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[— Manga Scene —]
"…"
Naruto's fingers trembled.
He was barely standing, his body weighed down by Neji's strikes, the chakra pathways inside him shut down one after another.
'Impossible…'
He tried again and clenched his teeth.
'Chakra flow… what's happening?'
But nothing came out.
In the darkness, the chakra network inside his body appeared, its points extinguished and its pathways sealed under the effects of the Gentle Fist.
"How…?!"
Neji raised his eyes toward him, the Byakugan still active.
Then something changed.
Deep inside Naruto's body, where the chakra flow had completely stopped, a small vortex appeared.
Another chakra source, one that did not come from Naruto's sealed network, but from somewhere deeper.
"!"
Neji's eyes widened.
The vortex grew, and from its center something enormous began to take shape in the darkness: a head, long ears, fangs, and then a single eye glowing from within a mass of red.
"What…?!"
Neji took half a step back.
In the stands, Hiashi rose from his seat without even realizing it.
"That chakra…!"
Kiba gasped, Akamaru lifting his nose into the air, while Hinata's eyes widened despite the pain.
Even the Third Hokage's expression changed as he spoke in a low voice.
"There's no mistaking this chakra… it's the Nine-Tails' chakra."
On the contestants' balcony, Gaara remained silent, his eyes fixed on the boy below.
Then the chakra exploded.
It burst from Naruto's body like a tornado, deep crimson across the page, twisting around him in raging arms and tails. The ground shook beneath his feet as stones scattered in every direction.
Neji bent against the wave, his Byakugan staring at the sight.
At the heart of the erupting chakra, Naruto raised his head.
His eyes had changed, his fangs were visible, and his fist was clenched tight.
"I'm…" He smiled. "…coming!!"
[— End Scene —]
…
Konohagakure:
The word Nine-Tails was nothing new to anyone inside the Art Store.
They had heard it since the first volume. They had seen the beast towering over Konoha, its claws, fangs, and nine tails tearing through the night, and they had seen the Fourth Hokage confront it. Later, they learned that the beast had not died, but had instead been sealed inside the blond child who had spent eleven volumes running across the pages and shouting that he would become Hokage.
But knowing was one thing… seeing its chakra pour out of him was another.
The open page before them no longer merely said that the Nine-Tails was inside Naruto.
It showed them.
In the southern section of the Art Store sat a woman who had known that chakra before most of the people around her even knew their own names.
Mito Uzumaki did not move. She sat within the youthful body restored to her by the life-extending doses Rob provided, her hands folded over her lap, her eyes fixed on the red vortex bursting from the boy's body on the page.
She did not need the Byakugan, nor did she need the future Hokage's explanation.
She knew it.
"Kurama…"
The name left her lips quietly, but Kushina, sitting not far from her, heard it. She glanced toward Mito for a moment before returning her eyes to the page. One hand had unconsciously risen to her stomach, over the place where the seal she had known for years rested.
"It's different," Kushina finally said.
Mito raised her eyes toward her.
"What do you mean?"
"The chakra." Kushina pressed her palm harder against her stomach, her brows drawn together. "Whenever some of his chakra leaks through inside me, I feel it before it even reaches my skin. Heavy. Hot. Like it wants to fill everything all at once."
She looked at Naruto standing in the middle of the crimson storm.
"But this child… asked for it."
Mito did not answer immediately. She had noticed the same thing.
Only moments ago, Neji had completely shut down Naruto's chakra network. Sixty-four strikes had hit his points one after another, leaving his body unable to release the chakra he already possessed. Then another chakra appeared, one that did not pass through the same source.
The chakra of a tailed beast.
"Neji did not fail," Mito said, raising one finger toward the page showing Naruto's sealed chakra network. "His strikes landed, and the boy's network is closed exactly as he intended. What we're seeing now is not Naruto recovering the chakra Neji sealed away… it's another reservoir opening from the inside."
Kushina fell silent. She understood what that meant better than anyone else in the store, and Mito could tell from her face that she had understood.
"Jinchūriki," the woman said, her voice not loud, and yet it made Minato lift his eyes from the volume. "That is the truth no one understands the first time they fight one of us. You can exhaust a jinchūriki, shut down their pathways, push their body to its limits… and then discover that the entire time, you were fighting the smaller reservoir."
Kushina stared at the page for several seconds before speaking.
"But there's a difference between him and me in this moment."
She pointed toward Naruto's face.
"He's conscious. His eyes have changed, his fangs have appeared, and the Nine-Tails' chakra is surrounding him… but he still knows who he's fighting, and he still remembers why he's fighting. Even his words…"
I'm coming!!
Kushina read them again, then smiled faintly.
"He's still Naruto."
A slight smile appeared on Mito's face as well.
"And that, Kushina… matters more than the amount of chakra itself."
…
Minato had watched the fight from the beginning with the mind of a shinobi, before the heart of a man who still could not understand why the pages of the future contained a child who resembled him so much.
He had watched Naruto enter the match against an opponent who surpassed him in taijutsu, then flood the arena with clones. He had watched Neji crush that assault with Rotation, close sixty-four points in Naruto's chakra network, then stand over him and tell him that hard work was an illusion and fate could not be changed.
In any normal match, that would have been the end.
But this was no longer a normal match.
"It's crossed the line," Minato said.
Kushina looked at him.
"You mean Neji?"
"I mean the entire fight." He pointed toward the page. "A few minutes ago, they were fighting to prove two ideas. Neji wants to prove that fate cannot be changed, and Naruto wants to prove the opposite. But now one of them has used a technique capable of shutting down the entire chakra network… and the other has been forced to draw on the power of a tailed beast just to remain standing."
He fell silent for a moment, his eyes narrowing.
"This is no longer a genin match."
The sentence was simple, but Hatake Sakumo, sitting nearby, raised his eyes when he heard it.
"It never was from the beginning," he said.
Minato turned toward him. The White Fang stared at the final page with an expression that showed less awe at the chakra than concern over what would come after it.
"Exams place limits on how much power a contestant is supposed to need in order to win. But this kind of rivalry does not recognize limits." Sakumo pointed toward Neji. "That boy is not only fighting Naruto. He is fighting the Main Family, the seal on his forehead, his dead father, and everything that convinced him his life had been decided before it even began."
His finger moved toward Naruto.
"And this boy is not only fighting Neji. He is fighting everyone who told him since childhood what he would never be able to become."
Sakumo lowered his hand.
"When two children enter an arena carrying all of that with them, don't expect them to stop just because the sign above the door says Chūnin Exams."
Minato said nothing, because he found nothing in those words to disagree with.
…
As for the young Kakashi, he was not interested in the philosophy.
He stared at the first page of the scene: the sealed chakra network. Then the second: the vortex. Then the third: the beast. Then he went back to the first.
"Father."
"Hmm?"
"Neji closed his chakra points. So why did the Nine-Tails' chakra come out?"
Sakumo smiled slightly, not because the question was childish, but because he had been waiting for it.
"What do you think?"
Kakashi frowned. He knew this game. Whenever his father answered a question with another question, it meant the answer was somewhere in front of him. He went back to the pages.
"Either the Gentle Fist can't shut down tailed-beast chakra…"
He stopped, then shook his head.
"No. Hiashi said the points really were closed."
"Good."
"Then…"
He leaned closer to the volume.
"It's a second source. Neji shut down what Naruto had, but he didn't shut down what was inside Naruto."
"Exactly."
Kakashi lifted his head toward the final page again. For the first time since the match began, his eyes were no longer on Neji, but on Naruto.
"That's cheating."
A short laugh escaped Kushina before she could stop it, while Minato smiled. Sakumo merely raised an eyebrow.
"Cheating?"
"He has a second chakra reserve inside his body. If you close the first one, he uses the second. That's unfair," Kakashi said with complete seriousness.
"Tell that to the Nine-Tails."
"If I ever meet him, I will."
Sakumo's smile widened slightly.
"I hope you never have to."
But Kakashi had already returned to the page, and after a few moments, the small trace of amusement disappeared from his face.
"Father. How strong is this chakra?"
This time, Sakumo did not answer quickly. He looked at the red storm covering half the page, at Neji being forced backward by the pressure alone, then at the future Hokage who had recognized it from the very first instant.
"The amount that came out just now? I don't know."
"And the full amount?"
Sakumo's eyes paused for a moment before he answered.
"Something whose strength you do not want to learn while standing in front of it."
…
Kushina returned to silence, but her hand did not leave her stomach.
She could feel him there, the enormous mass of chakra behind the seal, the very same thing now flowing around Naruto in the future.
And with every page, an old question inside her began to change shape.
Ever since she had become a jinchūriki, everyone had spoken about control: the strength of the seal, its durability, preventing leakage, keeping the Nine-Tails inside. Even she had learned to view their relationship in the same way.
A door.
A lock.
And something behind it that must not be allowed out.
But Naruto on the page had done something different.
He needed power…
So he went to the door himself.
"Mito-sama."
"Yes?"
"Have you ever done that before?"
Mito understood what she meant without needing an explanation.
"Asked him for chakra?"
Kushina nodded.
Mito stared at the page for a long time before answering.
"No."
Kushina blinked. She had expected a story, a warning, perhaps an old lesson from the first jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails.
But the answer was a single word.
"Not even once?"
"Not once." Mito moved her fingers over her lap. "I was born in an age when the tailed beasts were disasters that walked on four legs. I saw what armies could do with them, and what they could do to armies. And when the Nine-Tails entered my body, I never once thought of him as a source of power I could borrow."
She looked toward Kushina.
"I only thought of him as something I had to keep behind bars."
Then her eyes returned to the page.
"And it seems that child will grow up in a world slightly different from ours."
Kushina smiled.
"Or maybe he's just more stubborn than we are."
Mito laughed softly.
"That is also possible."
…
In the eastern section of the Art Store, the Hyūga Clan stared at the page in silence.
The Byakugan in the drawing—Neji's eye that could see everything—was itself staring at the red chakra in stunned disbelief.
Hiashi was standing without even realizing when he had risen, his eyes fixed on the vortex that had burst from the body of an opponent whose pathways Neji had completely shut down only pages earlier.
"All sixty-four strikes landed," he said quietly. "Neji did everything correctly… and then that chakra came out of nowhere."
Beside him, Hizashi found nothing to say. He simply continued staring at the stunned face on the page, the face carrying the eyes of their clan… and failing, for the first time, to understand what those eyes were seeing.
…
From his seat, Minato read the final page again: Naruto surrounded by chakra, Neji before him, the ground between them torn apart.
Only a few pages earlier, the blond boy had barely been able to stand. Now, even through ink and paper, it felt as though the arena itself had become too small for the power that had awakened inside him.
"He's going to attack," Minato said.
"Of course he is," Kushina replied.
Minato shook his head.
"No, I mean immediately."
He pointed toward Naruto's posture: one foot planted into the ground, shoulder leaning forward, fist tightly clenched.
"Neji is still trying to understand what he's seeing, and this is the first moment since the match began when he doesn't know what's coming next."
Kakashi studied the same panel, then nodded.
"And if Naruto gives him time, Neji will recover his distance and use Rotation."
Minato looked at him.
"Exactly."
On the final page, Naruto's small fanged grin still hung before them.
I'm coming!!
Kushina leaned forward slightly.
"Then don't give him time."
Somewhere else in the store, the corner of Sakumo's mouth lifted.
As for Kakashi, he fixed his eyes on the next page, the one no one had turned yet.
Because everyone had understood the same thing:
The match that should have ended with the sixty-fourth strike…
had only just begun.
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 229: The Winner… Uzumaki Naruto!
Chapter 230: The Truth
Chapter 231: Shikamaru vs. Temari!
Chapter 232: A Shadow Within a Shadow!
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