Indra's newly awakened Rinnegan suddenly flared!
The talisman Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki had been about to place on his younger brother, Hamura Ōtsutsuki, vanished without a trace!
As though they had anticipated where it had gone, Sasuke and Madara Uchiha immediately looked toward Indra.
Sure enough, the talisman had appeared inside a mass of purple chakra behind him!
It was a simplified Susanoo arm!
And held within it were...
Ashura's ashes!
"!!!!!"
Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki stared at them in astonishment. He had been so focused on finding a way to deal with Hamura, who was under Mother Kaguya's control, that he had failed to notice the group suddenly appearing in the distance.
"The Rinnegan?! Someone besides Mother possesses those eyes?!"
This Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki was slightly younger than the one from the previous parallel world. He stared in disbelief at Indra and Madara Uchiha, both of whom possessed the Rinnegan, with no idea where these people had come from.
Wait!
More importantly, the talisman meant to revive Hamura!
Indra gave his father from this era a sinister smile, then extended a hand and made a grasping motion.
The pale purple Susanoo arm behind him shook the talisman in its hand as well, the gesture full of provocation.
Hamura, realizing what his older brother's eldest son intended to do, felt both numb and helpless.
It seemed his older brother in this world would not be able to save his counterpart after all. How had Hamura forgotten that Indra would undoubtedly seize the talisman to revive Ashura?
What a disaster. They had truly made a mess of this mission.
They still did not know whether the previous world would reach a peaceful conclusion, and now this world had gone completely off the rails.
After provoking his father from this world, Indra, a man of action and few words, immediately used the talisman on the ashes he had preserved so carefully.
As they watched a luminous green glow envelop Ashura's ashes, Naruto and the others forgot all about trying to stop him.
"That isn't chakra. It belongs to the system of Senjutsu," Minato Namikaze murmured.
During his training at Mount Myōboku, he had heard that the Three Great Sage Regions had existed for an unimaginably long time. They had already possessed their own Senjutsu and Jujutsu in an age before humans had even learned to use chakra.
It was already too late for Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki to intervene.
He watched in disbelief as the talisman Gamamaru had given him floated above a cloud of ash. A luminous green light enveloped the dust and molded it like clay, gradually shaping it into the form of an adult man.
The figure became more detailed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Muscles, facial features, clothing.
In only ten seconds, the cloud of ash transformed into a young man dressed much like the rest of them!
Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki finally understood that the dust had been a pile of gray bones and ash.
The young man with purple markings beneath his eyes had used the talisman Gamamaru gave Hagoromo to resurrect someone else!
It took Hagoromo another moment to process what had happened. Then he remembered what Gamamaru had told him when handing over the talisman.
Use it carefully. You will only have one chance.
He looked down at Hamura in his arms, at the hole Hagoromo himself had pierced through his heart.
This was his twin brother, who had accompanied him for twenty years!
No matter how stunned Hagoromo was, he understood now.
Someone had stolen his only chance to revive Hamura!
Overwhelming grief once again caused a special chakra to form within his brain, stimulating the nerves behind his eyes.
Despite already possessing the Rinnegan and having wept over his younger brother's death, Hagoromo now shed tears of blood!
"Who are you people?!"
Kaguya, who had been observing the battle from inside the house, slowly emerged.
She approached Hamura, whom Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki had killed with his own hands. Her rounded brows drew together slightly as she placed a hand on her second son and examined him.
With no time to pay attention to the newcomers, Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki had no choice but to yield before Mother Kaguya.
"Mother! Hamura..."
Kaguya did not even look at him or the dead Hamura Ōtsutsuki.
Instead, she gazed at Indra and Ashura, whose body had already been completely reconstructed.
The newly revived Ashura looked utterly bewildered.
"Older Brother?"
His dazed and foolish expression made Indra furious.
Indra suddenly remembered how Sasuke would pull up Naruto's forehead protector and repeatedly poke him in the forehead whenever he lost an argument.
He yanked the bandage away from Ashura's forehead, pressed his fingers together, and jabbed Ashura's forehead at the frantic speed of a sewing machine!
"How can you be this stupid?!!"
"How did you get hit when you were standing behind me?!"
"Will you only be satisfied once your own stupidity makes you cry?!!"
"You're going to be the death of me!!"
Ashura clutched his forehead and begged his older brother for mercy.
Even Naruto, whose forehead Sasuke had recently started poking quite often, and Sasuke, whose forehead Itachi had always poked, felt phantom pain in their own foreheads.
Even Madara Uchiha felt mortified.
Just as expected, Indra...
Had an extreme little-brother complex!
Madara Uchiha and Sasuke Uchiha, both members of Indra's lineage, felt thoroughly embarrassed by association.
Naruto and Hashirama were delighted to see Ashura revived.
Only Hamura Ōtsutsuki, realizing that his counterpart in this world was probably beyond saving, felt both resigned and somewhat guilty toward his older brother here.
After all, it was their arrival that had deprived Hagoromo of the chance to revive him.
"Who are you?"
Kaguya Ōtsutsuki regarded them calmly. Naturally, she had also noticed Hamura Ōtsutsuki among them.
Hagoromo, however, knew that the person in his arms was his younger brother, so he could only stare in complete confusion at the Hamura standing beside Indra.
Hamura walked over, greeted his mother, then apologized to his older brother from this world.
Just as he was about to explain their identities, along with the situation involving Indra and Ashura, their bodies suddenly began turning translucent and fading away.
Ashura, who had only just been revived, remained completely bewildered.
Clutching the forehead his older brother had poked red, he looked around and asked Minato Namikaze, whose reasoning was clearer and who was easier to talk to, what was happening.
Minato watched their bodies gradually disappear. After thinking for two seconds, he understood.
"Indra stole the resurrection talisman the Rikudō Sennin intended to use on this world's Hamura Ōtsutsuki. As a result, Hamura Ōtsutsuki of this world can no longer be revived."
Minato looked apologetically at the shocked Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki, the future Rikudō Sennin.
"To seal Kaguya, the brothers must combine the powers of the Sun and Moon, Yin and Yang, and use Six Paths: Chibaku Tensei."
But with Hamura Ōtsutsuki dead, the brothers could no longer use their combined sealing power.
"Although it's difficult to believe, we have indeed completed the S-rank mission on the mission scroll: Prevent Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki and Hamura Ōtsutsuki from sealing Kaguya Ōtsutsuki."
"!!!"
"The mission is complete?!"
"Because of something like this?!" Even Izuna Uchiha could not believe it. "You can complete a mission this way?!"
They had only been in this world for around ten minutes!
In the previous world, they had tried everything to persuade the others and had spent so long fighting both Kaguya and Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki.
Yet all of that had accomplished less than ten minutes of coincidence in this world?!
Izuna could not help complaining to Tobirama. "When did missions in our era ever become this unreasonable?"
Tobirama Senju nodded in agreement.
Minato Namikaze also felt somewhat embarrassed. After all, he knew and had already told everyone that the mission scroll was most likely connected to his counterpart from another world.
However, many of the scroll's absurd missions and its fondness for pranks also reminded him strongly of Kushina.
Sometimes it even felt as though Kushina were accompanying Naruto in her own way, doting on him and teasing him for fun.
This particular situation made Minato picture Kushina taking a prank too far, hurriedly trying to fix it, only for everything to become more chaotic the harder she tried until she finally turned to him for help.
Minato kept that thought to himself.
He could also tell that Naruto had encountered something unusual while breaking the Nine-Tails' seal.
Minato planned to wait until Naruto found an opportunity to tell him about it so they could analyze it together.
Their bodies were now almost completely transparent.
With a grim expression, Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki stared at Indra and Minato Namikaze.
"What about Hamura?"
Indra showed no remorse whatsoever for altering this world's history.
"You killed him yourself."
He did not say the words "serves you right," but the meaning was written plainly across his contemptuous expression.
Hagoromo Ōtsutsuki erupted with such fury that even the Nine-Tails inside Naruto clicked its tongue.
It quietly told Naruto that it had never seen the Six Paths Old Man this angry in its entire life.
["After all, Hamura is the little brother the old man was always politely asking to come back from the moon and visit him more often. That brat Indra really does have guts."]
Hagoromo had created the Nine-Tails with his own hands and granted it self-awareness, so the Nine-Tails still favored him somewhat.
Naruto pressed his lips together.
Although the young Grandpa Rikudō in the previous world had infuriated him, losing Hamura was probably similar to Indra losing Ashura, or Naruto losing Sasuke.
At the final moment, Naruto hurriedly offered one last piece of advice.
"Grandpa Rikudō, you should still consider reconciling with your mom! The Rinnegan seems to have an ability called Gedo Art of Rinne Rebirth. I saw Pain from another parallel world use it. It can bring the dead back to life!"
"Bring the dead back to life?!"
"Yeah."
Naruto turned toward Kaguya.
"Aunt Kaguya, Isshiki Ōtsutsuki is still alive! And the way you're trying to protect your sons is completely wrong, dattebayo!"
"Isshiki?!"
As expected, Kaguya Ōtsutsuki's expression changed drastically upon hearing that name.
"Where did you hear that name?!"
"There's no time to explain! But I still have so much I want to tell you, dattebayo!"
The more anxious Naruto became, the more useful ideas flashed through his mind.
At the final instant before he vanished, he condensed all his memories of Kushina into a tiny strand of chakra and passed it to this world's Kaguya.
...
Afterward, they finally returned to the ancient parallel world where they had first arrived.
There, they saw that world's Kaguya Ōtsutsuki and her maidservant, Aino.
"This S-rank mission ended far too suddenly."
Having returned after completing the mission, Naruto and the others all breathed a sigh of relief.
Indra, who had awakened the Rinnegan during this mission, still wore a terrifyingly gloomy expression. Ashura remained beside him, apologizing in every way he could think of.
However, knowing his older brother had become so furious and distraught because of his death left Ashura in a surprisingly good mood.
At the very least, he could now be certain that deep down, his older brother was still the gentle person he remembered.
"By the way, Naruto," Sakura asked, "what reward did you receive for this S-rank mission?"
***
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