Back in the Shinobi World, after Sasuke lost consciousness the masked ninja raised his needles to strike again! However, the world around him suddenly twisted upside down. A sharp sound, like shattering glass, split the moment—and the mask fractured. It fell away in pieces revealing a young, beautiful face beneath.
Naruto stood before the now-unmasked enemy. His wounds were gone and the usual goofiness that clung to him like a second skin had vanished. His eyes were cold. Detached. Indifferent.
Elias knew: the timing was perfect and it was finally time to strike!
The barely recognizable boy smirked—and the ninja standing before him suddenly ignited and out of nowhere his head erupted like a volcano!
Without hesitation, and without even admiring the falling ashes, the orange-haired boy hurled a kunai straight at Zabuza's left eye. Bullseye! The weapon buried itself deep, nestling gruesomely into its new home!
Before Kakashi could even turn to process what was happening, explosions rippled across the bridge while dust clouds erupted like geysers! With no other option, he grabbed Sakura and Tazuna and leapt into the water below.
Massive pillars and chunks of the bridge rained down, creating waves that clashed with each other, setting chaos over the already raging sea! Sakura and Tazuna hadn't yet caught up with reality as they were miraculously saved and now were watching months of construction beeing obliterated, the bridge crumbling as if it was made of sand! The mission had turned from dangerous to catastrophic, or maybe worse.
Farther down the shore—overgrown with tropical plants—Naruto reappeared. He knelt beside a bloodied Sasuke, his body still pierced with senbon needles. He pressed one hand to his own heart and the other to Sasuke's chest.
Something happened. The world slowed. Froze. For that moment—time itself stopped, just for Naruto.
Inside the Inner Sanctum Elias grinned maniacally!
He heard a guttural voice singing somewhere, nearby:
"In the hush beneath the briar,
Where the silver moths take wing,
Something hums behind the thicket—Not a bird, and not a thing.
Clocks don't tick the way they should,
And hearts don't beat quite right,
In the place where ribbons tangle,
Bathed in candlelight."
From the two boys, something began to rise, something was being pulled into his seal.
The entity within the seal—its proud owner—heard a woman's voice, monotonous and eerie as he was pulling alien charka strands into his sanctum:
"To pluck, to snatch, to unmake. To peel the layers back, oh yes—yes, yes. To take what sparkles, what wiggles, what whispers. To steal, to steal, to steeeal with joy. Ooh, the trembling little things...They never see it coming. Oh, how they beg, how they beg. But I just hum, la la la, not listening. Mine now. MINE. And isn't it better that way."
In front of Elias floated two strands of foreign energy—suspended within his cosmos, carried by his chakra.
His long-term project—manipulating Naruto's psyche and subconsciousness—had finally paid off. He had begun subtly, then refined it day by day since day one! Now, Naruto, in a hypnotic trance, had allowed the sealed bijuu to use his body—freely transferring chakra, freely welcoming it. Elias used spacetime jutsu effortlessly—his Shin Jutsu domain was a spacetime nexus—and he pulled the two mysterious chakras into the seal using his cosmos.
It wasn't delicate work and it wasn't surgical either.
The DNA of both boys might encouter important after effects in the future as the mutation was stopped abruptly, their bodies would suffer the consequences of this batched operation.
But now Elias faced a new problem: he couldn't assimilate foreign chakra. He had never tested this before—he didn't want to degrade his own essence. All he could do now was maintain the two strands of chakra, burning his own cosmos continuously to preserve them. He needed time to test, and fortunately, he had plenty as his inner galaxy was vast—and still growing. Spiritually and physically, he had no limitations for its growth, alteast for decenies to come and with time, his control would only deepen.
To avoid unnecessary distractions from the foolishness of his host, he created and implanted Gessō Garu, a very effective high-speed, ambush-based taijutsu style inspired by the movement, instincts, and anatomy of rabbits into Naruto's mind during the trance. That would hold for now and Elias could focus on research.
In the outter world, Sakura's face was tear-streaked and panicked, but after what felt like forever, Kakashi-sensei found Naruto and Sasuke and brought them back. He assumed Naruto had leapt off the bridge with Sasuke and swum ashore amid the chaos, risking his life and saving his teammate.
Later, villagers discovered the charred corpse of the rogue ninja. Judging by its horrific condition, Kakashi concluded someone far stronger than Zabuza had intervened. Someone hired by Gato, perhaps but someone who chose not to provoke Konoha directly—for now.
Naruto and Sasuke needed weeks to recover until they could travel safely. They remained in the Land of Waves for another two weeks before paying for a private boat and slowly returned to Konoha on a rented horse-pulled kart.
The bridge was gone. Most of the workers had died in the collapse. Tazuna had survived—but he wasn't the same. His spirit was broken and it wasn't know what happened to him and his family after they departed.
Gato had won and his grip on the Land of Waves tightened. He didn't even have to pay the rogue ninjas from Kirigakure, as they went missing along his past problems.
Back in Konoha, team seven was put on hold while Naruto and Sasuke were treated at ninja hospital.
Sasuke's attitude toward Naruto shifted as he spoke to him with more respect—but beneath the surface, frustration brewed. He had awakened his Sharingan during the battle, but now every time he tried to use it, his eyes throbbed with pain. Worse, he lost a third of the vision in the right eye. Additionally his left Sharingan still functioned, but one of the tomoe had vanished. Despite medical exams and chakra scans, no cause could be found, the damage was invisible, untraceable but very, very real.