Suffering was not a feeling anymore; it was a condition. The Absorption Tail Seal was not simply sucking their Prana, but spinning their very being away. Naruto could hear the furious roars of Kuraroku in his mind fainting to pained whimpers. There was only one probability that the Ultra Sharingan Instinct of the former, which perceived every chance, should now contemplate, the absolute zero of their extinction. The great logic and equations that formed the brilliant mind of Gohan were tearing their edges, the numbers melted into immobility. The energy that Raizo applied was a guttering flame, and the bio-armor of Sakura was screaming in malfunction.
They were fuel and the engine was the ascent of Cell Akatsura.
"No... Not like this..." With a ragged tear Naruto gritted out. He was able to sense the Nine-Tailed Saiyan inside him, Kuraroku, draining its divine Prana. Dying to oneself was one thing; dying to the friend in his heart was not possible. One last, desperate effort of will, not of hope, but of simple, pure, naked refusal, broke out in him. He was not appealing to power, but was transforming into it.
"KURAROKU! GIVE ME EVERYTHING!"
There was a tearing reality sound reverberating in the valley. The Golden Spiral aura around Naruto did not light up, but exploded. Raw, crimson-gold power, the crude power of the divine Prana beast, burst out of him. The fur grew golden on his arms, his eyes shone with the light of the savage old. It was the Infinite Prana Form, which was not created by harmony, but by utter desperate will. The drain was struck out a microsecond by the shockwave.
Sasuke, having seen how primal Naruto was, perceived his own way. Pride could not have him outdone or fed upon like a battery. His cold calculus gave the solution to this: to oppose a god, to have to touch the divine. He threw off his terrestrial fetters, and his perception became vast, vast, cold, and infinite as the stuff of the universe. The six spirit Prana Rings of his Rinne Saiyan Form came whirling round him, his aura becoming a blinding white-blue. It was not the fight against the drain he was making the energy so very great, so very conceptually in harmony with the source of the Prana himself, that it was attempting to drink the ocean.
Behold, Sasuke muttered to himself, and it was the voice of a thousand slain Uchiha, the pride of a prince who goes against heaven.
Gohan watched the heart and pride both, straining to excess. And he knew his role. The researcher has to know the machine in order to break it. He was not resisting the drain any more. He instead opened his mind, which gave the Chrono Theorem the opportunity to chart the very functionality of the Absorption Seal. His consciousness should have been vapored by the feedback. However, when his body started breaking down into light, he attained the hypothetical Stage 7. The Infinite Prana Scholar. His shape was made half-transparent, radiant with the light of a new galaxy. He was not a fighter anymore, he was a moving hypothesis.
The seal has a song, complete was the voice of Gohan a chorus of sanity and light, a tune of uncreation. I shall intonate a counter-frequency.
Their final forms, combined and desperate ignition with each other generated a resonance that the Absorption Seal was unable to handle. It was as though siphoning three supernovas at once. The whirlpool of strength stuttered, whined and with the snap of breaking glass broke.
The backlash dropped them all on the ground. Even their transcendent forms were short-lived and the price was instant and violent. Naruto fell over, his body smoking, the golden fur falling back to reveal raw craked flesh. Sasuke sank on his knee and spat ethereal blue blood, his Rinne Rings going dead. The aspect of Gohan melted again into the body, and he fell and rolled his eyes in his head, and his mind was a jumble of rubbish.
They were free, but broken. The drain had been carried away, but they were almost drained out.
Sakura who had shielded her own energy to protect her core systems was the sole survivor. She had seen them, her friends, her allies, the final hope of Shinra, broken at the feet of a young god. No technology, no Capsule Kunai, had the power to cure this.
There was only one thing left.
Her Crimson Resonance.
A cherry-blossom pink veil fell over her, but this time, it was different. It was deeper, sadder. Her chest-glowing Prana was not the stuff of mechanical perfection, but the crudely tortured light of her own soul. She knelt in the two to put one hand on the chest of Naruto and the other on the chest of Sasuke, and then her bio-armor withdrew out of her fingers, making direct skin contact possible.
Bio-Heal Link: Maximum Output, she said, and there was a clean line of tears that ran through the dirt on her cheek. "Crimson Soul Transfer."
It wasn't a technique. It was a sacrifice. A show of vivid pink vitality, sprinkled with the actual spark of her life, poured out of her into them. Her Synthetic Prana Core had overloaded but not due to an outer influence, but due to the inner pressure. Alarms were sounding in her visor, unheard.
WARNING: LIFESPAN CRITICAL. Accelerating biological decomposition.
ESTIM. REM. LIFE: 12... 11... 10...
She didn't flinch. She had given them her life, and had mended their ruined cells, and rekindled their lapsed lines of Prana, and had hauled Gohan back to life across the chasm of the bare data. The pallor that had covered their faces grew grey and the flushed life returned. Their breathing steadied.
As she at last drew away her hands she wobbled on her legs. One, flared, white line now trailed in her pink hair. Corners of her eyes were etched with fine lines which no one could see. She had given them a second opportunity.
But, getting up in her friends and returning groggily to the nightmare, the price of her freedom was written on her face. They were alive, and were fighting on borrowed time, which had been purchased by the very life of their healer. And Cell Akatsura, his ritual momentarily interrupted and was now looking on them not as parts, but as true anomalies in his perfect design.