Konoha --- Team 7's Training Ground
Third day after the scroll.
Five forty-five in the morning.
Naruto was already at the training ground when Sasuke arrived.
This was unusual.
Sasuke was usually first.
He stopped at the entrance.
Naruto was sitting against the fence where they always ended up, arms loosely around his knees, looking at the split post from yesterday.
Sasuke walked in.
Sat down beside him.
Said nothing.
Waited.
Naruto looked at him sideways.
"I need to tell you something," Naruto said.
"Okay."
"It's kind of big."
"Okay."
"You're not going to like some of it."
"Naruto."
"What."
"Just say it."
Naruto looked at the training post.
Then he told him.
The same things Bai Yan had told him last night.
Kaguya's seal weakening.
The Moon Temple.
Toneri's letter.
The failsafe array.
The anchor.
All of it.
In the same simple way Bai Yan had told him --- not dramatizing, not softening.
Just the shape of the truth.
Sasuke listened in complete silence.
He'd promised himself he would do that after the last two days of watching Naruto get hit with things and deal with them.
He would listen first.
Then respond.
He listened.
When Naruto finished, there was a moment of morning quiet.
Birds.
Distant sound of the village waking up.
The post standing in the dug-up earth from yesterday.
"I know," Sasuke said.
Naruto turned to look at him.
"...What."
"I know," Sasuke said again. "I figured it out two days ago."
Naruto stared at him.
"HOW."
"The Sage's warning about Kaguya. The moon shuddering. The way Bai Yan's been moving since the scroll closed." He paused. "You had a look when you came to training yesterday."
"What look."
"The 'I know something but I haven't decided how to carry it yet' look."
"I don't have a look---"
"You have a very obvious look, Naruto."
"I DO NOT---"
"It's the same look you get before a fight you're not sure about. Except without the excitement part."
Naruto stared at him.
"...I have a look," he said.
"Yes."
"And you just---knew."
"I inferred. Then Bai Yan went to your roof last night and I confirmed."
"You were watching my roof."
"I was in the area."
"Sasuke. Nobody is in the area of my roof at that hour."
"I was training nearby."
"At what time---"
"The time doesn't matter."
Naruto looked at him for a long moment.
At the particular quality of not-looking-at-him that Sasuke did when he'd done something that was essentially kind and didn't want to acknowledge it as such.
He'd been doing it since the scroll.
Staying nearby without making it a thing.
Showing up at the training ground without being asked.
Saying exactly the right amount and not one word more.
"You were checking on me," Naruto said.
"I was training."
"Sasuke."
"In the vicinity of your building. Incidentally."
"Incidentally."
"Yes."
Naruto looked at him.
Sasuke was not looking back.
He was studying the middle distance with great focus.
"Okay," Naruto said.
"Don't make it weird."
"I'm not making it weird."
"The face you're making is making it weird."
"I'm just looking at you!"
"Look somewhere else."
"SASUKE---"
"The anchor," Sasuke said. Cutting through it.
Back to the actual thing.
The thing that mattered.
The thing they'd both been building up to.
Naruto let it go.
He looked at the post.
"Yeah," he said. "The anchor."
"You're the primary candidate."
"Yes."
"Because of the Uzumaki bloodline and the---"
"The will to anchor the world, Bai Yan said. That's the phrase."
Sasuke absorbed this.
"The evaluation said there were multiple candidates."
"Theoretically."
"Theoretically." Sasuke was quiet for a moment. "The scroll placed us first on the rivals ranking."
"Yes."
"As a placeholder. For ten years from now."
"Yes."
"Which means by the time any of this reaches its conclusion---"
"We're both involved," Naruto said. "Yeah. I figured."
Another silence.
"Tobirama's Ability Sealing Card," Sasuke said. "Madara."
"What about them?"
"They're variables now. On our side." He paused. "Bai Yan's Divine Beasts. The Moon Temple's failsafe. The array."
Naruto nodded.
"More on our side than we would have had," he said.
"Significantly more."
"Because of the scroll."
"Yes."
They sat with that for a moment.
The morning was getting lighter.
The pale pre-dawn gray turning warmer.
"Sasuke," Naruto said.
"What."
"Are you scared?"
A pause that was slightly too long to be uncalculated.
"...Not of Kaguya," Sasuke said.
"What are you scared of then."
"Not being ready in time." Said flatly. Precisely. "The difference between what we are now and what we need to be. The gap."
Naruto looked at the post.
At the fracture line.
At what yesterday had opened.
"The secondary Rasengan," he said. "That's new."
"Yes."
"The Sage Imprint. The Harmony Seal."
"Yes."
"Tobirama told me my father never got to the secondary rotation," Naruto said. "But I did. Yesterday."
Sasuke was quiet.
"And you said if you apply the inward rotation to lightning---"
"I said it was theoretical."
"But you said it."
"Yes."
"So there's something there."
"Possibly. With years of development."
"We have less than years."
"I know."
Naruto looked at him.
"Then we work faster," he said.
It was the simplest possible thing to say.
And the most Naruto possible way to say it.
Sasuke looked at him.
At the twelve-year-old who had eaten six bowls of ramen after his dead father visited and had gotten up the next day and started training at five in the morning.
Who had just been told there might be weeks before a god woke up and had said we work faster with the specific calm of someone who had already processed the fear and put it somewhere useful.
"Yes," Sasuke said.
"Together."
"We're teammates."
"I know. I'm just saying---"
"We're teammates, Naruto. That's what together means."
Naruto opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Looked away.
"You're being decent again," he said.
"I'm being accurate."
"Same thing lately."
Sasuke said nothing.
But he didn't argue.
They sat against the fence in the early morning light and looked at the training ground.
At the split post.
At the evidence of what could be built in a day.
"What do we do first?" Naruto asked.
"You need Sage Mode foundations," Sasuke said. "Jiraiya's Imprint accelerates the access, but you still need the chakra control prerequisite. That's the bottleneck."
"What do you need?"
"The Six Paths chakra seed that the scroll gave me needs cultivation. I need someone who understands Ōtsutsuki energy structures to guide the early stages."
"Bai Yan."
"Probably Bai Yan."
"Tobirama for you, Bai Yan for me."
"Or some combination."
Naruto nodded.
"We should tell the others," he said.
"Sakura already suspects."
"Shikamaru definitely knows."
"Shikamaru knows everything eventually," Sasuke said.
"He knew I had a look."
"...Everyone knew you had a look."
"I DON'T HAVE A---"
"Naruto."
"WHAT."
"You have a look."
"---OKAY FINE I HAVE A LOOK."
Sasuke almost smiled.
He didn't.
But almost.
"Tell Kakashi today," Sasuke said. "He needs to know the full picture if he's coordinating with Hiruzen."
"And Jiraiya."
"And Jiraiya."
"And the Sage."
"He already knows."
"Right." Naruto stretched. "Okay. Today we tell people. Tomorrow we go back to training. The day after---"
"The day after we figure out what we don't know yet and start learning it," Sasuke said.
"And so on."
"Until we're ready."
"Until we're ready," Naruto agreed.
He stood up.
Offered a hand down.
Sasuke looked at it.
He took it.
They pulled each other up.
They stood in the training ground in the early morning.
"Rivals ranking," Naruto said.
"Don't."
"First place."
"Naruto---"
"In ten years."
"I know."
"That means by then we're the best in history."
"It means the scroll believes we will be. There's a difference."
"The scroll believed it before we did."
Sasuke was quiet.
"...Yes," he said. "It did."
"So we make it true."
"Yes."
"Together."
Sasuke looked at him.
"You said that already."
"I'm saying it again. It's worth saying twice." He grinned. "Tobirama said that, actually. About a different thing. But same principle."
Sasuke made a sound in the back of his throat.
"You're going to quote Tobirama at me now."
"He's giving good advice! He's like a very strict sensei who doesn't admit he's a sensei---"
"He said you could call him Tobirama-sensei."
"He said it was marginally acceptable. Which I'm choosing to interpret as---"
"He said marginally."
"WHICH I'M CHOOSING TO INTERPRET---"
"Naruto."
"WHAT."
"Go warm up."
Naruto went to warm up.
Sasuke went to the opposite side of the ground.
They trained.
Side by side.
Not coordinated.
Just present.
The way they'd been since the scroll appeared.
Finding the same place without planning to.
The split post stood in the morning light.
Evidence of yesterday.
Foundation for tomorrow.
Group Chat:
[Uzumaki Naruto @Kakashi Hatake: Can we talk today. All of team seven. Including Jiraiya.]
[Kakashi Hatake: When?]
[Uzumaki Naruto: After morning training. Say, noon?]
[Kakashi Hatake: I'll be there.]
[Kakashi Hatake @Jiraiya: You saw this.]
[Jiraiya: I saw it. I'll be there.]
[Jiraiya: ...He's going to brief everyone, isn't he.]
[Kakashi Hatake: Yes.]
[Jiraiya: The anchor thing.]
[Kakashi Hatake: Yes.]
[Jiraiya: How does he seem?]
[Kakashi Hatake: He's already training.]
A pause.
[Jiraiya: ...Of course he is.]
[Jiraiya: He's so much like Minato it's---]
[Kakashi Hatake: Don't finish that sentence in the public chat.]
[Jiraiya: Right. Sorry.]
[Kakashi Hatake: Tell him privately.]
[Jiraiya: ...Yeah. I will.]
In the Reaper's Belly, Minato had read the exchange.
He didn't say anything in the chat.
He just held Kushina's hand.
She squeezed it.
They watched their son train.
The morning was good.
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