Setting: The Fourth Great Ninja War—
After listening to the lengthy stories from the Warring States period, the four Reanimated Hokage finally arrived at the battlefield!
Madara: "I've been waiting for you, Hashirama!!"
Hashirama: "Ah, hold on a second!"
"Uh..."
Madara Uchiha's enthusiasm was met with cold indifference, leaving him standing there awkwardly like an idiot.
Hashirama pointed at the Ten-Tails with a sheepish grin and explained: "Because, well... it's kind of running this way..."
The several-hundred-thousand-ton Divine Tree baby—the Ten-Tails—was joyfully charging toward the Allied Shinobi Forces like an overexcited puppy!
However, no one could have anticipated what happened next...
—A milky-white rectangular pillar descended from the heavens!
—The enormous unknown object crashed down HARD onto the charging Ten-Tails?!!
BOOOOOM!!
In an instant, the ground shook violently!
The Ten-Tails let out a shrill, ear-piercing scream that echoed across the entire battlefield!!
"GYAAAAAAAHHH?!"
The Allied Shinobi Forces erupted into chaos! Even the four Konoha Hokage who had just arrived hadn't seen this coming!
Madara Uchiha's long hair was blown wild by the kicked-up dust as he whipped around to look...
The Ten-Tails, which was larger than a freaking mountain, now lay completely flattened on the ground, pinned down and unable to budge even an inch by a rectangular pillar even more massive than itself!!
The thing was milky-white and semi-transparent. They couldn't sense any chakra from it whatsoever, yet it had some kind of 'never-before-seen text' flowing from right to left across its surface.
"Did the Lord Hokage do this?!"
"That's incredible! They just squashed that monster flat!!"
"As expected of the previous Hokage! I feel so much safer now!"
The Allied Shinobi Forces cheered excitedly. Having witnessed Lord Fourth transfer that Super Tailed Beast Bomb earlier, they naturally assumed the Reanimated Hokage had summoned something to pancake the Ten-Tails.
"No, it wasn't us." First Hokage Hashirama's expression turned grave. Even his 'Sage Art: Gate of the Great God' didn't have the power to suppress the Ten-Tails this easily and firmly!!
"I can't sense any chakra, and it's not senjutsu either..." Second Hokage Tobirama mused thoughtfully: "I've never seen this kind of writing before. It resembles the tablet in the Uchiha shrine." Ordinary people couldn't read that text, but those with the Uchiha Sharingan could decipher it without difficulty.
After speaking, he followed his chakra sensing toward Naruto's direction.
And there, arriving fashionably late compared to the Hokage, was Sasuke Uchiha!
"Sasuke-kun?!!" Sakura's eyes widened in utter shock. "Why are you..."
Naruto had already sensed this through sage mode and wasn't surprised. "You're way too late, Sasuke."
All of Konoha's shinobi were stunned by Sasuke Uchiha's sudden appearance. His former classmates immediately gathered around.
When they heard Sasuke say he wanted to become Hokage, they exploded in anger, accusing him of cracking a terrible joke! How could a rogue ninja who'd been on the run for years just waltz back and become Hokage?!
"While I'm very happy to see you all aspiring to become Hokage..." Lord First interrupted their bickering with a kind smile. "Don't get too comfortable now! We still don't know what that thing is or who's responsible for it."
Sasuke shifted his attention to the object currently squishing the Ten-Tails. He'd also assumed the Hokage were behind it, but clearly that wasn't the case.
"Oi, Uchiha brat." Lord Second called out to Sasuke bluntly: "This thing resembles your Uchiha tablet. Try using that Mangekyō Sharingan of yours to decode it!"
Even Madara Uchiha hadn't made that connection, yet it was Tobirama—the man most suspicious of the Uchiha—who first thought to use the Mangekyō Sharingan to decipher the flowing text.
"Hmph, only weaklings desperately study their opponents."
Madara scoffed arrogantly but, just as Tobirama suggested, activated his Mangekyō Sharingan to examine the flowing text on the pillar...
On the other side, Sasuke Uchiha did the same. While internally marveling that Lord Second understood the Uchiha better than they understood themselves, he also activated his Mangekyō Sharingan.
The two looked fine at first!
But the instant they laid eyes on it, they both froze completely!!
It was one thing for Sasuke to react that way, but even the legendary Madara showed such a stunned expression!
"Oi, what happened?! Sasuke! Can you read what's written there?!!" Worried that Sasuke had fallen victim to some enemy genjutsu, Naruto grabbed his hand, desperately trying to channel his own chakra into Sasuke's body to snap him out of it.
"We should try as well!"
The speaker was Hiashi Hyūga, head of the Hyūga clan and Hinata's father.
As wielders of Konoha's other legendary dōjutsu, the Hyūga couldn't afford to fall behind the Uchiha!
All the Hyūga clan members, including Hinata, activated their Byakugan in unison! The very next moment, they all displayed the exact same gobsmacked expressions as Madara Uchiha and Sasuke Uchiha!
"Oi! What's going on, I'm asking you!!"
Naruto frantically called out to both Sasuke and Hinata-chan.
"I-I can... I can see the text clearly..." Hinata responded quietly to Naruto-kun, her voice barely above a whisper. "But the content is...!!"
Halfway through her sentence, Hinata's voice caught in her throat. She looked absolutely shocked!
"Hey! What the heck does it say?!!" Naruto grabbed Sasuke by the collar in complete desperation. Even his sage mode couldn't sense what that thing was, and the Nine-Tails inside him was more shocked than anyone on the entire battlefield—something actually existed that could suppress the Ten-Tails, which even the Tailed Beasts feared, so completely and effortlessly?!!
Sasuke Uchiha tried focusing intently on decoding the text with his Sharingan, but Naruto kept interrupting him over and over, making it absolutely impossible to concentrate!
"You're so damn loud! It says—"
Sasuke suddenly paused, as if his eyes had landed on something utterly unexpected.
"N-Naruto-kun..." Hinata seemed to see it too, but her voice was so soft that Naruto completely missed it.
"What does it say?!! Just spit it out already, damn it!!"
With everyone else pressuring them, plus Naruto's ear-splitting shout, Sasuke Uchiha and Hinata Hyūga both spoke at the exact same moment:
"Naruto, I love you..."
"Naruto-kun, I love you!"
Naruto: "..."
Allied Shinobi Forces: "..."
The Hokage: "..."
Complete and utter silence blanketed the battlefield...
Terrifyingly, deathly quiet...
"...Huh???"
Naruto tilted his head in confusion, his brain taking a full two seconds to process what he'd just heard, then: "EHHHHHHH?!!!!!"
And then, like a dam breaking, everyone else finally snapped out of their stupor!
"WHAAAAAAAAT?!!!!!!"
Their jaws dropped wide enough to fit two whole eggs inside! They stared in absolute shock at the love triangle—no, the three people involved: Naruto, Sasuke, and Hinata!
Sakura's reaction was the most dramatic of all!
She stumbled backward away from Naruto and Sasuke and literally fell on her butt three or four meters away!
"Sa-Sasuke-kun likes... No, wait! The person Sasuke-kun LOVES is Naruto?!!! And Hinata too?!!" Sakura Haruno went completely white, her mind blanking out! She could wrap her head around Hinata loving Naruto, but the person Sasuke-kun loved was ALSO...
Ino Yamanaka clutched her chest, struggling to calm her wildly racing heart. "Then what the hell have Sakura and I been competing for all these years?!!!"
Shino Aburame calmly adjusted his sunglasses. "I always knew you two were different from everyone else. If you ask me why, it's because Naruto and Sasuke, you two once—"
Shino: "...I really hate being ignored."
"Team 7's relationships are a complete disaster," Chōji Akimichi munched on his chips thoughtfully. "Our team's dynamics are way less complicated."
Slap!
Shikamaru Nara's hand met his forehead with an audible smack. As the only person thinking clearly right now, he really, REALLY didn't want to step up and be the responsible one who had to explain this mess.
So... he wisely chose silence...
"This is such a drag..."