On the other side...
The wind howled faintly across the empty terrain as Boruto hid inside a cave alongside Naruto.
"So we really can't ask for help? I'm sure the Hidden Leaf would lend a hand." Boruto asked Karasuki, worry clear in his voice as he thought about Sasuke's situation. They had left him all alone to face that bastard Urashiki.
"Hey, what's with this turtle? Is this some kind of summoning beast? It looks so weak." Naruto narrowed his eyes at Karasuki and let out a dismissive sound.
"That would be out of the question. Dragging more people from the past could..." Karasuki replied in his usual calm, mechanical voice, but suddenly stopped midway.
"Karasuki... what's going on...?" Boruto muttered, his breath coming out rough. "Why'd you suddenly stop talking?"
There was a pause.
Karasuki did not answer him.
"...Kara-suki?"
"...Boruto," Karasuki finally responded, but something was off. Even his normally flat voice carried a strange heaviness this time. "I am detecting... a critical change."
"Huh?"
"...What kind of change? And what's even going on? Tell me already." A bad feeling welled up inside Boruto, and he roughly shook the turtle in his hands.
"...Boruto," Karasuki's mechanical voice came through again, unusually heavy.
"...Sasuke Uchiha... has died."
—!
Boruto's body froze in place.
The hand holding the turtle trembled violently.
His heart slammed against his chest, faster and faster, like it was trying to break free.
"...Huh?" The sound that left Boruto's mouth was small, confused, almost like he thought he had heard wrong.
No.
He had to have heard wrong.
"...What did you just say?"
"...Confirming," Karasuki replied, mechanical, but firm this time. "No life signals belonging to Sasuke Uchiha are detected in this timeline. No chakra signature corresponding to the individual Sasuke Uchiha is present."
"Sasuke Uchiha is deceased."
"...!"
"...No."
Boruto immediately shook his head in denial, his voice rising.
"No, no! That's— that's wrong."
"He can't just— what kind of joke is that, huh?! That's not funny, Karasuki!"
Then he sucked in a deep breath and roared, not even noticing that the Karma markings on his body were already flowing out in blue streaks, trying to take him over.
"He's Sasuke! He doesn't just die like that! He— he's the supreme shinobi in the world!"
"Hey, Boruto..." Naruto, who had heard the conversation, felt his expression change as well. His face turned pale as he reached toward Boruto.
That mister... did he really...
Although Naruto did not know Sasuke the way Boruto did, the man had still stayed behind just to let them escape.
And now... hearing that he had actually lost his life...
Naruto's eyes slowly turned into red slits as blood-red chakra vapor began leaking from his body.
"DAMN IT!"
Naruto's fist slammed into the ground.
Dust exploded upward.
"That's not how it's supposed to go!"
"You don't just— just die like that after helping someone!"
"That's not fair! ...I hate this...!"
Naruto shot to his feet, and without even asking Boruto anything else, he stormed straight out of the cave they had been hiding in, ready to run back to the place where the fight had started.
He couldn't.
No— he wouldn't let something happen to someone who had chosen to stand up for him.
"I'm not just gonna sit here!"
He would beat that freakish white-haired bastard into the ground and make him pay.
Swoosh!
Before he could take another step—
A violent gust of wind tore past him.
Naruto's head snapped to the side on instinct.
"...What the—?!"
For a split second, he saw blond hair whipping wildly through the air at insane speed.
Then the figure vanished from his sight completely.
"...!"
Naruto's eyes widened in astonishment.
"—Boruto?!"
The shock hit him a second too late.
"That speed—!"
And in that brief instant, he caught sight of something ominous.
Those black markings... spreading across Boruto's face.
"...What was that...?"
And that chakra...
He had never felt anything like it before.
Even the chakra inside him—from the one he hated—didn't feel that cold. Or that menacing.
"...Not even from that stupid fox..."
"...What the hell is going on...?" Naruto couldn't make sense of any of it. This whole situation was a complete mess, and his head was overflowing with confusion.
First, two suspicious-looking guys had shown up in the village.
Then Lady Tsunade had him keep an eye on them.
And now they were in real danger, all because they had tried to save him from another guy who was after him for some reason.
In the end, Naruto gritted his teeth, then suddenly slapped himself hard across the face, turning it red. A second later, his eyes sharpened again with determination.
"Phew... let's not waste time. I can't let Boruto face it all alone."
But just as he was about to rush forward again—
"...You're too late, Naruto-kun."
—!
Naruto's entire body locked for a split second.
That voice...
Right behind him.
His instincts exploded, and he twisted around instantly.
"...Who—?!"
But a hand touched his shoulder.
Not good—!
Naruto's eyes widened in alarm, but no matter how hard he tried to resist, his vision still fell into darkness.
Standing behind him, Tobi slowly lowered his hand.
The spiral mask tilted slightly as he looked down at Naruto.
"...Man... still as reckless as ever."
A faint chuckle slipped out from behind the mask.
"...Didn't even check his blind spot."
He lightly nudged Naruto with his foot, confirming that he was completely out cold.
"...Yeah... you're done for now."
Then, in an exaggeratedly cheerful tone, he proudly and happily declared—
"...Your part is over, Naruto-kun."
"...Dattebayo."
--
On Boruto's side, the forest blurred past him.
The ground trembled beneath each desperate step as he shot forward at a speed his body should not have been able to reach.
"Shut up, you bastard!" Boruto roared through gritted teeth as he tore through the forest.
"How are you still alive?! And why the hell are you inside my head?!"
A voice answered him almost lazily, soaked in cold amusement.
"...So he finally died. That annoying Uchiha Sasuke."
The voice paused for a moment, as if savoring the thought.
"Such a boring outcome. And here I thought I'd be the one to kill him with my own hands."
—!
Boruto's expression twisted instantly.
The markings spreading across his face stretched even further, crawling over his skin like black poison.
"Shut up!"
His eyes shook violently as fury and grief crashed together inside him.
Inside Boruto's spiritual space...
A dim, unnatural light stretched across the endless hollow darkness, casting everything in a cold, dead glow.
At the center of it, Momoshiki slowly lifted his head.
His pale eyes glinted with detached indifference, as though he were looking down on something pitiful and beneath him.
"...How pathetic."
Then the Ōtsutsuki's lips curved ever so slightly.
"If you want revenge..." he said in a low, smooth voice, "then switch with me, boy."
His gaze turned wicked as a malicious grin spread across his face.
"You cannot change anything right now."
"In your current state, you will achieve nothing. You will only throw your life away meaninglessly."
Boruto clenched his teeth so hard it hurt.
He knew that voice was trying to tempt him, so he shot back without hesitation.
"...Like hell I will."
Momoshiki's expression did not change.
"Then run forward and witness your own helplessness."
Boruto fell silent and did not answer again.
Momoshiki did not care in the slightest.
He could feel the Kāma continuing to spread.
It was only a matter of time before this lowly creature understood his place and gave in to him.
The forest began to thin out.
Boruto finally arrived at the place where Urashiki and Sasuke had fought.
His eyes widened as he looked ahead.
The entire area had been reduced to utter ruin.
The earth was split apart in multiple directions, with giant cracks tearing through the ground like scars.
His gaze frantically swept across the wasteland.
"...Sasuke?!"
But no matter how hard he looked, he could not see Sasuke anywhere.
"Urashiki, you bastard!!! Come out, you coward!"
Boruto could only call out Urashiki's name instead, but seeing that even he was nowhere to be found only made the anxiety inside him grow worse.
Even Momoshiki, observing from within, slightly furrowed his brows in confusion.
What is that sly bastard thinking?
Swirl...
Then the sudden sound of a space-time portal opening rang out and instantly caught their attention.
Boruto snapped his head to the side and saw space itself begin to twist.
Through the distorted opening, he could see another dimension.
Snow covered everything beyond it.
But what caught his attention was not the different landscape.
It was the body lying silently in the snow, covered in wounds.
"S-Sasuke...?"
Without even thinking that it might be a trap, Boruto rushed straight toward the portal and leaped through it.
The moment he entered, it closed behind him.
"Fool." Momoshiki commented from within, but he was pleased by the sight.
The more desperate Boruto became, the more likely it was that he would seize control.
Right now, Boruto's intense emotions had pushed the Kāma's progression to a level that would normally have taken much longer.
Momoshiki's data was constantly flowing through him, rewriting his body bit by bit.
If Sasuke Uchiha truly was dead, then one of the few people capable of interfering with fate had already been removed from the board.
Either way, Boruto Uzumaki was walking exactly where he needed to walk.
Straight toward ruin.
And once that helplessness reached its limit...
Momoshiki's lips curled faintly in the darkness.
Then you will beg.
You will throw away your pride, your fear, and your body with your own hands.
And when that moment comes, boy...
I will answer.
The moment Boruto stepped into the snowy dimension, a freezing wind slammed into him from all sides.
But he did not care.
His eyes were locked onto the battered figure lying motionless in the snow.
"Sasuke...!"
Without hesitation, he rushed forward, dropped to his knees, and reached out with trembling hands.
His fingers touched the body.
But before he could even check on him, the figure in his arms suddenly softened.
Its surface turned pale and warped in an unnatural way.
Boruto's eyes widened in shock and confusion.
"...What?"
In the very next instant, the body dissolved.
A white, disgusting mass twisted in front of him and instantly took shape.
White Zetsu.
Its face split into a grotesque grin.
Too close—!
Boruto's pupils shrank, but it was already too late.
White Zetsu's arm shot forward like a spear, aiming straight for his vitals.
Thud—!
"Ghk—!"
Boruto's body jerked violently.
For a moment, everything froze.
Then the pain exploded through him.
A huge hole was torn open through his stomach.
Blood burst from Boruto's mouth in a violent cough, splattering across the white snow.
"Cough—!"
His eyes trembled violently as his body staggered backward.
He stumbled away from White Zetsu, his boots dragging through the snow as blood began staining the ground beneath him.
His vision blurred.
And at some point, another figure had already appeared ahead of him in the snow.
Boruto's gaze snapped upward through the haze.
A masked man stood there, his head tilted slightly.
One eye behind the mask glowed crimson—
A Sharingan.
Boruto's eyes widened.
"The same eyes... as Sasuke... the Sharingan..." he forced out, blood still clinging to the corner of his lips. "Who are you... and what happened to Sasuke?"
Obito let out a soft chuckle.
He only looked at Boruto for a brief moment before turning his head away, as if Boruto himself was not the thing that interested him most.
Then he spoke to White Zetsu in a flat, cold voice.
"Well done... now get as far away as possible."
His visible Sharingan narrowed faintly.
"This time, I won't be holding back."
White Zetsu's grin widened even further.
"Aye aye, captain!"
In the next moment, it sank straight into the ground with its technique, vanishing beneath the snow-covered earth.
Boruto's fists clenched, and after being ignored like that, his agitation only grew worse.
"I asked you something!"
Obito's cloak fluttered faintly in the freezing wind as his single visible Sharingan stared at Boruto with quiet indifference.
There was no reason to tell Boruto that he had killed Sasuke and risk pushing the boy into a complete rampage before he fully understood the limits of that Kāma transformation.
That would be stupid.
And Obito had already learned enough not to underestimate strange variables.
The reason he had prepared this trap with the fake Sasuke corpse in the first place was because of Tobi's report.
After hearing that Boruto had already begun entering a deeper Kāma state, Obito had chosen to take precautions, just in case.
This was his first time dealing with a so-called protagonist.
And not just any protagonist, but one under the protection of a being from a higher dimension.
He had no way of knowing whether this sudden change in Boruto was the natural result of Sasuke's death...
Or the product of outside interference.
Either way, caution was the smarter path.
So without any further hesitation, he vanished from Boruto's sight without warning.
Fast—!
Boruto's face darkened, and his body reacted almost entirely on instinct.
He twisted violently to the side—
A black hand wrapped in warped space ripped past where his neck had been just an instant earlier.
Snow exploded behind him.
Obito reappeared only a step away, his visible eye narrowing faintly.
Boruto had actually managed to dodge his all-out blow.
A faint blue light flickered across the Kāma spreading over Boruto's body.
And then Obito noticed it.
One of Boruto's eyes had changed.
The veins around it bulged slightly, and the pale, almost eerie clarity in that eye made Obito's expression shift ever so slightly beneath the mask.
A Byakugan...?
His thoughts moved at high speed.
Had the Kāma really advanced that far already?
Wasn't that thing supposed to take time?
Boruto stumbled backward across the snow, clutching his wound with one hand as he glared at the masked man with fury and disbelief.
"You—!"
"Who the hell are you?!"
Obito did not answer.
Instead, he attacked again.
This time, he moved even faster.
His figure blurred through the snowstorm, appearing at Boruto's side with killing intent so direct it made the air itself feel heavier.
Boruto gritted his teeth and leaped back just before Obito's hand tore through the place where his chest had been.
The snow beneath them blasted apart.
Boruto landed badly, nearly collapsing the moment his feet touched the ground, but the blue flicker of Kāma pulsed again and forced his body to evolve and adapt even further.
Obito pressed in immediately, giving him no chance to breathe, and unleashed a kick from the side.
Boruto raised his arm on instinct—
Bang!
The impact sent him skidding violently across the snow, carving a long trail behind him.
"Ghk—!"
He coughed up more blood, but before he could even regain his footing, Obito was already in front of him again.
"Damn it...!" Boruto snarled, forcing himself to dodge once more, but his body was too damaged to keep up completely.
Inside Boruto's mind, a cold voice echoed.
"...Boy."
Boruto's pupils trembled.
Momoshiki.
"...This one," Momoshiki said, his voice colder than the snow around them, "I can see it clearly."
"He killed Sasuke."
—!
Boruto's heart seemed to stop.
And for a moment, he did not even bother wondering whether Momoshiki was lying.
Because even he—
Even while desperately clinging to denial—
Had already begun to understand that Sasuke might truly be gone.
The fake corpse from before.
The trap.
The silence.
All of it pointed to one thing.
This man had come for him after killing Sasuke.
For a split second, everything around Boruto froze.
And then the rage came crashing down all at once.
"You...!"
The pressure around Boruto exploded.
The Kāma flared violently, blue light spilling across the snow.
His expression twisted with raw fury as he lunged forward, ignoring the tearing pain in his stomach, ignoring the blood, ignoring everything except the person standing in front of him.
Obito's Sharingan watched him calmly.
Boruto threw himself into the attack anyway, his movements wild, but fast—
Faster than before, driven by grief and the unstable boost of his evolving Kāma.
Obito parried him with ruthless efficiency.
He slipped past Boruto's strike, stepped inside his range, and drove a brutal blow straight into his side.
Thud—!
Boruto's body folded like a bow as the air burst from his lungs.
Before he could recover, Obito caught him by the throat and lifted him slightly off the snow.
Boruto's eyes widened, both hands grabbing at Obito's wrist.
Whatever change was happening to Boruto, it was dangerous—
But it was still incomplete.
Which meant this was the best moment to end it.
Obito let out a quiet breath of relief and dropped fully out of Kamui to hold Boruto in place, solidifying completely as he prepared to deliver the killing blow for good.
His other hand rose.
And just in case he left a Flying Thunder God mark on him, Obito made no careless move.
His fingers sharpened into a piercing strike, ready to drive straight through him.
Everything in Boruto's vision swam as time seemed to stop all around him...
The pain from his wound, the mental blow of Sasuke's death, the pressure of facing Obito—everything was crushing him at once.
"Move aside, boy. Now let a god handle the rest."
Momoshiki's expression turned devious, his lips curling faintly as if he had been waiting for this exact moment.
Boruto's pain, rage, and helplessness were reflected clearly in those pale eyes—and Momoshiki savored every bit of it.
"You hate him, don't you?" he asked in a low, smooth voice. "You want to crush him, to make him pay."
He tilted his head, the smile on his face growing darker.
"There is no shame in relying on power when your own is insufficient. So stop resisting and hand me your body..."
His voice dropped into something almost seductive.
"I'll do what you cannot."
"I know what you are... so don't act like this is kindness," Boruto replied, lowering his head without bothering to look at Momoshiki.
His blue eyes trembled with fury.
"But if my power isn't enough... if you really can make him pay..."
Then—
ZMMm...
Blue chakra suddenly erupted from Boruto's body, and what looked back at Obito now was something malicious and inhuman.
A smile slowly curved across Boruto's face.
Obito's Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan widened slightly in astonishment for the first time.
"...Damn."
A savage burst of force exploded from that body at point-blank range.
BOOM!
A kick slammed into him with monstrous force and sent him flying backward like a cannon shot.
Obito was hurled across the snow and smashed straight through a massive stone statue in the distance.
The entire structure exploded apart on impact, boulders and frozen debris erupting into the air.
For a moment, the dimension itself seemed to tremble from the violence of it.
Dust and snow swirled together.
Boruto—no, Momoshiki—slowly lowered his leg.
Blue Kāma patterns pulsed across his body with eerie brilliance as he stood there in the snow, blood still staining his clothes, yet his posture was now calm.
Inside the broken remains of the stone statue, rubble shifted.
Then, from within the wreckage, Obito slowly stepped out.
He casually dusted the rubble off his cloak.
Surprisingly, aside from a faint layer of dust, he looked completely fine.
"Ho... interesting, human."
Momoshiki let out an amused smile.
He cracked his neck slightly, then rolled his shoulders and stretched Boruto's body as if testing its condition before slowly beginning to stroll across the snow.
On the other side, Obito also stretched his neck after brushing the dust from himself.
"So it's another parasite taking over..." he said flatly. "You people really do have a perverted way of crawling inside someone else."
Then he began walking forward as well, his steps calm and unhurried, his boots pressing into the snow and leaving clear footprints behind.
Swoosh!
The snowy wind swept across the battlefield once more.
Both Momoshiki Ōtsutsuki and Obito Uchiha came to a stop some distance apart and faced each other in silence.
For a brief moment, neither of them moved.
Then Momoshiki suddenly let out a cold, amused laugh.
"...Heh... kuhahaha..."
The smile on his face deepened, arrogant and cruel.
"You actually seem to know me?" he said, his pale eyes narrowing with interest. "It seems you're hiding a rather interesting secret yourself... you lowly creature."
Obito's visible Sharingan stared back at him without the slightest ripple.
Then he lifted one hand and placed it behind his neck in a lazy, almost mocking manner.
"Didn't someone teach you not to pry into other people's privacy... filthy Ōtsutsuki?"
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