Chapter 162: The Things Inside Naruto's Body
…
Naruto did not recognize the man in front of him.
The handsome young adult wore a white turtleneck coat and a gentle smile, the kind that looked warm from a distance. Yet the moment Naruto met his eyes, instinct screamed danger. It was not something the man had done, not a twitch of hostility or a leak of killing intent. It was worse than that. It was the quiet certainty that the person smiling at him was the source of everything wrong.
Konoha had become a graveyard in two years. His friends had become monsters wearing familiar voices. And now some stranger stood here, calmly calling himself a technical director.
Naruto would have to be brain dead to believe it was unrelated.
"Technical director?" Naruto's voice came out sharp. "You? Where's Granny Tsunade?"
"As for Tsunade senpai," Aizen replied, still patient, still smiling, "since she did not want to disturb this precious reunion, she is in another place."
He gestured lightly, like a host welcoming a guest.
"Please, take a seat, Naruto kun. Everyone has been looking forward to meeting you. As someone seeing you for the first time, I also…"
"Bring Granny Tsunade out!" Naruto snapped. "I'm not talking to someone I don't know. Call her out here!"
…
Silence.
It rolled across the hall like fog.
The grotesque figures who had been chatting moments ago stopped moving. Sakura, smiling strangely among the shadows, stopped as well. Even Aizen's expression did not change, yet he did not speak for a beat.
They only looked at him.
No hostility. No pressure. No visible chakra flare. Just ordinary gazes.
And somehow that made Naruto's skin crawl worse than open violence.
Cold sweat broke across his forehead. His teeth clenched. Because a voice rose inside him, low and heavy, echoing behind his ribs.
"…Kid. If you want to live, run."
The Nine Tails.
It was not laughing. It was not snarling. For once, there was no arrogant contempt in that voice. Only caution, and something dangerously close to fear.
"You have almost no chance here," it growled. "If you still have a brain, use my chakra and force your way out. With that toad's help, maybe you live."
Naruto's mind roared back, fierce and stubborn.
How could I run? This is my home. Those are people I know. Even if I die here, I'm not running away.
"If you want to die, do not drag me with you," the Nine Tails hissed. "I'm not interested in your village games. Did you not feel it? There are several in this room whose strength is close to mine."
Naruto's heart sank as he stared at the figures standing like silent statues.
He did not understand why Konoha had become this. He did not understand why his classmates looked like stitched nightmares. But love for his village and his friends made standing aside impossible.
His breathing tightened. His pupils sharpened.
A faint red tint began to seep into his chakra.
Then a voice cut through the silence, one Naruto recognized instantly.
"You really are an impolite brat."
A presence stepped forward from the shadows.
Tsunade appeared with her arms crossed, the structure of the Yin Seal visible on her forehead, her gaze steady, her posture unchanged. She looked at Naruto as if he had merely tracked mud into the house.
"I wanted to give you a touching reunion," she said, "but you insisted on dragging an old woman out. Please have mercy. What is it, Naruto?"
Naruto stared at her, frozen.
"…Are you really Granny Tsunade?"
Tsunade's brow twitched. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Naruto's voice rose, raw and furious. "You dare ask what I mean? Look at them. Look at what the village has become outside. Granny Tsunade, are you really the Tsunade I know?"
Tsunade's gaze dimmed, sorrow moving behind her eyes.
"That is how they want to be," she said quietly. "I have no right to demand they become something else. Even as Hokage, I do not have the right to decide what they must be, or how they must live. You know that, Naruto."
Naruto's pupils contracted.
He was not stupid. He never had been. Acting foolish had been a mask, a way to survive loneliness and force people to notice him. He understood words. He understood meaning.
That was why Tsunade's answer felt like a blade.
He looked around again. At the creatures wearing familiar chakra signatures. At friends who no longer looked human, only traces of the past clinging to them like stains.
Was this what it meant? That everything he believed in, everything he fought for, could be twisted into this and called choice?
He had been branded a monster his whole childhood. A fox in human skin. And now, seeing the people he loved turned into something even more ghostly than him, how was he supposed to accept it?
Aizen stepped forward, still calm, still smiling.
"Allow me to explain, Naruto kun," he said.
"They have chosen this in pursuit of their paths. The same way people reshape their bodies through training, medicine, and tools in order to master certain techniques, they have become what you see to cultivate what they desire. This is their ideal self."
Naruto's throat tightened. "You're saying… they chose this? This is their ideal?"
"Yes," Aizen said. "More precisely, it is the ideal they created once their desires were no longer restrained."
Naruto's control snapped. "What are you even talking about?!"
Aizen sighed softly, like a teacher facing a stubborn student.
"In truth, human emotion is rarely as rational as we pretend. Consider idol worship. People listen to songs, watch performances, praise the idol, defend them, buy merchandise, chase news. At first it is harmless, even joyful. Then it grows."
His voice remained gentle as his words sharpened.
"As the attachment deepens, actions become extreme. People begin stalking, chasing, intruding into spaces they do not belong. They pursue their own imagined dream. In reality, they chase an ideal version of themselves. That substitution becomes fanaticism. Worship. The more they love that image, the more they pour themselves into it."
Naruto's jaw clenched.
Aizen continued, unfazed.
"But normally there is a limit. A string that holds people back. That string is reason. The social contract. Rules. The fact that behavior must remain traceable."
He raised a hand slightly.
"When one breaks free of that restraint, there are only two outcomes. You become a beast that abandons rules, or a god that establishes them. They are simply walking the second path."
Naruto's rage boiled over. "You bastard…"
He moved before he finished speaking.
A punch shot toward Aizen, wrapped in chaotic Nine Tails chakra, a violent surge meant to smash that calm smile into the floor.
And at the exact moment Naruto swung, the Nine Tails howled inside him, panicked in a way Naruto had never heard.
Wait, idiot, stop. Do not do it.
Too late.
Aizen's wrist turned pitch black.
The dark structure sliced through the Nine Tails cloak like a hot blade through butter. It pierced the chakra, seized Naruto, and lifted him as if he weighed nothing.
Before Naruto could even twist, three black rods erupted from the shadows beneath his feet. They shot upward and crossed through the air, pinning him in place.
Naruto thrashed. The rods did not budge.
His chakra surged. It did not matter.
"Excuse me," Aizen said, almost politely. "I did not intend to do this so soon. I do value memories."
His eyes remained calm as he held Naruto suspended like a captured fox.
"But since you chose to take a dangerous step, I cannot ignore it."
Aizen leaned closer, voice lowering.
"The Nine Tails chakra, the other will inside it, and the one lurking beyond, in the afterlife. If this is truly all the so called Otsutsuki clan has to rely on, then my evaluation of this crisis must change. They are even more incompetent than I expected. Have they spent their entire existence bullying primitive worlds?"
Naruto's breath hitched. "What… are you talking about?"
"I am analyzing you," Aizen said, "and the future of this world."
He studied Naruto with something like pity.
"Your entire life has been arranged. From beginning to end, you have played the role of a victim. That tragedy is not an accident of the ninja world. It is manufactured. The shadow of a few people has been woven into everything from the beginning."
Naruto fought the rods, voice cracking. "Granny Tsunade… everyone… give them back…"
Tsunade's gaze turned away, pain flickering across her face.
"Naruto," she whispered, "Aizen is right. And he proved it to us."
Her voice shook, but she did not deny it.
"The ruins you saw outside, what we are now, it is because we were shown the real face of this world. It is not that we simply chose this. The ninja world forced those choices on us. I hope you understand."
Naruto's eyes trembled, flicking between faces. "I… I do not understand…"
Aizen's grip tightened slightly.
"This is to help you, Naruto kun," he said. "You have been bound to these things for far too long."
A power that felt wrong flowed through Aizen's hand, a legendary force Naruto had only ever heard tied to the Sage of Six Paths. The Nine Tails chakra raged crimson, but it could not touch anything. It was as if the cloak existed in another dimension, sealed away from reality.
Naruto's eyes shifted, flickering between human blue and the vertical slits of the fox.
The three rods acted like a conduit. Naruto's chakra was split into three streams. The Nine Tails chakra and Naruto's own chakra poured out like two torrents, one vast and violent, the other smaller, drawn downward through two of the rods and into the ground.
The third rod did not drink.
It stayed fixed at Naruto's neck, unmoving, like a lock holding something back.
Aizen spoke again, conversational, almost casual.
"Do you believe in precognition? In other worlds?"
Naruto's voice came out hoarse. "What?"
"I believe," Aizen replied. "Because I am that kind of being."
He spoke as if it were obvious.
"Novels, comics, movies, games, they all carry information. So let me ask you this. Is it possible that the stories people create are real possibilities in other universes?"
Naruto stared, struggling, unable to even process the words as his chakra drained away.
Aizen continued, patient with his own explanation.
"Based on that premise, I am not from this world. I am not a person of the ninja world. I carry memories of two other worlds. This world is the third. And in one of the worlds I experienced, there was information about this one. I knew you existed, Naruto Uzumaki."
He smiled faintly.
"I know you are the protagonist. I know your story with Sasuke. I know you will face many enemies, even the revived Madara Uchiha. Even enemies from beyond the sky. I regret that I do not know that part in detail, but I am very certain your will has never truly been your own."
Aizen's tone softened, almost kind.
"I am saving you, Naruto kun. Or rather, I have always been trying to save this ninja world. I want it to become better."
Naruto barely heard him.
Extraction of chakra was extraction of life. Naruto knew it. As the Nine Tails jinchuriki, if the entire Nine Tails were pulled out, he would die instantly. Even drawing out his own chakra like this meant death if it continued.
But Naruto did not give up.
Even as his vision blurred, even as his limbs weakened, he gathered strength in secret, trying to force his body to move, trying to break the rods before it was too late.
Sakura stepped forward.
She looked almost tired.
She shook her head, sighed, and reached inside her coat.
Naruto's eyes widened as she pulled out a warm test tube, uncorked it, and poured the liquid over his head.
The moment it touched him, Naruto's control vanished.
His will, his consciousness, his sense of self, all of it slipped away like sand through fingers.
He could only stare blankly as Sakura tossed the empty tube aside and moved to Aizen's side, as if proud of a completed experiment.
Aizen smiled, praising her without looking away from Naruto.
Then Naruto felt it.
Both torrents inside him poured harder. His chakra surged out like a flood ripping open a dam. The Nine Tails chakra followed, violent and screaming, yet still unable to touch the world.
And in the last moment before Naruto's mind dimmed, before the drain threatened to kill him, he saw something he had never imagined could exist inside his body.
A third chakra.
Dim. Cold. Unlike anything he had ever sensed.
It began to seep out through the third rod, slow at first, then steadier, like a hidden vein finally opened.
Naruto's eyes snapped wide.
This was not his chakra.
This was not the Nine Tails.
It felt like something that had been living inside him all along, silent and unseen, like a second life growing in the dark without his knowledge.
Impossible.
Yet it flowed before his eyes, defying every rule Naruto thought he understood.
Aizen's smile deepened as he watched the concentrated stream emerge.
"Look," he said softly. "The third chakra inside you. The chakra that has been secretly manipulating the state of this ninja world."
His eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
"This is what I have been looking for within you."
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