Land of Water.
"What happened?" Boruto asked nervously.
"...Nothing much." Naruto shook his head. "It's dinner time, but I forgot to prepare the ingredients for tonight's meal."
"Can you not make such a fuss over something so trivial?" Boruto said, exasperated.
"Trivial?" Naruto glanced sideways at him. "Then it's happily decided. You'll be in charge of tonight's ingredients."
"Huh? Get what?"
"With such a large lake and so many mountains, can't you go find something?"
"Ah?!"
"What 'ah'? Get a move on! If you don't find anything, there's no dinner tonight."
Watching the little guy run off into the mountain forest, Naruto walked to a shaded spot under a tree and sat down cross-legged.
Within his Mental Space.
"Tell Naruto One, if Uchiha Itachi insists on his course of action, we won't interfere excessively," Naruto said to Kurama.
"When Ōtsutsuki Urashiki will arrive and what his strength is are both unknown. Won't doing this potentially alienate that Uchiha Sasuke from the future?" Kurama asked.
"This is Uchiha Itachi's own choice. If he blames me for this, then I've misjudged him," Naruto shook his head. "Besides, regarding Ōtsutsuki Urashiki, I never once thought of relying on Future Sasuke's power to solve the problem." "Rely on mountains, and they will collapse; rely on people, and they will flee." "The only ones we can ever rely on are ourselves. If we can't beat him, we can still outrun him."
"True enough," Kurama nodded.
"A Mangekyo that enhances the body… truly rare." As Shimura Danzo spoke, he leaped backward to dodge Sasuke's attack, yet an enormous, bone-deep wound still inevitably appeared on his body. His expression darkened. There was simply no way to deal with this kind of straightforward power increase from his opponent unless one's own strength could completely overwhelm him, or one could find a way to exhaust his Dojutsu.
Sasuke said nothing. Seizing the moment before Danzo landed, he suddenly accelerated, and several flashes of his blade lit up the air.
Puchi! Severed limbs flew. Shimura Danzo, hacked into a limbless torso, lay on the ground, staring directly into Sasuke's eyes. "Good, that's the look. The look of someone willing to pay any price to obtain what they desire." "It's truly a pity I won't get to see the scene of you two brothers turning against each other." His dying body vanished once more.
Whizz! A shuriken flew from behind him, its edges coated with a thin, razor-sharp cutting layer. Uchiha Sasuke tapped his foot lightly, and the shuriken, like a 'giant windmill,' flew past him.
CRASH! RUMBLE! The sound of a swath of trees falling echoed from behind. One could only imagine the sharpness of that last shuriken.
Whizz! Whizz! Several more 'Shadow Windmill' shuriken flew towards him. Not far away, Shimura Danzo took out another shuriken, blew on it lightly, and a sharp layer of Wind Release chakra enveloped its edges.
"Up! Right! Down…!" The Mangekyo Sharingan in Uchiha Sasuke's eyes rapidly tracked the shurikens' trajectories. He thrust out his Kusanagi Sword, piercing the central ring of an incoming shuriken. The long sword moved with the momentum, sending the shuriken back along its original path.
"It's the final battle, why isn't he using his other ability?" Future Sasuke observed their fight, puzzled.
BOOM! The Mangekyo in Uchiha Sasuke's left eye spun rapidly, and his figure abruptly vanished from the spot.
"It's over." Naruto's Number Two Shadow Clone stopped absorbing natural energy.
"Got you!" Shimura Danzo's withered hands shot out, gripping his enemy's arms tightly, completely disregarding the fact that his own heart had been pierced. "For the sake of the ninja world! For Konoha Village! I absolutely cannot let you live!" he roared, sputtering mouthfuls of blood. Large black markings suddenly appeared on his chest, and copious amounts of black, ink-like liquid spewed forth.
"Reverse Four Symbols Sealing… Truly befitting the Darkness of Shinobi. Vicious enough." Naruto's Number Two Shadow Clone's expression faltered upon seeing this. It seemed this old fox never intended to make it back alive.
"Hiruzen… it seems it's my turn this time. Just as you risked your life to protect Konoha, this time it's my turn… The Uchiha cannot be allowed to produce another pair of Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan…" Shimura Danzo's past flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern. "I really… have been following in your footsteps all along, Hiruzen…"
"What?" Suddenly, the Uchiha Sasuke he held tightly in his grasp vanished, replaced by a tree trunk the size of a person.
"Uchiha Shisui's eye belongs to the Uchiha!" Future Sasuke's figure materialized before him. His right hand shot out, gouging the Sharingan from Danzo's right eye socket.
"Taking you with me isn't a loss!" Shimura Danzo grinned ferociously. The Reverse Four Symbols Sealing was complete! Future Sasuke said nothing. Amenotejikara activated again, and he instantly swapped places with a distant rock.
"What kind of eye is that?" The image of the Nine-Tomoe Rinnegan became Shimura Danzo's final memory before death, and the obsession he couldn't let go of even as he died.
"Ngh!" The aftertaste of hovering on the brink of life and death hadn't yet dissipated when a searing pain shot through his left eye. Uchiha Sasuke clutched his eye, blood seeping continuously through his fingers.
"You've used too much of your Dojutsu." Future Sasuke walked to his side, placing a Sharingan, still connected to its nerve endings, into a glass vial filled with a special solution. "If you don't want to go blind, use your Mangekyo as little as possible."
"Where's Shimura Danzo's body?" Uchiha Sasuke, having recovered slightly, asked while still covering his left eye.
"Sealed away in some unknown alternate dimension."
"Is that so…" He looked around. In the distance, Aburame Torune's corpse came into view. Walking slowly over to the body, he asked, "Can you help me find his lower half?"
"What are you planning to do?" Future Sasuke was puzzled but still helped him find Torune's lower body.
To his future self's bewilderment, Uchiha Sasuke joined the two halves of the corpse together, raised his Kusanagi Sword high, and the Mangekyo in his right eye spun wildly. A dark purple, eerie pattern spread from his palm, down the blade.
Stab! The long sword plunged downwards. The bizarre pattern, using the sword as a conduit, snaked across Aburame Torune's body.
"This is…?" Future Sasuke's eyelid twitched. On the ground, the lifeless corpse that should have been eternally resting, twitched a finger. After a few breaths, Uchiha Sasuke pulled out the Kusanagi Sword. The pierced chest wound writhed strangely as muscles reformed, and in less than a moment, it was fully healed. And Aburame Torune, following that, opened his eyes, which now glowed with a purple light, and stood up, looking at the two Sasukes.
"From now on, I am your master! It is I who has granted you a second life," Uchiha Sasuke said, as if he had anticipated this.
"Yes, Master," Aburame Torune responded.
"March of the Dead. A Dojutsu that permanently binds the deceased to the world of the living, at the cost of sacrificing one's own Dojutsu." Sensing his future self's confusion, Uchiha Sasuke explained.
"So that's why you asked me where Shimura Danzo's body was earlier," Future Sasuke nodded.
"He got off easy," Uchiha Sasuke said coldly, a stream of blood trickling from his right eye. "Where did Shimura Danzo hide the other Sharingan?" he asked, turning his head to look at Aburame Torune.
"In Root's secret chamber."