An Inch of Gold

30

Author's Note: As promised, next chapter of IOG. As usual, this is not edited. I have a bunch of stuff in earlier chapters to go back and fix, so hopefully when I do that I'll go through this and clean it up a bit. It's a bit choppy in some places, but considering the nature of events, if I went into too much detail I think you guys would get bored...

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Several things happen simultaneously.

Kakashi and Future Naruto both dart forward, as Teisōko barrels toward the time portal with Sarada. Giant tendrils of flame and light explode from this Naruto, straining toward Sarada as Kakashi puts on a burst of speed to reach her. He manages to brush her ankle before she and Teisōko vanish through the portal.

"Sarada!" Kakashi's students all shout in shock and dismay.

"Damn it!" Naruto snarls as his glowing chakra hands swipe at the empty air. The overwhelming chakra recedes.

With Teisōko gone, the power keeping Future Sasuke in place disappears, and he stalks forward, Rinnegan blazing to life in his left eye. "Move, I'm going after her."

"How?" Future Naruto asks. "You don't even know where they went—or when."

"The seam in reality still fresh, I can follow the trail."

"But there are infinite layers of time and space you'd have to weed through first, aren't there?" Sakura cries. "That could take forever!"

"Not necessarily," Kakashi says. "I managed to place a chakra trace on her before she went through. It's faint, but it's there. I'll go with you and—"

There's a commotion at the entrance to the cavern, and everyone tenses, expecting a new wave of curse-sealed monsters to arrive. Instead, the rest of Team Konohamaru arrive, with Hinata and Sarada's mother in tow. The woman is pale beneath the mark on her forehead, and her eyes dart around the space with a sort of manic desperation, before they fall upon her husband.

"Sarada?" she croaks.

Future Sasuke's jaw is set and he shakes his head. To anyone who doesn't know him, he would seem unaffected, but Sasuke knows that look from experience. His future self is probably gritting his teeth so hard he's in danger of breaking them.

And so he has to be the one to tell her, "Teisōko took her through a time portal."

Future Sakura's hand claps to her mouth in disbelief.

"Then we have to go after her!" Boruto declares.

"She could be anywhere," Mitsuki points out, Sasuke thinks if anyone looks unaffected, it's this strange kid.

"Everyone calm down," Future Naruto orders. "We will figure something out."

"Calm down?!" the younger Naruto demands. "Did you see what just happened? That creepy and old lady got made all...creepy and young, and powerful, and she grabbed Sarada! This isn't the time to be calm!"

"It's exactly the time to be calm," Kakashi informs him in a level voice, "because we have a slew of problems coming at us and a limited time to deal with them. Missteps at this juncture could be fatal."

"As if they're not already?" Sakura asks, and then jumps a little when the small boy at her side burrows in closer to her hip.

"I want to go home," he murmurs tremulously.

She shivers a little. He's a defenceless kid right now, but in a few decades, he will grow up and become one of the most terrifying people she has ever met.