Kaguya Otsutsuki lifted her eyelids once more and revealed her Byakugan. Her ears were slightly ringing and her other senses were numb, but they were quickly returning to normal. Her chakra finally stabilized and she gathered her bearings. What was immediately noticeable to Kaguya was that everything was too dark for her to see normally, so she activated her byakugan. In doing so, she immediately noticed that she was not alone in the darkness. Ahead of her, she saw one of the two boys who just sealed her away. The fact that he was glowing gold was quite helpful. But how was she revived this time, and where did Indra's reincarnation go? What was going on?
Without Black Zetsu, there wasn't anyone to feed information to her directly. All that she knew in that moment was that she was unsealed, but was also with Asura's reincarnation somewhere that had no light. The latter problem didn't matter to her, though. If she was in a cave or confinement, escape would be as easy as breathing. What mattered was that Asura's reincarnation no longer possessed her son's chakra, which meant he couldn't seal her, and she could take his chakra without concern. Seeing that he was in a defensive posture and placed his pesky shadow clones in front of him, he must not have been that confident. She could easily take him, and with that thought, she lunged towards him.
And suddenly, her face met stone. After her initial leap, she flew for about five meters, but then as if gravity had switched from off to on, she collided with the floor and slid for another second or two.
Six pairs of golden light-clad eyes shot wide open with surprise, hearing and sensing as Kaguya hit the floor. If it was anyone else, except maybe Obito or Madara, he might have laughed at the comical nature of what just happened. He remained silent and solemn, however. In fact, he took the opportunity to attack.
Kaguya pushed herself off the ground, and with her Byakugan still active, was able to narrowly dodge the kick of the first shadow clone, the rasengan that the second was holding. However, was quickly driven into her back and pushed her an inch or two into the stone. The shadow clone backed away, as Kaguya released a burst of chakra fists in every direction.
That worked? Naruto thought, surprised yet again. His clone was able to land a solid hit with just that, when it took far more effort and more power to damage her before. He hit her with nine different rasenshurikens, and before mutating, she was barely hurt at all. But as Kaguya recovered and his shadow clones went for a second round, Naruto was able to get a better look at her. While they attacked and evaded, their glowing figures illuminated Kaguya's face, and her lack of a visible third eye.
That rinnegan sharingan thing is closed? He discovered and exhaled with relief. It's like when Kakashi-sensei runs out of chakra and covers his eye… wait, that's right! We only gave her a bit, enough for Ten Tails to form, but then why isn't she absorbing more chakra?
If she was running low on chakra, she should have been able to draw more from the people that were trapped by the Infinite Tsukuyomi. That's what she'd done before and multiple times at that. Since the sealing property of the Planetary Devastation shouldn't have been active anymore, it shouldn't prevent her from acquiring more chakra either. That could only mean one thing; the worldwide genjutsu must have been dispelled. He felt thankful; it meant that everyone else escaped. That was why he couldn't sense them.
But he didn't have the time to celebrate, not until he could see them in person, and he still had quite a to-do list before that could happen.
With a pair of bone spears, she was able to tag both of the shadow clones, causing them to explode in smoke, and yet they didn't m turn to ash and decay like they did before. Kaguya also seemed to notice, as she looked stunned at the puff of smoke that was once a shadow clone. She must have been just as confused as Naruto was. He couldn't judge her for that though. He'd be confused as well but there was no way he was going to complain about it. If she couldn't use the rinnegan's abilities or her space-time ninjutsu, all the better for him.
Naruto created another two dozen shadow clones, sending most of them towards Kaguya to distract her, while he turned to the eight that stayed behind.
"Alright guys, just like before." The real Naruto said. He channeled akurama's chakra, creating a rasengan in his hand with a reddish tint. The rasenshurikens were going to be excessive in a situation like this, and he didn't want to use too much chakra in case he needed it for later.
The eight followed suit, creating rasengan with the power of the other tailed beasts. With these, they would be able to draw out the pieces of each tailed beast and defeat Kaguya.
But that was ever so slightly displaced as the 16 shadow clones Naruto sent as a diversion were quickly destroyed in one fell swoop. It wasn't that Kaguya was getting stronger, but she was pulling herself together. Of course, the lucky shot his clone managed was because she was confused, and even a weakened goddess was still a goddess. He needed to act quickly before she got any wiser.
All nine remaining Narutos launched themselves at her, bobbing and weaving to avoid her hair needles and bone spears; their chakra cloaks protected them from most of the hair needles, but they still had to avoid the spears. One of the clones reached Kaguya first and shoved a ball of blue flames towards her face, and she pushed herself back to avoid it. Behind her, another clone positioned themselves to catch her, but Kaguya was able to see him with her Byakugan. She used her hair to grab them and throw them back as far as possible, but at the same time, three more Narutos were about to fall upon her.
"Get away from me!" Kaguya shouted, embedding chakra into her words like a sonic boom. It stunned them for a moment, enough for her to roll out of the way and let their attacks dig a crater in the ground. In the next moment, she was able to fire several spears like a machine gun. Each of his clones were struck and dispersed, allowing her a moment to breathe.
"Damn." Naruto cursed, and started to think up a new strategy.
"How dare you, reincarnation of Asura! Again and again, you attack me, but you cannot win against me alone!"
Naruto grit his teeth, and put his fist to palm. "No, I'm not alone. And I won't lose this fight when I have something to go home to!"
Naruto rushed towards Kaguya, packing a massive amount of chakra into his fist to deliver a world class knuckle sandwich. Kaguya finally stood up and readied a counterattack, and met Naruto halfway. Hundreds of opaque chakra fists slammed into each other, half gold and half white. They hit each other with enough force to blow through mountains, and gouge out rivers, and did that much to their surroundings. They may very well have caused a collapse if the planetoid wasn't so well built. Instead, they settled a single punch breaking through each other's defense, reaching each other's jaws, and hurling them both into the opposite walls of the enclosure.
She's still this strong. Naruto thought, as he pried himself from the wall. But I can tell she used up a lot of chakra.
"So have we." Kurama replied grimly. "You aren't using the Sage of Six Path's chakra, and you've used up most of the chakra we'd built up."
"Already?" Naruto asked. He didn't exactly spend a ton of time gathering chakra, all things considered, and he was unconscious a moment earlier.
"Whatever you do next, it's probably our last chance. Make it a good one." Kurama explained.
"Right, let's do this." Naruto crossed his fingers and covered himself in smoke.
Kaguya finally freed herself from a Kaguya-shaped hole in the wall, in time to see the smoke. But just before she could activate her Byakugan and see through it, Naruto burst forward. He was moving even faster, bolstered by a jet of steam that resembled the tail of a comet. In his hand was a rasengan.
Kaguya threw a bone spear at Naruto. With his momentum, he would have to use up his rasengan to stop it or take a spear to the face. But to her surprise, that I'd exactly what the blond did. The spear pierced his forehead, ending his life, and causing him to explode into smoke. The rasengan however, continued to fly towards her, before it transformed into another Naruto. With his fingers crossed, he spawned another group of clones, all of which kept their hands in a cross.
Before her eyes, they transformed yet again, and what they transformed into, caused her heart to stop. Naruto was no longer present, and before her near-clairvoyant eyes, stood a harem of beautiful men who some women would surely kill just to spend a day with. If Black Zetsu was present, he would surely be ashamed. Not because of the sight of such a jutsu yet again, but the fact that it worked again.
Naruto flew out from behind his handsome clones and grabbed Kaguya by the arms. He hit her with a headbutt, and the collection of men returned to their correct forms, each using some of the tailed beasts chakra. But just before contact, the shadow clones suddenly disappeared. They and their chKra dispersed, having used up all of the chakra that they had. All that was left was Naruto himself, and the woman that he was holding pinned against the ground. Even his chakra cloak had been extinguished. Naruto was back to his normal self.
You gotta be kidding me… Naruto groaned, making a face of pure disappointment.
"Get off of me!" Kaguya screamed, slamming a wall of chakra into Naruto and freeing herself.
Naruto landed hard several meters back, still defiant yet very exhausted.
"You… with that… stupid disgusting ability!" Kaguya shouted in between heavy breaths, simultaneously ignoring the blood that was leaking from her nose. "How dare you use my chakra… for that accursed… technique!"
"Your chakra? Just because you ate the chakra fruit doesn't mean it all belongs to you! Your son gave chakra to us shinobi, not you!" Naruto shouted back.
"His chakra is mine! He should have never learnt of it, let alone obtain it. Instead, he turned against me, and shared chakra amongst you humans, and what good has it done?!" Kaguya shouted. She walked with unsteady steps towards Naruto, before falling to the ground. For what it was worth, she was just as drained as he was. She still kept approaching.
"You should have just… just gone to sleep. You would all be at peace," She said, having finally reached Naruto.
She tried to stab him with a bone spear, but instead, all she could muster was slapping him across the face. It didn't really hurt, not when he'd taken much harder hits from the likes of Sakura.
"None of you… could ever understand. Not even my own sons…" Kaguya panted, and Naruto felt droplets of water splash against his face from her flailing.
"What?" Naruto blurted, confused.
"Turned against me. I need to… I need to… but… it's too late, isn't it?" Kaguya muttered to herself. She stared at Naruto, but wasn't quite looking at him. She was looking in his direction, and he happened to be in front of her.
"Umm, what are you talking about?" Naruto asked.
Suddenly. Kaguya's senses came back to her, and she ripped herself back. She held her own mouth closed, as if she just said something she wasn't supposed to. She looked, as far as Naruto could tell, like an absolute mess. He could sense some of her emotions, sorrow and fear, but he couldn't sense her violent intent like he could just a moment ago. She was no longer in a mood to fight, to his surprise.
"You… no, there's no point." Kaguya whispered, teetering on some kind of defeat against an invisible enemy.
"What? No point in what?" Naruto asked again, this time approaching Kaguya.
"Get away from me!" She shouted at him, although made no effort to attack. "Because of you, no, because of all of you… I've failed. I've failed all of you."
"You… you wanted to bring peace to the world, didn't you?" Naruto muttered.
"Not this speech again." Naruto heard several disembodied voices groan in perfect sync in his head, and grimaced. He didn't exactly appreciate their attitudes towards a potentially peaceful solution. It was almost like they wanted this to end in a bloody death match. But he steeled himself and spoke again.
"I want to hear you out. You must have cared about others before. What happened?" Naruto asked.
"There is no point in telling you. A human like you, who knows only conflict amongst yourselves, can do nothing."
"Tell me anyway, and don't underestimate us. Me and Sasuke, Sakura, Obito and Kakashi-sensei just kicked your ass before you know." Naruto fired back, causing Kaguya's eye to twitch in irritation.
And yet despite her earlier declaration, she spoke anyway, having little in the ways of a counterargument. "Chakra divides and fuels greed when it is held by more than one. By holding it myself and me alone, I could fulfill the dreams of all, and protect them from all dangers. My sons betrayed me, and sought to share my chakra with the world. Foolish ignorant children. And now… what has become of my world?" She asked herself aloud.
"You might be right about us humans fighting each other, but we don't fight for no reason. We fight for the people and things we want to protect. We're no different from you, goddess or not." Naruto retorted.
"Can you truly say that? You shinobi and all of your so-called history. What have you accomplished other than destroying each other? What have you achieved with your strengths, that I could not alone?" Kaguya demanded angrily. But her anger felt hollow.
"It's true, we fight each other, and hurt each other. But we've also learned from each other, fought alongside each other, for things greater than any of us alone. We can understand each other for real, not just in a dream." Naruto answered. He wore a heavy and thin smile on his face, one weighed down by countless sorrows and suffering to fill a lifetime, but a smile regardless.
"You're lying. You shinobi only joined together out of fear. They surely have returned to their barbaric wars by now." Kaguya commented in disgust.
"After all we've been through, there's no way that's true. We've bonded, protected each other even though we come from different nations. We have definitely achieved real peace, and if we haven't, we will for sure." Naruto replied.
"All you have is your misguided ideals. What you speak of is no different from the dreams I'd given all of humanity." Kaguya scowled, crossing her arms like an annoyed parent.
"No, it's real. The peace we all wanted is real, and it can be achieved even without a God."
"And yet you all worshiped my son's power." She quickly snapped back.
Naruto recoiled for a moment hearing her remark. He was hardly religious, and didn't really think things like gods were that big of a deal until half a day ago ahen Kurama callex the Ten Tails a deity. For some reason, he never bothered to really wonder where these kinds of things came from until now. But that was besides the point. The Sage of Six Paths was respected and revered, but not worshiped. Aside from small pockets of monks around the world, shinobi weren't particularly religious people. Or did calling things demons denote religious beliefs?
"Hey, if it weren't for that black thing that calls you mom, we shinobi would have had a lot less problems you know. He manipulated a lot of people just to revive you. He was the one who turned super old gramp's kids against each other, you know." Naruto pointed out.
He wasn't so dense as to notice that when he said that, Kaguya's brow wavered, and she looked slightly away from his face. Her expression was a mix between denial and shame. His expression promptly changed to a judgmental sneer.
"Hm? What's wrong, Miss Goddess?" Naruto asked.
"You're just as annoying as Black Zetsu said." Kaguya muttered. She didn't need to see his face to feel his snide attitude.
Naruto then retracted himself to a reasonable distance, before continuing on with his line of thought. "If you don't believe me, I'll prove it to you myself that we shinobi don't need your illusions."
"What?" Kaguya said, almost shouting in disbelief. She stepped towards Naruto, pushing her index finger against him. "You're not the reincarnation of Asura, you're the incarnate of nonsense itself! After all you've gone through to try to stop me, you offer to invite me to the world that should already belong to me? Do you even have a way to escape this, let alone without me?"
Naruto waved her hand from his chest and crossed his arms confidently. "We just need to get out of this meteor thing… and then… we can summon ourselves out. Sasuke could summon a big bird, so I can summon a toad to help us out."
"And how do you propose we escape my son's seal?" She asked rhetorically.
"The seal is already gone, so just give me a minute to build up my chakra." Naruto said as he sat down and crossed his legs.
"My chakra."
"Knock it off with that would you? You sound like a spoiled kid or a needy parent." He grumbled.
Luckily for him, Kaguya seemed at least willing to give him a chance. That, or she knew neither of them were in condition to keep fighting. If she really wanted to resume their fight, she could've started gathering chakra as well, but for now, she was surprisingly passive. Although the moment he had the chance, Naruto entered Six Paths Sage Mode. He'd far from lowered his guard even if Kaguya wasn't making any obvious moves. After a few minutes, Naruto stood up with a fair amount of chakra, and then created a few more shadow clones. Half of them took his previous position of gathering chakra for the rest of him.
"Alright, let's start digging guys." Naruto exclaimed, and his doppelgangers roared in response. Like they'd done during their first attempt, all of them created larger than average rasengan in their hands, and picked a place to start digging.
One such clone drove his attack into the wall, and felt a wave of relief and accomplishment as he felt the wall give way. They were finally able to make progress. The other shadow clones felt their spirits rise as they saw the achievement, and lined up in a single file so they could continue their work.
"Now that the seal isn't active anymore, we should be able to dig our way out. It'll just take… an hour or two." Naruto said, the excitement in his voice quickly declining from impatience.
"Why are you using such an inefficient method?" Kaguya asked skeptically. Naruto turned to her, looking confused. "The elements should be yours to command. It should be no trouble to form a corridor with your will alone."
Naruto looked away, neither at Kaguya nor his clones, and started thinking. It was true, ever since he obtained Six Paths Sage Mode, he felt like he had a great understanding of all nature transformations. Even though his element was wind, and he'd only really had one technique that used it, he felt like he could use any element he wanted. But he didn't know any earth jutsu.
Naruto commanded his clones to stop for a moment, and they all backed out and away from the ten meter long tunnel they'd made. He pushed his hands against the floor at the start of the tunnel and tried to use his chakra to do something without hand signs. It felt like when he was training to create the rasenshuriken, and he was cutting a waterfall with just his chakra. It wasn't actually as hard as he thought it was going to be, it was quite simple, and just as Kaguya suspected, Naruto was able to extend the corridor to an incomparable extent. He felt the tunnel practically racing to reach the other side, and after a couple of minutes, he felt the tunnel reach its end.
"I didn't know I could do that. I didn't even need any hand signs." Naruto said aloud. He felt a little pride in himself. While he might never be able to move his hands as quickly as Kakashi could when weaving hand signs, Naruto didn't need to at all. Not that he'd ever become that acquainted with them, for that matter. He'd become proficient mainly in jutsu that didn't require them, while the Shadow Clone jutsu only needed one. That wasn't going to stop him from bragging about it, though.
"Of course, it was Indra who needed to create those silly gestures just to control his chakra." Kaguya said with all of the superiority in the world.
"Oi, hand signs aren't silly. There's a whole lot of cool jutsu that were made using them. I bet you came make shadow clones like I can, and that only takes one sign.
Kaguya scoffed at the proposition, and then stepped in front of Naruto. She leisurely waved one of her hands in front of them both. Promptly the corridor that Naruto created doubled in size, and Naruto's sense of achievement fell by half.
"What need have I for mere echoes? I alone am more than enough. And who are you to tout the glory of those seals when you use so few of them yourself? Not once did you or Indra's reincarnation do such a thing against me. Face it, you have already accepted Shinjutsu long ago."
"Shin-what?" Naruto repeated like he heard a foreign language.
"The power of my clan; chakra without those hand signs that you humans employ." Kaguya answered simply, still smiling with her divine arrogance.
"Your clan? There's a clan of monsters like you?"
"How rude!" Kaguya snapped at Naruto angrily. "I am not a monster. I am a mother, a caretaker, but not a monster. Leave that kind of title to those that deserve even less."
So you don't really like your clan, huh. Naruto thought. "So then, you're not the source of all chakra, right? I mean, you're not the first Otsutsuki are you?"
"On Earth, I am. Enough idle chatter now. The air is becoming stale here." Kaguya commanded, before leaving Naruto behind.
Naruto quickly caught up, since she was only walking, not flying or even running. She seemed to be recharging her chakra, at a snails pace that is. For a moment, he considers asking why she didn't stop to gather chakra properly, since it would be far faster, but even he wasn't so stupid as to not realize why that wouldn't have been a good idea. He was lucky she didn't take a page out of his book, since he did just that in front of her a moment ago.
Suddenly Kaguya was forcibly lifted off the ground, yelping in a strangely human way as she was picked up by her waist by a golden chakra arm by a floating Naruto. They both started moving far faster than before, and instead of the hours upon hours it would've surely taken, they would be out in just a few minutes.
"Unhand me! I will not be held in such an undignified way!" She screamed at the boy, who was holding her like someone would hold a can or jar.
"It's faster than walking, isn't it?" Naruto fired back, ignoring her demands.
He was already starting to regret offering her a chance, just a little bit. He still couldn't tell what Kaguya was going to do once they returned to Konoha. He could only hope that he and Sasuke would be able to stop her if she tried anything again.