Kaguya's Legacy

With a final leap, I landed on the crumbling stone bridge that led to the castle's main gate.

The castle, even in its ruined state, was a breathtaking sight. Its walls were made of a white, shimmering stone that seemed to glow with an inner light, its towers and spires reaching up toward the star-dusted sky.

The castle was ancient and noble; even in its current state, it still exuded wealth and power.

This was the heart of the Ōtsutsuki on the Moon, the children of Hamura, built on top of my very prison.

Carved from the very rocks that bound my true body.

I had mixed feelings about it. On one side, it was breathtakingly beautiful. On the other, it was all built on my downfall.

As always, I had mixed feelings about it, because my feelings toward my sons remained mixed.

They were my children, my flesh and blood. I had cared for them, given them my heart and love, my very chakra.

And yet, they had also turned against me, betrayed me, and sealed me inside the Moon.

No matter what, I could never forget that.

But this wasn't the place for such thoughts, so with a shake of my head, I pushed them aside.

I had a mission to complete, a goal to achieve.

I walked across the bridge, my footsteps echoing in the silence, my Byakugan scanning the castle, looking for any signs of life, any traps or ambushes.

But there were no traps, no ambushes, even the puppets no longer came for me, having stopped and turned toward Kakuzu instead.

Clearly, whoever awaited within allowed me to continue.

Even if they hadn't been able to stop me, even if they wanted to.

The main gate was a massive, iron-bound door, covered in intricate carvings that depicted the history of the Ōtsutsuki clan.

It was beautiful, and broken.

Just as the clan itself.

As I entered the castle itself, I could see that progress on its repair was evident. The victors hadn't wanted to abandon it, though it was equally clear that they had little energy to repair it.

At most, they had smoothed over the biggest problems, merely repairing the surface and ignoring the structural damage underneath.

Still, I could only guess at the extent of their progress, because my Byakugan failed me, unable to see through the walls and deeper into the heart of the castle.

Few things could block the all-seeing sight of the Byakugan; even in Konoha, there were no true permanent places hidden.

Even Danzō could only hide his secrets deeper underground, trying to use the earth itself to block the Hyūga clan.

And that did have some effect. The earth had its own energy, nature chakra, which could weaken the penetrating range of most Hyūga clan members.

But even then, he did his most questionable things away from Konoha entirely.

So, the fact that this castle could block my sight was impressive, but hardly unexpected.

The Hyūga clan hadn't become a clan filled with exhibitionism due to everyone being perverts; it had happened due to there being no privacy.

There was no privacy not because it wasn't wanted, but because it wasn't available.

Only high-level Fūinjutsu could block the Byakugan, or a few ninjutsu, but they all had one thing in common: using a large amount of chakra to build a blockade.

And chakra wasn't infinite.

The reason the Ōtsutsuki clan had solved this problem was that they had something the Hyūga clan didn't, and it wasn't a mastery of Fūinjutsu.

It was the Moon itself.

The Moon, the entire Moon, was made when Hamura and Hagoromo used Chibaku Tensei: Planetary Devastation to turn the entire Land of Ancestors into my prison, placing it high in the sky, trapping it in orbit.

During this moment, every bit of the Moon was infused with their chakra, and then, for the next thousand years, my own chakra leaked out and infused the Moon, giving it a faint glow and great strength.

Making moon rock far harder than normal rock, and more importantly, since it was filled with chakra, it could block the Byakugan.

This allowed the Ōtsutsuki clan to maintain their privacy, which allowed them to look down on the Hyūga clan, which had no choice but to develop a collective exhibitionism fetish to cope with the fact that, at any time, someone could be watching them.

Why was I thinking about all this now?

Because I was jealous, plain and simple.

As Yuki, I too had fallen into depravity. The Hyūga clan might seem all prim and proper on the surface, but that was only to avoid being seen as a clan of pervs, so over the years, they built a reputation for being distant and aloof to hide their true nature.

They might be seen as a noble clan, but inside the clan, things were different.

And I... well, the less I thought about it, the better.

Because the less I thought about all the times I, too, had engaged in all manner of depravity, the better.

It wasn't a time in my life that I was proud of.

Still, even while the moonstone blocked the Byakugan, it couldn't fully block mine.

While I was only a clone of Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, formed through chakra and faint blood in Hamura's descendants, I was still Kaguya Ōtsutsuki, and the very chakra that was so deeply infused into the stone here was mine.

Sure, it had changed over the years, no longer truly mine, unusable.

But still, it remained mine at its core, and my own chakra wouldn't block my Byakugan.

So, while there was some interference, it wasn't absolute.

I could see a chakra signature deeper inside, just one.

Still, that person was strong, S-rank for sure, what would be called a Clan Lord in the old days, and likely still called such up here.

Yet I could also see that, despite the strong chakra, the person was young.

Toneri Ōtsutsuki.

No more than a child, but also so strong. Truly, he was worthy of being a prodigy of the Ōtsutsuki clan.

The fact that I could see no one else was a clear indication that he was likely the last one alive, because sure, if there had been more, they would be here.

As I reached the room he was in, I found myself in an elegant sitting room. The ceiling was high and vaulted, the walls were lined with bookshelves, and in the center of the room sat a young boy.

He couldn't have been older than ten, with short white hair and pale, almost translucent skin.

He wore a simple white robe and looked somewhat like a young monk, all white like that.

But his eyes, or rather, his empty eye sockets, were what truly stood out; the sunken eyelids did little to hide the truth.

"Who are you? You who holds both the Byakugan and the Shikotsumyaku of the ancestor, Hamura Ōtsutsuki himself?" he asked, curiosity overflowing from his voice, but also doubt and hostility.

He was guarded, which was smart.

Rather than answer his question, I asked one of my own. "You are Toneri Ōtsutsuki?"

He looked up at me, his head tilted to the side. "Who is asking?" he said, a bit of defiance in his tone.

"I am Kaguya-hime, the progenitor of all," I answered him.

There was a long pause, the only sound being the faint and distant fight between Kakuzu and the puppets outside the castle. Toneri's expression was unreadable, but I could see the gears turning in his mind, the disbelief warring with the undeniable truth of my power.

"The Kaguya-hime... the one who betrayed the world, the one who was sealed away by her sons? The ancestor of all who wields chakra?" he asked, his voice a mixture of awe and suspicion.

"That is me," I said, my tone calm and even.

"Impossible," he said, shaking his head. "You are sealed within the Moon. You can't be here."

"I have little time to speak to you, nor a desire to explain it. I am here for what is mine," I said, my patience wearing thin.

Toneri was still in a state of shock, unable to believe it, unwilling to believe it.

"It isn't here, whoever you truly are... what you are here for is long gone. The Gedō Statue has been stolen, it is lost," he said, thinking that I was after the Gedō Statue.

I couldn't help but laugh at that. "You think I am after the Gedō Statue? Child, that is but a husk of my power, a worthless shell," I said, a little too condescendingly.

But also, not untrue. I hardly cared much about getting something I already had.

The Gedō Statue was back in the Land of Rain, and it was merely the husk of the Ten-Tails, not my true body.

Its value wasn't zero, but it also wasn't immense.

Not to me at least.

"The Tenseigan, the artifact that holds the legacy of your ancestor Hamura. I am here for that."

The boy went pale. "How... how could you possibly know about that? Who... just who are you?" he asked again, a hint of fear creeping into his voice, the puppets around us shifting slightly as he lost focus due to panic.

"I am the mother of Hamura, and I have come for what is mine!"

I had no time nor desire to waste more time on him.

I knew that he was misguided, that he and his entire family, the entire branch family of the Ōtsutsuki clan on the Moon, misunderstood Hamura's will.

But I had no desire nor time to spare to explain these things to him. I needed the Tenseigan, the giant eye that held both Hamura's own eyes, his chakra, and the Byakugan of countless Ōtsutsuki clan members.

I lifted up a hand toward him. He felt the shift in the air, the puppets around us finally moving, but it was too late.

My Byakugan was pure, far beyond what any of my children after Hamura himself had, so it possessed many of my original abilities.

Toneri was instantly lifted from where he sat, his body pulled toward my outstretched hand.

The anime always liked to raise up the Sharingan, showing all its different forms and different powers, all up until the final form, the Rinnegan.

But it forgot that the original dōjutsu of the Ōtsutsuki clan, the true Ōtsutsuki clan, was the Byakugan.

All things the Rinnegan could do were, in the end, drawn from the Ōtsutsuki and from the Byakugan itself.

The Byakugan's potential was immense, and right now, I fully unleashed its might.

The instant Toneri's forehead hit my palm, he froze, as did all the puppets he was controlling.

The Rinnegan had its paths, one being the Human Path, Ningendō, which allowed for mind and soul manipulation.

The Byakugan in its base state hadn't reached that refined level, but it was enough to touch memories.

And I quickly found what I wanted, the location of the Tenseigan, and its defenses.

With that secured, I showed no hesitation as a spike of bone shot out of my hand, piercing right through Toneri's skull with a wet thud.

"Such a pity," I said, as I withdrew my bloodied hand from Toneri's head, letting his now-dead body fall to the floor with a dull thud. "He had the potential to become a truly powerful shinobi. But he was on the wrong side of history."

He was, without a doubt, the most talented child I had ever seen. Whatever Sasuke or Naruto, none could compare to even a tenth of Toneri, but potential is just that.

It means nothing if not grown.

Still, I wasn't here to admire the dead, nor was I here to feel pity for the young and misguided.

I was here for the Tenseigan.

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