Nine Months Earlier – Kumogakure, Advanced Training Ground Omega
The air in the specialized dome crackled with restrained power. This wasn't a genin training field; this was a sealed, sensor-dampened arena built for Kage-level sparring and testing catastrophic prototypes. The walls were lined with Adamantium-reinforced, chakra-absorbing plates. The floor was a self-repairing nano-carbon mesh.
In the center, two figures faced each other.
Indra Uzumaki-Uchiha, in his standard grey commander's uniform, Sharingan dormant, posture relaxed but rooted.
Adult Sasuke Uchiha, cloak discarded, his lone arm holding his kusanagi loosely, his Rinnegan and Eternal Mangekyō both active, spinning with wary intensity.
Around the observation deck, overlooking the arena through one-way crystal, was an audience. Raikage A, arms crossed, a critical frown on his face. Killer Bee, grinning. Rias, leaning forward with analytical interest. Gyūki (in his small form), perched on the railing, munching popcorn. Matatabi, curled elegantly on a seat, her blue-flame tail flicking. And Boruto, practically vibrating with excitement.
This was the first—and only—public spar between the Commander and the enigmatic time-traveling Uchiha. The story for the few cleared personnel was that Sasuke was a distant, powerful clansman from a hidden branch family, here for advanced consultation. The truth was known only to those on the deck.
Raikage A: "Alright! No lethal force, no dimension-ripping, no village-leveling nonsense. Show me what a future Uchiha is made of. Begin!"
There was no signal. One moment, they were still. Next, the arena was a storm of afterimages.
Sasuke moved with the terrifying, efficient grace of a veteran who had fought gods. He didn't waste chakra on flashy entrances. A shunshin placed him behind Indra, and Kusanagi aimed at a kidney. Indra didn't turn; his left arm snapped back, palm open, and a shimmering hexagonal barrier of condensed space—a Palkia-derived spatial shield—materialized an inch from the blade's tip. The sound was a deafening CLANG that shook the dome.
Sasuke was already gone, appearing above, hand outstretched. "Shinra Tensei!"
A wave of invisible repulsive force blasted down. Indra looked up, unimpressed. He didn't dodge. He raised his right hand and made a gentle pulling motion. "Dialga: Temporal Drag."
The air around the descending force seemed to thicken, to become viscous. The Shinra Tensei didn't stop, but it slowed, its devastating speed reduced to a mere fast walk. Indra sidestepped it casually, the force plowing into the floor a second later with a dull, heavy thud instead of a cataclysmic explosion.
Gyūki: "Whoa! He just made a repulsion wave take a nap mid-air! That's a new one!"
Sasuke landed, a faint sheen of sweat already on his brow. His Rinnegan glowed brighter. "Amaterasu!"
Black flames erupted around Indra, consuming the space he occupied. But Indra was no longer there. He had simply… stepped sideways. Not a body flicker. He took one step to the left, and he was five meters away, outside the flames' perimeter, as if the space between had been folded away.
Indra: "Interesting. The pinnacle of Uchiha flame control. But fire requires space to burn. If I deny it the space around me, it's just an expensive light show."
Sasuke's eye twitched. He formed a hand seal. "Katon: Gōka Mekkyaku!" A colossal fireball, enhanced with Rinnegan chakra, roared forth.
Indra didn't counter with water or wind. He pointed a finger. "Spatial Compression." The fireball, twenty meters wide, was suddenly squeezed, compacted into a tiny, white-hot sphere the size of a marble. It hung in the air for a second before Indra flicked it with his finger, sending it zipping past Sasuke's head to impact harmlessly on a wall absorber, leaving a small, molten dent.
The fight continued. Sasuke used Susano'o—a skeletal ribcage that formed around him. Indra responded not with his own Storm Monarch, but with a technique that made the Raikage sit bolt upright. He raised both hands, palms facing the Susano'o ribs, and murmured, "Palkia: Spatial Dislocation."
The air around the purple bones sheared. There was no sound. A perfect, rectangular section of the Susano'o ribcage, two meters by three meters, simply vanished. Not shattered. Not broken. Gone. Erased from the spatial coordinates of the arena. Through the hole, Sasuke's shocked face was visible.
The Susano'o flickered and dissolved. Sasuke dropped to one knee, breathing heavily, chakra visibly depleted.
Indra deactivated his Sharingan, which had flared to life at some point during the spatial manipulation. He walked over, not even winded. "You're holding back. Significantly. And your chakra reserves are… surprisingly low for someone with your power and lineage. It's inefficient. You fight like you're rationing a cup of water in a desert."
Sasuke glared up, panting. "I manage."
Indra: "You're starving. A Rinnegan and an Eternal Mangekyō are cosmic-tier engines. You're trying to power them with a civilian's chakra pool. It's like attaching a starship reactor to a rowboat. The rowboat is going to splinter. Is this a choice? Some misguided attempt at… penance? Or are you trying to emulate Kakashi Hatake and his famous 'fifty-fifty' ratio?"
The term made Sasuke flinch. On the observation deck, Boruto perked up.
Boruto: "Fifty-fifty? What's that mean?"
Killer Bee: "Oh, it's a classic, a tale that's spastic! Back in the day, the Copy Ninja would say, in a fight, he'd only win half the time, come what may! A humble brag, a clever tag, 'fifty-fifty' was his flag!"
Rias, frowning in thought. "Kakashi Hatake… the Jonin of Konoha? I've read his files. Prodigious talent, but noted for low chakra reserves compared to Kage-level shinobi. He compensated with flawless technique and intelligence. You're saying he framed it as a fifty percent chance of victory?"
Indra, still looking down at Sasuke. "It was a psychological tactic. And a realistic assessment of his limitations. But for you, Sasuke? With your heritage? To intentionally cripple your capacity… It's not humility. It's stupidity."
Boruto burst out laughing. "Pffft! Wait, so in the future, Uncle Sasuke is trying to be like Dad's sensei? That's hilarious! I'm totally telling the Sixth this when we get back! 'Hey, Lord Sixth, guess what? Uncle Sasuke is copying your old schtick!
Adult Sasuke flushed, a rare show of sheer embarrassment and irritation. In a flash, he was on his feet (with a slight wobble) and delivered a sharp, precise THWACK on the back of Boruto's head with his lone hand.
Boruto: "OW! What was that for?!"
Adult Sasuke: (Through gritted teeth) "For running your mouth about things you don't understand."
But the damage was done. The casual mention had slipped out.
A heavy silence fell on the observation deck. Raikage A's brow furrowed. Rias's eyes narrowed. Matatabi and Gyūki stopped chewing.
Raikage A: "…The Sixth?"
Rias: "Boruto. You said 'the Sixth.' As in… the Sixth Hokage?"
Boruto paled, realizing his mistake. He looked frantically from Sasuke's furious glare to Indra's suddenly sharp expression. "Uh… I mean… I…"
Indra held up a hand, silencing him. His gaze was fixed on Sasuke. "You haven't told them the full extent of your temporal displacement. Only that you're from *a* future. Not which future. Kakashi Hatake becomes the Sixth Hokage in your timeline."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement, piecing together the clues with terrifying speed.
Sasuke sighed, the fight gone out of him, replaced by weary resignation. He straightened up. "Yes. After the Fourth Great Shinobi War, Kakashi-sensei served as Hokage. He was… a good one. A steady hand."
The implications rippled through the room. For Indra and the Kumo leadership, it was a tantalizing, politically significant piece of intelligence. For Rias, it was a fascinating data point. For the tailed beasts, it was just another curious human milestone.
Raikage A: "Hmph. The copy-nin, huh? Wouldn't have guessed it. But it makes a twisted sort of sense. After a war, you don't need a flashy hammer. You need a precise, experienced scalpel to rebuild." He focused back on Sasuke. "And your chakra? Is it a choice, or a consequence?"
Adult Sasuke: (His voice low) "A consequence. Of many things. Overuse of the Rinnegan. Travel between dimensions. The price of power. And… yes. A choice. To rely less on sheer volume and more on… precision. Like him."
Indra shook his head, a look of profound disappointment on his face. "A flawed model to emulate. Kakashi Hatake was born with limited reserves; he maximized what he had. You were born with an ocean and have deliberately drained it to a puddle. Precision is meaningless if you don't have the fuel to make the shot. We will discuss this later. For now, the spar is over. Your technique is impeccable. Your foundation is anorexic."
The session ended on that somber note. The secret of the Sixth Hokage was added to the small pile of classified truths known only to the top tier of Kumo. Boruto got an extra week of cleaning duty with Karui's team for his slip-up.
Later That Evening – Indra's Private Lab, Skyhammer
The mood was tense. Adult Sasuke stood before a diagnostic pod, its sensors having just finished a deep chakra pathway analysis. The results glowed on a screen, a map of brilliant potential marred by shocking atrophy and scar-like constrictions.
Indra: "These aren't natural limitations. These are wounds. Self-inflicted and otherwise. Your chakra circulatory system looks like a river that's been repeatedly dammed, diverted, and poisoned. The Rinnegan is a foreign organ grafted onto your system, leaching energy. Your dimensional travels have caused micro-tears in your very chakra cohesion. And your deliberate neglect of basic chakra cultivation for raw, advanced technique has left the foundations crumbling."
Sasuke said nothing, staring at the damning image.
Boruto was there too, fidgeting. To break the tension, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the Time-Space Turtle. The small, ornate turtle had been mostly dormant since their arrival, its energy spent.
Boruto: "Hey, little guy. You awake?"
The turtle's head slowly emerged from its shell. Its eyes, glowing with faint chronal energy, blinked. It made a soft, clicking, hungry sound.
Boruto: "Uh… you hungry? I don't have any turtle food…" He looked around helplessly, then at Indra. "Lord Indra, do you have anything… temporal… it can eat?"
Indra, intrigued, walked over. "Its fuel is space-time chakra. A refined, potent form." He held out his hand. "Let me see it."
Boruto placed the turtle in Indra's palm. The moment Indra's skin made contact, the turtle's eyes blazed with brilliant silver and purple light. A soft hum filled the room. The turtle's shell, previously dull, began to glow with intricate, luminous patterns.
Time-Space Turtle: (A tiny, ancient, surprised voice echoed in their minds) *"—FUEL! PURE! UNREFINED CHRONON/SPATIAL ESSENCE— SOURCE: HOST— EXTREME DANGER— CONTACT SHOULD HAVE CAUSED CATASTROPHIC FEEDBACK— HOST INTEGRITY: 100%— IMPOSSIBLE— CALCULATING—"*
The turtle seemed to vibrate, its shell patterns swirling faster. Then, with a soft POP, the glow stabilized at a steady, healthy level. The turtle looked… satisfied. Plump, even.
Time-Space Turtle: *"Fuel reserves: 100%. Recharge time from zero: 9.2 seconds. Source expenditure: Approximately 5% of the host's available time-space chakra reservoir."*
Boruto's jaw was on the floor. Adult Sasuke's Rinnegan was wide open, staring at Indra as if seeing him for the first time.
Adult Sasuke: "Five… percent? You just gave it enough energy to send us back in time… and it only took five percent of what you have? What are you?"
The turtle's head craned to look up at Indra. "Query: Host biological/chakra signature anomalous. Possesses intrinsic authority over dimensional and temporal axes. Signature matches no known mortal or Ōtsutsuki paradigm. Explain."
Indra looked at the curious turtle, then at his own hand, a faint, knowing smirk on his lips. "Let's just say I have a good template." He was thinking of the two cosmic archetypes sleeping within his system: Palkia and Dialga. Their integration, even at 10%, had fundamentally altered his chakra nature, granting him a well of space-time energy that was innate, not borrowed. He was becoming a sovereign of those domains.
He handed the turtle back to Boruto. "It seems your ride is ready. You can return to your timeline whenever you wish."
Hope and conflict warred on Boruto's face. He looked at Sasuke. "We can go home?"
Adult Sasuke, however, was grim. "Our mission isn't complete. Urashiki Ōtsutsuki is still here, in this past. We came to stop him. We can't leave until he's dealt with, or he could alter this timeline catastrophically, which might erase our own… or create something worse."
Time-Space Turtle: "Affirmative. Return journey to the point of origin is now possible. However, causal navigation is complex. The timeline you return to will be the one you left, but this branch—this 'Kumo Ascendant' timeline—will continue on its own path. You cannot return here. The river has split."
That settled it. They would stay until Urashiki was found and neutralized.
Nine Months Later –
A Pattern Emerges
The following months were a period of intense activity and integration.
For Boruto, it was a transformative boot camp. He graduated from training with genin to running drills with chunin squads. His skills sharpened under Kumo's relentless, systemic approach. He learned to fight as part of a unit, to use terrain and allied jutsu in combination attacks. He grew taller, tougher, his control over his lightning nature and the faint, nascent whispers of his Karma seal becoming more refined under safe, supervised study in Indra's labs. He still missed Konoha, his friends, and his family, but he had found a second home and a second family in the boisterous Uzumaki clan.
For Adult Sasuke, it was a period of reluctant rehabilitation and strategic partnership. He underwent the surgery and received the bio-synthetic prosthetic arm. The process was as Indra promised: six hours of stasis, two days of disorienting neural calibration, and a week of grueling therapy. The result was astonishing. The arm was stronger, faster, and more precise than his original. It could form chakra blades instantly, manipulate chakra threads with microscopic accuracy, and its feedback loop improved his overall coordination. He hated the debt, but he couldn't deny the tool's superiority.
More importantly, under Indra's cold, logical insistence, he began a regimented chakra capacity rebuilding program. It was basic, almost insultingly so: meditation, chakra circulation exercises, nature transformation drills focused on volume, not complexity. He grumbled, but he complied. The diagnostic scans nine months later showed a 30% improvement in his core reserves—not enough to be called an ocean, but no longer a puddle. A respectable lake.
For Indra and Kumo, it was business as usual, just with two extra pieces on the board. The Thunderhead system expanded. The orbital Skyhammer platforms went live, giving Kumo god's-eye-view surveillance of the continent. Relations with Suna deepened thanks to the "Singing Lake" and ongoing trade. The reformed Konoha under Tsunade remained a wary, wounded neighbor, focused on internal healing.
And the hunt for Urashiki Ōtsutsuki continued. The strange, fading chakra signature over the Land of Frost was just the first breadcrumb. Over the months, the Eagle Clan scouts and Thunderhead sensors picked up a half-dozen more: brief, anomalous energy spikes in remote locations, often near historical sites or places of natural chakra concentration. Urashiki was moving, hunting for something—likely tailed beast chakra or other powerful energy sources. But he was cautious, a ghost.
Then, one afternoon, a priority alert flashed across Indra's neural link and the command nexus.
[THUNDERHEAD ALERT: Catastrophic-level chakra spike detected. Coordinates: Border region, Land of Fire, near the Valley of the End. Signature analysis: 84% match to 'Ōtsutsuki' profile from subject Boruto scan data. Energy levels rising. Proximity to historical Senju/Uchiha battle site suggests target may be attempting to harvest residual chakra or access a dimensional weak point.]
[EAGLE EYE-7: Visual confirmation. Single humanoid figure with pale skin, twin horn-like protrusions, holding a peculiar fishing-rod-like tool. The figure is extracting violet chakra tendrils from the earth. Chakra reading off the scales.]
Indra was in his lab with Rias, reviewing seed germination data. He looked up, his eyes sharpening.
Indra: "He's shown himself. At the Valley of the End. Arrogant, or desperate." He opened a comm channel. "Raikage. Target located. I'm mobilizing."
Raikage A's voice crackled back. "The Valley? That's Konoha's backyard! This could be seen as an invasion!"
Indra: "I'll be in and out before their border patrols finish their lunch. I'm taking our 'guests.' This is their hunt too. Skyhammer, prepare for tactical teleport. Coordinates locked."
He turned to Rias. "Hold the fort."
Rias: "Bring back something interesting for the lab." Her smile was fierce. "And don't get sucked into any time holes."
Minutes later, in the Skyhammer teleportation chamber, Indra, Adult Sasuke, and Boruto stood in a triangle. Sasuke's new arm gleamed. Boruto was in full Kumo-style combat gear, looking determined.
Indra: "The teleport is precise but has a five-meter margin of error. Be ready for anything. The moment we arrive, I seal the area. You two distract him. I'll analyze and contain."
They nodded. Indra raised his hands. The air twisted, space folding around them. There was no sensation of movement, just a sudden change in scenery.
One moment: sterile orbital lab.
The next: the iconic, mist-shrouded gorge of the Valley of the End. The colossal statues of Hashirama and Madara loomed through the spray from the mighty waterfall. The air was thick with ancient, clashing chakra residues.
And in the center of the river below the statues, hovering above the water, was Urashiki Ōtsutsuki.
He looked exactly as Boruto and Sasuke remembered: tall, pale, with ash-blue hair styled into two long horns. He wore simple white robes and held his iconic blue fishing rod, from which a line of violet energy plunged into the turbulent water, seemingly pulling up shimmering, gossamer strands of latent chakra—the echoes of the First Hokage and Madara's battle.
He sensed them instantly. His head snapped up, his pale, pupil-less eyes fixing first on Adult Sasuke and Boruto. A smirk played on his lips.
Urashiki: (His voice was reedy, arrogant) "Well, well. The lost little sparrow and the brat have tracked me across the stream of time. How persistent. And futile. The chakra in this place is… vintage. Potent. A fine addition to my collection before I find the real prizes—the biju."
Then his gaze shifted to Indra, who stood slightly apart, already scanning him with Sharingan and a dozen sensor techniques.
The smirk vanished. Urashiki's eyes widened. His whole body jerked as if struck by a physical blow. The fishing rod wavered. The color seemed to drain from his already pale face.
Urashiki: "You… What… What are you? Your chakra… it's… It's looking at me. It has eyes." He took an involuntary step back in the air, his aura of arrogant superiority shattered into pure, unadulterated dread. "This… this is wrong. This timeline is wrong!"
Everyone was confused. Boruto and Sasuke exchanged glances. They'd seen Urashiki be playful, cruel, arrogant—but never afraid. And certainly never afraid of someone just by looking at them.
Indra merely tilted his head, analytical. "Fascinating. Your perceptive abilities are keen. You can sense the template authority. Good. It will make you appreciate what comes next."
He didn't give Urashiki time to recover from his existential shock. Indra's hands moved in a blur, not forming standard hand seals, but tracing intricate, three-dimensional patterns in the air that left glowing gold trails.
Indra: "Primary containment protocol: Alpha. Space-Lock: Palkia's Grid."
From Indra's outstretched fingers, black receiver rods—similar to those used against Obito but more refined—erupted into existence. Dozens of them, forming a perfect three-dimensional lattice that enclosed the entire area around Urashiki in a cube of sealed space. The rods hummed, stitching the space itself, preventing any dimensional escape or high-speed movement.
Urashiki snapped out of his stupor, his fear turning to rage. "You dare cage a celestial?!" He swung his fishing rod. A scythe of compressed temporal energy, capable of cutting through years in an instant, flew towards the spatial grid.
Indra didn't flinch. "Dialga: Temporal Null." A wave of silver energy from his left eye washed over the approaching scythe. The terrifying temporal attack didn't dissipate; it simply… stopped. Frozen in a single moment, hanging in the air like a bizarre sculpture, harmless.
Now true panic entered Urashiki's eyes. He raised his hands, preparing a more powerful technique, his horns beginning to glow.
But Indra was already on the next step. He produced a simple, unglazed ceramic jar from a scroll at his hip. It was adorned with a single, complex Uzumaki spiral seal.
Indra: "Sealing protocol: Final. Mafūba: Evil Containment Wave."
He held the jar in his left hand. With his right, he formed a single hand seal—a tiger seal—and took a deep, monumental breath. From his mouth, not chakra, but a stream of pure, silver-and-gold energy—a fusion of temporal and spatial authority—erupted. It wasn't the classic white light of the traditional Mafūba. This was something older, more absolute.
The energy wave hit Urashiki. He screamed, not in pain, but in profound, cosmic violation. His body, his chakra, his very existence was unraveled, not into nothingness, but into a coherent stream of information and power, sucked inexorably towards the mouth of the jar.
Urashiki: "NO! THIS POWER— IT'S NOT— YOU CAN'T— AAAAAAGH—!"
He fought, lashing out with Ōtsutsuki techniques that could shatter mountains, but within the Space-Lock grid and under the onslaught of the modified Mafūba, they were like ripples in a pond. Within three seconds, the last wisp of him was pulled, screaming silently, into the jar.
Indra calmly slapped a pre-prepared seal over the lid—a spiral within a hexagon within a clock face. He gave the jar a little shake.
Then, he held the jar in both hands. His left eye, Dialga, blazed. "Time Acceleration Field: Maximum Compression."
A sphere of violently warped time enveloped the jar. To Boruto and Sasuke, nothing seemed to happen. But inside that field, relative time accelerated at a rate of ten thousand years per second.
Indra held it for ten seconds.
Then, he dismissed the field and opened the jar.
A small pile of fine, iridescent grey dust ttrickledout into his waiting hand. All that remained of Urashiki Ōtsutsuki, the rogue celestial who had tormented the future Kage and tailed beasts, was less than a cup of inert, temporally decaying particulate matter.
Indra poured the dust into a sample vial, labeled it 'Ōtsutsuki Remains - Urashiki', and pocketed it. He handed the now-empty jar to a completely, utterly speechless Boruto.
The entire engagement, from teleport to dust, had taken twenty-two seconds.
The roar of the waterfall filled the sudden, deafening silence.
Boruto's mouth was opening and closing like a fish. Sasuke stood frozen, his Rinnegan staring at the vial in Indra's pocket as if it held the secrets of the universe. His mind was reeling, comparing this effortless, clinical dismantling to the desperate, near-fatal battles they had fought against Urashiki and his partner in their own time.
Adult Sasuke finally found his voice, a hoarse whisper. "…How?"
Indra looked at him as if he'd asked why the sky was blue. "You gave me nine months of advanced warning, his general behavioral profile, and a sample of his chakra signature from Boruto's Karma. You didn't think I'd devise a tailored, overwhelming counter-strategy? That sealing technique was the simplest of nineteen potential solutions I formulated. Options two through seven involved binding him as a power source for the Thunderhead grid. Eight through twelve were for disassembling him for materials research. The Mafūba modification was just the most efficient for permanent disposal with minimal collateral damage."
He said it all with the casual air of a chef explaining why he chose to boil an egg instead of frying it.
Boruto stammered, pointing at the vial. "B-But… he was so strong! In the future, it took Grandpa… I mean, the Fifth Hokage, and the other Kage, and Uncle Sasuke, and Dad… everyone! And he had a partner! And you just…Youu just… sucked him into a jar and turned him into dust!"
Indra: "The element of surprise, superior intelligence, and the application of fundamentally higher-order powers tend to have that effect. He was a hunter of chakra. I am becoming the architect of reality. We operated on different conceptual tiers." He tossed the vial to Sasuke, who caught it on reflex. "Here. Evidence for your timeline. Proof of mission completion."
Sasuke clutched the vial, the cool glass feeling surreal. The threat that had haunted their journey, the reason for their temporal exile, was now a bottle of ashes. The anticlimax was staggering.
Indra: "Your primary objective is complete. Your turtle is charged. It is time for you to return to your stream."
The finality of it hit them. Boruto's excited grin faded, replaced by a sudden, deep wistfulness. He looked around at the misty valley, then back towards the north, towards the unseen mountains of Kumo. "So… we just go?"
Indra: "Your presence here is an anomaly. A productive one, but an anomaly nonetheless. The timeline must re-stabilize." He gestured, and Rias, who had been monitoring via comms, teleported in with a soft crackle of lightning, carrying two massive, heavily sealed scrolls.
Rias: "Don't look so glum, Boruto. You've left your mark. And we have parting gifts."
She handed the larger, vibrant orange scroll to Boruto. It was tied with a seal that felt warm and stubbornly hopeful. "This is for Naruto. Your father, in our time. It contains… theories. On chakra, on cooperation, on breaking cycles. It's not a blueprint; he'd hate that. It's a… perspective. From one Uzumaki to another, across the branches of the tree."
She then handed the smaller, deep blue scroll to Adult Sasuke. It was cool to the touch, its seal complex and intellectually demanding. "And this is for you. Advanced schematics for the prosthetic arm's maintenance and potential upgrades. Theories on Rinnegan chakra management and pathway reconstruction. And… a historical analysis of the Uchiha clan's political failures and potential alternate paths. Consider it… a different kind of atonement manual."
Both men took the scrolls, feeling their weight—physical and symbolic.
Indra produced the Time-Space Turtle. It now had a small, additional module grafted to its shell—a Kumo-made device of sparkling crystal and orichalcum. "I've modified its navigation system. It will take you back to a point approximately three minutes before you initially activated it in your timeline. A minimal insertion, which should cause negligible disruption to your causal stream. You'll arrive just as Urashiki is beginning his attack, with the knowledge and the means to stop him instantly. A closed loop."
He placed the turtle on the ground. It grew to the size of a small wagon, its shell opening to reveal a shimmering interior of flowing light.
The goodbyes were brief, but profound. Boruto bowed deeply to Indra, Rias, and then, on impulse, hugged a surprised but pleased Rias. "Thank you. For everything. Tell… tell everyone back in the district goodbye for me."
Adult Sasuke faced Indra. There was no handshake, no embrace. Just a long, measured look of mutual understanding between two men who carried the weight of legacies.
Adult Sasuke: "You've built something… formidable. Don't let it become a cage."
Indra: "A fortress can be a cradle, Sasuke. It depends on who holds the keys. Build something worthy in your own time. And feed your chakra. A lake is better than a puddle, but an ocean is best."
With a final nod, Sasuke and Boruto climbed into the turtle's shell. The hatch sealed. The turtle glowed with intense light, then folded in on itself, disappearing from their reality with a sound like a reversed sigh.
They were gone.
Indra and Rias stood alone in the Valley of the End, the mist from the waterfall slowly soaking their clothes.
Rias: "Do you think they'll be alright?"
Indra: "They have the tools. And the knowledge. The rest is up to them." He looked up at the statues of Hashirama and Madara, the frozen giants of a dead paradigm. "Our path is here. Let's go home. The Akatsuki timeline approaches. And we have a coalition to manage, and a moon to keep an eye on."
He took her hand, and with another spatial fold, they vanished from the valley, leaving only the eternal roar of water and the silent judgment of stone gods behind.
In a flash of light in a different time, in a different forest, a turtle appeared. Two travelers stepped out, armed with a vial of dust, two scrolls of wisdom, and nine months of experience that would change everything.
And in a village in the clouds, the storm continued to build, patient, intelligent, and utterly unbreakable.
[System Notification: Temporal Anomaly 'Sasuke & Boruto' resolved. Causal feedback: minimal. Timeline stability: 99.98%.]
[System Notification: Template Update: Victor Von Doom – 45% Completed. Reason: Successful elimination of an extra-dimensional threat, demonstration of absolute tactical superiority, and consolidation of legacy through strategic knowledge transfer.]
[System Notification: Ōtsutsuki Biological Data acquired (Urashiki). Analysis initiated. Project: Celestial Immunology – Phase 1 unlocked.]
The game continued. And the architect of the new world had just successfully debugged his first major temporal error.
End of Chapter – 46.