eternal shadow 466-468 (Patreon)

Chapter 466: Urashiki Doesn't Even Act

The moon.

Manji stood alone on grey dust with his back to the deep black and looked down at the blue world hanging out there.

Earth turned under him, slow. Cloud and ocean caught the light and lost it again, a glass bead left in time.

“Another cycle. Almost done.”

The words left his mouth and the vacuum took them. In this world, sound still carried where it had no right to. The old fights in the dark between stars had already proved that much.

He put his hands behind him and walked the dead ground. No dust rose. The figure he cut looked smaller for it.

“I don’t even remember the count anymore.”

A dry laugh. Hollow under it.

The longer he lived, the less he belonged to anyone.

No friends.

No one left who could stand across from him.

No old names he could still say out loud.

The only son he had, he had put back into the other world with his own hands.

Now it was him. One man in a Naruto world, holding the plot and the cycles in place as they came around again.

The look in his eyes went down a shade.

Alone. The word sat on him clean.

Then the system opened in his head.

[System]

Host. What’s wrong.

Manji’s step hitched. He kept his eyes on Earth.

“Lonely. Feels like a game with one player in it.”

A pause.

[System]

I am with you. Is that not enough.

He laughed once, short.

“Fair.”

“You’ve been here longer than anyone. Feeling. Use. History. You’re the one in deepest.”

[System]

Mn.

Simple. Pleased, or making sure it had heard him right.

He laughed again, tired this time, and rubbed the center of his brow.

“When this cycle closes I go back to Mount Myoboku and be the Great Sage again.”

He tipped his head to the stars. The voice dropped.

“One man like this… it’s dull.”

[System]

I will go with you.

His feet stopped. That one he had not expected.

“You’re not afraid I’ll break the plot?”

A thin amusement sat in it.

“The way I did in the first cycle. Tear the whole story until no one can read the face of it.”

The answer came with no wait. Flat. Serious.

[System]

Host matters more than the plot.

[System]

If Host breaks the plot, the rewards stop.

He laughed under his breath.

“The strength I have now is first in this world.”

“Young Boruto isn’t even on the page yet. The Ōtsutsuki won’t knock for a while. What I hold is already enough.”

[System]

Correct.

[System]

Host is presently first in the Naruto world.

He nodded. A question came up off the side of his mind.

“System. Time here against the other world. What’s the rate.”

[System]

One thousand years in the Naruto world equals one day in the other world.

He blinked. Then he laughed at himself.

“So my son has been over there less than a week.”

[System]

Yes.

He looked at the diamond mark on his hand.

The Kāma still answered. Clear. The boy was alive. The signature sat steady. No fade. No pain in it.

“Looks like…”

“The brat’s doing fine over there.”

The smile this time had actual ease in it.

There was no wind on the moon. The starlight stayed cold and white.

He put his hands behind him again and walked. The smile held.

It was still there when his brow moved.

A chakra he knew too well opened in the dark off Earth.

His body locked.

“That one.”

He made no sound. His shape tipped and went into empty space, not a thread of presence left behind.

A figure stood in the black between moon and world.

Blue and white cloth. The odd hair. Eyes that already held a joke and a question. Ōtsutsuki Urashiki.

He hung in the vacuum with his arms folded and studied the blue planet the way a man studies ground before he puts a foot on it.

Advance work. Alone. The real strike would wait for Kinshiki and Momoshiki.

Manji watched from farther off. Something complicated crossed the look and left.

He knew the name.

In the original this one was loose and hard to pin, and he would tear a hole in the Boruto years later.

For now—

Manji turned it once and stayed still.

On the original line he had no business putting a hand in at this hour.

One extra touch was one extra break.

He held the deeper dark and did not move.

“Hahahaha. Found it!”

Urashiki hung there over the blue world with heat in his eyes.

He threw his arms out and talked to the empty dark like the universe had asked.

“Finally. I made it to the shinobi world.”

“This time I punch through the whole of it. Let the natives see what a traveler can do.”

The laugh went up. In the vacuum it still carried. His body became a streak and tore for Earth with no care for who might be watching.

Farther out, Manji saw all of it.

He had been calm. He had even thought: yes. That was Urashiki. That loud.

Then the words landed clean in his sense.

This traveler.

Manji went rigid.

The next breath he shook his head hard, as if he could throw the line back out of his skull.

“No.”

The voice went low. The eyes went sharp.

“Travelers don’t open like that.”

“‘This traveler’? Said it to the air?”

His face darkened until there was no light left in it.

Another one.

And this one had not even put a mask on.

The shell was Ōtsutsuki Urashiki. The thing inside it was not the original man.

“…Trouble.”

He stood on the moon with a look that could have cut stone.

He had meant to leave the line alone. This one would hit dirt and turn the shinobi world over before anyone had a name for him.

Manji lifted a hand. A thin, ugly pulse sat on the fingers.

No more sitting this one out.

“You start noise in my ground…”

“Wear Urashiki and think you’re untouchable? You don’t know this old man is cleaning travelers off the board?”

“The last one who dropped into Ōtsutsuki Isshiki—I put him in the Pure Land for a thousand years.”

He cut the air.

A black gate opened without a sound.

His shape went through it and the gate took him.

—

Konoha. Senju Hashirama’s house.

Hashirama had been at the window with the night sky in front of him. His brow locked. Chakra in him snapped tight.

A presence he did not know—and large enough to put a hitch in the chest—dropped over the village with no warning.

“Who.”

The word was still in his mouth when the room bent.

A man in blue and white stood in the center of the floor. The look on him was wrong in a way that wanted a fight.

Urashiki had his hands in his sleeves. Head tipped. A crooked smile aimed at Hashirama, play and a challenge sitting in the same eyes.

Hashirama turned all the way.

“Who are you?”

“Heh. Senju Hashirama.”

The laugh was light. Loose. No respect in it.

“Me?”

He let it hang, as if the answer were a joke he liked.

“An alien.”

“I came to see it for myself. How strong the God of the Shinobi World actually is.”

He leaned in a fraction. War-heat lit the eyes.

“Senju Hashirama. Show me.”

Chapter 467: My Fists Want Blood

“Wait. Who are you?”

“Talk. Just talk.”

Hashirama looked at Urashiki the way a man looks at someone who has already left the road. A stranger had walked into his house asking for a fight and speaking in pieces that did not fit.

“Hahahaha. I want the fight. My fists want blood.”

“I came to this world to hit something.”

“Come on, Senju Hashirama.”

Hashirama did not get the next breath.

Urashiki hooked an arm around his neck and pulled.

The room went.

A low hum ran the dark.

Other space.

The sky sat grey. Grey-white emptiness moved in every direction with no edge to it.

Urashiki kept his hands in his sleeves. A toe touched nothing and he hung there, the crooked smile still on him.

“God of the Shinobi World. Senju Hashirama.”

“Let’s see if the trip was worth it.”

“Last life the boards called me the weakest Ōtsutsuki. Said I wouldn’t even clear you. I want that test myself.”

He tipped his head. The tone was light, as if he were grading a toy.

Hashirama stood across from him. The Hokage robe moved in the drift of the place.

The ground was wrong. The man was not joking. A space like this did not belong to anyone ordinary.

Relief still came, thin and real. If they tore each other apart here, the new village would not be the one under it.

“What are you? Ōtsutsuki. I’ve never heard that name.”

“Knowing more won’t help you.”

“You’re about to die anyway. I’ll be kind. I’m a traveler. I came from another world. The real thing.”

Urashiki lifted a hand. A red fishing rod sat in the palm as if it had always been there. The shape of it was wrong.

Hashirama’s brow drew in.

“A traveler.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not the original waste Sasuke and Boruto beat into the dirt. I have the whole story in my head and this body’s whole strength in my hands. You—” He smiled wider. “You’re a part already written to die.”

Heat lit the eyes.

Hashirama took the words and had nowhere to put them. The face. The chakra coming off the man. None of it looked like an act.

“Come on. Get up. This is the part that feels good.”

Urashiki vanished.

The red rod cut the air from Hashirama’s left with a sound like cloth tearing.

“Wood Release: Wood Clone Technique!”

Hashirama’s hands moved fast enough to blur.

Two thick limbs punched out of the floor and caught the rod.

Thread ran off the tip, clear, and wrapped the wood in a blink. Chakra left the branches in a rush.

They withered while he watched. Then they came apart.

Hashirama’s pupils tightened. He went back.

“It takes chakra straight out.”

“That’s the opening act.”

Urashiki laughed and vanished again. This time he stood at Hashirama’s back.

“Behind you.”

The rod broke into a rain of thread and came down.

Hashirama’s chakra jumped.

“Sage Art: Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands!”

The wooden Buddha tore up out of nothing. Arms opened in layers until they made a wall with no gaps.

Thread hit wood and the larger flood of chakra threw it back.

Urashiki’s face changed for the first time. The joke left it.

“Sage Mode already? Not bad. God of the Shinobi World. Fast.”

Hashirama stood on the Buddha’s shoulder. The sage marks sat in his eyes. Natural energy and his own chakra ran as one thing.

The mild look was gone. The man in front of him was work.

He did not talk. Both hands drove forward.

“Wood Release: Wood Dragon Technique!”

Dragons tore out from behind the statue, thick as towers, and went for Urashiki with enough weight to take a ridge off a mountain.

Urashiki did not move off the line.

His eyes flickered. The Rinnegan opened a short window on the next beat and let him pull a step back along it.

“Third from the left. Called it.”

His body bent at an angle that did not belong to ordinary taijutsu. Claws passed him. The rod came around and hooked the dragon at the neck joint and tore.

Chakra ripped out.

The dragon gave a dull crack and broke in the middle.

Hashirama’s eyes locked.

Future sight. And something else—Urashiki’s condition had dropped a shade when he used it.

“Smart.”

Urashiki whistled, pleased. Then the color in his skin went wrong. Red climbed it.

“Smart won’t finish me. Look at the real thing.”

Red chakra blew out of him like fire. The form that followed was rawer. Strength, speed, and hide all jumped more than one step.

“Crane Mode!”

He dropped the long game. A red streak hit Hashirama head-on.

Taijutsu opened in the same breath.

Fists tore the air. Each clash put a shock through the empty space you could see.

Wood gauntlets met red bone and the sound of it sat wrong in the teeth.

“Your healing’s good.”

“Chakra still runs out.”

Urashiki talked through the rush and laughed through it too.

Thread from the rod worked in close like something that wanted a vein. It hunted skin and tried to drink.

Hashirama used Sage Mode’s sense and Wood Release’s knit to cut the worst of it, again and again.

The fight went hotter.

“Sage Art: Wood Release: Advent of a World of Trees!”

The void filled.

Old trunks drove up from every side. Leaf and limb came in a tide and tried to bury Urashiki under them.

He laughed in the red light.

“Better. Again.”

Hands sealed. The space split on black seams.

Yomotsu Hirasaka.

Gates opened together. Urashiki’s shape snapped from mouth to mouth. Every exit came with a cut already aimed.

The wood sea took holes. The drain-threads moved through it like snakes no one could hold, and Hashirama’s reserve started to thin.

He set his jaw. The sage marks dug deeper.

“Wood Release: Wood Human Technique!”

A wooden giant rose out of the trees, the same scale as the Buddha, and put a fist through the space Urashiki occupied.

Urashiki did not take it.

He went into a gate and came out at the giant’s back. The rod hooked the spine and drank.

The huge body started to dry where he stood.

For the first time Hashirama felt the weight as weight.

The kit was ugly in the right ways. Rewind. Drain. Space. Wood Release lived on chakra. This man was built to starve it.

Chapter 468: Deus Ex Machina

Higher in that same empty dark, Manji hung still.

Every thread of him was pulled in. Neither man below had him.

He watched the fight tear the space and his brow drew down.

On the node he remembered, Senju Hashirama was due to die soon anyway. The hat would pass to Tobirama.

If Urashiki took that death early… it was not a result he could not live with.

Let him die here?

The doubt sat a second.

Hashirama alive put a lean on a dozen lines already set.

A traveler no one held, standing over the God of the Shinobi World with a kill to his name—that variable would run farther off the map.

He took the safest cut he had.

He watched.

Below, Hashirama’s voice finally broke open.

“Sage Art: Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands!”

Urashiki stalled for the first time.

Thread locked in wood. The space-gates warped under the raw life in the jutsu.

Hashirama was in his face in the next breath. A wood fist carrying every drop of sage chakra he had left hit Urashiki square in the chest.

The sound of it went through the void.

Urashiki flew. Blood came hard. The red form cracked along the surface.

He wiped his mouth and laughed wider.

“Good. Again.”

The space around them started to fail. Wood forest rose and died. Gates opened and shut. Red thread and green limb knotted in the air until there was no clean line left.

Hashirama’s breathing had gone rough. Sage Mode was close to the wall.

Urashiki was worse. Chakra thrown back into him too many times. The red form burning itself out.

Both of them knew it.

The next hit would end it.

Hashirama sealed again. The Buddha came up out of nothing. Every arm on it pointed at Urashiki.

Urashiki lifted the rod high and poured everything he had into it. The future flashed behind his eyes. He pulled the step back along that line and drove forward anyway.

“Come on!”

They hit at the same time.

The last exchange found a winner.

“Die!”

The red rod went through Hashirama’s chest on a clean line.

Blood came out of him in a rush.

He locked in the air. The sage marks ran off his face while Urashiki watched. The Buddha came apart into a weather of splinters.

Hashirama looked down at the hole. Blood at the mouth. The voice already thin.

“Not enough…”

“Konoha. Konoha’s open…”

The words had no fight left in them.

Urashiki hung across from him, chest working hard. The red form was split across most of its surface.

He wiped blood off his face and could not keep the laugh in.

“Hahahaha!”

“God of the Shinobi World. That’s all. Die—”

Hashirama’s mind was going under when Manji moved.

He put a hand in.

He had seen enough of this traveler’s mouth.

Time held.

A warm force Hashirama could not refuse lifted what was left of him off the broken body.

The next breath he stood in white light that had heat in it.

A figure wrapped in more light than a man should hold stood in front of him and did not move.

Hashirama stared.

“This is—am I dead?”

He looked at the brightness. The voice had no place to land.

“Is this the world after.”

Manji did not answer at once. He only looked at him.

“Senju Hashirama.”

Not loud. It filled the space anyway.

“Your work isn’t finished.”

Hashirama stalled.

“Kill that man.”

“Protect Konoha.”

Hashirama shook his head, a tired sound in it, and looked at his own hands. They had gone almost clear.

“I’m too weak. I’m already dead. He’s past me. I couldn’t even stop the last hit.”

“Madara and I together might not have been enough.”

Manji was quiet two seconds.

Then he put his palm toward Hashirama.

“This old man will give you a hand.”

Light broke.

Power Hashirama had no word for came into him like warm water and went all the way down, past chakra, into the part of him that was still standing. Not chakra. Something closer to the rules the world ran on.

A god’s weight.

“Go.”

“Finish what you were put here to do.”

Manji’s voice stayed in the light after the rest of it was already moving.

—

Other space.

Urashiki had started in for the last cut when his body locked.

The corpse in front of him was closing.

Flesh knit. Bone shut. Skin came back as if the rod had never been there.

Then the pressure hit.

Chakra off Hashirama jumped by tens of counts and kept climbing. Nine signatures rose with it—different, complete, and running in one body as if they had always belonged there.

The nine tailed beasts.

Gold and six colors turned around him and settled into a flame that sat too close to Six Paths work.

His eyes went pale orange. A black cross-star cut the iris. Faint shapes of the beasts hung at his back like a second outline.

The whole space shook under it.

Urashiki’s eyes went wide. Fear sat in them for the first time, raw, with no joke left to cover it.

“That’s not possible!”

“I put a hole through your heart. You don’t get up from that. What is this? All nine? Six Paths—?!”

The shout broke. Panic in it.

Hashirama lifted his head, slow.

He looked at his own chest. Whole. He looked at the gold running his hands. Something complicated moved through his face and then went hard and clean.

“I’m sorry.”

The voice had weight again.

“I can’t die yet.”

“Konoha still needs me standing in front of it.”

Six Paths light closed over him all the way.

Urashiki took half a step back without meaning to. Sweat sat cold on his spine.

He had it now.

He had put a hand on something he should have left alone.

His head snapped toward the empty sky over them.

“Plot correction? Is that what this is?”

It was the only box a traveler like him had for what he was seeing.

Senju Hashirama, dead on the floor a breath ago, standing up in the nine beasts and Six Paths work. No other story in his head would take that.