Chapter 542: Two Pillars
"Before you ask how to get power like that..."
Adult Naruto finally released young Sasuke's fist and stepped back half a pace, his gaze moving between the two teenagers in front of him.
"Let me tell you who I am first. Although honestly, you two are being surprisingly thick about this -- neither of you has figured it out even with all the evidence right in front of you."
Because the evidence was right there. The same chakra signature. The same face. The same way of speaking. The same Rasengan. Even the same verbal tic.
And neither of them had made the connection.
Adult Naruto couldn't entirely blame them, though.
At this particular moment, young Sasuke's head was full of nothing but revenge. And young Naruto's head was full of nothing but "I can't let him leave." Young Naruto's entire mind was occupied with not letting Sasuke go. Young Sasuke's entire mind was occupied with strength and vengeance.
Neither of them had any mental space left to wonder about the origins of a strange adult who had appeared from nowhere.
The question made young Sasuke actually stop and think.
The chakra of the man in front of him was identical to Naruto's -- only vastly larger. The face was almost indistinguishable from Naruto's -- only older. The techniques, the Rasengan, that terrifying black sphere -- if this person were simply impersonating someone, why go to such lengths? Why model the imitation so precisely? Why appear in front of him this way?
One possibility rose in his mind.
It was absurd. Too absurd to believe. But the evidence was sitting right in front of him, and it was the only explanation that fit.
Young Sasuke's expression went dark.
"...You're..." His voice came out dry and slightly hoarse. "The future version of... this dead last?"
Adult Naruto blinked.
Dead last.
Nobody had ever called him that before. He found it oddly -- endearing.
"What?!"
Young Naruto's voice cut through his brief moment of sentiment.
"Your identity?!"
Young Naruto was staring wide-eyed. He hadn't gotten close to that conclusion -- his brain was still full of "this person is wearing my face," "this person grabbed Sasuke," and "what does this person want."
"If you have an identity then stop using my face, will you?!"
He shouted it at full volume.
"And another thing! Even if you use techniques like that, if you're trying to take Sasuke somewhere, I'll stop you!"
His head was obviously still entirely preoccupied with Sasuke. The obvious conclusion hadn't reached him at all.
Adult Naruto looked at him, and a complicated feeling moved through him.
This is another version of me.
A little dim. Single-minded. Once he's decided on something he doesn't look back.
Not a bad way to be, honestly.
Young Sasuke stood nearby, his expression still difficult, still working through more than young Naruto was. If the person in front of him really was a future Naruto -- that would mean Naruto was going to become this strong. Strong enough to erase a stretch of earth on a whim. Strong enough that young Sasuke couldn't even begin to see the ceiling of his power.
And what did that mean for Sasuke himself?
He had sacrificed everything in pursuit of strength -- abandoned the village, abandoned his comrades, set out toward darkness. And Naruto had still surpassed him?
Then what was the point of any of it?
"Yes and no."
Adult Naruto's voice cut through young Sasuke's spiral. "I am Uzumaki Naruto."
He paused.
"But I'm not the Uzumaki Naruto you know." His gaze settled on young Sasuke specifically. "And you're not the Uchiha Sasuke I know."
Both of them stared.
"Let me explain." Adult Naruto began, calm and unhurried. "Do you know what a parallel universe is?"
-- -- --
Adult Naruto explained everything that needed explaining.
The concept of parallel universes. The fact that he came from a different world. Why he had appeared here. All the things that sounded utterly impossible, laid out in the most straightforward language he could find.
Young Sasuke and young Naruto listened. Their expressions moved through shock, then bewilderment, then a kind of dazed disorientation, and finally landed somewhere in the vicinity of reluctant acceptance.
In all honesty, the explanation was outrageous.
If adult Naruto hadn't just demonstrated power that transcended anything a Kage-level ninja should possess -- power that put itself entirely outside the range of human comprehension -- neither of them would have believed it so quickly.
But strong people didn't go to the trouble of fabricating stories to deceive genin. And the evidence that this man was some version of Naruto was overwhelming.
Once young Sasuke understood that the adult man in front of him was not his world's future Naruto, something inside him quietly loosened.
If this had been the future version of his Naruto -- that would have meant spending his entire life beneath someone he had always considered his rival. The thought of that, even briefly considered, was suffocating.
But it wasn't. They were from different worlds. There was still a chance.
He had questions. A long list of them.
What kind of strength did his world's Sasuke end up with? Did he succeed in getting revenge? Did he kill Itachi? Did he restore the Uchiha clan?
All of those questions cycled through his head, and then a more urgent one pushed all of them aside.
"How do I --" Young Sasuke looked up, eyes fixed on adult Naruto with burning directness. "Get strong enough to match you? No -- I don't need that much. I just need the strength to kill Itachi."
Adult Naruto looked back at him.
"Kill Itachi?"
He repeated it as a question, then continued. "If that's all you need -- you don't have to do anything at all."
Young Sasuke went still.
"Itachi -- or rather, the Uchiha Itachi of my world, but yours is the same -- already has a terminal illness at this point in time."
"What?!"
Young Sasuke's composure shattered.
His eyes went wide, pupils shaking. That face which had maintained its cold control through everything cracked open with pure disbelief.
A terminal illness? That man -- the one whose existence had seemed like an immovable wall?
"Wait a few years and do nothing. He'll die on his own."
"No!"
Young Sasuke's voice shot upward with something uncontrolled in it.
His mind had latched onto one thought and was spinning around it -- Itachi has only a few years to live?
Then what about his revenge?
He had given up everything in pursuit of strength. He had abandoned everything and walked into darkness. All of it, every painful step, was for one purpose: to kill that man with his own hands. To make that man die by his hand. To stand in front of Itachi and tell him that what he had done was wrong, that there was a price for it.
If Itachi died of illness -- died somewhere Sasuke couldn't reach -- died in a bed, worn down by time --
What did that make his revenge? What did that make his suffering?
He couldn't let Itachi just die like that. He absolutely could not.
Only if he was the one who did it --
Only if he personally killed that man could he avenge his parents. Could he avenge his clan. Could he give meaning to the years he had spent surviving.
"I can't let that man just die --!"
Young Sasuke's voice rang through the gorge, carrying every scrap of fury and refusal a young person can hold.
"Only by my hand --!" He clenched his fist. "I have to kill him myself!"
He spun toward adult Naruto. "Please!"
"Give me the strength! I'll give you whatever you want! Just let me get my revenge--"
Nearby, young Naruto had been standing quietly without speaking.
He knew there was no room for him in this conversation.
But inside, something in him had slowly unclenched.
If what adult Naruto was saying was true, then Sasuke wouldn't go to Orochimaru. Sasuke would stay.
That thought arrived, and the tension that had been wound through young Naruto for this entire encounter loosened at once. Everything that had been pulled tight, everything that had been suspended and anxious -- it finally came down a little.
He really wanted to ask adult Naruto what his own future looked like.
Did he become Hokage? Did he reach his dream? Did everyone finally recognize him?
But he saw the raw urgency on young Sasuke's face, and swallowed the question back down.
Later. He would ask later. Right now, Sasuke's situation came first.
Adult Naruto looked at young Sasuke -- at those eyes still burning with the fire of revenge, at the way he had come completely undone at the news of Itachi's illness.
Kill Itachi.
He thought of Satsuki. His Satsuki, who before she knew the truth had also held onto that same desire.
"Kill Itachi?"
"My Sa--" He caught himself, adjusted the name. "The person most important to me also had that idea once."
"But let me tell you some things first."
Adult Naruto made his decision.
The truth that had been buried for too long.
But the same events, told by different people, become different stories.
In canon, when Obito had told the story of the massacre, he had first erased himself from it -- he had called the Nine-Tails attack a natural disaster and removed his own role as the instigator. Then he had described the deaths of the Uchiha civilians -- the women, the children, Mikoto -- as a "necessary sacrifice," words that wrapped atrocity in the language of tragic nobility.
That had been a telling with a purpose. A misdirection designed to keep someone walking down the wrong road.
Naruto was not going to tell it that way.
He was going to say all of it.
Everything good. Everything terrible. Everything unavoidable. Everything unforgivable.
And along with the rest, he was going to say clearly: Uchiha Itachi's choice, and the path he walked, were deeply, fundamentally wrong.
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