In a void beyond time and space, an inky puddle pools in the blank white nothingness. As the dark pool grows, tendrils are born. The inky pool begins to drop down, forming a black cloud, and the tendrils snake throughout its blooming leaves. Slowly, this inky cloud becomes a tree, its inky limbs gradually forming a trunk hundreds of feet tall. At the bottom, roots spread and form land around the black tree, every landmass painted in black and white as it disappears in the distance. Blades and weapons appear from what seems to be nowhere. An inky cocoon grows from the base of the tree as if it were the heart of this world.
The world of black and white was still; nothing moved, and not a sound could be heard. In this world, the only objects with color were weapons—not the weapons themselves, but the memories contained in their aura. These souls were born from their users' will and hopes. Some were the original weapons; others were fakes made from the memories of their forging and use. Some were specially made with the craftsman's heart and soul; others were as common as the next.
As we turn toward the giant tree, the black cocoon begins to shudder and shake. Its amorphous form begins to melt away, slowly seeping into the dark ground. After the inky cocoon seeps away, a solitary figure is revealed. He has light golden locks and sun-tan skin. His build is muscular but not too much; he has more of a swimmer's build. Oh, yeah, he is also naked! 'Here, just let me censor that real quick... there, now his lower half is all blurry.'"
**POV: Shirou Yamanocka**
"Naroko, turn off the lights! Wait... didn't I? Why is the afterlife so bright?! I wasn't evil, but I figured that after the Third War, I would not be in the best place after death. What is this place? Is this my hell? I'm surrounded by the weapons and memories of those I killed, and the weapons I used to kill them."
**POV: End**
The dark land that unfolded before him was a realm of memories and iron; there was no grass, no water—just black sand and inky roots. The sky was white: no sun, no moon, but there were clouds blacker than the night sky. The mountains in the distance were barely visible; the black-and-white mountain range felt like a wall. Slowly, Shirou turned around, looking at the only tree he could see—the giant ink-black wood that seemed to absorb the light.
Shirou felt a strange connection to the massive tree. Before he could stop himself, his hand shot out and slapped the tree. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remove his hand from it. "Come on, tree, I need this hand. It's my favorite hand!" Shirou complained. But before he could say any more, a white ringed eye opened in front of his face.
"Holy shit!" whispered Shirou. He could recognize that eye anywhere; it was the Juubi. The eye was white, but this was definitely the Juubi.
Freaking out, Shirou froze, his mind racing a thousand miles a minute. Why was this mountain of a monster here as a tree? If this is the afterlife, did Naroko and the ninja army kill the Juubi? Before he could think anymore, the voices of multiple individuals echoed in his mind. 'Slow down, idiot! We need to talk to you! We can't think over your excessive chatter.' Shirou's mind went blank; there were nine voices in his head, all talking in unison as if they were all under an illusion. 'Finally, your mental breakdown was grating on our nerves.'"
"Anyway, would you stop whining about your death? You're not dead! This place is not the Pure Land or the underworld, so stop being a baby and listen to us." The eye stared into Shirou's eyes as if it were looking straight into his soul. Shirou tried to look away, but the eye pulled him back somehow. "Hey! Look at us when we are talking to you. Listen, we are on a plane created from your sword-sealing technique and the Juubi chakra. The two fused and created a black hole, sucking you in and erasing a whole multiverse on the other side."
"It erased a what?!" Shirou yelled, hoping it wasn't something too important. The eye seemed to look away. "It's nothing important to the greater Omniverse, so don't worry about it. The most powerful beings there had football-shaped heads, and even a civilian with no chakra would be more powerful than they are. A normal person's mere existence would destroy everything in that place; plus, I don't think the world would last that long anyway; it was so small you could probably throw it like a ball." Shirou stared at the eye for a long moment before sighing. "Fine, but you could at least tell me how to get back." The eye stared at him for a second and said, "Well... about that, you might be lost."
"Lost?! How could I be lost? You somehow know what happened before we got here, but for some reason, you don't know a way back. Whatever you are, you better give me a good explanation!" The eye gave him the "are you serious?" look, then sighed. "Fine, we don't know how we have this information. It just popped into our minds as soon as we got here. By the way, we have not introduced ourselves yet. We are the consciousnesses of the Biju chakra from the Juubi. We are like the nine-tailed beasts, just too weak to form as different beings, so we were forced to fuse into this pseudo-Juubi using the leftover chakra from the creation of this realm."
"So how do I get back?" Shirou asked in an impatient tone. He heard a sigh as the inky black Pseudo-Juubi seemed almost frustrated with the future course of events. "To get back, you're gonna have to bind yourself to this pocket dimension/realm/independent space and use it as an anchor point to create a map. But because you're lost, you're gonna have to make the map manually." Shirou thought for a second before asking, "How will this work exactly? I don't understand." The tree paused for a moment, formulated a response, then said, "I will open a space-time gate to a random location. You will have to go there to lock onto that world and stay for a certain amount of time to make the map stable so we can understand everything around it. That way, you won't have to go through thousands of worlds to find your way home. And once that happens, if it's not the right world, go on to the next. Just keep going through individual multiverses and mapping out where we need to go."
Silence prevailed for minutes as the man contemplated what the tree had said, trying to understand. Eventually, he looked up at the Juubi's eye and gave a nod. "So, what do I do to bind myself to this realm?" The Juubi's eye smiled like a goofy scarecrow and said, "Why do you think I still have your hand? I've been binding you here the whole time. Don't you think I want to go home too?" After a while, Shirou's hand detached from the tree, and suddenly grass grew from the ground. Instantly, the sky turned blue, a sun appeared from nowhere, and a river flowed out of nothingness. Full-grown trees shot up and formed a forest in the distance. This place had come to life, but there was still nothing living except plants, Shirou, and the memories of weapons.