Chapter 19: Ten Minutes Against the Tides of Fate
The clone tore through space like a thought given form.
One moment there was wind, sea, and blood-stained earth at the edge of the Land of Waves—
the next, Konoha unfolded beneath his feet, lanterns glowing softly in the evening haze.
Naruto's clone barely slowed.
His senses, sharpened to an almost painful clarity, swept the village in a single breath. Chakra signatures layered over one another like constellations—familiar, comforting, alive.
And there.
The hospital.
Sakura.
She was exactly where he felt she would be.
For a fraction of a second—a dangerously human fraction—the clone hesitated.
Through Naruto's senses, he could see her without being there. Sakura moved through the hospital corridors with practiced ease, clipboard tucked under her arm, white coat fluttering softly as she walked. She looked… steady. Focused. Busy.
Normal.
And that was what stopped him.
She was rebuilding herself, brick by careful brick, burying grief beneath routine, duty, and the quiet rhythm of saving others. The clone could feel it as clearly as chakra—the effort it took, the way she was forcing herself forward because stopping would mean drowning.
If I call her now, Naruto thought, I'm pulling her back into it.
Back into blood.
Back into death.
Back into him.
His mind echoed with her voice from the graveyard, raw and broken.
Why did you leave me?
Not just Sasuke.
Him too.
Naruto understood then, with a sharpness that hurt more than any wound, that the path he was walking—the heights he was reaching, the distances he crossed in a blink—would keep pulling him away from normal lives. From quiet mornings. From shared grief that healed slowly instead of exploding into catastrophe.
From her.
But this time—
This time, someone was dying.
And Sakura was the only one who could help.
Naruto inhaled, steadying the storm inside his chest.
Just this once, he promised himself. I won't leave her behind. I'll walk back to her instead.
The hesitation vanished.
The clone moved.
Sakura was reviewing patient charts when the familiar rush of chakra filled the room.
She looked up instinctively.
Naruto stood in the doorway.
For just a heartbeat, she forgot how to breathe.
He looked the same—and completely different. Tired in a way sleep couldn't fix. Focused in a way that made the room feel smaller, safer, and heavier all at once.
She realized, with a quiet ache, that he had become her anchor without either of them ever saying it out loud.
And then—
She smiled.
Not the polite smile she wore for patients.
Not the careful one she used for colleagues.
A real one.
"Naruto," she said, warmth breaking through the professional calm she'd been hiding behind all day. "You're… here."
The clone swallowed.
"I'm sorry," he said quickly, the words tumbling out before doubt could stop them. "I know you're busy. I know you're—trying to get back to normal. But I need you. There's someone dying. Juubi chakra. I stabilized him, but I can't fix it. I—I don't know how."
Sakura didn't hesitate.
Not once.
The clipboard hit the desk with a soft thud as she stepped toward him, already shrugging out of her coat.
"Where?" she asked, voice steady, eyes sharp.
The relief that hit Naruto was so strong it nearly staggered him.
"The Land of Waves. He was heading toward Konoha. His cells are collapsing—like they're rejecting themselves."
Sakura nodded once, already moving past him toward the supply cabinets.
"You did the right thing calling me," she said firmly, as if reading the guilt written all over his face. "You didn't fail him. You bought him time. That matters."
She turned back to him then, medical kit slung over her shoulder, green eyes softening just slightly.
"And Naruto?" she added quietly. "Thank you… for not disappearing without telling me."
The clone smiled—small, tired, but real.
"Yeah," he said. "I figured… some things are worth coming back for."
And for the first time since the war, Sakura didn't feel like she was being left behind—
but called forward.
---------------------------------
Naruto realized the problem exactly three seconds too late.
He stood there, chakra humming faintly around him, mind already racing miles ahead toward the dying man—
and Sakura was still very much… human.
Fast, yes.
Incredibly capable, absolutely.
But not blink-across-the-continent-in-a-breath fast.
An awkward silence stretched between them, the kind that only existed when someone with godlike speed suddenly remembered that not everyone else had evolved into a walking natural disaster.
Naruto rubbed the back of his neck.
"Uh… I just realized—"
Before he could finish, Sakura stepped closer.
Then closer still.
She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised, lips curved in that familiar half-smile that had once meant stop being an idiot and now meant I know exactly what you're thinking.
"Pick me up," she said simply.
Naruto froze.
"…Huh?"
Sakura didn't roll her eyes—she was too tired for that—but she did cross her arms with practiced patience.
"Don't overthink it," she added, softer now. "If we walk, he dies. If you hesitate, he dies. So—" she gestured vaguely upward, "—hero stuff. Now."
Naruto swallowed.
"But—"
She met his eyes, completely steady.
"Don't worry," Sakura said quietly. "I trust you."
That did it.
Something in Naruto's chest loosened—something tight and knotted he hadn't realized was still there.
He nodded once.
"Okay."
Carefully—almost reverently—Naruto scooped her into his arms. She weighed far less than the responsibility she carried, and yet it felt… right. Familiar, even. Like this was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Golden chakra flared gently around them, warm instead of overwhelming, wrapping Sakura in a protective glow.
"Hold on," Naruto said.
Sakura smirked. "I'm a medical ninja, not glass."
And then—
The world ran.
Land blurred into streaks of shadow and light as Naruto moved, not teleporting but running, feet kissing the ground in perfect rhythm. Mountains bowed past them. Rivers flashed silver beneath the moon. Wind roared—but the chakra cloak softened it, turning speed into silence.
It was one thing Jiraiya had drilled into him endlessly:
Know your world, or it will swallow you whole.
Naruto knew every ridge, every bend, every forgotten path of the continent.
So he didn't get lost.
They arrived in a burst of displaced air.
The clone vanished the instant Sakura's feet touched the ground, dissolving into smoke and memory.
Before them sat the real Naruto—kneeling beside a middle-aged man whose breathing was shallow, ragged, and borrowed.
Golden chakra flowed over the man like a second skin, forcing life into failing systems through sheer stubborn will.
Naruto looked up at Sakura immediately.
"You see it?" he asked.
She already was.
"I saw it the moment I touched him," she replied, kneeling beside Naruto without hesitation. Green chakra bloomed around her fingers as she activated a high-level diagnostic technique—one that peeled back skin, muscle, and bone without cutting a single cell.
Her vision shifted.
Cells.
Not metaphorical ones. Real ones.
She felt them.
And what she saw made her breath catch.
The Juubi chakra was everywhere—threaded into the man's body like a foreign nervous system. It killed cells, then forced them to regenerate wrong. Stronger. Stranger. Faster.
And then killed them again.
"Just like you said," Sakura murmured. "It's forcing evolution—but his body can't keep up."
Naruto nodded grimly.
"I saw it with my Rinne Sharingan. It's not just damaging him—it's rewriting him."
Sakura's jaw tightened.
She'd seen this before.
Not like this—but close enough to make her stomach twist.
Kyubi chakra exposure.
The aftermath of Pain's invasion.
Victims of uncontrolled power, bodies trying to become something they were never meant to be.
This was that… multiplied a hundred times.
"He's alive because you're here," Sakura said quietly. "Without you, he'd already be dead."
Naruto didn't look relieved.
That worried her.
"There are others," he admitted. "I sent clones. I felt it… spreading."
Sakura exhaled slowly, forcing her mind into focus.
"There are two options," she said, voice steady and clinical despite the storm beneath it. "First—we support every cell individually. Keep them alive through the transformation."
Naruto winced. He knew what that meant.
"That would drain us dry," he said.
"And take too long," Sakura agreed. "For one patient, maybe. But not many."
She placed her hand over the man's chest, green chakra intensifying.
"Second option—we remove the Juubi chakra."
Naruto stiffened.
"But it's what's keeping him alive."
"Yes," Sakura said calmly. "Which is why we do it carefully."
She looked up at him then—really looked at him.
"You absorb it," she said. "Slowly. Directionally. From one point to the next. You contain it so it doesn't spread into the healed areas."
Naruto's eyes widened slightly.
"And you?"
"I fix the damage as you go," Sakura replied without hesitation. "Organs. Cells. Systems. We don't let his body collapse when the chakra leaves."
Naruto nodded instantly.
Not a second of doubt.
"Okay."
That immediate trust—total, unquestioning—hit Sakura harder than any compliment ever could.
For a fleeting moment, despite the blood, the moonlight, the dying man between them—
she smiled.
He still believes in me, she thought. Completely.
And for the first time since the war, that belief didn't feel like a burden.
It felt like strength.
"Let's do it," Sakura said, chakra flaring brighter. "Together."
Naruto placed his hand over the man's shoulder, golden and dark energies spiraling in perfect control.
And as the Juubi chakra began to retreat, cell by cell—
the two of them moved in perfect sync, like they always had.
Not as legends.
Not as weapons.
But as teammates.
---------------------------------------------
Sakura had never liked the Juubi.
That was not a particularly medical opinion, but as she worked, she found it perfectly accurate.
The chakra fought her.
Not in the way poison resisted antidote, or infection resisted treatment—but like a will. It clung to the man's cells, burrowed into the spaces she tried to mend, pulsed angrily whenever Naruto tried to pull it free, as if insulted by the very idea of being removed.
"Careful," Sakura warned, teeth clenched as green chakra surged from her palms. "It's twisting back toward the heart."
"I see it," Naruto replied, sweat beading at his temple.
This was not absorption like usual.
There was no clean pull, no neat spiral into his chakra network. The Juubi's remnants resisted like thorns hooked deep into flesh. Every time Naruto drew it out, it lashed sideways, searching for something—anything—to anchor itself to.
Naruto adjusted instinctively, Rinne Sharingan spinning as he isolated one corrupted cluster at a time.
"Why won't it let go?" he muttered.
"Because it doesn't want to die," Sakura answered grimly. "And because it thinks this body is still useful."
She shifted position, chakra threading through the man's ribcage, reinforcing collapsing tissue faster than it could tear itself apart.
Cells died.
Cells regenerated.
Cells died again.
And Sakura kept them alive through sheer precision.
"Left lung stabilizing," she said sharply. "Naruto—now, pull from the shoulder down. Slowly."
Naruto obeyed immediately.
Golden chakra wrapped the extraction point like a net, isolating the Juubi chakra before drawing it inward. Even then, it screamed—not audibly, but in pressure, in violent recoil that sent shockwaves through Naruto's chakra system.
He grimaced.
"So this is what it feels like… when power doesn't want you."
Sakura shot him a brief look. "Focus."
"Right. Sorry."
Minute by minute, they advanced.
Sakura repaired neural pathways as Naruto stripped corruption from them. She reinforced blood vessels as he pulled foreign chakra from their walls. When the man's heartbeat faltered, Naruto instinctively poured just enough life force back—not too much, not too little.
Ten minutes passed like ten hours.
And then—
"It's gone," Naruto said softly.
Sakura froze, scanning one last time, vision tunneling down to the cellular level.
No corruption.
No forced mutation.
Only damage… and healing.
She exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.
"He's stable," she said. "Alive. Exhausted. He won't wake for a day or two—his body needs time to relearn what normal feels like."
Naruto sat back heavily, the golden chakra fading around his hands.
They did it.
For just a moment—only a moment—relief bloomed.
Naruto smiled, tired but genuine. "You were amazing, Sakura."
She huffed softly, wiping sweat from her brow. "You say that like I didn't almost throw chakra at your head twice."
"Yeah, but you didn't," he replied brightly. "That's growth."
She laughed—quietly, unexpectedly.
But the moment shattered almost as soon as it formed.
Naruto stiffened.
His smile vanished.
"…Naruto?" Sakura asked, already knowing something was wrong.
He didn't answer immediately.
His senses expanded outward—far beyond the quiet shore, beyond the forests, beyond the villages he could name.
Life forces.
Flickering.
Fading.
Too many.
"All around the Land of Waves," Naruto said, voice hollow. "And farther. My range is… about a thousand miles right now."
Sakura's stomach dropped.
"How many?" she whispered.
Naruto closed his eyes.
"…Too many."
The joy of saving one life dimmed beneath the weight of countless others slipping away, unseen and untreated.
Sakura placed a hand on his arm, grounding, steady.
"We saved him," she said firmly. "That matters."
Naruto nodded slowly—but his gaze had already turned outward, searching, calculating, feeling.
"Yes," he said. "It matters."
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Mister Sinister:
While golden chakra and emerald healing light wrestled with death on a distant shore, reality elsewhere decided—quite rudely—to bend.
In the heart of a forest in the Land of Earth, space folded in on itself with all the subtlety of an offended god.
There was no thunder. No explosion. Just a crease in the air, like silk pinched between invisible fingers.
From it stepped a tall figure clad in pristine white and crimson, boots touching soil that had never known his name.
Mister Sinister paused.
He adjusted his gloves.
Then he looked around.
"Hm," he murmured pleasantly. "This is… not my laboratory."
Nathaniel Essex—scientist, geneticist, immortal observer of evolution's more entertaining failures—stood perfectly still as his mind began working at terrifying speed.
Trees unfamiliar. Atmosphere breathable. Gravity within acceptable parameters. Magnetic field… odd. He inhaled, eyes narrowing as his enhanced senses sampled the air.
"Not Earth," he concluded calmly. "Or at least not my Earth."
That alone was fascinating.
He glanced skyward. Wrong stars. Subtly wrong curvature. No satellites pinging his internal sensors.
"Curious," he said softly, lips curling in faint amusement. "Very curious indeed."
Someone had moved him.
That narrowed the list considerably.
Galactus? Unlikely—too unsubtle, too hungry.
Doom? Possible, but Doom would have announced himself with flair and a monologue.
Sinister's smile sharpened at the thought.
"Now that would be rude," he mused. "Plucking me mid-experiment without even a note."
He tapped a finger against his temple, crimson eyes glowing faintly.
Regardless of who had done it, one rule applied universally: observe first.
With a flick of his wrist, his cape rippled—and from its shadow peeled half a dozen small, bat-like constructs. Pale, elegant things with membranous wings and glimmering eyes.
"Run along," Sinister told them cheerfully. "Bring me stories."
They scattered silently into the forest.
Sinister himself began walking, unhurried, boots crunching softly against leaf litter. He allowed his senses to stretch, sampling life signs the way a connoisseur sampled wine.
And then—
He stopped.
"…Oh," he breathed.
Life forces pulsed all around him—strong, dense, vigorous. Even the civilians, the farmers and woodcutters moving through the forest paths, possessed physiques that would qualify as enhanced by his world's standards.
Denser muscle fibers. Reinforced skeletal structures. Neurological pathways primed for rapid response.
"These aren't baseline humans," he said, delighted.
Then he felt more.
Deeper currents.
Individuals carrying vast internal reservoirs of unfamiliar energy—coiled, flowing, shaped by will rather than mutation or cosmic accident.
Not mutant genes.
Not magic as he knew it.
Something else entirely.
"Marvelous," Sinister whispered, eyes alight. "Absolutely marvelous."
Moments later, one of the bat-clones returned, dissolving into data as it merged with him.
A village.
Small. Mixed features—East Asian, Southeast Asian, others blended through generations. Architecture unfamiliar. Technology… inconsistent.
But the people—
"Oh, you lovely little anomalies," Sinister said fondly.
Some wielded that energy consciously. Others carried only traces. And a few—
A slow, dangerous smile spread across his face.
—possessed signatures that made even him pause.
"Whoever sent me here," he said to the empty forest, "has either made a catastrophic mistake… or given me the greatest gift imaginable."
He clasped his hands behind his back and resumed walking toward the village, posture relaxed, demeanor immaculate—like a gentleman strolling into a gala rather than an unknown world.
"Let's gather information," he hummed. "After all…"
His eyes glinted crimson.
"…evolution waits for no one."
Far away, Naruto felt life forces falter and stabilize.
Closer still, something ancient and calculating smiled at a world that had no idea it had just been noticed.