Chapter 186: Limits Before Victory

Sasuke leaped across the ruined roofs as water surged through the streets below. A dragon's head rose from the flood and snapped toward him.

His kunai carried explosive tags. They burst against the dragon, tearing it apart before its jaws closed. Shuriken followed, curving on wires toward the Mist shinobi forming seals on a distant roof.

The man broke off his technique to avoid them. Sasuke landed, drew breath, and sent a Great Fireball into his path. The flames caught him before he could regain cover.

Sasuke was already panting. The technique cost him dearly at his age, but he had no time to rest. Somewhere in this ruined village, more enemies might be waiting.

Was this really Captain Tobitake's work? Sasuke had known him to be powerful. He had not imagined an illusion that could make a battlefield feel so complete.

"Good. But that's as far as you go."

A transparent figure appeared behind him, blade descending.

The weapon struck a log. An explosive tag hissed upon its surface.

The blast threw the attacker clear and broke the technique concealing him. Sasuke was beside him before he recovered, driving a kunai into his chest.

"When did you—"

"When you came close."

Fighting Kiba had taught him to notice things he once would have ignored. In the instant after his fire attack, a change in temperature had warned him of someone nearby. He had prepared the substitution without waiting to see who it was.

He straightened and looked across the broken streets. This was Konoha. Its houses had been smashed, and the monument beyond them was scarcely recognizable. Only the Third Hokage's face remained intact.

The destruction felt real enough to have happened while his back was turned.

More enemies found him before he had recovered his breath. They were only genin, but there were several of them, and he was exhausted. Their attacks closed around him. This time he could not escape.

Awareness returned in another place, with his strength restored.

Sasuke considered what had happened. So far, he had been reset only after running out of stamina and being killed. Perhaps the exercise was meant to teach more than fighting. It forced him to make what chakra he had last against enemy after enemy.

Could training like this bring him closer to defeating Itachi?

He could not answer that here. These battles were constructed. Only after leaving the illusion and testing himself in the real world could he judge how much of the experience had become his own.

Elsewhere, Naruto answered an ambush with the strongest technique he knew.

"Multiple Shadow Clone Technique!"

The attacker vanished beneath a crowd of Narutos. Whatever the man tried, there were too many hands, too many weapons, too many directions to defend. The fight ended quickly.

Naruto wiped his nose and grinned.

"One technique. That's all it takes for the future Hokage."

Then he looked around.

He was standing in a vast crater. Hinata, Kiba, Sasuke, Sakura—his classmates lay scattered across the ground beyond it, terribly wounded and motionless. Farther away, a sword pinned the Third Hokage through the chest. Tonbo hung against a stone wall, his head bowed.

"Naruto... run."

He turned toward the voice. Iruka was reaching for him, blood covering his hand. A long blade protruded from his body.

"Iruka-sensei?"

Naruto could not fit any of it together. He had been waiting for a graduation gift. How could everyone be dead?

His eyes reddened. The marks on his cheeks deepened, and orange-red chakra began to gather around him.

Before it could fully emerge, a blade took his head.

For an instant there was only disbelief. He had not become Hokage. He had not even learned who had killed them.

Then he stood in the crater again.

"Only you left, boy. Die."

The same enemy rushed toward him. Naruto dodged, fought back, and used his shadow clones to kill the man once more.

The bodies were still there.

"What's happening?"

Iruka staggered into view, wounded as before. This time Naruto ran to him. He remembered enough of the Academy's battlefield first aid to begin helping; trying to keep pace with Kiba and the others had made him learn at least that much.

He was so intent on Iruka that he forgot to watch his back. A sword struck him from behind.

The world reset.

Again, Naruto defeated the first enemy. Again, Iruka appeared. This time Naruto kept part of his attention on the clearing while he worked on the wound.

A movement behind him. He threw a kunai without turning fully away from Iruka. When he looked, the attacker lay on the ground, his bloody sword beside him.

"Caught you that time."

Naruto turned back to his teacher.

A kunai entered his chest.

"Why?"

Iruka's face changed. A stranger smiled at him from inches away.

The crater returned.

After the repeated deaths, something finally connected in Naruto's mind: the training ground, Tonbo's hands forming seals, the same enemies returning no matter how often he killed them.

"Genjutsu."

He clenched his fists.

"Uncle Tonbo! You did this!"

The accusation echoed over the crater. Tonbo had made him think everyone he cared about was dead. He had used Iruka's face to draw him close and kill him. Naruto's fear turned to fury at the man behind it all.

"When I'm Hokage, I'm going to beat you up!"

The next enemy approached. Naruto faced him, still shaking with anger. None of this was real. These were illusions, all of them.

Then he could kill them without hesitation.

Outside the simulation, the adults had seen a different danger. When the Nine-Tails' chakra began to leak from Naruto, Hiruzen and the surrounding jōnin tensed, ready to make Tonbo stop the technique.

The chakra subsided before they acted. Only then did they breathe again.