Chapter Text
Madara washes onto the filthy, overpopulated shores of Earth after what was supposed to be his final meeting with death. What happened, precisely, why he didn’t get to die on the battlefield, why he is alive, in a body that he should in no way possess, remains unclear. The best explanation available is that the Shinigami found him unworthy of being re-united with Hashirama even in death.
It’s an appropriately merciless punishment. He’s been a sad example of one, but Madara is an Uchiha. He has done unspeakable things, unnatural things to and for his soul-match. He had clung to life, used each and every method at his disposal so that he could re-shape the world to match his will. He cut apart his own kin, shaped an innocent boy into a shadow of himself when he could do no more. Little Obito—among all of his sins, perhaps moulding Obito into a monster that would enact his will is the least forgivable.
It is a fitting punishment, he thinks, laying in the dirt, watching the filthy, polluted air choke the sky itself. If there is a living Hell, he is in it. His soul is in tatters, rabid-mad and howling for Hashirama-For love-For death. Death is not for you, he reminds himself for the thousandth time. The millionth. Serve your penance and hope.
Humility doesn’t come naturally to him. He was blessed and cursed with the treacherous notion that everything he wants will be his if he works hard enough. As lessons go, this one is momentous. Apply enough force, and even a mad dog will learn, it seems.
Surviving in this new world is, ironically, far too easy. Madara has his body, has his skill. He walks the overpopulated streets of a city called Jakarta, gets into trouble and walks out of it. Nobody cares for the unwashed masses, and Madara certainly doesn’t have a single urge to insert himself into the cleaner parts. The hypocrisy of it would drive him to chaos within the hour. For once, he doesn’t want to change or fix or destroy. He is here to serve out a punishment. The world is more than able to destroy, change or fix itself. Nobody and nothing needs him.
Soon enough, he finds himself in something resembling an appropriate setting. Cage-fighting dens, filled with drugs and sex and smoke. He doesn’t strengthen his body in any way, relishes the brutality of the violence. If his Elders could see him now, he thinks, lost in the haze of one drug or another, bloody and bruised and sated, having stumbled from a scarcely-remembered bed. If they had a spine, they would have been proud. This is what Shinobi should have always been, what they should have had the sense to contend themselves with. Instead, they aped honour, lied with every breath they took, with every gesture and thought. Lies, lies, desperate, honourless lies. Shinobi are base creatures, born to go where their urges would lead them. Case in point, Madara is serving his function well. His fights quickly become well-known, as does his willingness to fall to bed with his opponent if they survive, or with a suitably wretched creature who will have him.
He acquires something of a manager, amusingly. Intan is the closest thing to a like-minded human he has come across. Wild and unhinged, with a seething hatred of herself and the world. Honest to the bone. She approaches him without speaking a single lie. He is good, she wants to benefit. He will benefit too. Bigger fights, better opponents, cleaner drugs. Prettier people to fuck.
He allows it. She comes through. His opponents grow fiercer, just as mad and bloodthirsty as those before, but kept in better condition by their masters. Madara’s mistress insists he improves his condition. Talks at him about addiction and death. He stops taking what she deems problematic, mostly to shut her up. Addictions work on those who cannot hypnotize themselves into being—whatever and whoever they want to be. These humans have taken their psychoactives far, he will grant them that, but they are slaves to their bodies in a way he will never have to be.
He lets himself be choked out by a skilled, white man who would have won if Madara wasn’t a soulless monster. The man says openly that he fought for reasons other than money. He shrugs, a little baffled at this but allows it. The weekend spent in the man’s bed is, if anything, more violent than their fight. The intensity of it is almost enough to quiet down the howling in his soul, in a way drugs never managed. Intan is begrudgingly impressed, after. She points out he is going to kill himself with sex sooner than with fighting and huffs when he laughs and laughs.
Soon enough, it is time to leave. Madara is apparently becoming a bit too well-known, and the people Intan is running from are closing in on her. He can’t bring himself to spare a single solitary thought about it. Jakarta never stopped being a gruesome testament to human weakness and despair. He doesn’t doubt the next place will be the same. He asks if there will be fights and sex there, and doesn’t think about it, after.
Moscow is better suited for the type of lifestyle Madara has created for himself. The fights are semi-public, large and merciless. Fighters are bigger, go for longer, and sometimes his opponents are clever enough to bring hidden weapons to their matches. He never does, but the slide of a blade over his skin is as welcome as the rest of it. His metabolism has worked through most of the commercially available drugs on the market, so the haze is more difficult to reach. He fights more, invites multiple opponents. Lets himself lose when it’s deserved, and only then.
Intan grows older. He does not.
Years in Moscow run out. A polite young man from their Government visits him in the den of iniquity he’s inhabiting at the time. Nothing personal, Sir, the child assures him, bold and fearless. You have built a name in our country, and we respect that. Times are changing, however. War is ahead. Unless you want to serve, we cannot afford the distraction.
He thanks the polite young man, gets Intan and leaves.
Buenos Aires is swelteringly hot and nowhere near as comfortable as Russia had been. For a city of that size, the population was depressingly even-tempered. There are fights, but they’re about skill before bloodshed, if they don’t approach the cartels. Madara isn’t principally opposed to drug cartels, but the way they run their organization rubs him the wrong way. He appreciates a sense of style that Russians and Indonesians had, and these pretenders don’t. These children with their guns and their thuggish airs would drive him to chaos as quickly as the upper-classes would. On the other hand, Intan assures him that the world is at war, and nowhere is going to be comfortable. She is nearing fifty, has mellowed some in her older age. Still as calculating and merciless as she’d ever been, but has lost some of the urge to impress her wrath upon the world. The loyalty, however, is unexpected. She does not ask to part ways, even though he can clearly see her heart is no longer in it. His fights have made her more than enough money to live in comfort. There is no reason for them to stay together.
She accepts a compromise and starts training her replacement immediately.
Nobody who met Intan is surprised that her replacement is a woman. Sofia is a hard-eyed girl of maybe sixteen who is on the run after having killed the men who killed her family. The insanity in her eyes is familiar. Comfortable. He agrees easily enough.
They move cities after the war finishes, settle in Mexico. It works out until it doesn’t. Another war grips the world, and Madara is almost tempted to join in. No real entertainment can be found, when the entire world is choked by violence and the few leftovers lose their taste for it.
They’re on their way to Bolivia when the choice is made for him. A stray unit of fighters comes upon them and opens fire without pause. Sofia is dead on the spot, and Madara reaches for his Chakra again.
War is a different type of haze, he finds, some months later. He finds he doesn’t mind it. The violence is as intense as it ever was, and the ranged weaponry makes it that much more interesting. Other than that first battalion he tore up with superior speed and eternal flames, he makes a point to never harden his skin against bullets. What would be the point of that?
His name quickly becomes known. Madara never joined the military as such, but in the beginning, he had something of a grudge, and soon enough he found himself carefully managed by desperate humans willing to take any monster who will turn the tide their way.
He is soon flown to Europe, where the fighting is thickest. His so-called handlers don’t quite know what to do with him, so they send him to the Balkans. A stone-faced young man leads him to the cruel cliffs in Bosnia and dies soon after.
The haze that sees him through the massacres there is the thickest one yet. People fight as fiercely as any Shinobi, use similar tactics for all that they aren’t blessed with physical superiority. He even lets go of his creed to fight fairly. The endless dead children get to him. Battles turn with his presence, but there is always more. Endless numbers, it seems at times. The fighters grow younger and younger and ever more rabid. He kills men, then youths. When they turn to boys, he starts disarming them when he can. Most get executed right after, but he never did enjoy killing children.
The war finishes eventually, and by then even Madara’s bloodlust is spent. He turns to the carnal side of things. Japan, Thailand, then India. India keeps him occupied for a couple of decades until the urge to fight spins him up again. Staying low is not even remotely possible. He’s been fucking and fighting through Earth for a century at least. The light side of the world is mostly ignorant of his existence, but the shadows know him. He is famous, in the right circles, which makes some things easier and some things more tedious. Flights are organized for him, the details of the fight pre-arranged. He doesn’t have an official manager, but his impatience is well-known. The bidding happens outside of his purview, and the winner gets to approach him with their offer. He always accepts. Why wouldn’t he? He doesn’t have a home, hadn’t had one in a long time. He goes where his urges take him, as is his due.
New York has grown interesting over the years. The city that never sleeps is as hard as Moscow, and almost just as bold about its sins. Madara never really understood humans’ urge to divide each other by skin colour, gender and sexuality, but they do, and this arbitrary divide creates a simmering tension that equates in violence. Madara is far from too noble to exploit this most bewildering of human failings. He falls into the scene, almost enjoys the way men and women stereotype him even while knowing who he is. Some of the most vicious fights he’s had are with white men unable to accept being beaten by a supposed Asian with a fondness for semi-public orgies. It works out.
Another difference is that, instead of him falling into a convenient scene, one grows around him. A proper den of iniquity, complete with violence sex and everything that comes with it. New York, it seems, is set on keeping the savage, mindless monster at least for a little while. Well—who is he to refuse? Fights come to him, managers come and go, sometimes literally building around him. The empty storage facility off New Jersey turns into something of an arena, complete with an internal market. Some brave soul starts talking about selling tickets, and Madara very carefully doesn’t murder him. Men and women fill his time with fists and knives and guns. Every now and again a person called a Mutant that Madara is tempted to call a Clan-child comes around. Those fights are the best, and he makes a point to never kill any of them. Gifted blood is rare these days, after all.
This is where the blonde prince finds him.