Tiboro didn't move his hand.
Instead, the air around Naruto collapsed in on itself.
A soundless implosion snapped between them and Naruto was blown off his feet. The pressure struck his ribs like a battering ram. One second he was standing. The next he was tumbling across the scorched earth, coughing dry blood into his palm as he landed hard on his back.
The desert didn't even echo.
Just heat and dead silence.
Naruto forced himself upright, spitting iron. His shirt was torn at the chest, smoke rising off his skin where Tiboro's energy had grazed him.
So this was real. No tricks. No bluffing. The bastard could hit really hard.
Tiboro hovered forward without touching the ground. His feet didn't stir the dust. His expression was blank, like this wasn't even personal. Just a procedure for him.
"I gave you a chance," he said. "You wasted it."
Naruto didn't respond. His hands flicked together, chakra rushing down his limbs like static.
Chakra wrapped around his frame in a rough spiral, drawing the dry ash off the ground in a circling vortex. He leapt forward fast, low, and angry.
He was done listening.
His fist shot forward like a blade.
Tiboro caught it without blinking.
Then cracked his other palm against Naruto's sternum.
The air whomped.
Naruto's vision blurred. His chakra flared too late to stop the force as it slammed him backward again. His body folded into the ground, skipping across the stone like a ragdoll. Something sharp tore through his shoulder. Something else cracked near his hip.
He bit down a scream and rolled, staggering to his feet. His chakra pulsed automatically, trying to numb the pain.
Tiboro was already there.
Naruto barely dodged the next strike. A golden arc of energy carved the space where his head had been and split a dune in the distance. He jumped again, twisting mid-air to lash out with a sweeping kick. Wind exploded off his heel but Tiboro raised a finger and stopped it. Not the kick. The wind.
Naruto hit the ground on one knee, panting.
"I've fought monsters," he spat, "gods, and maniacs. You're just a fraud with too much ego and not enough leash."
Tiboro extended his hand toward the sky.
The clouds above churned.
A single black bolt of lightning screamed down, curved, and shot sideways like a whip.
It tore through the battlefield and Naruto with it.
He barely had time to throw his arms up. Chakra surged to his skin, forming a sort of half-barrier just as the bolt struck. The world went white.
Naruto flew back, his body skidding across the cracked earth until he smashed into a mound of broken stone statues. Dust collapsed over him like a shroud.
His ears rang.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Somewhere deep in his gut, the chakra of this cursed dimension still churned with his own, trying to balance, but every second it slipped. It was like taming a beast he hadn't meant to ride. His body pulsed with energy he hadn't trained for, hadn't earned, but needed desperately to keep going.
He didn't know what it was. Only that it let him breathe down here without choking on blood. Something close to… peace, if he could just stop getting hit for five seconds.
Kurama was still gone and silent.
The quiet in his mind felt wrong and heavy.
And all Naruto could think about besides the searing pain in his back, was Kate's laugh. Kamala's wide-eyed panic face. Even America's nonstop trash talk.
He missed them.
He missed them.
"Damn it," he muttered, pushing himself up on shaking arms. His skin peeled where lightning had kissed it. "I don't want to die in this graveyard."
Tiboro landed behind him.
No sound. Just a shadow. Cold and sure.
Naruto twisted, throwing a punch out of desperation. Power surged behind it, but Tiboro caught his wrist, pulled him forward, and headbutted him.
Hard.
The blow rang through Naruto's skull like a church bell. Stars exploded in his vision. He staggered and Tiboro didn't stop.
A palm to the ribs. A knee to the gut. An elbow to the back of the neck. Naruto hit the ground again. Blood hit the sand.
"You're not even trained," Tiboro said with something like disappointment. "You don't understand your gift. You just react. Instinct. Impulse. You're but a child thrown onto a battlefield."
Naruto wheezed. Blood dripped from his lip in slow, lazy arcs. He didn't have the strength to wipe it.
Tiboro crouched beside him, regal and smug. His hand hovered over Naruto's chest like a priest about to perform last rites.
"I'm going to take what's inside you," he said softly. "Not out of cruelty. But because it wants out. And you're clearly too weak to hold it."
His fingers glowed with intent.
Naruto's eyes fluttered.
Something twitched behind them.
It wasn't fear.
The chakra inside him was twisting, bending, screaming.. Something flipped. The energy of the realm that he'd been balancing with his own? It didn't tip anymore.
It collapsed inside of him.
A crack echoed and Tiboro paused.
A line of black light split Naruto's chest from collarbone to navel. Not blood. Not energy. Something else. Something primordial and ancient.
Naruto's spine arched violently.
And a voice tore through the stillness like a blade through silk,
"Tch. You just had to touch me, dirty god."
The ground beneath Naruto exploded.
Dark chakra, vile, unfiltered, and alive burst from his body in a spiraling vortex of pressure. Tiboro was hurled back, skidding through dust and bone as the statues around them shattered like glass. The sky above twisted, clouds bending into spirals as if trying to flee from whatever had spawned out of the boy.
When the smoke cleared, Naruto stood.
But it wasn't Naruto anymore.
His blonde hair had turned silver-white, cascading down to his waist in wild waves. Two black horns made of malleable energy curled out of his skull like some ancient and forgotten creature. His back split open into jagged wings made entirely of writhing energy, charred black, endless in reach.
And his..
His eyes weren't just red.
They burned like an exploding star.
No pupils. No warmth. Just a deep, infernal glow like a forge left to rot in the dark.
He cracked his neck, and flexed his hands.
"Man," he said, voice dual-toned and bone-dry. "This body's always so damn tense. You ever carry all that repressed chakra for months on end? It's exhausting."
Tiboro forced himself upright, brushing ash off his shoulder. "What… are you?"
Dark Naruto grinned, teeth just a little too sharp.
"Me? You can call me.. "
Tiboro wasted no time and fired.
Molten sigils twisting brands of divine script shot toward him like meteors.
Dark Naruto didn't move.
The attacks hit but the wings twitched, and the energy simply vanished. Sucked into nothingness like it never existed.
"Cute," Naruto said, glancing at the scorch mark on the ground. "Did you really think I was gonna dodge that?"
Tiboro surged forward, divine power blazing, swinging a strike that could flatten mountains.
Naruto caught it.
With two fingers.
"Slow," he murmured.
Then he twisted Tiboro's arm until it snapped backwards at the elbow. The god screamed, but Naruto wasn't done yet.
He drove a knee into Tiboro's stomach, then another. Then a third. Each hit detonated with the weight of a falling star. Each one buried deeper than the last. By the time he slammed his foot across the side of Tiboro's head, the god was already coughing blood.
"Come on," Naruto taunted, voice dripping dark venom. "You were giving me speeches five minutes ago. Where's all that righteous fire, King? Where's your kingdom now?"
Tiboro tried to rise.
Naruto kneed him in the mouth.
His teeth hit the ground like dominoes.
Tiboro reeled and staggered back, screaming as an arc of dark chakra sliced through his thigh. It didn't just cut flesh. It disintegrated it.
Naruto spun the blade lazily between his fingers, watching his opponent crawl the the dunes.
"That's the thing about hope," he said, stepping forward, voice smooth and amused. "It's kind of like bone."
He raised his sword of dark chakra.
"It only takes the right amount of pressure…"
He stabbed it down.
Tiboro barely rolled away. The blade embedded into the earth where his head had been, then expanded, a shockwave of corrupted chakra blasting out in all directions.
"Oops," Naruto said, mock-sheepish. "Almost got you."
Tiboro's body lit with divine fire. He launched a pillar of molten light into the sky, screaming in fury.
Naruto just watched.
The moment it came down, he walked through it.
The light scorched everything around him. But not him.
He emerged on the other side with smoke curling off his shoulders and a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"You know," Naruto said, forming a gun with his fingers, "for a guy who talks about being a god, you sure do die easy."
Black chakra began to swirl around his hand.
Faster. Denser. Tighter. Until it hummed like a black star at the tip of his index finger.
"Let's see how you like having your soul turned inside out."
"Rasendan."
The shot didn't just fire.
It howled in the air.
A column of destruction tore through the air and slammed into Tiboro's chest with the force of a black hole being born. The sky turned black with impact. The world beneath them cratered as the blast swallowed half the battlefield, reducing it to molten slag.
When the dust settled, Tiboro was on his back.
Barely breathing.
Bleeding from too many places to count.
Naruto stood over him.
The blade was back in his hand.
"You're gonna die here," he said quietly. "No throne. No revenge. No salvation. Just you, choking on your own blood in a wasteland no one remembers."
Tiboro's lips moved.
Naruto crouched to hear him.
"W-why… are you… doing this?"
Naruto smiled.
It was cold.
Almost kind.
"Because he wouldn't."
Then he stabbed down.
Tiboro's corpse steamed where it lay, his limbs bent the wrong way, body cored through the chest. Smoke curled from the crater, the scent of scorched divine flesh hanging thick in the air.
Dark Naruto stood over him, wings folding in like jagged blades of shadow. His silver hair fluttered in the hot wind. Horns black as onyx curled out of his skull. Crimson eyes gleamed beneath his lashes.
He wasn't breathing hard. Not a scratch on him. The ground around him was glassed over from the heat.
A tear in the air in the shape of a star opened behind him.
It shrieked like metal being peeled apart. A clean cut rift sliced into the realm, and from it, three figures stepped through.
America Chavez led the way, her stance sharp and alert. Behind her, Kate Bishop drew her bow in one motion, scanning the blasted field with tense precision. Kamala Khan's eyes went wide as she took it all in.
The barren sky. The heat. The mangled body in the dirt.
And him.
The thing standing over it.
Silver hair. Horns. Red eyes. Shadow wings.
The air around him bent in waves of dark miasma.
"That's..." Kamala didn't finish her sentence.
Kate narrowed her eyes. "Naruto?"
He turned to face them fully. No tension or reaction.
Just calmness.
And then,
"Hey Kamala, miss me?" he said.
His voice was his, but layered dark and smooth.
Kamala took a step forward. "Is that… you?"
He didn't answer right away. He just smiled slightly. "Of course it's me!"
America didn't wait. She stepped in front of both girls, raising her fists. "Back up. That thing's not him."
Kate kept her arrow drawn. "Where's the real Naruto?"
Dark Naruto's eyes flicked to the body. Then back to them.
"You tracked his energy signature here, right?" he asked. "Well. You found me."
No one moved.
Kamala's voice dropped. "What happened to him?"
He raised his brows. "I told you. I'm right here."
Kate's grip tightened. "That's not funny."
"I wasn't joking."
America narrowed her eyes and stepped in closer. "Okay… what is this? Some kind of possession? Illusion? 'Cause this ain't you."
He looked at her. "No. Just honesty. No more lying to myself, no more holding back my power."
None of them could believe their eyes.
Because the thing standing in front of them wasn't the boy they knew. He looked like Naruto, but the feeling was all wrong.
His energy, even through the rift, burned like an all-consuming fire, oppressive and ancient. More of a presence, and not a person.
Kate's eyes flicked to the body. "Who is that?"
Dark Naruto shrugged. "An ant who stood in my way."
America didn't wait.
She moved fast, opening a portal mid-charge and slamming through it, aiming a punch directly at his head.
He leaned aside letting her pass by.
Then turned and tapped her on the back.
America flipped midair, landing with a roll and gritting her teeth.
Kamala fists glowed with Noor energy as she launched herself forward, shouting his name.
He spun under her swing, palm resting lightly on her shoulder as he stepped past her and whispered, "Too slow."
Kate fired three arrows in a tight pattern.
He raised a hand. An invisible sheet of chakra shimmered into being and caught them mid-flight.
She tried to reposition for another volley but he was already beside her.
"You're the smart one, right?" he asked. "You should've figured it out."
He didn't hit her. Just stood there.
Kate backed off fast.
"You're not Naruto," she said.
"I am," he said. "I'm the part he never talked about. The one that kept quiet when things got bad. The one who stayed behind every time he smiled and said he was fine."
Kamala came again but this time reckless and emotional.
He didn't counter. He let her hit him.
The punch landed.
He didn't move.
She stared, frozen like a deer in headlights.
He leaned down slightly.
"I'm not here to hurt you," he said. "But I could."
Kate drew another arrow.
America circled behind.
He watched them all.
Still relaxed. Still calm.
Looking like he was enjoying this all the same.
"You're fighting the wrong guy," he said. "And if you keep pushing, I might decide to stop holding back."
No one answered.
The three of them surrounded him. The tension rising with each second tighter than the last.
But none of them knew who they were standing across from.
Because Naruto was gone.
And whatever stood in his place… wasn't pretending.
___
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