While the others continued inspecting the area on foot, Sai carried Sasuke into the air on an ink bird he could now safely summon, allowing the Uchiha to survey everything with the Rinnegan from above.
Unfortunately, the aerial excursion didn't last long. It quickly became clear that the tower was encircled by abnormal, tightly controlled wind currents so precise and violent that both of them were certain it would inflict severe damage on anyone reckless enough to attempt passing through.
Still, they kept circling, peering through the cracks and fractures in the tower's structure in search of any clue that might help them move forward. When they climbed high enough and flew as close as possible to the broken dome at the top, they were able to make out several massive, puppet-like machines inside—five, roughly—apparently deactivated and abandoned. They had likely served as some sort of guardian mechanism at some point.
"Well?" Shikamaru asked, arms crossed, when the two of them finally dismounted the ink bird.
"There are unused guardian puppets inside. Sasuke believes he could use one of them as a teleportation marker to get inside the tower and search for a way to disable the barrier from within," Sai reported as everyone watched the riderless bird drift toward the wind barrier and get violently torn apart upon contact. "…Good time not to have a wind user on the team, wouldn't you say?"
As the discussion about strategy carried on, the Uchiha noticed Killer B stepping away to inspect the wind barrier more closely. So, without drawing too much attention to himself, he followed, coming to stand at his side as though Bee's presence meant nothing to him at all.
"…You didn't say anything," Sasuke muttered at last, low enough that only Killer B could hear, not looking at anyone or anything in particular. "About the vision I had, I mean."
From the corner of his eye, Sasuke saw Bee turn his head toward him in silence, studying him briefly before returning his attention to the barrier. "Should I have?"
"I thought you might recognize something," Sasuke admitted with reluctant resignation. "The place. Isn't it… similar to what you see? You know. You, jinchūriki."
Killer B watched him carefully again, and Sasuke was already preparing to brush it off and tell him to forget it and move on when Bee finally spoke.
"It's the space where Kurama lives, yes."
Sasuke nearly choked on his own breath.
"…What?" he managed, unable to mask his shock.
Yes, in his mind it had been a theory he had quietly entertained, but he hadn't expected such a direct, concrete confirmation.
"I thought you already knew. That's why I didn't say anything," Killer B replied evenly. If anything, his seriousness unsettled Sasuke more than a joke would have. "And because you don't want the others finding out."
Sasuke's gaze drifted almost unconsciously toward the rest of the group, making sure they were still far enough away not to overhear.
"I thought so," he began quietly, "because when I entered the world Kurama and Naruto share, I saw something similar. But—"
"You can do that?"
Sasuke blinked, momentarily taken aback by the abrupt interruption. "With the Sharingan, yes," he clarified. "I can enter a person's consciousness. That's how I was able to access the space they share."
"…Interesting," Killer B said simply—again, with complete seriousness.
"Anyway," Sasuke shook his head faintly. "I wasn't certain because what I saw inside Naruto was different. The lighting was similar. The water on the floor was the same. Maybe even the pipes along the walls. But this vision… it wasn't identical. For one, there was no cage. And I couldn't feel a presence."
"Well," Bee shrugged, "it would've been hard for you to find something like that."
"Hm?"
"I'm just saying," he continued, "the shared space between a jinchūriki and their bijū can change depending on the jinchūriki's mental state, even their maturity and the kind of relationship they have with their beast. If you saw a cage when you entered Naruto's mind, I'd guess that was before they broke the seal that kept the fox imprisoned inside him."
Ah. Of course. Sasuke should have considered that.
"And besides," Bee went on, "you're not a jinchūriki. I agree with you—what you have is nothing more than residual chakra you obtained… somehow. People who only carry a finite, limited amount of a beast's chakra don't usually have a shared space with the bijū. They shouldn't be able to see them or speak to them."
"Then how do you think I got in?"
"That's the part I don't know," he admitted at last, finally turning to look at him. "I imagine it has something to do with the Storm calling to you—or contacting you in some way. But maybe I'm just being overly dramatic," he added, lightly mocking himself.
Sasuke thought it sounded ridiculous too, almost laughable. And yet, he could have said the same about countless other things that had proven true over the past few days. Still, here he was.
"Then how do I go back?" he asked. "To that place, I mean."
Killer B looked away and shook his head. "It's not an easy task, not even for us," he began. "Maybe Naruto and I have it under control now—but it wasn't always like that. Usually it takes a great deal of focus and introspection. But your case is different. I don't even know if you could reach that place, because I'm not sure you have one to begin with. You could spend hours meditating and get nowhere, simply because it doesn't exist."
Sasuke would be lying if he said that answer didn't disappoint him.
"Maybe…" Bee continued, "the only way I can think of is if Naruto were here. You could enter his consciousness with the Sharingan, like you said. But I don't know how much you'd find that resembles what you saw. Like I told you—mental spaces change. And Naruto's has definitely changed compared to the one you and I witnessed."
"Ah. You saw it too?"
Killer B nodded, and Sasuke supposed that should have been obvious. He had already said the description matched the place where Kurama lived.
"I helped Naruto fight the fox to gain control over it," Bee explained. "So I had to step into the mental space and lend him a hand."
Sasuke was about to continue, another question forming at the tip of his tongue, but before he could voice it, Shikamaru approached them. Behind him, the rest of the group watched from a distance.
"Sorry to interrupt," the Nara began, then fixed his gaze on the Uchiha. "So you're going in?"
Sasuke met his eyes and nodded firmly, silencing the voices in his head that whispered he would—so long as he didn't fucking die halfway through the attempt.
"What will you do if you can't find a way to deactivate the barrier?" Shikamaru pressed.
"I'll come back," Sasuke shrugged, as if he were stating the most obvious thing in the world. "It'll take more than a damn breeze to keep me contained."
The Nara smiled faintly, then turned and gave a small nod to Sai before he pulled out another seal and swiftly sketched a new ink bird across its surface, summoning it for him.
"You'll be traveling alone this time," the artist said, that same polite smile never quite leaving his face.
"Thank God," Sasuke shot back as he climbed on.
"Sir Sasuke—!" Ayame called just as he settled fully onto the ink construct, looking up at him with those eyes Sasuke almost wished did not belong to her. His heart melted into something unbearably tender every time he saw them.
"Don't worry. I'll be back in a moment," he told her, even though he knew the reassurance was unnecessary and probably sounded embarrassingly sentimental to everyone else. He simply couldn't look at her without thinking of the blond. "You focus on sensing my chakra and warn them if anything feels wrong," he continued. "It's not like you can do much from here, but I'm sure you'll figure something out."
Ayame nodded firmly, wearing that expression of courage and certainty far bigger than her small frame, an expression Sasuke could not stop comparing to his man. Naruto used to declare things with the same unwavering conviction when he was just a loud, foolish kid who wouldn't stop insisting he'd become Hokage one day.
Fortunately, the bird took flight before the others could notice the smile that had crept onto his face.
Maybe he would never see Naruto again. But at least he had crossed paths with someone who reminded him enough of him to bring a small, fragile warmth to his chest.
*
As expected, getting into the tower hadn't been difficult. He'd done exactly what he said he would—swapped places with one of the puppets and slipped inside with the power of the Rinnegan.
That wasn't the problem.
What was frying his brain now was that, somewhere among the billion goddamn floors this monstrosity had, Sasuke had stumbled upon a particularly strange one.
Most of the heavy mechanisms there were clearly deactivated, abandoned, and long since fallen into disuse. But what caught his attention was the powered down and coated in dust computer sitting at the far end of the room, impossible to ignore. Especially when it looked suspiciously like the key to opening… the fucking magical door standing right in front of him, buzzing nonstop in his goddamn ears.
Okay, maybe "magical" was an insultingly simplistic way to describe whatever the hell he was staring at—but it was testing his patience to the limit.
Before resigning himself to solving what was probably some archaic, idiotic puzzle as the only legitimate way forward, Sasuke had tried everything in his arsenal to break through the barrier. He had used techniques of the Rinnegan and the Mangekyō that should have been enough to carve a path through nearly anything in existence. And yet here, in this cursed place, they were completely fucking useless.
He exhaled deeply and finally let himself drop to his knees in front of the machine. He slumped forward, resting part of his torso and face against it, pressing his cheek into the crook of his arm as if it were a pillow, and let out a low, raw groan of frustration.
He could be at Naruto's place right now.
He could be in the quiet of the house the blond had bought far from the village and its people, from cameras, and from problems.
He could be asleep in his ridiculously large bed, the one spacious enough for both of them to lie with inches to spare and yet completely pointless because they always ended up tangled together anyway, clinging to each other as if they were back in that old, narrow single bed Naruto used to have in his cramped apartment.
At this hour of the night—though Sasuke wasn't even sure what time it was anymore, only that it had to be obscenely late—he could have been getting jumped by the blond for the fifth time before dawn. He could have been utterly wrecked against the mattress, his man's hand pressing his head into the pillow while the other gripped his hip hard enough to bruise, pounding into him like he meant to ruin him for good.
In the privacy that absolute solitude granted him, the Uchiha let out an exaggerated, miserable sob as he sprawled even farther over the machine, silently grateful that no one could hear the direction his thoughts had taken. No one but him and—possibly, in a scenario he deeply resented—Kurama. Though honestly, he wouldn't be embarrassed if the fox knew exactly how much he enjoyed being fucked by its jinchūriki.
If anything, Sasuke huffed out a quiet laugh at the thought of the torture it must be to exist inside Naruto during moments like that.
It was a shame he would probably never find out. He was going to die before he ever had the chance to see Kurama again and ask what kind of arrangement they actually had. The few conversations he'd shared with the fox had been enough for Sasuke to know with absolute certainty that whatever answer he gave would be crude, sarcastic, and deeply inappropriate. Maybe Kurama and Naruto were so in sync that the beast participated in the act too. That would be fucking hilarious.
Still half lost in that ridiculous line of thought, Sasuke lifted his head and forced himself to focus on the space in front of him. This time he studied the floor more carefully, noticing the narrow channels carved into it that connected directly to the machine. They looked like conduits, shallow pathways clearly meant to be filled with something like water, maybe.
Something meant to flow.
Following the grooves with his eyes, he noticed they all converged into a hollow carved into the floor directly in front of the barrier. When he stepped closer, he saw that the cavity contained several narrow openings at its center—tubes, most likely—meant to channel whatever was poured into it somewhere deeper within the structure.
He stood there longer than he should have, staring at the glowing barrier, letting the pieces arrange themselves in his mind until the answer—so fucking obvious it almost insulted him—settled into place.
Chakra.
…
Chakra?
As insane and counterintuitive as it sounded, it made a twisted sort of sense. Fill the channels with chakra. Let it flow through the grooves, down into that hollow, and from there into whatever mechanism waited to be fed.
But who the hell had that kind of chakra to spare? Enough to externalize it, sustain it, flood an entire system with it and—
Sometimes he was an idiot.
A complete fucking idiot.
It was almost embarrassing how many people insisted he was some sort of prodigy, intellectually superior, sharp beyond average. Naruto should really be louder with his propaganda about Sasuke being a dumbass, because for once, the idiot would be absolutely right.
Sasuke stepped back in front of the machine and placed his palm against its cold surface. He focused, reaching inward for the fox's chakra the same way he had when he'd cloaked the others earlier.
This time, it answered faster.
The red thing bled from his hand almost naturally, as though his body had already begun adapting to the foreign current coiling through his coils. It was disturbingly easy now.
That, more than anything, unsettled him.
Because no matter how satisfying it felt to succeed, the thought that this power had an unknown expiration date gnawed at him relentlessly. Every flicker of pride was immediately strangled by the reminder that this could kill him. That it probably would. That it will.
The machine reacted the instant the fox's chakra coated it. The dusty screen flickered to life, and with it, Sasuke felt the entire room awaken.
Gears groaned somewhere inside the walls, protesting after years, maybe centuries, of neglect. Energy pulsed through unseen circuits, reverberating through the floor beneath his feet. The air itself seemed to hum louder, vibrating against his skin, putting every nerve on edge as though the tower were inhaling for the first time in ages.
He tensed automatically, eyes alert, expecting a trap or something.
But the screen blinked as if processing data, until at last it displayed a single, infuriating fraction.
1/3.
A heartbeat later, the carved grooves along the floor began to glow. Red chakra poured into them, just as he had imagined, racing along the channels in thin, liquid streams before spilling into the hollow near the barrier. It pooled there, forming something akin to a reservoir of condensed chakra.
It worked.
Or it had to be working.
But—
Nothing happened.
The barrier did not falter. It did not so much as flicker.
The low hum of the tower continued, unmistakably alive, but no new mechanisms engaged. No doors unlocked.
Just the screen.
Mocking him.
Were they seriously going to make him solve a fucking mini-game?
Sasuke only exhaled slowly through his nose.
Then he turned on his heel and went looking for the rest of the machines.
*
If the tower hadn't been so fucking endless, it probably wouldn't have taken him a whole goddamn hour to find the three remaining terminals and repeat the same damn process over and over again, jumping the same way every single time the mechanisms began to activate.
By the third repetition, when the screen finally displayed a clean, mocking "3/3," the barrier in front of him at last dissolved, finally giving way to—
Another shitty empty room, smaller than hell.
Sasuke almost let out a shout, but instead he inhaled deeply and forced himself to keep his emotions at bay. He was already concerned enough about how out of character he'd been acting lately; the last thing he needed was to start throwing hysterical fits out of nowhere. He would have time later in hell to reflect on his mood swings and on the way his patience no longer seemed capable of surviving three cheap tasks in a row. For now, he needed to focus.
Exploring the newly opened area, Sasuke found, lying on the floor, a kind of red, fluorescent rock that was probably incredibly dangerous, poisonous, and lethal to the touch—yet he picked it up with complete confidence.
In fact, the Uchiha went back to each of the machines to retrieve the identical stones resting there as well, silently thanking his so-called great intelligence for having etched the entire route into his memory with the Sharingan.
Maybe he wasn't that stupid after all.
But now, with all three stones in his possession… he felt stuck again.
Nothing had happened when the machine completed its charge.
Absolutely nothing.
The chakra he had poured into each terminal still sat there, pooled inside the grooves carved into the floor, refusing to drain through the holes he had noticed earlier, most likely because whatever gates controlled those conduits were still sealed. Most likely because something was missing. Something he hadn't found yet.
This time, the Uchiha did scream.
*
After an endless and utterly exasperating process of searching like an idiot through every floor, every corridor, and every single room for something, he finally found a central chamber striking enough to be of actual use.
This time there were no machines. Instead, there was a massive fucking pit carved into the very center of the floor, opening into what looked like an endless void. Sasuke could even step right up to the edge and look down, taking in the sheer, suffocating immensity of it.
This had to be the lowest accessible level of the tower, the closest to the ground, before the barrier that guarded the true core of the place. The place he was obviously meant to reach.
And after all the time wasted on this insanity, Sasuke couldn't even pretend to hide the flicker of excitement at the thought of solving this final puzzle. It even looked simple.
Arranged in a triangular pattern, three indentations carved into the stone floor bore the exact shape of the stones he carried, each one connected by channels similar to the ones he had already seen in the machine room.
Letting himself be guided by the excitement coiled tight in his gut, the Uchiha didn't hesitate long before kneeling and setting the stones into place. To his satisfaction, they reacted immediately, glowing the moment they settled into their slots.
Sasuke almost cried in relief when he placed the last one and watched all three flare with blinding intensity, red liquid flooding through the channels that connected them.
He almost cried again when the barrier ahead evaporated as the process completed.
And he almost shit himself when the entire fucking floor began to tremble, followed by the most thunderous, violent roar he had ever heard in his goddamn life.
No.
Not ever.
He had heard this before.
It was a roar no one could ever mistake.
One that, like very few things in his life, froze him completely in place like hearing the voice of his dead brother call his name out of nowhere.
In less than a second, everything—absolutely everything—went straight to hell.
Sasuke saw the floor crumble beneath his feet as a monstrous, tearing scream erupted from the depths below.
He didn't waste so much as a breath.
Susanoo flared to life around him, wings unfurling, blade swinging wide as he cleaved through the tower's walls that were already collapsing anyway, and shot the fuck out of there.
Outside, the world looked exactly as he had left it, except that whatever he had unleashed inside the tower had, indeed, shattered the wind barrier that had been keeping the others at bay.
Sasuke soared over the group and, instead of landing, scooped them all into the Susanoo's massive hand, lifting them with him as he retreated at full speed from the crumbling structure.
"What's happening?!" Shikamaru shouted, barely managing to steady himself midair.
"The Jūbi!" Sasuke yelled back.
"The what?!"
N