Chapter 1

Obito and Sakura looked at each other. Naruto and Sasuke had been forced into separate dimensions by Kaguya’s space-time ninjutsu.

As the duo navigated to Kaguya’s core dimension, they were in the perfect position to find Sasuke and return him to Naruto’s side.

Obito activated his Kamui and searched the nearby dimensions. He found nothing.

One of the portals he opened suddenly destabilized, and the opening collapsed as Obito coughed a mouthful of blood onto the ground.

“I’m out of chakra”, Obito said between his coughing fits.

Sakura activated her Strength of a Hundred Seal and stabilized his condition. Without a word, she started passing her chakra to him.

Words were unnecessary; they both knew the stakes. If Naruto and Sasuke could not be reunited, Kaguya was undefeatable.

Obito reactivated Kamui and continued to search the various dimensions of the Rabbit Goddess for Sasuke.

Kaguya fought with Naruto in the Ice dimension. The yellow haired child has suddenly transitioned to the offensive, and she was confused at his seemingly illogical actions. He could not defeat her, but here he was, attacking with abandon.

When one had lived long enough as her, one’s judgment underwent a a qualitative transformation. Seemingly unrelated actions were suddenly connected, and it became hard not to develop a God complex when the world was at one’s fingertips

A nagging voice in the back of her mind warned her. For some reason, the child in front of her was buying time for something, trying to keep her busy.

When the enemy attacks retreat, and when the enemy retreats attack.

She quickly dislocated her existence from the Ice Dimension and cast her gaze over the entirety of her domain.

She quickly noticed the holes that Obito had torn through her core dimension. One of the holes tunneled into the dimension that contained the other spawn of Hagoromo.

Kaguya transferred to her core dimension, and Obito felt it.

Obito had just opened a portal to a new dimension, and Sakura exclaimed that she felt Sasuke’s chakra from within.

Obito had lived in the shinobi world for far too long. He had survived situations he shouldn’t, and the specter of death was a constant companion.

At this moment, the horror of the shade loomed over him, and he knew it was over.

Kaguya was here, and he was out of time.

Obito’s Mangekyo Sharingan spied Sasuke in the distance through the portal. Sasuke was too far to make a difference though.

Obito’s last actions were desperate. He would die, and Sasuke would be trapped when that happened.

So he did the only thing he could.

He gouged both his eyes from their sockets and threw them through the portal to Sasuke’s dimension before cutting off his chakra flow and closing the portal.

Kaguya’s Ash Bone speared him from behind, straight through the heart. He died instantly.

Sakura’s hands were still on his back, supplying chakra to the corpse.

Sakura looked at her hands in confusion.

Her left hand was pinned to Obito’s back by a bone white spear. She traced the line of the spear from her hand back, and found it originated from her sternum.

Kaguya had speared the both of them with a single Ash Bone.

With a gasp, the breath driven from her body, Sakura collapsed. Her medical training went into overdrive.

She started healing herself and started tallying the damage to her body.

Her spinal column was severed, her left lung punctured, and her aorta dissected.

The aorta would kill her first. A sever in the great artery of the body killed in 3 seconds.

With her Strength of a Hundred Seal still active, her body would naturally heal itself if she lost consciousness, but she would become defenseless.

Alas, as her vision faded to black, she focused on Obito.

His body had already turned gray and was disintegrating to ash.

Kaguya looked on the two ninja faded to dust. She found the pair much easier to kill than the current incarnations of Asura and Indra.

She extended her senses once again, and located the dimension that Sasuke was currently trapped in. She focused for a short moment, and severed the dimension from the temporal continuum.

Though she had lost part of her domain, the incarnation of Indra was permanently banished.

She could turn her attention to Asura’s incarnation, but without the support of Indra, he was as trapped as Indra now was.

Meanwhile in the Ice Dimension, Naruto was on the edge of panic. Kaguya had disappeared, and without the support of Obito or Sasuke, he recognized that he was effectively trapped.

He swallowed his fear, and his faith in his companions held. In the brief respite he currently enjoyed, he focused on recovering his chakra.

Kaguya however, had better things to do than occupy herself with the incarnation of Asura.

She strolled across the dimensions and found herself back in the Shinobi World.

She looked around, and was disgusted with the state of it.

Her chakra had been stolen, corrupted, and soiled by these ants. Her anger flared, and with a wave of her hand, a new God Tree formed.

The God Tree was the originator of chakra, and it was time for chakra to return to the fold.

Kaguya channeled her power through the tree, and the chakra of the world started moving.

She blanketed the world with her senses and monitored the movement of chakra.

It was sluggish at first. Chakra was inseparable from life, and the God Tree had to overcome the tenacity with which chakra attached itself to living beings.

A formerly retired genin, coming out of retirement for the Fourth Great Shinobi War, was the first to fall. His age and relatively weak hold on chakra allowed the God Tree to wrest his chakra from him most easily. His life force came with it.

As the last trace of chakra was pulled from his body, he fell over dead.

The God Tree continued to pull.

Kaguya continued to watch.

Soon enough, Kaguya stood beside the God Tree and gazed at the newly formed Chakra Fruit. She cast her senses back out into world, and there were only a few existences that had not yet relinquished their chakra.

In the tailed beast dimension, Hagoromo gazed at the 9 bijuu. In a way, they were his children as much as Asura and Indra were.

The Bijuu and Hagoromo felt the pull of the God Tree and knew it was the end.

Hagoromo simply looked at the beasts, showed a painful smile, and faded away. The Bijuu cried.

Shukaku was the first to go. The beasts were inseparable. The nine of them had always remained connected through their shared dimension.

However, one moment Shukaku was there, and the next he was gone. Ripped from existence. The remaining Bijuu felt a disgusting emptiness.

Kurama shed a single tear, while some of the other beasts openly sobbed.

Kurama laughed mirthlessly.

“That annoying Tanuki would be mad to know he went first.”

A choking gasp escaped from his throat.

As much as he and the Tanuki quarreled, they were family.

If Kurama denied Shukaku, he would deny his father, Hagoromo.

Matatabi was next. It didn’t feel real.

Isobu was raging, and then he wasn’t.

Son Goku said nothing. Each disappearance left a bigger hole in those who remained.

Kokuo sighed, and left with a simple “Fare well.”

Saiken wept the loudest, and the silence became deafening.

Chomei smiled. “Lucky me, could’ve been one of you two.”

Gyuuki held his fist out to Kurama.

Kurama wasn’t fast enough, and for the first time ever. Kurama was alone.

Naruto felt it. He was connected to the beasts too, but not as intertwined as Kurama had been.

“Kurama, what’s going on?”

“Is the ten-tails reforming?”

Kurama said nothing.

“Kurama, answer me!”

Naruto could feel the hint of panic creep into his voice. He was a shinobi though, and he steeled himself.

That’s when it hit him.

Naruto had long since lifted the seal on Kurama, and emotions could flow between them in a limited capacity.

Naruto was overwhelmed with a crushing sadness, a hopeless depression, and an impotent rage.

Naruto fell to his knees, and every single one of his clones in the Ice dimension disappeared.

Naruto’s psyche was nearly shattered. He had no idea what was going on, only that Kurama was feeling a level of emotion that would kill a human. Kurama’s existence as embodied chakra had formed into a curse, currently allowing the bijuu to experience unending pain.

That level of pain.

It was unspeakable.

Kurama would kill himself if he could.

Kurama would die of a broken heart if he had one.

Naruto, who experienced only a fraction of Kurama’s pain, curled into a ball and vomited.

Naruto finally started feeling the chill of the Ice Dimension. He whimpered

"Kurama, talk to me… please…”

There was no answer, only rage and despair.

Kaguya watched the chakra fruit ripen as the disgusting animals Hagoromo created were purified and returned to unadulterated chakra.

The fruit had almost reached completion. One more step would have it fall from the tree. Upon which, Kaguya would consume it and reach apotheosis.

She turned her gaze to the ice dimension and saw the Incarnation of Asura curled in a ball, covered with his own filth, and she was hit with another wave of disgust.

Hagoromo had reduced her Godhood to something this base. It enraged her.

She teleported the incarnation back to the Shinobi World, directly against the bark of the God Tree.

With a quick flick of her wrist, she threw out two Ash Bone spears, and crucified Naruto against the tree.

His chakra was quickly ripped from him. However, as an Uzumaki, he was one of the unlucky few who didn’t die immediately upon losing their chakra. His bloodline carried a certain momentum of life.

As he hung from the God Tree, his hands pinned to the bark, he felt himself fade.

Dying is not a pleasant experience, and the curse of the Uzumaki only extended the experience.

His hands turned gray first, and the color slowly crept down his arms.

He was still incapacitated by Kurama’s raw emotion, but he could intuit, this was the end, and he had failed.

Suddenly, the emotional feedback cleared, and Kurama’s stranglehold on Naruto’s psyche was released.

For the first time ever, Naruto was alone.

Naruto opened his eyes, and his last vision was Kaguya, eyeing him in disgust before turning her attention to the chakra fruit, which fell from the God Tree into her waiting hand.

Deep within the ancestral lands of the Senju clan, an unnamed cave was carved.

The cave was hewn by hand, and the coarse chisel marks covering the wall spoke of mortal means of production. However, the quality spoke to devotion. This was a holy site, and the devotion was impressed into the stone.

Following down into the bowels of the earth, the cave extended, but eventually expanded into a small cavern. In the center, upon a stone dais, a simple monolith sat.

A flame, which had been lit since the days of Asura, flickered atop the monolith.

The cave, which had always shone bright and warm, started to cool. The darkness started at the edges and crept in ever so slowly.

The flame flickered. The shadows danced.

The earth heaved with a shuddering gasp, and the fire went out.