The Last Ones Standing

Chapter 3

AN: This chapter is an entry for MadaSaku Weekend 2019, Day 3

Prompt: "Your ego knows no bounds."

"Activate the Sharingan! Obito's ability was time- and space-jutsu. He could jump dimensions with exactly these eyes."

"I cannot," stated Madara with surprise. "I cannot mold my chakra… And when I try to activated it, it gets depleted."

"Are you hurt?" Sakura furrowed her eyebrows. She thought she fixed him.

"No, as far as I can tell. But I was dead for a while, so I probably qualify as a special case."

Sakura pressed her palms against his back and scanned for injury. There was none; after her handiwork his body was in order.

"You seem alright…" she hummed and dug deeper. A man like Madara wouldn't ask, literally ask, for help if he didn't need it.

Sakura sent her chakra along his chakra pathways. She moved from the top of his head downwards. All seemed fine… She followed down his chakra pathways and suddenly – the pathways were not there. Sakura closed her eyes and shielded all external disturbances away from her consciousness. It couldn't be.

But it was. The pathway was simply ending on the level of his solar plexus. The connection between his Fifth and Sixth Gate wasn't even there. Sakura concentrated. The endings of the pathways were… jagged? It looked as if someone ripped something from him. It reminded her of injuries received from an animal.

"What happened to you?!" she exclaimed. How could she overlook something like that? But on a second glance – only his chakra system was affected. Of course! He was the jinchuuriki of Juubi! And Juubi was removed from him. It was ripped out of him and that was what she was looking at.

The scientific, inquisitive part of Sakura's brain was overjoyed – an opportunity to study a still alive jinchuriki after a beast's removal! How many people even had an opportunity to see something like this? Not to mention, to see it and have enough medical knowledge to examine it!?

But scientific rush aside - this damage was nothing fun. His chakra was leaking as from a broken vessel. Will she be able to fix it? It would be a feat equal to regrowing a cut-off limb… Sakura concentrated and gently, gently prompted the cells of what remained from his pathway channels to divide.

Three hours of painstakingly delicate work that resembled lace-weaving later Sakura was exhausted and covered in cold sweat. And Sharingan shone in Madara's eyes.

Sakura popped two chakra-replenishing soldier pills into her mouth. "Alright. We can move on. Do you know how to make those jumps?"

Madara was looking up, into the sky. "I think I see them… No, 'seeing' is a wrong word. I perceive a presence of something huge, something that pulls at the fabric of the reality. When I 'reach' I feel that something is there, like an object deforming the cloth under which it is hidden."

Sakura listened with a mix of hope and fascination. Maybe this could work. Maybe they could do it.

Madara was still watching the sky. "Nine over us. Arranged in a square." He looked down. "And nine below us. And eight around us, on the horizon's level. Six feel closer, more defined." He reached to the front, as if trying to touch something. "Others are further, with eight of them really far." He looked up and right.

"So many?" Sakura didn't hold back a moan of disappointment. But she quickly got a grip on herself. Twenty six wasn't that many in the end. It was much better than those 'hundreds if not thousands' that Madara had tried to intimidate her with. She took out a kunai. "Point the directions, I will mark them on the ground."

Madara outstretched his hand towards south-east. "There. There, and there."

"Are the lower and upper ones directly above those on horizon?" asked Sakura scratching the arrows in the trotted ground.

"Yes, I think so. The angles make it a bit unclear, but I think that yes."

Sakura bit her lip. "A cube. It's a cube. And we're in the middle." She stood up. "Alright. Enough of that talking, let's go finally!"

Madara turned and stepped towards her, only to halt abruptly. He was looking around in astonishment, as if he was seeing things suspended in thin air.

"What is it?" demanded Sakura.

"They moved. The dimensions changed their locations." He slowly turned in place, as if trying something out. "They spin with me. When I move, so do they. It doesn't matter how I turn around, it's just the direction in which I 'reach'."

"What? Why? How are we going to keep track?" Sakura wrung her hands in her hair. Her meticulously scratched-out direction arrows were useless now. But wait. "If they move with you, then you will be our orientation point. It's even easier! Here, draw!" She pushed her bingo book backcover up into Madara's hands. "We will cross out the ones we check," she added looking over his shoulder when he was sketching.

She hooked her hand under his arm and hoped that such amount of contact would suffice. Travelling with Obito, she had clung to his back, keeping the poor dying man going. She couldn't imagine she could force herself to such intimacy with Madara.

Nevertheless, her fingers clutched at the fabric of his sleeve. "Will you… will you be able to come back?" That was probably a very bad idea to show weakness in front of him, but she was afraid.

"No idea. Hold tight."

The already somewhat familiar, but still nauseating feeling swept over her like cold water. It felt like falling and being abruptly stopped mixed with being hit on the head. Sakura carefully swallowed – it tasted awful in her mouth, like vomit. She wondered if one can ever get used to it.

They were on a slope of mountain. Sakura too a careful step – gravel rolled from under her feet. But the stones weren't round – they had sharp edges. Entire ground was covered with polyheadrons, smaller, bigger, some as big as boulders. Sakura picked a handful of pebbles. Even in the dim, bluish light, that had no obvious source, they gleamed and sparkled.

"This place is new to me…" she said. "We haven't been in this dimension when we chased after rabbit goddess."

"Irrelevant. So how do you want to search for them?"

Sakura bit her lip. She didn't have this thought so well through. "We can climb to a high point… or… Can't the Sharingan sense chakra?"

"It can see chakra, when it's close enough. I am no sensor."

Sakura pursed her lips. She would need Katsuyu right now… Well, actually… She was summoning Katsuyu from the slugs' dimension into their world. So why wouldn't her contract work if she was somewhere else? Sakura bit her thumb. "Kuchiyose-no-jutsu!"

She had never been happier to see slug, not even when she first succeeded in summoning her. Sakura threw her hands around Katsuyu's neck. With the corner of her eye she saw a grimace of disgust on Madara's face. She didn't care. Katsuyu was the only friendly, familiar presence in this world. Or in any world. Because everyone he knew in her home dimension were trapped and locked away in that horror of a jutsu.

The slug looked around and crawled towards a larger boulder. The sharp edges of gemstones must have been hurting its abdomen. "So you've convinced him to cooperate, Sakura-chan?" Katsuyu pointed with her antennas at Madara who was climbing a small stone spire. "Can you trust him?"

"I think so," said Sakura wondering at her own words. "I was starting to lose hope and at that point I was ready to take a risk." She felt compelled to explain herself in front of Katsuyu. She knew the slug didn't approve risky decisions of any kind. Whether cautiousness was Katsuyu's inborn quality, or a learned habit acquired through years of coping with Tsunade-sama's irresponsible behavior - Sakura didn't know.

"He can simply teleport away and leave you here…"

"I don't think he would. Plus then you can always back-summon me to the Shikkotsu Forest."

Kasuyu sucked her antennas half way in, a sign of agreement, even if a half-hearted one. "Well, I cannot provide a better plan, so I guess it makes sense to go with this one." She nodded towards Madara who sat perched on the top of the spire.

"Then let's get on with it! Can you sense Sasuke and Naruto somewhere in this dimension?"

"No… With this size my range is one hundred kilometers, maybe two hundreds…"

"I'll get you bigger, wait up!" exclaimed Sakura and dispelled the summoning. When she dug her hands between the gemstones seconds later, she pumped good quarter of her chakra into the jutsu. Enormous body of Katsuyu crushed the side of the mountain and filled the valley. Sakura jumped away and propelled herself up the stoneface. Running on vertical surface required more concentration than usually, probably because how perfectly smooth it was. She saw Madara running up as well, as his spire existed no more. She noticed he was looking at her with more attention than ever before.

Sakura reached the level of Katsuyu's neck and decided to give communication a try. "And? Do you sense them, Katsuyu-sama?" she shouted, hoping the slug would hear.

Giant slug turned her head. "No." Gentle voice of Katsuyu drummed like a thunder. "Not in many thousands of kilometers. And, Sakura, there is no life here. Nothing at all… I don't think they could have survived until now if they landed here…"

Sakura swallowed. She won't think about it. She won't. "Alright. Let's go back then. We have twenty-five more to check."

Madara was approaching her, casually making his way across the rock face. "Actually, many more than twenty-five…"

"What do you mean?"

"The dimensions are here as well, all around. Twenty-six of them. Same arrangement. And I bet those are different twenty-six than the I saw from our home dimension."

"And if we jump again, there will be another twenty-six?"

"Most probably."

"Oh gods." If she wasn't balancing with her chakra on a vertical plane of a giant crystal, Sakura would have collapsed on the ground. "Gods have mercy." She couldn't draw a proper breath. In order to perform a least some logical action, Sakura released Katsuyu. It made no sense to invest her chakra if the dimension was empty. When the slug disappeared, she was confronted with a void in her mind. What was she supposed to do?

"Lets' go back." Madara grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. "We need to approach it methodically."

Sakura didn't fully perceive the sickening sensation of the jump – she was too preoccupied with the magnitude of the task ahead. There was no telling how far this pattern of dimensions stretched… Suddenly Madara's thousands didn't seem just a cruel jab anymore.

Her feet sank into something warm and dry. Sakura looked down – she was standing on the sand. Waves were breaking against the shore some meters away from them. Water was very blue, shade of blue she had never seen before. Blue sky, blue water, white sand. "Where are we? Where is the tree? We were supposed to be back!"

"I don't know," answered Madara. "When I jumped for the first time, I was aiming to the dimension directly in front of me. The second time, I aimed back. According to my logic, it should have worked."

Sakura yanked his arm. "Don't tell me that you've lost the way! Don't you tell me this!"

"How was I supposed to know how this works?!" Madara shoved her hand away, hard enough to make Sakura tumble and fall. "Gods damn it woman, I'm doing what I can!"

She didn't bother to land in a defensive pose. She just let herself land on her behind. That was it. The end of her mental resilience. She felt the sand pouring between her fingers. Everyone was trapped in Tsukuyomi. Boys were gone. And she was lost in a foreign dimension.

Madara was walking away from her. A minute more and she would lose him from her sight as he would disappear behind a group of rocks. She couldn't bring herself to care. She grabbed a handful of sand at let the grains flow through her fingers. She took another handful.

She had a small mound heaped up in front of her, when with the corner of her eye she saw him returning. He was walking fast, with a sense of urgency in his movement. She had impression, that if not for keeping up the appearances, he would have run.

He threw a heavy look at her state and at the pile of sand in front of her. Sakura didn't want to think what kind of image she presented in his eyes. "Get up," he barked. "Stop that sulking. It is our world."

"How do you know?!"

"There is a small fishing village over there. Or it used to be. People are all gone, but there are the cocoons everywhere."

Sakura's hands flew to her mouth, trying to tamper the cry of joy. "Really?! Are you sure? Or can it be that in other dimension a similar catastrophe happened?" Sakura didn't want to get her hope high in vain.

"Larger fishing boats have names etched on the sides. In our script. It is our world. Judging from the shape of the coastline and the houses' architecture I would assume we are close to the Land of Waves."

She wanted to jump and embrace him. She didn't. She only shook her head at her emotional state – the loneliness was must have been really getting to her. "Why are we so far from where we started?" she asked instead.

Madara shrugged. "No idea. Does it matter?"

Sakura thought about all her friends trapped in the cocoons. Most of the people she knew were ninja, so there, by the tree was where they hung trapped. Her parents were hopefully still in Konoha. But indeed, it didn't really matter – they were all inaccessible to her at the moment. "For time being - no. Once we find my teammates, we'll come back to the tree." She placed her hand on his arm. "Where is that sketch? We should cross out that gem-dimension and keep going."

"So your plan is to first check all the twenty-six dimensions accessible from here?"

Sakura chewed at her lip. "I guess we need to start from somewhere. We need more experience and more data before we formulate a final strategy."

"Fine with me."

The beach spun and disappeared. Gods, she would never get used to that sickening sensation. Especially to the taste in her mouth. The dimension they landed in was a desert of sorts, but the sand was so fine that it resembled ash. And it was deep red. Sakura bit her thumb and summoned a full-detection-size Katsuyu.

"Which one is it?" asked Sakura when Katsuyu was scanning the perimeter. She crossed out the 'front' dimension already and dotted word 'gem' next to the mark in the smallest letters she could manage. Sakura furrowed her brows – soon she will need to re-draw this sketch in bigger format.

"The left one."

Sakura wrote 'red desert' next to the left-most point.

Katsuyu was still sensing. She would never complain, but Sakura could see that the giant slug was getting dehydrated far too fast in the arid climate of the dimension. Unfortunately, with Katsuyu's current size there was little Sakura could do to help her. Best course of action was to finish the scan and dispel the summoning.

"I'm sorry Sakura-chan," announced the slug. "Nothing."

Sakura pursed her lips and crossed out the left-most point.

Madara grabbed her shoulder. "Let's not waste time."

They landed on the same beach. Sakura's pile of sand was a still visible, a bit flattened by the wind, but still there.

"Ok, the next one," demanded Sakura not letting go of his elbow. They had so much work to do. "Try the right-most now!"

She couldn't be more surprised when they landed on the red desert again.

"Where are we? It looks this same as before! Can it be that two dimensions are identical?!"

"No. It is the same one. I jumped to the left one again."

"Why? We checked it already. And it was empty. Why are you losing time?"

"I wanted to prove a hypothesis."

"What kind of hypothesis?" she asked and bit her tongue before adding: 'And would you mind consulting such ideas with me first'. That would be unwise to piss him off, now when he had all his power back.

"When we jumped to our home dimension, we landed not there where we started, but on that coast. And the second return was also to the coast. Maybe when one teleports between the dimensions there is always…"

"The same entry point!"

"Exactly. And it is. Look here." Madara pointed at the traces in the sand. "That's where your slug was standing. And those," he pointed to the side, "are our footprints."

Sakura digested the information for a moment. "That really works in our favour. If my teammates had arrived into a dimension they would have landed in the very same place where we will upon our arrival. Meaning we would be searching the correct area…"

"Assuming that the entry point is not traveler-dependent."

"Assuming. But that's a very egocentric concept, that the rules of universe would be contingent on an individual."

"Maybe egocentrical, but not to be excluded until we disprove it. Which we cannot, because I'm the only one making the jumps."

Sakura let the argument die. It did have practical consequences, because if they were landing in the same place as Naruto and Sasuke would have, she could invest less chakra into the size of Katsuyu, and by extension into the radius of the search. That would allow them to check more dimensions in shorter time. But she didn't see a point in verbal spars with Madara. In the end she was the one deciding how much chakra she will expedite to Katsuyu. "Anyways," she said, "we still have to test this hypothesis further. And even if it is jutsu-caster-dependent it will still allow us to verify our cube model is correct." Sakura pulled out the sketch. "If it is indeed a cube, then this dimension," she tapped at the forward-up-right point with her pencil, "should become forward-horizon-right once we jump directly up."

"True. And I think we should come up with a numbering system for them," suggested Madara and stepped forward weaving a long series of hand seals. "Amaterasu!"

"What are you doing!?"

"Marking this dimension."

A focused jet of black flames left his mouth. The fire was travelling in a curve, melting the sand into a foot-broad band of glassy black glaze. It was so hot that the stuff was still bubbling even after the flames had already moved meters away. There must have been sulphur in that sand, concluded Sakura wrinkling her nose, because it stank. The flames drew three-quarters of a circle, when Madara changed their direction and started tracing a concaving curve.

A recognition sparked in Sakura's mind – he was drawing symbol of the Uchiha clan.

"Your ego really knows no bounds." She shook her head in disbelief. "That's what you've always dreamed about, right? To brand your mark on the universe."

"That's a good symbol," shrugged Madara starting on the handle of the uchiwa. "Not something that can be repeated accidentally like a circle or a cross. Yet simple enough. And your teammates will recognize it as well, in case they had figured out the dimension travel."

AN: Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think!

Technical note: if you want to visualize the grid of dimensions, the "cube" that Sakura was talking about, google "sodium chloride crystal lattice". The atoms form what is properly called face centered cubic lattice, and in case of sodium chloride it's easy to find your way through this mess, as there are two types of atoms and most figures have them in two different colors.