The War Within

Takuma felt as if every bone in his body were being crushed, every muscle fiber torn apart, and every cell burned alive.

It was like countless snakes slithering through his veins, their scales scraping the vessel walls as their icy venom seeped deep into his marrow.

Takuma had no idea how long he'd been unconscious.

He could only feel two forces tearing at each other inside him.

One was the Cursed Seal.

The cold, savage chakra was like a starving beast. It spread from his neck, traveling down through his meridians, muscles, and bones.

Wherever the Cursed Seal's power passed, his cells were forcibly altered—swelling, twisting, mutating, as if it meant to reshape his body into a vessel better suited to contain the seal.

The other force was the Healing Factor.

Wolverine's healing ability was pushed to its limits, frantically repairing the tissue damaged by the Cursed Seal.

The seal corrupted and warped old cells, and new ones immediately regenerated to replace them—only to be corrupted again and regenerate once more. The cycle repeated without end.

And caught between these two forces was the Senju Bloodline.

Without the Senju physique, his body would have collapsed in the very first clash.

Unconscious, Takuma sensed the war raging inside him.

He "saw" the cells transformed by the Cursed Seal. They had turned deep purple, their surfaces covered in twisted black patterns like cracks reflected on polluted water.

The Cursed Seal cells were several times more active than normal cells, and their chakra output far exceeded the norm. But they were unstable, each one on the verge of collapse.

New, healthy cells surged from deep within his bone marrow like a tide, washing over the areas corrupted by the Cursed Seal and replacing the deep-purple mutated cells.

But the seal's power was inexhaustible. Each time its territory was taken, it quickly reclaimed it.

The two forces used his body as a battlefield, locked in a tug-of-war as they tore at each other.

With every clash, Takuma felt as if he were being flayed alive.

His consciousness faded again and again beneath the agony, only to gather itself once more with the Healing Factor's support.

Trapped in a body being torn apart and repaired at the same time, he could only endure every second of the torment in full awareness.

He didn't know how much time had passed.

At last, a sliver of clarity emerged from the chaos of Takuma's mind.

Deep within his consciousness, he saw a space.

Water stretched beneath his feet, black as ink, reflecting a sky that did not exist.

Thick fog shrouded everything around him, limiting his vision to just three meters.

The air was still. There was no wind, no sound—not even the sound of his own breathing.

Takuma looked down and saw his reflection on the water... His skin was pale, and the Cursed Seal patterns on his neck were black as ink, like three twisted snakes emerging from his collar and crawling up his neck to his jaw.

Then he looked up and saw another version of himself standing across from him.

The same height, the same build, the same face.

But the skin was grayish-white, like a corpse's.

Cursed Seal patterns covered his entire body, from his face to the backs of his hands, densely packed. He smiled, the corners of his mouth stretched almost to his ears.

"Finally, we meet." The Takuma opposite him spoke in a voice exactly like Takuma's own, but with a deeper, hoarse echo, as if a second person were speaking at the same time. "Doesn't it hurt?"

"Doesn't it make you angry?" The other Takuma stepped forward, sending ripples across the water beneath his feet. They were purple, the color of the Cursed Seal. "Why should you have to suffer through all this? Why should those strong enough get to crush you whenever they please?"

"You're not me," Takuma finally replied, his voice dry and hoarse. "Quit pretending to be my therapist."

The other Takuma tilted his head. "I am you. I'm all the anger you've suppressed, all the fear you've swallowed, all the pain you didn't dare cry out when you faced death. When Orochimaru had his hand around your throat, what were you thinking?"

"What else?" Takuma said. "How to survive."

"Survive?" The other Takuma burst into laughter, the shrill, grating sound echoing through the space. "Survive by struggling like that? Survive with your useless system? You draw posters, milk, toy wings—and you call those things what you need to survive? You can't even withstand one attack from Orochimaru!"

The moment his words fell, the other Takuma moved.

He appeared in front of Takuma in an instant and swung a fist at his face.

Takuma instinctively raised his arm to block, but his consciousness had no Healing Factor, no Spider-Sense, and no boost from any other power.

The punch landed squarely on his face, hard enough to send him flying.

He tumbled across the water three or four times before coming to a stop. The taste of iron filled his mouth, and the pain felt exactly like it did in reality.

"See?" The other Takuma looked down at him, his grayish-white face full of scorn. "This is how weak you are. So weak you can't even beat your own anger."

Takuma braced himself against the water and stood up, wiping at the blood that wasn't really there.

He took a deep breath, then raised his head and looked his other self in the eye.

"Are you done?"

The other Takuma narrowed his eyes.

"You say you're my suppressed anger," Takuma said. "Then you should know what I'm best at."

The other Takuma froze for a moment.

"You've said all that, but your main point is just one thing—I'm weak," Takuma said. "But when have I ever denied it? From my first day in this world, I knew I wasn't some kind of genius. No Sharingan, no Nine-Tails, no Wood Release. My rewards have been a mixed bag. My teammates died, my teacher ended up in the hospital, and the only thing I can do is take a beating."

He took a step forward, deliberately closing the distance between them.

"But there's one thing you got wrong."

"What?"

"You think all this makes me angry?" Takuma tugged at the corners of his mouth, managing a smile more miserable than a sob. "I was prepared for it from the start. When Yamada and Sato died right in front of me in the Land of Waves, I understood. This world isn't a game. There are no second chances. Of course Orochimaru is stronger than me. He's one of the Sannin, an S-rank missing-nin, and the mastermind behind the Konoha Crush Plan. Why would a Genin who graduated just a few years ago be able to beat him?"

The other Takuma frowned, the Cursed Seal patterns twisting across his face.

"So you're fine with him crushing you? Treating you like an experiment?"

"Who said I'm fine with it?" Takuma shot back. "But does being unhappy mean I have to let anger consume me? Does it mean I have to turn into some inhuman monster like you?"

He pointed at the Cursed Seal patterns covering the other version of his face.

"Look at you—or rather, look at 'us.' If we really turned into something like you, that would mean Orochimaru had won."

The other Takuma's expression twisted for an instant. The Cursed Seal patterns suddenly spread, nearly covering his entire face in black lines.

"What do you know—" His voice grew even hoarser, the echoes layering over one another. "You think you can win with willpower alone? While you're talking to me in this mindscape, the Cursed Seal is still corrupting your body out there! How long can your Healing Factor hold out? An hour? A day? It'll run out eventually!"

"Then let it run out."

Takuma stared into those pitch-black eyes and spoke, word by word.

"If I can put up with an edgy chuunibyou like you, I can put up with a little pain."

Takuma walked forward until he stood face-to-face with the other version of himself, close enough to see his own reflection in the other's pupils.

"You think you're my darkest emotions? You're just something Orochimaru shoved into me. You wear my skin and speak with my voice, but you're not a part of me."

He raised his hand and pressed it against the other Takuma's chest.

"Get out of my body."

Something deep within his soul awakened.

It was something that had lain dormant in the Senju Bloodline.

Senju Hashirama had ended the Warring States period with more than just strength. He'd done it with his will—a will that no power could break.

The Healing Factor seemed to receive a command and suddenly accelerated.

The new, healthy cells no longer simply replaced those that had been corrupted. They began attacking the Cursed Seal's territory.

Wolverine's Healing Factor and the Senju Bloodline, two forces from different worlds, began to truly fuse as they fought the Cursed Seal.

Using the Senju Bloodline as its foundation and the Healing Factor as its weapon, they formed an entirely new defensive system.

The Cursed Seal's power let out a silent shriek and launched a frenzied counterattack inside Takuma.

The Healing Factor regenerated faster than the Cursed Seal could corrupt.

For every healthy cell devoured, three new cells took its place.

The Cursed Seal's territory began to shrink. It receded from his entire body to his upper half, then back to his neck, until at last it was pinned down within a three-inch radius of the bite mark.

Inside the mindscape, the other Takuma's body began to crack.

His grayish-white skin flaked away like parched earth, revealing healthy new skin underneath.

The Cursed Seal patterns faded, retreating from his whole body to the backs of his hands, then from his hands to his fingertips, before disappearing completely.

The other Takuma looked down at his crumbling body, his expression shifting from ferocity to calm.

"You think this is over?" His voice grew fainter, as if coming from far away. "I'll still be there. Every time you're angry, afraid, or despairing—"

"Come back whenever you want," Takuma interrupted him. "But use a different line next time. That one's way too old."

The other Takuma's body vanished completely, like the last ripple on the water, fading into nothing in the blink of an eye.

The mindscape began to collapse.