The beginning of this chapter would seem confusing at first, but as you read, you'll understand what's happening :)
CHAPTER 35
"Naruto?"
"In the flesh!"
Hiruzen gawked and his shoulders steadily sank at the boy's haggard, emaciated appearance; there were holes in his frail shirt, his pants were frayed at the knees, and the shoes he wore at his feet were far too thin to be called footwear.
Naruto's blonde hair was thin and dry, with some sticking to his forehead due to sweat.
The ANBU hidden in the Hokage's office winced at the purple and blue bruises on the boy's neck and sides, visible through the holes in his shirt. The Hokage's look of surprise and amazement at his ward standing in his office faded to that of disappointment and sadness at the sorry state of the child.
"Hello? Lord Third, are you still there? Pretty neat huh?" Naruto chirped, opening his arms and gesturing to himself.
"H-How…?" Hiruzen stuttered, clearing the grief from his eyes.
"There was this nice guy that gave me these scrolls on fuinjutsu; it was so interesting I just had to learn it."
'The level of mastery he has to have to create a seal to do this is amazing!' he cleared his throat, saying for the boy to hear. "Well done, Naruto." He watched, confused, as Naruto deflated and his shining expression dimmed. The man asked, "Is there a problem?"
"Gramps—I mean—Lord Third…I came to sign up for the academy. I may be a bit too old but—but with hard work and dedication I can—"
"I'm sorry Naruto, but you can't be admitted," the old man cut him off before Naruto could fall into a nervous rant.
"Why not!?"
The Hokage waved for a cat mask-wearing ninja to stand down after the boy's outburst, saying, "Technically…you still can't walk."
"But I can! Look at me!" He stomped around the room and stumbled after two steps. He cursed foully and stood up so he could walk around again. "I can walk fine!"
"I can see the strain it has on you—"
"It's only a little. I'll get used to it!"
"The answer is still no. You're unhealthy and you're weak." He saw the respect the boy had for him, the little left, falling out of Naruto's eyes as tears.
"And whose fault is that?"
Sarutobi sighed, pinching his nose and closing his eyes. "Naruto—"
"Tell me who's to blame." He used a dirty sleeve to wipe his eyes, trying to stand upright but wilting as his trembling forced him to hold onto a chair. "I spent the last seven years finding a way to walk…so I can finally be a ninja…and you-you won't even give me a chance to prove myself."
"I was just being honest; a weak ninja is not only a risk to their teammates but also a risk to the village." He motioned to Naruto's leg, where the seal was imprinted. The man discarded any softness in his tone, asking the boy, "What if that seal got washed off by a water jutsu?" Naruto faltered, piecing together a reply, only for the man to interject, "Exactly."
"I-I can make it more durable. Waterproof, even; I just need a bit more time."
"The answer is still no." The man placated the boy, sounding almost pleading, "I can register you for civilian school…?"
"No! I want to be a ninja!"
"Naruto…I'll say this once and only once but you can't ever be a ninja."
You can't ever be a ninja.
Ever.
The words stung as bad as they did all that time ago.
Hiruzen Sarutobi glanced to his right and his expression didn't change at the sight of another Naruto standing next to him; a somewhat taller, healthier version of the boy that had entered his office, wearing a Wave forehead protector, a dark blue jounin vest and ninja clothing.
"I only ever wanted to protect you, Naruto," the Hokage said to the Wave Leader. "For all my faults…at least I tried—"
"You didn't, Lord Hokage," the Naruto at Hiruzen's side said in a dry voice, still looking at his younger, broken self with a distant expression. The man's lips tightened into a frown, both at the formal way Naruto was addressing him and also because the boy's words were entirely true. "What you did was try to stop me from dreaming."
The malnourished version of the boy faded away and the hidden spectators in the Hokage's office vanished, leaving Hiruzen and Naruto alone in the office.
"I was barely living, wallowing in my filth…and you didn't even spare a shadow clone to come and see me…" Naruto turned to the Hokage. His blue eyes stormed with hatred and anger.
Hiruzen Sarutobi's eyes quietly shut. "Do you want to know why?"
Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Tell me."
Hiruzen pinched the bridge of his nose. "Because…" the hand on his face dropped to his side and the man's face looked more tired as if he had lived a hundred lifetimes during their short conversation, "after the Kyuubi Attack when I finally dared to visit you in the orphanage, the reality of your world had already eaten you alive."
Naruto's hands shook at the memory of his time before finding fuinjutsu.
Before he met Kurama.
He was scared and alone. A cripple was thrown into a children's home for juvenile victims of the Kyuubi Attack where a constant cloud of sadness and hatred hovered over the building, in an environment where children hated him for what they or he didn't even know.
He was starved, isolated, abused, and broken.
He had no prospects. No hope.
"Seeing you was also seeing my failures," the man finished, facing Naruto for the first time since the boy's arrival in the afterlife. "I am truly sorry, Naruto."
Naruto's hair cast a shadow over his downturned eyes as he was bombarded with those memories.
They were his darkest and lowest days…
He spotted the seal on the back of his right hand; it was a complex storage seal that stored his sharp paper bombs and extra-thin ninja wire. The combination of paper and ninja wire resulted in Naruto's alteration of one of his mother's techniques, Child of Paper Chaos.
Fuinjutsu.
He brought his hand up and looked at his palm, seeing one of his Chakra Beam seals; one of his most complex and multipurpose seals, which he used nearly daily. It had saved his skin more times than he could count.
Fuinjutsu had saved Naruto.
The Forced Movement seal on his right leg allowed him to walk, the Blue Bubble seal between his shoulder blades was an automatic defence, the Tree Root seals on his feet kept his feet stuck to the ground with little chakra, there were his semi-sentient snake ropes and snake chains, and there was also the Chakra High seal that was a precaution on the off-chance Naruto's chakra was depleted.
Through fuinjutsu, Naruto saved other people and helped change their fates.
Sasuke and Anko's Altered Cursed seal freed them from Orochimaru's influence and gave them power over the Sannin's seal, Yakumo's Beast Suppression seal that contained the beast sealed inside her, reversing the flow of chakra of the beast and safely filtering the beast's chakra into the girl's reserves, Neji's Altered Caged Bird seal that removed the influence of the Main Hyuuga family from the boy's chakra network, and Gaara's improved One Tails Containment seal that cut off the One Tails screaming from the boy's mind and allowed the Kazekage supreme control of the beast's chakra.
Naruto had created so many seals that it surprised even him, and there were so many more to create.
There were the Communication seals Naruto used with his country's allies, their upgraded barrier seals, the Citizen/Visitor seals of Wave Country, and Naruto's seal-board that could transform into an aircraft.
The beauty of fuinjutsu was that the possibilities were virtually endless.
Naruto smiled wanly. "I thought…that showing you how far I've come would make me feel better." He gestured to himself and stood upright, his chin up and a slight smirk lingering on his lips. "I thought I did all of this to prove you wrong, Lord Hokage. You, Kakashi, and everyone in Konoha. I thought that what I wanted most in the world was to see that look on your face when you realise that that helpless kid finally made something of himself."
Hiruzen sighed and didn't say anything.
The man couldn't bring himself to even feel pride at who Naruto had become now; strong, independent, intelligent, and capable. Hiruzen's role in this present Naruto was one of an antagonist.
Nothing more.
"I'm bigger than that," Naruto said with a peaceful smile. His mind was finally settled, and although he could never forgive the Third Hokage and most of Konoha for his childhood, he had forgotten about them for problems of higher priority long ago. "I've got better things to do."
Hiruzen bobbed his head with a melancholic smile, agreeing with Naruto. "For what it's worth…I'm happy you found purpose."
Naruto's right hand reached forward, stiffening his back but keeping the smile on his lips genuine. "Me too."
Fuinjutsu brought Naruto purpose and joy.
Hiruzen Sarutobi shook hands with Naruto Uzumaki and the world erupted in white light.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Naruto awoke to darkness.
He cringed at the high-pitched ringing in his ears and groaned, trying to turn to his side but he couldn't move from his back; his left leg was crushed under a rock. He was also pinned on his back with a large, flat slab of rock pressing onto the tip of his nose.
His vision swam and he retched with wooziness, distracted from the absence of pain from his leg being crushed by both the adrenaline and his alarmingly low chakra levels. His vision faded and he shook his head, managing to wriggle his right hand up to the side of his temple. He touched his brow and winced at the blood on his fingers.
"Daku's on eight tails," the Kyuubi said, speaking as if he was on the other end of a tunnel. A ripping sound reverberated through the darkness, followed by a feral roar, then a crashing noise like glass breaking. The Kyuubi sounded hopeless as he said, "Don't ask me if he's still sane; I don't know."
Naruto grits his teeth and gradually begins to feel the absence of his left leg. His left hand painstakingly slipped down to his left hip, scratching rock and bruising his elbow. He touched on the slow leaking pool of blood oozing from under the rock and drew a Painkiller seal on his hip.
It didn't activate.
The Kyuubi sighed. "Look up."
Naruto wanted to scoff at the statement, as there was nowhere else to look, but he soon saw a thin, stretched-out sheen of red and blue flitting above him, under the rock pressing down on him.
His automatic seal had kicked in, using both his and Kyuubi's chakra, but it was hardly strong enough. Naruto didn't have enough chakra between them to activate any painkiller seal.
"Great…"
"Y'know, I didn't think this was how I'd go out." The great beast tiredly sat down on all fours inside Naruto's mindscape, under the seal tree. The tree had lost all of its leaves and its bark was dry. "Crushed by a mountain, inside a stubborn teenager that didn't listen when I said that mountains hurt…"
Naruto rolled his eyes. "You'll reincarnate. I think."
"You won't…"
Naruto's eyebrows furrowed, smirking jokingly. "Will you miss me? After I'm dead, I mean."
Kurama snorted, setting his chin on the back of his paws. "You were an intriguing jinchuriki." He shut his eyes as the single tail of chakra the Kyuubi had left, the one he was using to power Naruto's bubble shield, was slowly fizzling out. "Aside from being a level ten seal master, your potential was astronomical. I... doubt anyone with your remarkable intellect and skill would come around for another century."
Naruto almost blushed. "Wow."
Kurama chuckled. "Yes."
"Thanks." Naruto smiled and tried to shrug, but the rock pressing down on him began to cave further in, making it harder to breathe. "I don't know what else to say." The jinchuriki beamed, catching his breath as tears pricked his eyes. "You were there for me when I wasn't there for myself. My first and best friend."
Kurama scoffed with a slight smile. "You never called me your best friend before. I'm…grateful."
Naruto laughed. "I swear, we're not going to die here."
The Kyuubi wilted and sealed his mouth shut.
Naruto was eerily calm though after settling down from his laughter. He didn't put up any resistance to the rock slowly crushing him, and for that Kurama was grateful…
A seal matrix spiralled into activation on Naruto's chest, shining green so brightly that it shone through Naruto's tattered jounin vest. It was a seal Naruto had given his circle of friends when their chakra levels were too low and their lives were in mortal danger; it made the little chakra remaining in their system a hundred times denser and swell up to fill their chakra reserves, thus making it difficult to burn and in turn making it last longer.
The similarity to the density of nature chakra was uncanny, however, the consequences of using nature chakra and chakra high differed.
It was extremely important for the person using the seal to be dangerously low on chakra, or else the seal would backfire; the chakra would become too dense, swelling their chakra reserves and network past their original capacity, and destroying their chakra system entirely.
They could fall into a coma, become paraplegic, or worse. The best case scenario was that they would lose the function of their chakra, and the worst case was an immediate and painful death.
Zabuza successfully used it to beat the previous Mizukage, Yagura Karatachi, in Kiri. Haku killed Kakuzu with it and Mole subdued Itachi with it, both during the failed Wave Invasion.
Ultimate Chakra High seal.
The seal expanded from Naruto's chest, creeping up and down Naruto's body and encasing him in green chakra.
Naruto inhaled deeply, feeling his body repair itself due to the influence of the chakra high seal. The bubble shield changed from red and blue to green, lifting the rock off his face and giving him room to breathe. The bubble shield that formerly covered his left leg was repaired, taking the rock that crushed his leg off, allowing his leg room to heal.
Kurama was left gaping.
The downside of Naruto having such massive chakra reserves and also being the jinchuriki of the nine tails was that even if Naruto's chakra was completely depleted, he could still sustain himself with Kurama's chakra. The same for Kurama's chakra was depleted but Naruto still had chakra.
So that Naruto didn't die, the seal master set his chakra high seal to activate automatically once he met two vital criteria.
His chakra was dangerously low and the Kyuubi's chakra was depleted.
Naruto's pupils dilated and turned green. He got up as his shield began to swell larger and larger, pushing back the massive rocks that had fallen on Naruto.
One slab of rock pushing down on Naruto's green shield was thrown off and Orochimaru beamed down at him from above, though he didn't expect to find Naruto looking back at him with a serious frown.
"I've got snakes too," Naruto said in a hollow voice.
From the back of his hands, his elbows, and his shoulders, semi-sentient ropes and chains slithered out and darted up the rock, surging towards Orochimaru in countless waves. They were powered by chakra from Naruto's chakra high seal, which was a hundred times denser than normal chakra.
Orochimaru grinned, changing his arms to wooden snakes and snapping at the ropes and chains pouring out of the hole Naruto was in. The wooden snake arms gnashed at the ropes and chains, breaking and tearing them, and absorbing the chakra inside them for Orochimaru's nourishment.
The Sannin's eyes widened when he saw that his arms were swelling up and pulsing with green chakra. He jumped back and detached them, watching as the wooden snakes were overpowered by the hundreds of ropes and chains, exploding from having their chakra networks oversaturated.
"What is this?!" Orochimaru yelled, feeling his body begin to inflate like a balloon.
His jaw unhinged and a new Orochimaru clambered out of the first Orochimaru's mouth, taking cover as the previous body detonated with a bloody pop.
Naruto climbed out of the pit and looked to the sky, inhaling a deep, relaxed breath. The snake ropes and chains writhed around him, swaying back and forth as he leisurely walked away from the edge of the pit, dishevelled but healed from his wounds.
The palms of Naruto's hands crackled with energy.
His green eyes flicked to the rock Orochimaru took cover behind.
Orochimaru gnashed his teeth and kicked the rock, blasting it to Naruto, only for it to be casually obliterated by a green chakra beam.
Naruto's right palm, levelled on Orochimaru, hissed with blistering heat but it rapidly began to cool down and heal. The seal on Naruto's palm then crackled again, increasing in brightness as it faced Orochimaru, who snarled defiantly.
Naruto clicked his tongue and hummed, reducing the intensity of the brightness of his palm and lowering his hand. "No." he cracked his neck. "I want to see the life leave your eyes." He snapped his fingers, commanding the semi-sentient snake ropes and chains. "Hold him down."
The ropes and chains noisily shot towards Orochimaru, slithering on the ground like spawns of hell; they had no consciousness or awareness. The micro-seals Naruto drew on them merely honed in on the targeted chakra with the sole purpose of absorbing and restraining it.
Worse yet for Orochimaru, the chakra powering them was too dense to be safely absorbed.
Looming behind the mountain, an eight-tailed Kyuubi manifestation tore off an arm of Madara's purple Susanno, exhaling a tailed beast ball on top of the chest of the Susanno, where Madara hovered, injured and worse for wear. The squabble between Naruto's shadow and the Uchiha overpowered everything.
Wooden snakes erupted from the ground, throwing aside many of the incoming ropes and chains while breaking the ground apart, allowing Orochimaru a chance to turn and retreat, only to bump into a barrier.
Slowly, and with a horrified look on his face, he looked up at the tall wall of pure green chakra.
Quickly, he vomited a new body, escaping the previous body as it burst messily.
Orochimaru panted; three body replacements in one day were pushing his abilities. He scrambled to his feet and watched with chilling stillness as the ropes and chains overran his wooden snakes, oversaturating the wood-release snakes' ability to absorb chakra and inflating the wooden snakes with dense chakra.
He was back against the green barrier, consciously resisting the urge to absorb chakra. The ropes and chains surrounded him. He held up his fists and hissed viciously, eyes feral like a cornered animal and punching a chain that leapt at him aside, shattering it to pieces with pure strength alone.
Orochimaru wilted after that and came upon another realisation.
The snake ropes and chains also absorbed the chakra.
Another chain snapped at him and Orochimaru kicked it, breaking the chain but feeling a little bit of his chakra escape his body into the broken pieces of the chain he destroyed. Beads of sweat covered his brow and he regurgitated his Kusanagi, swiping wildly at a wave of ropes and shredding them to pieces, though this left his right side open to chains and ropes that wound around his legs.
Orochimaru became paler at the loss of chakra and he swung his blade at the chains at his leg, cutting them but too slow to react to a pile of ropes falling on his left side, weighing him down to his knee.
The Sannin's reptilian eyes were sharp and he roared, finding a surge of chakra from within him and throwing them off, giving him a few inches of space. He jumped over the snakes, but a blast of Chakra Beam: Lightning smashed into his stomach, slamming him against the barrier and back down to the ground. His sword clattered on the ground, pulled out of reach by a swarm of chains.
The man groaned, backhanding a rope but not strong enough to break it. The rope wound around his arm up to his shoulder, leeching chakra from the man's pores. Another rope lunged and wrapped around Orochimaru's chest, and the man collapsed onto his face.
More and more ropes and snakes bombarded them Sannin, wrapping his body tightly and draining him of his chakra. Head to toe, the man was encased in semi-sentient ropes and chains.
Naruto walked through the crowd of ropes and snakes that didn't attack the Sannin and placed his foot under Orochimaru's left shoulder, flipping the man onto his back and looking down at the man with ominously shining green eyes.
Orochimaru's mouth was gagged by three ropes and he writhed weakly at the sight of the boy.
"This is going to hurt," Naruto said with a whisper of a smile.
He snapped his fingers and the ropes gagging Orochimaru slithered into the man's mouth, surging down his throat. Four chains slipped down Orochimaru's throat, and the man screamed as they reached his stomach, cutting his stomach lining and battering against his internal organs.
Naruto watched with grim satisfaction as a chain burst out from the man's gut, bloodied and covered in viscera, worming back in and ripping into his kidneys, while the other ropes and chains inside the man punctured his lungs, drilled holes through Orochimaru's reptilian heart, shredded his kidney, punched through his bladder.
All the while, the chains wrapped around the man tightened ever so slowly.
The ropes and chains inside the man wrecked more havoc, tearing Orochimaru's muscles and smashing his bones.
Orochimaru hacked out blood, bleeding from his nose and ears. Blood leaked into his yellow eyes, blurring his vision.
He bared his teeth and snapped, heaving out a voiceless word at Naruto, but unable to speak as his tongue was severed from his mouth by a chain. He wheezed, fighting for air as he was strangled harder and harder.
A chain and a rope darted back up Orochimaru's bruised throat and broke through the roof of his mouth, cutting through his brain and breaking out of his skull, returning in and cutting the Sannin's brain to pieces.
His intestines spilt out from the hole next to his navel, oozing out more as the chains around his body squeezed him like a tube of toothpaste, crushing his sides and damaging his organs more as his ribs stabbed into his lungs, and his heart burst from the pressure. Orochimaru's eyes bulged and he cracked at the strength of him gritting them, ultimately breaking and further choking him as they spilt into his throat.
The light in Orochimaru's eyes dimmed, and the chains around him completely squeezed together, gruesomely snapping his arms, ribs, pelvis, and legs.
The pain was indescribable.
Any other person would have been dead long ago, long before their lungs were punctured and their hearts burst, but Orochimaru's longevity and the immoral experiments he made on his body stubbornly kept him alive. The prolonged nature of his suffering was due to Orochimaru's fear of death.
His body underwent a stressful cycle of healing itself and then being destroyed by Naruto's creations.
Then Orochimaru gasped, feeling the last thread of his chakra escapes the tip of his fingers. The cycle of healing stopped abruptly, replaced by the downward spiral of torture.
The veins at his neck thickened and he gagged, feeling an icy coldness rise from his feet as if he was slowly sinking under a frigid stream. He began to hyperventilate, straining futilely against his bindings as bloody slobber flew from his toothless mouth.
He looked up at Naruto, his bulging eyes dilating under the painful throes of suffocation and death, and witnessed the seal master standing over him, overseeing his death with grim excitement.
"Please…" Orochimaru gasped, writhing again. A film of whiteness came over his vision as the cold sensation washed over his chest and heart, reaching under his chin and pressing down on him. He wheezed as his previously restored vocal cords were again squeezed by chains. "Naruto…please…"
With a grisly crunch, Orochimaru's neck broke and the cold sensation reached the crown of his head, pulling him into the icy depths of eternity.
Meanwhile, Naruto looked down on Orochimaru's dead body. "Oddly anticlimactic…"
The ropes and chains eased away from the man and slithered onto Naruto's body, vanishing into storage seals one after the other, until Naruto was alone with the Sannin's corpse. The body was mangled beyond recognition, bleeding profusely and perforated with holes all over his body.
He clicked his tongue and levelled his right palm with the dead body. "Just in case." The seal on Naruto's palm increased in brightness and he unleashed it on the corpse. "Chakra Beam."
A typhoon of green energy roared from Naruto's hand and covered the Sannin, obliterating him at a cellular level. What remained of the once infamous Sannin was a scorched outline that vaguely resembled human, and specks of loose chakra that would soon be dispersed into the world.
Gone forever.
He exhaled from his mouth and shut his eyes, quietly lowering his right hand and allowing his head to slump forward. He eased himself down to his knees and the sheen of green chakra coating his form flickered off as the Leader deactivated his chakra high seal. The density of his chakra plunged back to normal, leaving the seal master at less than one percent.
He looked up, witnessing a massive nine-tailed beast wildly disassemble Madara's Susanno by clawing and bashing it. The nine tails body was pitch black, so dark in fact that it was as if its presence in the world sucked light into it, distorting reality and bending light towards it, and its eyes were a beady shade of red.
Six tails restrained the Susanno, while Daku used his arms to break apart the Uchiha's chakra construct.
It dug its salivating jaws into the Susanno's chest, hungry for a meal, and bit down on Madara.
That was when Naruto slumped to his side and fell unconscious, deathly low on chakra.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Mole touched down moments later, barely letting her seal-board slow before jumping off, skidding to Naruto's slumped form, and falling to her knees beside him. She quickly removed the seal-paper from her face and tucked it into her jounin vest.
She touched his neck with her pointer and middle finger, searching for a pulse.
No pulse.
She pulled out a two-way radio from another pocket of her vest and clicked a button, speaking into it, "Code eleven. I repeat, Code eleven: I've found Lord Naruto and he is unresponsive. Come to my position."
She put away the radio and checked again for a pulse. Her heart pounded in her chest as she cursed, easing her leader onto his back and unzipping his jounin vest, freeing his torso. She then tilted his head back and opened his mouth, looking inside for any obstruction.
No obstructions.
She turned her ear and waited.
He wasn't breathing.
Fighting to keep her composure, Mole placed her right hand on Naruto's chest and set her left on top, clasping them together and beginning chest compressions. She pumped his chest thirty times and checked for breathing again, hissing when her master remained still. She went back to chest compressions, checking for breathing again after another thirty pumps, still not hearing any breathing.
She looked up and saw that no one had yet come to her position.
"Alright Em. He'll be fine," she reassured herself, performing another set of thirty chest compressions. She knew any more could risk breaking her master's sternum. Her eyebrows flew up into her hairline, and her eyes widened when she heard a faint breath.
The Naruto Mole knew and had sworn her undying loyalty to was a colossus of a person, whose abilities as a shinobi were so far unmatched, and yet still developing. This was the first time she had seen her master in such a frail position; his skin was pallid and his breathing was feeble and shaky. He looked thirty years older than he truly was, with streaks of grey in his dull blonde head of hair.
She airily touched his throat, feeling Naruto's weak breathing, and that was when she finally understood the root of the problem.
She almost facepalmed at her panicked forgetfulness; she was a touch sensor, and her ability was telling her that her master was completely out of chakra.
She hurriedly rummaged through the front pockets of her ninja vest, gritting her teeth and throwing aside bothersome kunai and shuriken stored in storage seals lined inside her pockets, until she finally unsealed a finger-sized scroll from a pocket inside her vest and unrolled it.
From the storage scroll, Mole removed a bottle of vitamin water and a tablet of chakra pills. She cracked open the water and tossed two chakra pills inside, screwing the lid and shaking the bottle until the pills fully dissolved. As she did so, she carefully propped her master up against her chest, holding him steady with her right arm and painstakingly uncorking the bottle of water, gently easing Naruto's mouth open.
She gave her master small sips of chakra water at a time, never allowing his mouth to be too full of water. Her right hand, still supporting Naruto's body against her, came up and guided her master's weak hand to the bottle, helping him grasp it.
By the time half of the bottle was downed, Mole felt a sliver of strength in Naruto's grip on the bottle.
Mole nearly wilted with relief.
She looked up and six seal-aircrafts flew towards her, followed behind by a battalion of Wave ninjas led by Zabuza, converging on her position. They swiftly clambered over the piles of jagged rock toward them.
Some ninjas stayed back and watched as Daku steadily reverted to normal, returning the Kyuubi's chakra to Naruto.
"You'll be alright, Master," Mole declared with hushed conviction. She put the bottle of water aside and let her master lean into her. Mole unabashedly supported her master, giving him her warmth and her unending affection for as long as he needed her. "Everything's going to be alright."
Naruto's eyes were still tiredly closed, but Mole saw the smile on his lips.
Naruto was happy.
Authors note
We've come such a long way with this story. A lot of ups and plenty of downs. I've dreamed of this story's ending for so long. Sure, I have some regrets about some decisions I made regarding this story, but I'm happy with where it is now.
I want to thank every single one of you for sticking with this fic. Even though I took some personal time off to focus on my Masters (preparing for my External Defence btw), and even though I didn't upload because I wanted to finish writing the fic before uploading, you guys were so amazing.
I truly don't deserve any of you. I'm grateful for everything. Thank you all so much!
Next upload is the Epilogue. It'll start after a long time-skip.
Leave a review of what you think of the story so far. Thoughts, both positive, negative, and critical are all welcome. Let's just be civil XD.
Also, please leave a review on a story you want me to go back to and finish; Whisper Group? Things Get Dark? Some other story?
See you when I see you.
Foy.