"I... lost."
With Madara's answer, Naruto put away his kunai, got off him, and sat on the ground.
Madara propped himself up with his remaining arm and sat up. After a moment's thought, he looked at Naruto and finally voiced his greatest doubt. "Naruto, you're no ordinary kid, are you?"
Naruto gave him an enigmatic smile. "What makes you say that?"
Madara laid out his reasoning. "Your actions and experience aren't anything a seventeen-year-old kid should have."
"At first, I thought that old toad on Mount Myōboku was guiding you."
"But after thinking it through, I realized that even with an expert guiding you, your way of doing things couldn't transcend the limits of your age and experience!"
"Actually..." Naruto was about to explain.
But Madara interrupted him. "Don't tell me yet. Let me guess."
Naruto nodded. "All right. Go ahead."
Madara pondered for a moment. "You... came from the future, didn't you?"
Suddenly, everything fell silent.
Naruto wore an unreadable expression. "Uh... that sort of thing shouldn't be possible, should it?"
Madara's gaze darkened. "Yes. Within the bounds of our current knowledge, it's impossible."
"But when I witnessed my closest friend being killed, I didn't know the Mangekyō Sharingan existed."
"Without my younger brother's death, I would never have unlocked the secret of the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan."
"Without the Uchiha's stone tablet, I would never have learned about the Rinnegan, the God Tree, Kaguya, or Infinite Tsukuyomi."
"People always try to understand the world within their current frame of reference, instinctively deeming anything beyond their understanding impossible."
"And even when they understand that principle, they're still constrained by that framework, instinctively rejecting such possibilities..."
"So it wasn't until you said there were two more levels beyond Perfect Susanoo that I became fairly certain of my guess... Tell me, what