A/N: Sorry this took a while. Enjoy this chapter!
"You." One word. One syllable. One woman, directed towards one man. And all the bitterness and venom acquired over the long, hard years condensed within it. The smoldering, poisonous green eyes did not hold back Sakura's emotions one bit; the woman herself was, physically – and Boruto was glad for that – more restrained. She resisted the temptation to charge into the fight and pummel Sasuke with her fists, that is, if she possessed the ability do so in the first place. Instead, she stood there, frozen. Boruto didn't blame her at all.
The confrontation between Sasuke and Kinshiki was a sight to behold. They whirred and clashed their weapons in the speed of light. Momoshiki swung his axe, tinged with a red and demonic hue, at Sasuke, who then dodged it deftly and nearly impaled his attacker's arm with his lightning-coated sword. It was truly a match of equals where neither was holding back. It was then that Boruto grasped just how powerful the two were: living deities among a sea of mere mortals.
Yet deities can be defeated. His father and Uncle Sasuke's triumph over Kaguya was testament to that (though Boruto would wager that the two did not qualify as simple mortals themselves), as was his own defeat of Momoshiki in his own world. Everything, every being, every sentient creature that inhabits the universe possesses weaknesses, regardless of power. Last time, Momoshiki's downfall was partly attributed to his own hubris, believing that insignificant beings like Boruto possessed no mortal threat and partly due to his less impressive taijutsu abilities.
"Boruto," Sarada said his name again. He snapped back to reality, his reality, with his friends by his side. "I'm joining you on this one." She drew out her kunai and fell into a defensive stance. He gave her an encouraging nod, masking his private despair. He knew, selfishly, that he did not want to involve her for fear of endangering her life – he also knew that, given the dire situation he was in, he badly needed her help, any help.
Momoshiki had gotten up, yet he was ignoring Boruto's presence. It seemed that he had sensed something. He leapt towards somewhere.
[The Kyuubi, why else?]
Boruto knew where it was, of course, from Sasuke's indirect briefings. Or at least he had an inkling about Kurama's rough location.
[Not too far away from the bookstore.]
Great.
"Sakura and Kakashi!" He found himself yelling frantically. "Come here! There's something important I need to tell you guys!"
Once the two had scrambled over, Sakura still not yet fully recovered from witnessing her old flame turned bitter enemy, Boruto explained under a hushed voice, "Momoshiki over there – he's vulnerable to taijutsu. Do not use ninjutsu or genjutsu on him because he can absorb them through the Rinnegan on his hand."
"Got it," Kakashi said. "Sakura and I will go after him immediately."
"I'll come too," Boruto replied. Like hell he was going to be left behind.
"We'll come too," Sarada and Mitsuki concurred.
"Someone will need to summon reinforcements," Kakashi remarked with urgency. "We'll need as much help as we can get. Sakura?" It was a gentle, prodding question. No doubt, he was concerned about the woman's ability to cope with the scenario before their eyes. She would, as much as she could willingly suppress her raw feelings of hatred towards Sasuke, struggle on the battlefield with him not as her opponent but, rather, some twisted form of temporary ally. She seemed to take hint.
Her face contorted, squirmed. A woman conflicted, battered, tortured.
"You're their leader," Sarada agreed with Kakashi. "They all – all of Hi no Ishi – put their ultimate trust in you. They'll believe you when you say this world is embroiled in an existential confrontation. We all need you."
Sakura nodded, too weak – emotionally – to muster a rebuttal.
They were blasted backwards before they could land a blow on Momoshiki.
"Pathetic mere mortals," he sneered, baring his teeth. They had acquired an eerie, ghostly quality. Synthetic, almost. Most definitely not natural, Boruto thought as revulsion coursed through him. "I have little time to spare for your silly games."
"You won't win," Sarada shouted defiantly. "You'll never find what you're looking for."
Momoshiki cocked his neck with amusement. "On the contrary, I believe the Kyuubi is well within the vicinity." His smooth, deceptively honeyed voice sent uncomfortable lacerations through Boruto's spine. It was all too real, too familiar.
[Find it before he does. Use it against him]
Erase that thought. Erase that damned thought.
[Your father, Boruto. Dad is still present in this dimension. He has to be. Remember? He failed to come here with you. Think. Rationalise. Build on what you know.]
And what did he know?
1) As per the properties associated with that inter-dimensional travelling scroll, those with chakra present in both dimensions are unable to journey between them.
2) Uncle Sasuke's counterpart killed his father's counterpart in this dimension 17 years ago at the Valley of the End. This was when history diverged.
3) His father failed to come here with him.
[He failed because a fragment of his chakra was still present.]
Applying further deduction, Boruto came to the conclusion that some form of Naruto's chakra – the other Naruto – not his father – was still preserved over the years. How? Chakra storing scrolls? A possibility. But of what purpose? It seemed strange that Sasuke should choose to do so, should authorize an action that had little tangible benefits or purpose in the present.
And then it flashed before his mind. The memory of the cave. That hissing voice –
[Orochimaru]
The younger man.
[Sasuke himself, that bastard. That idiotic, myopic bastard.]
The hushed, hissing conversation. Secretive, clandestine, a touch of shame from one of them, hidden securely under a mask of omnipotence and cruelty.
[Edo Tensei. Dad is still bound to the mortal world by Edo Tensei. His resurrected body. The Kyuubi is sealed within it. It all makes sense now.]
"My dad," he whispered to Sarada beside him. "He's still here isn't he?"
To his surprise, she inclined furiously. The intensity of it all shocked him.
"Edo Tensei?"
Another nod.
"The Kyuubi sealed within?"
"I'm surprised by your deductive abilities. In that respect, you are slightly different from your father…" That was Kakashi trying to be mildly sardonic, nostalgic and funny all in a life-threatening situation. Boruto snorted.
"My dad."
"Yes Boruto, your dad?"
"He can help us."
"What?!"
Sarada looked confused, even mildly irritated. She must think him crazy. Kakashi was eyeing him with a perplexed expression too.
"We need someone to match Momoshiki in terms of their abilities," Boruto tried to say this with a calm voice. Judging form Sarada's frown, he wasn't succeeding very much. "This has to work."
"We'll be giving him exactly what he wants!" She protested.
"Boruto… you are aware of the downsides to the potential, and I must say very likely, failure of this plot?" Kakashi cautioned with a hint of understanding. Locking eyes with Boruto, the boy then realised that the man followed his train of thought.
"Do both of you really think that something as powerful and potent as the Kyuubi's chakra can evade the detection of the Rinnegan for long? We'll have to get Dad and free him from the yoke of whoever is controlling him, which, in this case, may be no one, meaning that he may be in possession of his own free will. Then, we'll get him to help us!"
"Idiot…" Sarada muttered. "This better work."
It better.
"I can try to distract Momoshiki – not for long though. I'll do it when you two are absolutely certain of his location," Kakashi volunteered.
Konohamaru begrudgingly acknowledged that, monster he was, Sasuke Uchiha was probably the only figure capable of singularly confronting one of the two eerie deities that emerged out of the blue.
The man in front of him whirled and wielded his sword with lethal grace, cutting off another one of Kinshiki's horns. Then, a purple coat of chakra erupted around Sasuke, engulfing him in the same deadly armour that he used against many of Konohamaru's own fallen comrades. The Susanoo: a legendary deity, a protector summoned from the heavens. It fired a powerful, mythic arrow, rumoured by many to be owned by Indra Ootsusuki himself. The arrow barely scraped by Kinshiki as the giant ogre evaded its attack just in time. Instead, it struck an array of business establishments in town, planting the seeds of an earthquake and destroying building after building in the vicinity.
Realising the potential infliction of civilian casualties, Konohamaru leapt to the rescue of many terrified bystanders, launching a giant rasengan to blast all the building structures out of harms way and carried a young girl – no more than 5 years of age and trembling in stupor, teddy bear in hand – away from a sinking structure. Sasuke wasn't want to care about collateral damage, Konohamaru snorted internally. Of course, he wasn't – being the cruel, unfeeling bastard that so heartless struck down big-brother Naruto all these years ago in spite of everything they had gone through together and plunged the world into darkness. This was an arrangement (not even an alliance) of convenience that would shatter soon after the common enemy was vanquished.
"Get the civilians out of harm's way! Evacuate to the nearest village for safety!" Konohamaru belted out these orders to other members of Hi no Ishi. They were outmatched in this gambit of gods but they must do their share of work. Human life, it was something these two supernatural monsters clashing in front of him wouldn't understand. Human life was precious: a shinobi should never maim another man or woman that was more than necessary. And Hi no Ishi's bombings, attacks on low level (but innocent, damn what Sakura insists, innocent) officials ended up causing them more harm than good. Playing violence with the likes of Sasuke Uchiha would not end well.
The girl is crying, sobbing onto Konohamaru's shirt. He understands her perfectly. At her age, he would have done the same too. So he pulls up a cheerful smile and tells her: "It will be okay." Then, he gives her a thumbs up and calls Hiroku to evacuate her. She thanks him quietly.
In the distance, Sasuke was finally gaining an upper hand, slashing through Kinshiki's spilling array of weapons, manoeuvring his way up close. Sasuke, noticing Momoshiki was far away from their site of battle, smirks a smirk that Konohamaru knows only too well, for he has seen it before, during the day when Ino and Sai both-
Konohamaru isn't surprised when Kinshiki was engulfed by a black raging inferno. The ogre's grotesque cries pierce through the sky and still managed to strike terror into the hearts of mortals. In front of him, Sasuke's eyes, patterned like kaleidoscopic wheels, glistened with cold fury. Yet Kinshiki was no normal victim, he was a deity and, by definition, less destructible. The blaze lingered perpetually on his skin but made little way inwards. It hurt, Konohamaru could tell, it most certainly hurt. With horror, Konohamaru then realised that Sasuke was controlling the flames, directing them towards Kinshiki's eyes, blinding the ogre, then moulding the flames into shards that threatened to penetrate into the skull.
It was a macabre sight that no normal human being should have witnessed. Perhaps, Konohamaru philosophized, only a monster could hurt another monster.
"My dad's there!"
Sarada frowned at Boruto's declaration. They were at a dank, obscure alleyway not too far away from Sayuri's bookstore. And the boy was pointing at nowhere. Okay, scratch that: he was pointing down at the floor, which was coated by a mélange of well-fitted stones.
She caught Kakashi frowning too, yet his expression differentiated itself from hers in that his was a frown that suggested contemplation. The man was deep in hard thought. Then, he weaved a few handsigns for an earth style jutsu and placed his palms on the ground experimentally. He was testing out something.
"Boruto's not wrong, the ground here," he said as he walked over, "is hollow. This could very well be a storage sight."
"How do you know?" Sarada questioned, activating her sharingan. She could sense another almost deliberately obscured space underground, where evidence of chakra seem too deliberately erased. It was a clumsy hiding place, she concluded, hastily conjured up by Sasuke as a last minute response to the breaching of the Kyuubi's original hiding place. It was its location that made it so secretive, for no Hi no Ishi member would dare to imagine just how close the Kyuubi would be to their clandestine hiding place. That was it. Wait – that must mean that –
"I just do," Boruto explained. "I can feel it, I can feel that his chakra is somewhere down there. Sasuke told me the rough location of the Kyuubi off-handedly, probably didn't expect me to do anything with it. Heh. Said it was Hi no Ishi's gateway to Mount Myoboku. Long story, lets break in."
They scurried over, testing out the stone-laden floors that Kakashi had stood upon earlier, testing them for signs of a passageway.
"Quick," Kakashi whispered, "Momoshiki is nearing. I'll stand guard and distract him if need be. You two should hurry up."
There's something strange about these stones, Sarada thought. She coated her fingers with just the barest trace of pure, unmolded chakra and graced the stones one by one. They absorbed it within seconds, unflinching.
"Chakra stones," Sarada blurted out. "Chakra stones, Boruto. These are stones that respond only to a specific kind of chakra."
Boruto took her words in and coated his palm with chakra, slamming it into the ground. Little harm came, for the stones sucked in all the chakra, depriving him of all potential superhuman enhancements.
"Hold my hand," he said, realization dawning. "We'll combine our chakras. It might work. It could be the Sage of Six Path's chakra they were looking for. I'm a descendant of Ashura, you of Indra. It might work." He placed his hand over hers and then gripped it tightly, his warm chakra enveloping her hand. She did her part of the job too and their two chakras, miraculously, fused. The stones took them in and then, instantly, the ground gave way to a giant hole.
They fell.
Defeat was within sight. Kinshiki was bloodied and huffing and panting. His right arm was sliced off, his eyes a blackened scab and his horns were long gone. Facing him, Sasuke looked pushed to the brink of exhaustion too, stretched to his limits, sweat dripping down his harsh visage – but still alive and whole.
The civilians were, thankfully, mostly evacuated. Out of the thousands of spectators, Konohamaru would wager that only a hundred or so had received serious injuries and that was the best they could have hoped for. The vast majority of Hi no Ishi members have left the sight of battle too if only to safeguard those they had just protected. Not Konohamaru.
Just when Kinshiki's fate appeared sealed, just when Sasuke was about to charge towards the ogre with full fury and decapitate him, he was mysteriously whisked away, suckered into oblivion, laughing all the way.
Things were about to get worse, Konohamaru recognized, dread creeping through him.
Kakashi stood there, alone, in a dingy alleyway, facing Momoshiki with horror as the pale, unnatural man licked his lips and consumed a giant, grotesque, blood-red fruit, transforming into an eldritch abomination that chilled the hearts of even the bravest men. Steadying himself, Kakashi clasped his kunai and readied for the final confrontation of his life.
A/N: Confession - university started for me and I really wasn't sure whether I wanted to continue this story at all. I feared that the plot was getting stagnant, the characters were written poorly and a perusal through other fanfics of vastly superior quality was taking a toll on my self-confidence in terms of writing.
And then a lovely reader PM'd me and told me this story was wonderful. And then I got a ton of homework from university and procrastination time went up. Ergo, why I'm writing this now.
This story is nearing its end so be sure to keep me informed about your thoughts and predictions. Seriously, I love how supportive all you guys are. It's amazing :) Out of complete curiosity, out of all the characters I've written, who is your favourite? (Mine is strangely Sakura - I know some readers have said how much they hated her but the idea of her as a battle-worn, bitter and cynical resistance leader who is tormented by violent, paradoxical feelings towards the only man she ever loved was really fun to write.)
Please leave your thoughts, comments and feedback in the reviews! I read every single one of them and I love you all!