Her glasses were broken. Karin could not see the person speaking to her. But if she could see, she expected to see that same smile back at the Forest of Death. Rain was soaking down to her bones, but something about his aura seeped even deeper.

The words coming out his mouth shot by, not a single pause in breath. He was not giving her time to absorb all this information. Then again, neither was the sand beast. What she did manage to grab out of his babble was survival. They had a chance for survival.

Unable to contain himself, Naruto grabbed her hand. He half-expected her to retract or push him away, but she did not. Karin did not react at all, not until she was done with thought. Only then did her fingers enclosed around his. "Okay," she whispered.

Sakura and Sasuke cleared to the side, as Naruto joined Karin in a circle. Together they sat, her palm pressed against his, his against hers. Then, as per instruction, their fingers began to weave and interlock, one sign after the next of a long incantation.

Ox, tiger, hare, rat, bird...

Sakura watched anxiously, wincing when one of Naruto's hands faltered. The incantation broke. Unfazed, Mito restarted from the beginning.

This was bad. Hand seals were one of Naruto's weak points. In combat, he flipped that weakness into a strength by inventing shortcut seals. But those had been developed from practice and intuition, the pulses of instinct. This was different. Sakura could tell from the current sequences that this jutsu was on a whole other level of sophistication.

Sasuke shared her concern when the incantation broke for the third time. They exchanged a look. Sakura received his non-verbal request, already creating a window with her thumbs. She waited for Naruto to fumble again.

He never did.

Dog, bird, horse, bird, ram...

Naruto's eyes remained closed, not in concentration, but in peace. Sakura lowered her hands.

Ram, ox, hare, ram...

Sasuke studied Naruto, then the opposing kunoichi. It was her. Sometime during the ritual, Karin had trusted him to follow, and Naruto had trusted her to lead.

"Kai!"

Both their hands slammed into one another.

Naruto's eyes snapped open, his breath choked out of him. Karin gasped, controlling her own shudders. Through their palms, the paths of their chakra connected, their energies beginning to sync, flowing from her body to his, from his to hers.

Mito turned to the others. "The sealing will require a medium."

Unfortunately for them, only a few relics remained in the world that had the capability of containing a bijū. Even if there existed one in Konoha, it was trashed now.

"What about a scroll?"

Attention fell on Tenten, who waved an empty scroll. All weapons collectors had to be creative with storage and space, and when things had refused to fit in this dimension, she learned how to stuff them in another one.

Sakura was both intrigued by and skeptical of the idea. She did not recall any historical evidence of a bijū stored within an intertemporal pocket, though it was not theoretically impossible. Mass, energy, these concepts were all interchangeable.

But even then, they faced another problem. A kunai was one thing, but an ordinary scroll could never contain energy of that magnitude.

Tenten rubbed her nose. "We can use more than one?" she tried. Split the load up.

"You underestimate the bijū," Mito said. "Add all of the scrolls in the world, and you will still be trying to contain an ocean within a spoon."

Everyone grew silent.

Sakura rolled one of Tenten's scrolls in hand. She compared it to another one of identical size, first at parallel, then crossed at the center. Maybe, just maybe…

Sakura looked up. Sealing was not her speciality but, "Instead of adding, what if we multiplied?"

At Tenten's look, Sakura explained. An intertemporal pocket can be conceptualized as a fold in the space-time continuum. If you wanted layers, you can, say, take one hundred sheets and fold each all once. Or you can take one sheet and fold it a hundred times.

"You want to see if we can do a pocket within a pocket," Tenten said, genuinely impressed.

Grinning, Sakura nodded. A scroll within a scroll, a seal within a seal. With the power of exponentiation, they could fit an ocean inside a spoon, no problem.

Which left one last condition. The bijū needed to be rendered still during the sealing. Sasuke understood that was his cue. He flickered out, joining forces with Anko on the front lines.

Tenten unravelled a scroll. To Sakura, "So you want first crack at creating this uber-scroll?"

"You've got the practice," Sakura admitted.

"And you've got the theory."

Homura knelt before their befallen Hokage. Hiruzen's gaze was lost to the skies, his lips in soft murmurs. Koharu realized he was citing the old Konoha creeds. A bijūdama was coagulating. She closed her eyes, reciting her own prayers.

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of a crash.

"WHOO!"

Anko laughed as her snakes crushed the ichibi, choking the bijūdama right back down its own esophagus.

After years of dormancy, the curse seal at her neck broke free, and she as well. Unadulterated power flowed through her veins, spiraling like tattoos across her skin without restraint, without guilt. She fought, bathed in thrill. In rush. In freedom. In the mind-transcending bliss that her former mentor had blessed her with, the gift that she had reclaimed.

Her teeth glinted as sharp as her dagger as she flung herself in the air and lunged again, her jacket fluttering wildly in the storm.

While the ichibi cowered and trashed under her assaults, Sasuke weaved across the battle, wire thread across the air, up, down, front, back, netting the bijū from every angle. When done, he ascended to the highest peak he could find.

Water dripped down his hair. Koharu had brought down rain, because rain softened sand. But water and earth were defensive natures. From his satchel, Sasuke withdrew his last arrow.

It was about time they went on the offensive.

Naruto breathed heavily, as did Karin. The push and pull between them had become a spiral, a whirlpool of chakra spinning between them. Karin's hair whipped in all directions. The straps of his jacket beat against him. "Uh, guys, think we're about ready!"

Sakura felt Tenten pull her, before she pulled Tenten. To summon and to be summoned, together they traversed from one layer to the next, the evens and the odds. Both floated outside space, outside time, a rope strung between their bodies, preventing them from being forever lost inside null.

With renewed strength, Sakura dived even deeper. It was almost done.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes, bow strung.

Nothing was without weakness. Fire may not burn it, and wind may not cut it, but he would like to see how the ichibi handled this.

Homura watched a single arrow soar, straight and true, higher and higher, above the ruins, above the beast, above the sky and into the heart of the heaven itself.

The heavens responded.

A bolt of lightning speared down, through the wire and into the body of the beast. The ichibi screeched, black, white, soft, hard, ripping, spiking. When its torment finally quieted, there remained but some pitiful piece of petrification, damaged and deformed, a skin of steaming fractal scars.

Koharu stood, speechless, as adamantine chains glowed in divinity, surreal amidst the storm, binding the ichibi prisoner. The pull started slow, but gained momentum.

Naruto and Karin held onto each other in bone-tight grips, their combined chakra drilling. On either end of the scroll were Sakura and Tenten, struggling to keep it in place as chains flew through at dizzying speeds, pulling the bijū inside, inscriptions flowing across the parchment. Sakura gritted her teeth, heels dug in place, as the sealing stretched on what seemed an eternity.

Then, the scroll retracted itself and fell. It hit the ground with a clunk, rolling before coming to an anticlimactic stop. There it rested, radioactively hot.

It was over.

A century seemed to have passed. Back to back, shoulder to shoulder, Team 7 sat, each of their faces fatigued, aged. Sakura passed the scroll to Sasuke, who then passed it to Naruto. To the scroll, Naruto gave a weak grin.

"Sayonara…" His arm fell limp. "...sucker."

Meanwhile, Sakura stared at a broken billboard ahead, caught between a collapsed telephone pole and unrecognizable mass of concrete slabs. The colors on the billboard were uncharacteristically happy, the bright yellows and blues of some comic superhero.

It reminded her of the little boys she had seen on her morning jog, how they laughed as they chased one another in the streets, arms stretched and imitating battle noises. It reminded her of the Academy, time rewinded to six months ago. Back when she was taking notes inside the classroom, exchanging lunches with Ino, walking home alongside Naruto, arguing over whose turn it was to cook. Back when she was just starting to feel the tiniest rays of a future, confident enough in her grades to secure a genin position in this cut-throat industry.

Back when she wanted nothing more than to grab the bottom rung of the military, hang on long enough to get government payroll. Her goal had been to work over the next six to eight years, be financially stable across her teenage years, until the day she turned twenty, of which she would then get married and retire as a housewife. If she was lucky, Ino would pull a few strings and set her up with one of her clan's associates, allowing her to get indoctrinated into the Yamanaka. If she was super lucky, her future husband would have parents who were kind and accepting.

But that was six months ago.

Before the morning Naruto came home blood-stained and bleary-faced, his nails digging into his abdomen as if he wanted to rip himself open from the inside out. Before she labored over a shovel, digging a grave for their jōnin instructor in some bog-ridden land far away. Before the barrage of abuses throw onto her body, and she understood intimately the meaning behind survival of the fittest.

Survival.

Once a mercy, the rain now did nothing but drain her of warmth. Sakura imagined a blanket pulled around her. She was snuggled under Ino's covers, inside the protective embrace of her best friend. And when morning came, she would rub her eyes, trudge into the kitchen, where she would be greeted by the exasperated sighs of her mother and the insufferable jokes of her father. She could already smell the rice.

.

The rain had dried to a drizzle. Rivulets trailed down the cracks in stone, down the remnants of the cliffside monument.

Kurenai dislodged another boulder, desperately trying to clear a path amidst the cave-in. "Can anyone hear me?" she called again. "Please, say something if you can hear me!"

Before, the horror lied in screams and screeches, blasts and explosions, of the time bomb that was the ichibi. Now, the horror lied in silence.

"Someone, anyone!" she yelled, sinking to her knees.

Asuma had gone quiet long ago, unblinking. It was no use. Before them was a collapse of one thousand tons of hard rock. The engineers of the village had designed the protection shelter to save the children. Instead, it had buried them all.

Kurenai inhaled a shuddered breath, before her fist clenched. With greater vigour, she stabbed a splintered plank into the gap between two boulders, pushing onto the make-shift lever. "Can anyone hear me! Someone!"

When it became apparent Kurenai had turned hysterical, Asuma pulled her way. The rocks were full of her handprints, red and brown. She struggled in his grip, screaming harder.

"No! We have to get them out. NO!" Her elbow struck his ribs, and she freed herself of his restraint, running back. "If you can hear me, say something!"

"Kurenai, stop-"

"We're here, just say something!"

Asuma grabbed both her shoulders, forcing her to look at him.

Whatever he wanted to say had left him. Mascara stained her face, her expression open and raw. She had become untrained, imbued with the same naivety of her youth.

"Kurenai," he whispered. His mouth was dry. He had no way of saying this without breaking her. "Kurenai, they… they're..."

"... ere..."

Both turned to the collapse. After a heart-stopping pause, the noise proved to not be imagination.

"...there…!"

Udon cowered as Konohamaru kicked with all his might, trying to pry free another piece of collapsed rubble. "Anyone out there!" he yelled again. "Anyone!"

He fell back, sweat trailing down his temples, delirious from exertion. Moegi watched him force himself back up, making another call to the outside, banging his fists. "We need help! It's an emergency!"

Biting her lips, Moegi clutched the hand of their teacher. "T-tell me," she said. "Tell me another lecture, Iruka-sensei."

Iruka gave a weak smile. He had no more lectures. He recited all the ones he knew.

Moegi refused to believe that. There were always more lectures. This was Iruka-sensei, who had prepared years and years of course materials, memorized by heart what he would say each day on top of the podium. He definitely knew more lectures than this, and she wanted to hear them. She wanted to hear them all, some now, some tomorrow, some here, some back in the classroom. But every last lecture he had written in that notebook of his, she wanted to hear them. Every last homework he had planned to assigned to them, she wanted to receive them all.

She held his hand tighter. "I know! History. We haven't covered history yet. Tell me something about history, Iruka-sensei."

In her panic, Moegi failed to notice the blood down her jaw, the gash tearing across the delicate skin of her freckled cheeks. Only Iruka did, his expression tender. Gathering the last of his strength, he forced a murmur, and she excitedly leaned closer in response.

"Treat… don't let it… scar."

Confused, Moegi waited. But no matter how long she waited, no more words came. His hand had gone limp in her grip.

"No, no, I don't understand, Iruka-sensei," she pleaded. "I have a question, Iruka-sensei. See, my hand is raised. I still have a question, Iruka-sensei."

Her cries were accompanied by those of the other children. Though quiet before, they spoke now.

"I have a question too."

"Me too."

"My hand is raised, Iruka-sensei."

"Make me answer something, Iruka-sensei."

"You haven't assigned homework yet, Iruka-sensei."

Their voices rose in a chorus, wet and sniffled, louder and louder, as if making enough noise would wake their teacher up, and he would come back to scold them.

Asuma made lash after lash, his knuckles dripping, as he tore deeper into the tunnel, deeper towards the source of the noise. The barricades between them thinned, until a final crack and break. All heads turned toward the stream of light.

Kurenai's heart stopped. Huddled by a dying lamp were at least three classes of Academy students, each of their faces dirty and scratched but animate with life. During the implosion, the plate of bedrock beneath them had shifted, sliding the protection chamber deeper into the earth. Two-thirds of the space had buried and collapsed as a result, but the remaining walls managed to lock together at just the right angle to form a cavity. Her eyes landed on the figure the children were surrounding.

"My god."

The students cleared aside to let Kurenai through. She knelt before Iruka, her gaze trailing down his torso to the mountain of crushing rubble. Under the lamp, his complexion was ashen, his pupils nonresponsive.

"Help," Moegi begged. "Iruka-sensei is hurt. Please help."

Kurenai shook, her palm damp from the sweat on his skin. "Come on, stay with us," she said, urging Iruka awake. To Asuma, "Help me get him out."

Determined, Konohamaru joined the excavation, working alongside them to clear the rubble. His attention fell on the audience, the whimpers and sniffs of his classmates. "Instead of staring, you can help!"

His words jolted a few, froze others, but all remained hesitant until a scuffing sound. Knelt by Konohamaru's side was Udon, desperately raking with his fingers, tossing one fistful of pebbles and rocks after another.

Tears and snot dripped down Udon's face, his voice choked as he repeated, "Must help Iruka-sensei, must help Iruka-sensei…" When everything was coming down, he had been the one who failed to react fast enough. It was his fault. It was all his fault Iruka-sensei was hurt. His teacher had saved him, and now he had to save his teacher.

The inertia broke, as every student joined, digging and prying. Moegi continued to talk. "Help's here now, Iruka-sensei. We're getting you out." She squeezed his hand harder. "Just hang on. Please just hang on..."

Everything moved so slowly then, as she watched the lunging of a hand, the wedging of a boulder, the forming of a syllable on the lip. Why did everything have to move so slowly, Moegi thought, as she felt her teacher's hand colder and colder in hers. Help had arrived, but what was the good…

Despite all her efforts to keep her eyes dry so far, a tear was rolling down, crossing the gash on her cheek.

What was the good of help if Iruka-sensei was already...

Udon fell back in a yelp. All the other children did as well, with Kurenai and Asuma frozen. Moegi stared wide-eyed.

Light pierced through from beneath the rubble, as Iruka's body became coated in a glow.

Across the ruins of the village, through the forests, beams of light pierced into the clearing skies. Tsume retracted her hand from Kuromaru's fur. Kin and Zaku glanced at the teammate in slung over their shoulders. Baki lifted his student into his arms, the heavens crowning her a halo.

Homura knelt faithfully beside the glowing body of his old friend, while Koharu sought out the caster of this jutsu. By a collapsed water tower, she found her, as holy and everlasting as Koharu remembered from her youth.

Mito elevated to the heavens, coated by a surge of chakra, the tips of her once vibrant hair whitening to chalk, her nails and skin dissipating into the light, despite all of Naruto's shouts for her to wait. He still had questions. He still had so many questions he needed to ask her.

However, there would be no wait. Her time had extended beyond its proper bounds; theirs had been shortened. Her clan were servants of the shinigami, the gatekeeper of the cycle, the one who joins the beginning with the end. The wheel had been disrupted, and balance must now be restored.

If Naruto had questions, it is not the dead who will answer, but the living.

When Iruka opened his eyes, he found himself crushed under a hundred hugs, bombarded by a hundred simultaneous voices. He gave a dazed smile. Never in all his years of teaching had class participation been this perfect.

.

Hanabi's fingertips stopped before the glow. It was no use. Her posture loosened, as she watch the unconscious enemy nin be pulled back from the brink of death. The jutsu was nothing short of a miracle, an antithesis of time itself.

She turned to her father, awaiting his word. She had failed. The battalion had escaped, as did the kunoichi who had interfered. All that remained was a sacrificial infantryman, and she could not even deal the final blow.

Hiashi did not share her disappointment. Once a towering forest, the land now lied as flat as the plains of Kusagakure. Yet amidst the decimation, his daughter stood, unbent, unblemished. This was merely a prelude, and she had proven herself ready for the main performance: the war.

.

Water dripped down stalactites. Static flickered, revealing the ninth and final silhouette.

"All of us... Now this must be good."

"The invasion of Konohagakure is over. The village is no more."

"Ha, Orochimaru pulled through for once, yeah?"

"Not quite. The militia itself is well in tact. They have managed to seal the ichibi. Their next play is clear."

"Then our strategy must change to adapt to theirs."

"Meaning…"

"We move now."

The ring dimmed. A hand reached for the sugegasa, tilting it to uncover a view of the skies above, the sun returned once more, beaming of a false halcyon.

Uzumaki Mito may have refused to play the game, but the rest of the world remained oh so eager, the click of one tile after the next.

The countdown has begun.