For the moment, setting aside Naruto's squabbling with Kiba and the quiet ache in Hinata's heart, the story on the light screen continued to advance steadily, unfolding the next stretch of this altered-future tale before everyone's eyes.
[Inside the tunnel, Koyuki Kazahana instinctively turned her face away after hearing Naruto's reply, her voice carrying a stubborn edge she clearly couldn't quite let go of.
"When we get back, I'll just act in front of the camera. I'm not doing anything else."
Hearing the willful contradiction hidden in her words, Naruto couldn't help but smile.
But before that smile had fully faded, a shrill train whistle suddenly echoed through the tunnel. Not understanding what was happening, Naruto hurriedly turned his head—and his pupils instantly contracted.
Beneath the ground ahead, which had originally been sealed beneath thick ice, a rusted railway track was gradually emerging as the ice rapidly melted away. Cold iron rails, like a winding metal serpent, stretched out from beneath their feet all the way into the depths of the tunnel, vanishing into darkness.
At the tunnel's far exit, the film crew—who had been forced to temporarily shoot other scenes after Koyuki's earlier escape—also noticed the railway tracks suddenly appearing from beneath the snow. One after another, they stopped what they were doing and gathered around.
"What is this? Why are tracks suddenly appearing in the middle of the snow?" the director asked, frowning as he took two steps forward to stare at the rusted rails now visible through the melting ice.
Asama Sandayū stepped forward, crouched down, and touched the half-melted frost still clinging to the edge of the rail. Then he stood back up and explained,
"It's chakra. Someone infused a small amount of chakra into the rails and used the change in chakra nature to melt the ice covering them—that's why they've been exposed..."
"No—that guy's here!!"
He had only gotten halfway through the explanation when Sandayū seemed to realize something. His face changed instantly, becoming grave. He whipped around toward the film crew and shouted urgently,
"Run! If he finds us here, we're in real trouble!"
With that, Asama Sandayū immediately turned and sprinted toward the village where, as he had mentioned to Kakashi earlier, his companions were living.
Watching Sandayū's hurried retreat, the director and the production manager also realized that something was seriously wrong. In an instant, they forgot all about filming and instead began shouting for the rest of the crew to pack up and hide first.
The scene shifted, and the camera returned once again to the dim tunnel.
Naruto was still carrying Koyuki on his back, frowning as he stared toward the source of the increasingly loud whistle behind them. Then Koyuki, clinging to his back, suddenly fixed her eyes on the darkness deep in the tunnel and cried out,
"It's a train!"
"A train? What's that?"
Naruto asked in confusion.
He had never even heard the word before, let alone known what it meant.
But the moment his question fell, a blinding beam of light suddenly pierced through the darkness at the far end of the tunnel. Then, with a deafening rumble, a train of cold, iron-gray steel came roaring into view, answering his question in the most direct way possible.
Unfortunately, it was not an answer Naruto found comforting.
Staring at that steel monster barreling toward them from less than a hundred meters away, Naruto finally sucked in a sharp breath of realization. Then he spun around at once and ran flat-out with Koyuki still on his back.]**
On a forest path within the Land of Fire, Sasori of the Red Sand and Deidara—fresh from carrying out a mission assigned by the organization—were on their way back to headquarters in the Land of Rain.
Out of boredom, Deidara had been watching the images on the light screen. The instant that thunderous steel machine appeared in the footage, his eyes lit up. He turned excitedly to Sasori and said,
"Hey, old man! I just had a great idea. Why don't you try using steel in puppet-making and build a steel puppet? It'd definitely be a lot sturdier than those wooden lumps of yours!"
Hidden inside Hiruko, Sasori merely cast a casual glance at the clunky train lumbering across the screen and said in a raspy, dismissive tone,
"A terrible idea. Puppet-making isn't something you can judge by material hardness alone. The flow paths of chakra within the puppet body, its efficiency of chakra absorption, and the smoothness with which techniques can be executed—every one of those has to be controlled with precision."
"Ordinary steel simply can't bear that. If you force it, all you'll end up with is a stiff hunk of dead scrap metal."
"The only feasible option would be to use chakra metal to create a puppet. That might be enough to polish a new work of art. But you know as well as I do how scarce chakra metal is. The idea has no real chance of being put into practice."
"Hah? A work of art?"
The moment the conversation touched on art, Deidara's expression changed at once, and he immediately began refuting him.
"No! True art is a fleeting explosion! It's beauty that vanishes in the instant of ultimate brilliance! Old man, your outdated taste is just as terrible as ever!"
As soon as those words were out, the two of them fell—as they always did—into another fierce argument about art: one insisting that eternal puppets were the true form of art, the other declaring that the beauty of instant explosions was the only truth.
...
["It's going to catch us... there's no way we can outrun it!"
The train thundered down the tracks, effortlessly smashing apart the icicles hanging from the tunnel ceiling. Seeing shards of ice explode in every direction, Koyuki Kazahana completely lost even the will to struggle, and for a moment seemed ready to tell Naruto to stop this futile flight and give up.
But giving up had never, ever been part of Naruto's ninja way.
If anything, his pace didn't slow in the slightest—instead, it became even faster. Charging forward through the snowstorm, he shouted back at Koyuki over his shoulder,
"Don't worry! There's no way something like this train is going to catch me!"
"That's impossible! It's way faster than we are!"
"I said we can escape, so we can escape! I'm never going to give up!"
"I told you already—this is obviously impossible!!"
Watching Naruto gasp for breath and yet still stubbornly shout back at her, Koyuki's restraint finally shattered. All the despair and terror she had been bottling up exploded at once, and even her voice turned shrill.
"Shut up already and be quiet!!" Naruto wasn't about to let himself be drowned out by her scream. He immediately twisted his head and yelled right back.
But before their argument could reach any conclusion, the roar of the steel monster behind them was already growing closer and closer, as if in the very next second it would crush both Naruto and Koyuki beneath its wheels on the tracks.
"No matter how stubbornly you talk, it won't change anything! It's already over!!" Realizing that, the voice of Koyuki Kazahana on Naruto's back was now filled only with despair.
"It's not over! I'm not going to let it end!"
Naruto gritted his teeth and pushed his pace faster still. Sweat streamed constantly from his jawline, but he still shouted with absolute conviction,
"Even if you don't want to keep running anymore, I'm still going to use every bit of strength I have to get you out of here! I'm not going to let us end here—never!!"
As he said it, Naruto let out a thunderous roar.
And in the very next moment, the Nine-Tails' chakra—which had remained dormant ever since his battle with Doto Fuyumaguma—burst into bloom once more.
With that power, Naruto's speed underwent a complete leap in quality. In the blink of an eye, he widened the gap between himself and the train pursuing them from behind.]**
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 126)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter134)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 87
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 79
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 73
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 49
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 45
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 45
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