I know someone in the Narutoverse already has a green Susanno, I think it's Shisui, but for this story so will Obito ;)

It's one of my shortest chapters so far (for this story, that is)

This last chapter…oof…I…I don't even know what to say. Just…it's been a fun ride and I really enjoyed writing this story (if that fact isn't already obvious). I don't want to spoil how it ends. So yeah…

Enjoy.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The End of the Night

What is the Night without darkness?

Nothing.

No.

You get Naruto.

Night and Naruto were one and the same, but with one small difference.

Night was the Nara assassin's easy mode, while Naruto, the man behind the shadows, was the hard mode. Being Night and utilizing shadow manipulation to its fullest gave Naruto's victims a much faster, less painful way of dying. He didn't have to put too much thought before he manifested a tentacle of darkness from his cloak to rip out the heart of his opponents. Faster and easier for the person, but when he made the active effort to not use his bloodline in a fight, friendly spar or not, Naruto, the man behind the Night, was a totally different person.

There were many ways to describe him if Naruto fought without his bloodline which could also in turn describe him as Night; efficient, smart, fast, careful, cunning and even deceptive, but one word overpowered the rest so much so that those he clashed with as Naruto felt the word resonate in their very souls as they lay on the ground, looking up at the figure of darkness hovering over them.

Merciless.

Naruto's eyes squinted a little more as he ground his teeth, his bent arms tensed and his legs strengthened powerfully in his stance, enough to crack the ground beneath his feet a little. At first white vapour rose off from his skin and his clothes, before the vapour darkened into smoke, but only by a little. The Nara's blue eyes twitched and spun within their sockets, specks of red joined in at the edges of his iris before the spinning motion stopped, leaving his blue eyes corrupted by toxic and evil red, shimmering like ruby fragments in the edge of his iris, but never reaching in to fully overcome the blue. Naruto relaxed his clenched teeth and his right foot, set a little bit behind his left leg, twitched a bit to the right and Obito's eyes widened as Naruto seemingly vanished into thin air, with the thin black smoke going with him, only to reappear before him, his eyes not fully on fire but with the edges deep red and the centre a bright blue.

Obito's lone working sharingan could barely keep track of the flash movement as he lifted up his left shin to block Naruto's snap kick, making sure to augment his limbs with chakra because Naruto was obviously doing so as well. As the first attack was blocked the after effect of Naruto zipping through the air so fast slammed into their position like a herd of bulls. The spot Naruto ran from cracked a path straight to Naruto and before it could finally meet Naruto, the blonde-black haired man tightened his left fingers together and thrust them to Obito. The Uchiha just barely shifted his chest away from the stabbing attack and he could feel the blizzard of fire that had billowed out from the fingers of the Nara assassin, enough to make the hairs on his neck stand and shrivel up.

This time Obito finally got control of his shock at Naruto not holding back in the least, the Five Fingered Fire attack that had been used was testament to that fact. His left knee rose up to jam into Naruto's stomach but the Nara brought his right palm down onto Obito's knee to force it back down, singeing the clothes of his knees but not the skin because the Uchiha was still protecting his body with chakra. Naruto followed the last attack by thrusting the back of his right hand at Obito, which was dodged and slapped off course even more by a strong forearm. Naruto spun under the overhead kick that intended to lop off his head and extended his own right leg to trip Obito, but was avoided. Obito leaped away once, to get his breathe back, and shot back to Naruto, who was waiting for him with a fiery Five Fingered Fire attack to his diaphragm.

The Uchiha gasped in shock and spat out blood from his mouth as the fire tunnelled through his stomach and blasted out of his back with the intensity of the first fire blast. Obito managed to gain control of his body quickly and drove his left elbow into the throat of the assassin, the full brunt of the attack was blocked by a well-timed bat with Naruto's free hand but the effect was a pulse of chakra strong enough to throw them apart as Naruto's fire affinity clashed against Obito's fire affinity.

Both skidded apart, Naruto returned back to his fighting style stance as his sandals struggled to regain traction on the ground and Obito clutching the wound to his diaphragm, which was much too low to meet his heart or scrape his spine but still incredibly painful. The Uchiha closed his left eye, his dead sharingan eye, tightly and his other sharingan swirled intensely, so fast that Naruto could almost hear it. His sharingan caught sight of Naruto slowly moving through his stance, steadily moving his tightly held fingers through the air, both hands moving in circular motions that left spirally trails of thin smoke after them. Obito panted as he held his wound, willing his sharingan to heal it as quickly as possible, until Naruto stopped his motions after three spiral revolutions, slapped both of his hands together and pushed both smoky spirals at his Uchiha opponent by hitting his spread palms in the centre of the spirals.

"Fire style: Smoke Stack."

Two columns of smoke warped out from the two smoke stacks and surged to Obito, who grit his teeth and released his wound. His Mangekyo shone and the Uchiha pushed his right palm forward, a toxic green arm, armoured right from the upper forearm right to the knuckles, manifested after the swing and caught both smoke stacks. The Uchiha's sharingan spun in his sockets and, ever so steadily, more parts of his toxic green Susanno came into being; the segmented armoured torso, the samurai like shoulder pads and torso armour, the other arm. Then the head, swaddled in a fiery green helm that hid all its features besides its sparkling green eyes.

Naruto's eyes widened at the Susanno and he cancelled his jutsu just as a massive sword came down on him. The assassin flipped backwards, covering his face with his forearms as the backlash of the last attack hit him with rocks and dust. The Nara's eyes sparkled with red and blue, twitching every once in a while until he slid aside from a sparkling white arrow that had intended to impale him to the ground. He hopped over one, detecting the burst of chakra as it burst through the thick cloud of dust formed by the sword attack, but as he was about to land he dragged his left arm away from another arrow, though this heavenly weapon skimmed over his arm, cracking against his elbow before it slammed into the ground.

The assassin held in the hiss of pain that tried to crawl up his throat and sealessly switched with a pile of rocks as a massive fist came down on his position, crushing the rocks into dust. Naruto rolled his left arm and growled under his breathe when he realized that his elbow was dislocated, but nothing broken, only slightly burnt; he snapped his arm sharply, knocking his elbow back into place. The red and blue of his eyes glowed and he flowed through four hand seals.

"Fire style: Cursed Red Amaterasu."

Like with Sasori, Naruto held up the tiger hand seal up to his bottom lip and blasted demonic fire through the flames. He was confident that the mid S rank fire would deal damage, even a little, to the celestial armour. He had only read legends of it but he never really thought he would see one in the flesh in his life time. His red flames cut through the dust but despite that he kept blowing out more. A second later, black flames mixed with his own and a tussle of dominance ensued between the two similar fire attacks, until the black won out, forcing Naruto to cut off his red amaterasu flames and run lengthwise before he could get scorched with the black fire.

A plan came to him and the assassin ran his fingers up his left sleeve, pulling up the sleeve in the process and channelling chakra into a storage seal there, smoothly pulling out a standard katana blade with a simple red handle. He needed to get through the dust and attack Obito directly, so with that in mind he ran headlong through the thinning dust. He swerved as he ran as another blade came down on him, manoeuvring away as more arrows thudded around him until he broke through the dust and beheld the green behemoth that had been attacking him, controlled by the lone eyed Uchiha standing at its centre.

The Susanno sported four arms, the two left arms held the bow, the top right was empty but the bottom right held a glowing white sword. Naruto didn't take too much time looking at the chakra creation; he kept hurtling to Obito, dodging each strike, his katana slowly beginning to shine hot red, until he reached the belly of the beast, in front of Obito and he stabbed his blade forward. "One Fingered Fire attack."

As the tip of the katana clanged against the armoured abdomen, spewing out torrents of fire in its wake…

It shattered.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Outside the World In-between

The Valley of End

The messenger hawk the Hokage had sent had arrived a minute ago, dropping the small in Shikamaru's hand and then perching on one of the random spiked hairs of the Madara Uchiha statue. Shikaku was tending to his wife; the woman couldn't help the tender smile as her husband worried over her well-being. They didn't notice the bird fly over and leave the scroll for Shikamaru. Itachi was sitting on the ground with his legs cross, this time not in his Akatsuki robes but in his regular shinobi garb, his Mangekyo whirring in his sockets, searching for something he was not sure he would find.

Meanwhile Shikamaru was sitting on the ground, his logical mind trying to decipher the news Itachi had told him about the World In-between. His coal black eyes looked at the scroll and he swiped his blood onto the seal on it, allowing only him to access it. Inside the small scroll were two storage seals, one on top of the other, both were boldly drawn. The young genius noticed his parents were busy speaking to each other and Itachi was also straining his eyes, so he unsealed the first thing in the top storage seal.

A letter.

To my little bro, Shika.

I don't know how to tell you this so I'll start like this. I've been a ninja for a very long, I have seen things most people would wish they have never seen and I have done things that still scar my conscience, but what I have in common with every other ninja like me as, admittedly, experienced as I am is that we begin to develop a sense a danger for our inevitable end.

I've been having this feeling since I returned from the west, that my end is coming. This is not something you'd like to hear, especially because I just came back home a few days ago, but it's the truth. You're a big boy now Shika, your much smarter than I could ever think you could be and I am and I would forever be proud of you, that's why I'm telling this to you first before mom and dad hear about it, because I trust you to break the news to them without breaking their hearts.

Saying I'm a proud big brother is a big understatement, Shika. You're not the kid that used to be afraid of monsters under his bed anymore; you are that monster now, but to all your enemies. I've been writing this letter since I first came back, so if I sound disjointed then I apologize.

By the time your reading this then the Chakra/Time Lock seal connected to my chakra network has disabled and unsealed this letter, meaning that my chakra network has stopped 'operating' and we both know what that means. I wish I could have spent more time with you and mom and dad but I can only run from death for so long.

Please, don't look for me, Shika. I want you to keep being the strength of the house and I'm certain you'll make a great clan head one day. I trust that title to you now. I also trust something else to you, it's called the Rinnegan. Its only one eye, the other one is with me, but even one eye holds great power, I felt it. It's my way of staying connected to you and the clan always. I'm not sure the full extents of its abilities but Jiraiya was the teacher of its former owner, you can learn from him, the Amekage if you ask nice enough or even by yourself, that is if you choose to use it. Whatever decision you choose, to destroy it or use it, I'm still satisfied that it's in right hands.

Live your life Shika, that's my last wish.

Forever your big brother,

Naruto.

P.S. Don't think I just left you an eye and got killed off like a chump, little guy. I also left you everything I have in my bank vault. Yes, I have a vault; I paid good money for it. My banker has a document that says I willed all I have to you and another copy of it is with the Fire daimyo. Yes again, the Fire daimyo, just in case that banker tries to pull any tricks. I don't have any need for them where I'm going so use them wisely.

Shikamaru's arms went limp and dropped the letter. His already lowered heart sank even more as tears filled his eyes.

'Big bro is dead…?' he thought slowly, his hands shaking at his sides and his wide eyes staring blankly at the ground. He clenched his eyes shut, forcing the traitorous tears to not fall. The young Nara's breathes came out in puffs as he stifled his wheezing cries by clamping his mouth shut. He finally opened his eyes and used his pointer and middle finger to stash the letter in his flak jacket, then unsealed the last item in the storage seal, a cylinder filled with a transparent liquid and a single purple ringed eye floating in the middle. His mouth was in a firm grim line as he stared at the godly eye, holding it in his hands for five minutes straight before he sealed it back into the storage seal and storing the scroll into his flak jacket again.

The fourteen year old boy slowly got to his feet, drawing his parents gaze to him, and they quirked their eyebrows when their son steadily approached them, his eyes lowered to the ground in what they recognized as defeat and a large dose of mourning. Shikamaru fell on his knees before his parents and he delivered the news to them.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

The World In-between

'Shit, shit, shit.' Obito cursed as he moved and dodged the fiery fingers of the assassin, each blast hitting the inside of the armour and breaking it outwards.

Naruto's chakra affinity was fire, much like his mother, and he also inherited some of his mother's attitude, while Shikamaru was water like their father and obviously took more after Shikaku than Naruto. Unlike most Nara men, Naruto was not cripplingly unmotivated and unambitious; the simple fact that he capitalized on his high IQ and genius to graduate from the academy at age eight and became a full jounin when he was eleven was testament to that fact.

The blonde-black assassin had mastered his fire affinity when he was a chunin, so much so that if he ever wanted to make full use of the affinity he didn't need to mediate for longer than half a minute. He could shroud his body with fire chakra, creating the thin black smoke wafting off his skin and adding specks of deep red to his sky blue eyes. Though fire wasn't the only nature transformation he had mastered in his long and successful shinobi career. Earth was the next he grasped, then lightning and finally water, but wind always gave him trouble so he stopped trying, mainly because his fire affinity could negate wind. During his time as a jounin of Konoha when he was younger he would say he was good at what he knew but after returning from the west and pitting against monstrous men and women who were moulded in the fires of centuries of war and death. Those of his home region, the east, were surprisingly lower than he thought. This realization came up after he defeated the Zombie brothers, two S ranks, without lifting a finger. There were people of note that gave him trouble to assassinate, like the red head named Nagato and the purple angel named Konan, but he always found a way to end their lives. One way or the other.

Obito slapped aside two stabbing fingers honing for his chest and drove his knee into the unprotected stomach of the assassin, who winced a little but swiped his left leg forward to trip the Uchiha. Obito rolled back as he fell and used his arms to flip over Naruto, who blasted another column of fire at him. The Susanno was rapidly disintegrating with each fire attack. Obito cracked his heel on the back of Naruto's neck, spinning after the attack and bashing the same heel on the side of Naruto's head, cursing under his breathe when Naruto dissolved into steam. He leaped up, dodging Naruto as he erupted from the ground, and drove a kunai he had summoned from a storage seal on his wrist, only to curse again when Naruto dispersed again. The Uchiha's lone sharingan was working on overtime to see through the mist, his panting echoed in the silence and his doujutsu warned him ahead of time to pull out the kunai from the ground and spin it in his fingers, deflecting dozens of other kunai that had been thrown at him straight from the ground. His free hand reached to the side and smacked up the blow intended to burn off his head, his foot jammed into Naruto's stomach, this time he didn't disperse so Obito used the split second to lift his leg and slam it under Naruto's chin.

Naruto flipped backwards after the last blow and flowed through a set of hand seals. "Water release: Flash Flood." And as the jutsu did just that; one moment there was nothing but thin mist in the air and then the next water was splashing towards him from Naruto.

"Amaterasu." The Uchiha said and black fire quickly evaporated the water, though Obito had to cross his arms as Naruto's smoking foot planted on his arms. The Nara dropped six more kicks before gravity took effect and dropped him to the ground, only for Naruto to swipe a punch to his face aside with his left forearm and drive his right palm in the very centre of the Uchiha's chest. The result was Obito flying backwards, his back smashing through his Susanno and shattering it like glass, and landing in a heap yards away. He rolled aside when Naruto landed on his position with a savage stomp, aiming for his head, flipped onto his feet. The hole in his chest throbbed painfully, even more so as he spun away and blocked the unrelenting attacks from Naruto. He was panting for air as his arms and legs blocked and attempted counters, only for those counters to bite back at him and leave openings for Naruto to capitalize on. "Amatera-" an elbow smashed against his jaw, flinging him aside. He rolled multiple times and spun back to his feet, stumbling backwards as he said. "Amat-" he was again broken off when Naruto shot two columns of fire at him. "Am-" two hands clasped on his shoulders from behind and Obito yelled in pain as two knees were driven into his lower back.

The hands released him, letting him stumble away again. His Mangekyo was trembling but he couldn't stay on that fact because two hot fingers jammed into his shoulder blades, one on each shoulder blade. Those two increased to four and jabbed his kidneys. Those four increased to six and stabbed his spin. Then those four went up to eight and burnt off his kneecaps from behind, letting him fall onto the ground in a weak heap. Naruto kicked the Uchiha onto his back and grabbed a fist full of his shirt, yanking his body up and shaking him when he noticed that Obito was going into terrible shock from all those pressure point attacks.

Obito felt his second Mangekyo die in his eyes but unlike the first eye the sharingan only faded back into his normal coal black eyes, leaving him to stare into the red-blue eyes of the assassin.

"You've lost Obito, now take us back."

A small, tired smile came to the Uchiha and he chuckled, coming out as wheezing. "I haven't lost, Naruto. You have." He whispered, the profuse bleeding of his pressure points and the holes in his torso finally getting to him.

"This isn't a game Obito-"

"Your right, this isn't a game." The defeated Uchiha cut in with a large, crazed grin. "This is a story, and I'm the hero!"

"What the hell are you talking about? Take us back home now!" Naruto roared.

"No longer will your illusion hold the world hostage. No longer will people be prisoners to your will. I have freed the world from the Night!" Obito screamed, cackling like a mad person. "I am the hero of this story and I have vanquished you for good!"

Naruto clenched his fist and slammed it against Obito's laughing face; this silenced the Uchiha for a brief moment, only letting quiet, sputtering chuckles to escape his mouth. "You've gone mad, Obito."

"No I haven't. I have never been so clear sighted in my life. The world will not remember me but I will be cemented in the skies as the man that ended the reign of the Night." Obito's head lolled weakly and his eyes began to close. "You will never hurt the world again, Night, because you will never return. I…have…saved…everyone…" he said in a quiet voice.

At hearing this Naruto huffed and held back from breaking the Uchiha's neck. "What do you mean I will never return?! What have you done!? Tell me!"

The dying man laughed faintly, his one open eye looking into the red-blues of Naruto. "The moment I took you… here…you were taken out of the time stream of the elemental nations…to the time stream of all the universes…connected together in a central…hub…the…World In-between…a place only I can access with…my eyes…once we got here…we can never return back home…" Obito grinned, his red painted teeth clenched and fully exposed as he whispered. "…never…" his chuckle became a low hum when he felt Naruto's hand shake with unbridled fury. "I told you…Night…I am the hero…of …this…story…" his eye slowly closed and the severe blood loss finally ended his life.

Naruto panted and huffed as his fist hovered over Obito's dead face, his eyes on fire. Until Obito's body slowly dissolved into nothing, leaving his hand in specks of floating dust before that too went. The blonde-black haired man fell onto his knees as he stopped channelling fire affinity, returning his eyes back to normal.

Never.

The ground cracked under him and so did the featureless sky as the one person holding the entire landscape corporal died, leaving Naruto to fall into a void of empty blackness, staring with empty, dead eyes, at the featureless sky, breaking apart and leaving him, Naruto, to float through inky black nothing.

Authors note

The end

Mangekyo sharingan: Kamui: The World In-between: this is a forbidden sharingan jutsu that transports the owner of the doujutsu and his intended target or targets to the hub point of all the universes, like all quintillion of the universes (anime or not) are in some way connected to the World In-between. This means that the world is not corporal until a person with special traits, like an Uchiha with full control of his Mangekyo sharingan or a rinnegan holder, is able to enter here and thereby make it corporal, or in other words physical. The world is therefore not a creation of Obito but rather the culmination of notes Madara has been taking on how to step into 'World In-between' as he is using the kamui, that is, the world between his original location and his intended destination. Madara was not able to live long enough to test this idea but Obito, on his first attempt, used it on Naruto, thus removing both of them from the 'Narutoverse' forever, that is why the Chakra/Time Lock seal went off immediately Naruto disappeared with Obito. It is not known why people are not able to return to their universe of origin (yes, 'people' and yes again 'universe of origin' meaning other people in other universes can use it) but Obito suspected that he couldn't return because first his left Mangekyo burnt up and second he was in a desperate situation (wouldn't you if you were fighting Naruto?). Lastly, the reason Obito's body disintegrated into dust after he died, or his chakra reserves dried up, is the final sacrifice the world would take from the user after it is used, like losing his left eye.

The reason no one has ever been documented on using this jutsu should be obvious. They never came back to tell the tale.

Phew, that was a long one; I just needed to iron that out because I couldn't find a place to put it in the story. My bad.

So I'm debating with myself (yes, I do that; it's hard to explain) on whether or not to write an epilogue for this story. I know, I know; I said this was going to be the last chapter; I'm just throwing that thought out there. Let me know in the reviews, if you don't hate me too much, if you want to see what happens after the dust has settled both to Shikamaru (and his family) and Naruto.

How have I been doing with this story up to this point? I really like to know. Kindly tell me in the reviews your thoughts, opinions, criticisms and anything else really (just don't flame). Don't forget to review on whether or not you want an epilogue or I should just move on to another story and forget this one.

Stay safe, wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you :)

Foy.