Chapter 568: The Power of Creation
That was the end of it.
While young Sasuke had been dealing with things on his side, the real Naruto had handled his own situation with equal efficiency.
This world's Kisame Hoshigaki had been taken care of.
Naruto had wrapped him in a specialized sealing jutsu. Not the cold kind -- not the kind that locks someone away and never lets them out again. This one was something gentler, something with warmth to it. The kind of sealing jutsu you might compare to carefully laying out a bed for a traveler who had been on the road for far too long.
Kisame lay still, deeply asleep, his face relaxed and unguarded. He was dreaming. A very long, very beautiful dream -- one he had chosen for himself.
That dream was Naruto's gift to him.
The technique bore a surface resemblance to the Infinite Tsukuyomi, but it was nothing like it. The Infinite Tsukuyomi transformed people into White Zetsu. It drained them dry. It took everything. What Naruto had done took nothing at all.
It simply sent Kisame to the world he had always wanted. A world without deception, without lies, without killing. A world where he could live the life he had always wished for.
When would the technique end?
Naruto had set its release at a point very far away -- when Kisame had lived out every beautiful, happy, regret-free moment his dream world could offer him. When every wish had been fulfilled, every last longing had been laid to rest, every thing he had ever wanted to let go of had finally been set down. Only then would the seal dissolve.
Time inside was infinite. Kisame could live there for a hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand -- as long as it took for him to feel that he had truly lived, that this life had been worth it, that when he finally closed his eyes, his lips would be curved upward and his heart would be completely at peace.
Naruto didn't know if this was the right thing to do.
He didn't know whether sealing someone inside a beautiful dream and never letting them wake up was an act of kindness or an act of cruelty.
This world's Kisame would not betray anyone. Would not follow Naruto out of this world. Would not accept any offer Naruto could make.
Kisame had already decided. He had chosen to live inside that dream world. Naruto had only made the choice real. But did making someone's wish come true automatically make it right?
If the wish was escape -- if the wish was to seal yourself inside a fiction and never come out -- if the wish was to abandon the world as it actually was -- then was fulfilling it helping him, or was it destroying him?
Naruto never arrived at an answer.
He went ahead with it anyway. And then he layered enough protections into the seal to keep it secure against anything.
Kisame lay wrapped in silence, sleeping somewhere that no one would ever find, beyond any disturbance. Even if the Otsutsuki came, the seal would hold. He would stay in his dream, undisturbed and at rest. That much, Naruto could guarantee.
With that resolved, young Sasuke and the Shadow Clone regrouped with the real Naruto, while young Naruto had gone off to check on his teammates. The result was a small, slightly odd gathering: two Narutos and two Sasukes, the clone and the original, the young and the grown, standing together in a corridor of the Ember base.
"Your Naruto still isn't back yet."
Satsuki's voice drifted toward young Sasuke. "What are you planning to do next?"
...Your Naruto.
The corner of young Sasuke's mouth twitched. The phrase gave him a faintly uncomfortable feeling. He wanted to say something in response -- something along the lines of "he's not my Naruto" or "could you not phrase it that way."
He glanced at Satsuki. Then he swallowed the words back down. Knowing when to stay quiet was a form of wisdom. He had arrived at that conclusion very quickly.
"Thank you."
Young Sasuke's voice was completely sincere. "Thank you for telling me the truth. Thank you for everything you did. And for..."
"My father and mother. Thank you."
"But..."
He raised his head and looked directly at Naruto and Satsuki.
"Even so, there's one more thing I want to ask of you."
When he said this, something lit up in his eyes. Something recognizable. Hatred.
"I want you to kill this world's Shimura Danzo."
The real Naruto felt a small flicker of surprise. He had expected young Sasuke to ask for power -- to say make me stronger, help me grow strong enough to do it myself. Instead, young Sasuke had said kill him for me. He was handing over the act of revenge entirely, placing it in someone else's hands.
"Are you sure about that?"
Naruto's gaze rested on young Sasuke's face. On those eyes that burned clearly with fire but had not been consumed by it.
"He's your enemy. Don't you want to be the one who kills him?"
That question made young Sasuke's eyelashes flutter slightly. He did want that. He wanted it desperately. He wanted to see that man's final expression -- not described to him by someone else, not read about in some report, but witnessed with his own eyes. To see that man lying on the ground. To watch the light go out in those eyes. To see the rat who had operated in Konoha's shadows and manipulated everything from there finally, completely, dead.
"...Yes. I want it badly."
His voice was slightly tight. "More than I can say. More than anything. No matter what, I want to see him die."
"But... Danzo was once a candidate for the Hokage seat. His capabilities are beyond anything I can match right now."
He said this with a calm, lucid honesty.
He knew exactly where his own strength stood. He was not Danzo's opponent. That man had spent years standing in the shadow of the Third Hokage's position, had controlled countless things from within the darkness of the ANBU, had driven the Uchiha clan to that point -- not because he was lucky, but because he was ruthless. Because he would use any means available to him.
And young Sasuke? A genin who had failed his chunin exam.
What was he supposed to kill Danzo with? His pride?
"So you're not planning to get stronger first, and then go after him yourself?"
"I can't accept that."
The answer came quickly. "That man is the one I can't tolerate most, out of everyone responsible for what happened to the Uchiha clan."
"He was the one who put that grotesque deal to Itachi. He was the one who cornered the entire Uchiha clan into that situation. He is the one most responsible."
"If I just think about him still being out there -- hiding in the shadows like a rat somewhere in Konoha, still pulling strings, still using his twisted logic to decide who lives and dies -- and I have to wait. Wait for years. Years while he gets to go on breathing in this world..."
"I find that unbearable."
He drew a slow breath, pressing down the churning feeling inside him, and raised his head to look at adult Naruto. "Please. For someone like you, Danzo isn't even a consideration."
Adult Naruto was quiet for a moment.
"...Sasuke. You're more mature than I expected."
Young Sasuke's face went slightly warm.
He wasn't used to this. Wasn't used to that face -- the face that had been dead last -- wearing an expression this genuine. Wasn't used to being praised like this, with real seriousness, in a way that didn't irritate him at all. Wasn't used to hearing something like this from another world's Naruto and not finding it grating in the slightest.
Of course, young Sasuke understood the real reason he could accept not killing the enemy with his own hands.
He let himself imagine the future. His parents brought back to life. If that empty compound could light its windows again -- what would those days look like?
"In that case..."
Adult Naruto's voice pulled young Sasuke out of the vision. "Let me give you a parting gift."
"I hope that after you cut down your enemy yourself someday, you'll stay true to who you are."
Young Sasuke blinked. He hadn't had time to understand what that meant before adult Naruto reached out a hand and placed it, palm down, over one of young Sasuke's eyes.
Young Sasuke went very still at the sudden closeness.
At the same time, he became aware of a gaze.
Close. Very close. Adult Naruto's right eye -- the one young Sasuke hadn't paid much attention to until this moment, the one he now found impossible to look away from.
Not a Sharingan. Not a Byakugan. Not the Nine Tomoe Rinne-Sharingan that Satsuki wore in her eye, the one that made his soul run cold just to glance at.
This was something he had no way to predict, no way to understand, no way to prepare himself to face.
A black iris. A golden pupil. The eye turned quietly, without releasing any pressure, without radiating so much as a trace of chakra -- just existing, still and silent.
Young Sasuke's mind went blank as he looked at it.
When he saw an ordinary Sharingan, he braced for genjutsu, guarded against having his movements copied, calculated in the back of his mind how to respond.
When he saw Satsuki's Nine Tomoe Rinne-Sharingan, he felt fear rising from somewhere deeper than thought -- not directed at any specific threat, just an instinctive recognition: this is not something I can oppose.
But Naruto's eye -- he had never seen anything like it in any text. He had no idea what to predict, no idea what was about to happen, no idea what he was supposed to do.
It was like looking up at a sky full of stars.
You stand under the night sky, your head tipped back, looking at those points of light. You know they're there. You know they're vast. You know they're distant. But you don't know how vast, you don't know how distant, you don't know what they're doing in this exact moment.
You can only look. Only stand there looking upward, unable to do anything else.
"There. Done."
Adult Naruto's voice brought young Sasuke back. His hand lowered. Naruto blinked once. Then, as if producing it from nowhere, he held out a small mirror.
"Take a look. Consider it a farewell gift."
Young Sasuke took the mirror in a slightly dazed hand and turned it toward his own face.
Then he saw it.
The face in the mirror was his own face. The same face he had looked at every morning while washing up, more familiar than anything. But those eyes -- they were no longer his eyes.
What looked back at him was one purple eye, shot through with rippling concentric circles.
And the other eye -- red, with a pupil shaped in a way he had never seen before. Like a flower in the moment of blooming, resting quietly in his eye socket alongside the purple one. One purple, one red. One still, one turning slowly. Both of them meeting inside his face.
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