lower back.
"Senichi. I need at least six months before we fight each other again. I can barely walk. Look at us."
Shūichi gestured at their collective state of disrepair. Two of the most powerful shinobi alive, hobbling through the woods like a couple of pensioners who'd fallen down the same staircase.
For once, Senichi didn't argue.
"Fine. Six months. My spine feels like it's been reassembled in the wrong order."
"And another thing." Shūichi's expression turned sly. "That oath you swore in the temple. The one where you said if you were lying to me, the Uchiha would be destroyed by their own clan members. That still counts, right?"
Senichi's face went through a fascinating color journey.
He had said that.
"That… doesn't apply to this situation. I wasn't lying. I genuinely didn't know."
"Mmhm. Sure."
"I'm serious! And besides, the Uchiha would never turn on each other. The very concept is absurd."
Senichi's delivery was slightly too emphatic to be convincing.
"Whatever you say, Senichi. Whatever you say."
Shūichi shook his head with the long-suffering smile of a man who'd given up arguing with the universe.
"Just WALK, Shūichi!"
The two silhouettes—still leaning on each other, still bickering—grew smaller against the dying light, and eventually disappeared into the treeline.
..............
Manji watched them go from his perch in the sky.
Something complicated moved through his expression.
"So I've become a myth, have I? A ghost story. Those two looked at me like they'd seen the dead walk."
He remembered the tail end of the Ninshū era, when his existence was common knowledge. When he could step into any gathering, and people would nod respectfully, accepting his presence as the natural order of things.
A few generations of absence, and he'd been filed away under "probably fictional."
The original Sage of Six Paths in canon hadn't even left a portrait behind. At least Manji had managed that much. But at this rate, by the time Naruto's era rolled around, people would be debating whether he'd ever existed at all.
"Time really does erase everything."
He let the thought go. Looked down at Matatabi, who was pressed against his side, and gently scratched behind her ears.
"You're safe now. Get some rest. And don't hold what happened against those two. They're Asura and Indra's reincarnations. Special circumstances."
"Mmhm."
Matatabi tilted her head up and rubbed her cheek onto his palm, eyes soft and warm. "Master, I'm perfectly fine. I'd never let a little bruise of mine interfere with your plans. Besides, I was never in real danger."
Manji smiled.
"Good."
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