Naruto: Naruto's Uchiha girlfriend is too arrogant

Chapter 637 Identity Exposed

"Bang--!!!"

【Asura's Blade - God-Slaying Thunder Black Flame Scorching Tail Spiral Chaotic Heaven Zero Style】 struck Mai's mask head-on.

At that moment, the black Amaterasu flames, the golden Nine-Tails chakra, the purple Susanoo power, and the blue Chidori lightning exploded simultaneously in mid-air. The four forces twisted into a huge pillar of light that could pierce through the clouds, turning the entire sky, which had been stained red by the flames of war, into daylight.

However, this attack, surpassing even the Six Paths, failed to engulf Mai. Just as Naruto had suspected, this guy is ridiculously strong.

Mai's figure was thrown backward from the pillar of light of the explosion, crashing heavily to the ground. Debris and dust rose more than a meter high. Then, amidst the chaotic ruins, she staggered to her feet, supporting herself with one hand.

The fox mask she had worn since the start of the battle cracked. A fissure appeared in the center of the mask, and then the entire mask shattered in the middle, its fragments scattering and falling into the rubble at her feet. This revealed the face beneath.

If you only look at her face, she's definitely a standard beautiful girl. Her features are delicate, her skin is fair, and her eyes and brows have a subtle charm that lies between a young girl and a mature woman. The curves of her face and the lines of her chin are soft and clean.

She has the kind of sunny and cute face that makes passersby turn their heads to look at her when she walks down the street.

Unfortunately, his face was cold and devoid of any emotion. His blue eyes, the same blue eyes as Naruto's, were staring straight ahead, filled only with a faint, suppressed weariness.

Mai clenched her fists. She knew exactly what she had to do: retreat. If she continued fighting, her identity would likely be completely exposed.

How many years did it take her to hide her identity as the "leader of Akatsuki" so perfectly? How many layers of disguise did she use to make the people of Konoha only know her as that "unlucky Nine-Tails Jinchuriki" and not some other, more dangerous being?

Now that the mask is broken and the face is exposed, fortunately there aren't too many witnesses present. If this drags on, this advantage will disappear.

However, the nonchalant attitude the other party showed towards her made Mai unable to calm down.

The guy opposite her, another version of herself, handled everything with an air of effortless ease from beginning to end. She found his nonchalant attitude hard to accept. It was as if this was all just a slightly tricky misunderstanding for him; he could have taken it seriously at any time, but he deliberately avoided it.

"...Forget it. I'm fed up too."

Mai said this. Then—

"boom--!!!"

Golden chakra suddenly erupted from her body. A dark golden chakra cloak completely enveloped her, and behind her, several golden chakra tails slowly unfurled.

Perfect Jinchūriki, Yin Nine-Tails Chakra Mode.

Mai raised her right hand, spread her five fingers, and a dark red Tailed Beast Ball began to rapidly condense in her palm.

"...Let's pause for a moment."

Naruto suddenly spoke up. "If you want to keep fighting, I'll oblige. But you've used this power; you know what that means, right?"

"..."

Mai's fingers froze in mid-air. Naruto was right. The Nine-Tails Chakra Mode wasn't a power that could be used secretly. Once released, any competent sensory ninja within a radius of several kilometers could pinpoint its location with pinpoint accuracy.

Mai slowly lowered her hand. She didn't speak, but simply withdrew the Tailed Beast Ball's chakra back into her body, then stood there silently, the golden chakra cloak still burning quietly on her body.

"Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh—"

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, a figure came running from the other side of the Konoha ruins at an unprecedented speed.

His breathing was rapid and heavy, his chest heaving violently—this was Uchiha Sasuke of this world.

His steps abruptly halted when he was about ten meters away from Mai. Then he stood frozen in place, completely still.

He stood there, stunned, his eyes wide open, his black pupils reflecting the figure shrouded in a dark gold chakra cloak.

That face he'd known since childhood, those blue eyes he could spot in a crowd with a single glance, that tired and cold expression he'd never seen her wear before. No mask, no disguise, just laid bare before him.

"...Mai? No...Could it be an illusion?"

"Sasuke, get out of here right now. Don't get in the way."

Mai Uzumaki coldly issued her order to drive him away. She didn't even look him in the eye when she spoke; her gaze merely swept across his face before moving on, as if she were dealing with an inconvenient, insignificant passerby.

"That's not right...you..."

Sasuke's pupils contracted slightly. His mind was frantically processing all the information he was receiving, but he couldn't piece it together into a coherent picture.

"Why...Are you being controlled? By those eyes? Or that mask? Say something!"

"Don't be silly."

Mai seemed to be getting a little impatient.

"What do you know about me if all you do is eat sweets and you don't even have the Mangekyou Sharingan?"

"Was it really necessary to say it like that?" Naruto couldn't stand it anymore. "You were the one who saved the Uchiha clan back then, including Uncle Fugaku and Aunt Mikoto. Without you, Shisui wouldn't have stood by your side..."

"The person I'm about to kill has no right to speak here!" Mai abruptly interrupted Naruto.

Then she turned back to Uchiha Sasuke. She took a deep breath. "In this world, without power, you don't even deserve to be human. You don't deserve to be respected, you don't deserve anyone standing beside you. So I want power. Everything that can make me stronger, I'll take. Everything that can stop me from being seen as a monster, I'll seize. I don't care about the means, the cost, or what you think of me."

Her voice dipped slightly as she finally unearthed the deepest part of her heart, throwing it, along with her blood and flesh, into the sunlight.

"No one has ever cared how I see myself. So why should I care what you think of me?"

She looked into Sasuke's eyes. She looked into the depths of his pupils, at herself, filled with shock and bewilderment.

"In the end, we don't really have any relationship at all. I've disliked your personality since I was a child, so what right do you have to stand here and question me? And who are you to me?"

Sasuke Uchiha in this world is happy. Although he experienced the pain of losing his clansmen, most importantly, his father and mother have always been by his side.

He has never walked alone in hatred and darkness, never been treated as a monster and avoided by others, and never been wanted by the entire ninja world.

He had almost never experienced true darkness in his heart. But now, for the first time, he witnessed the darkness within the heart of the person he loved most.

He only realized today how vast, how deep, and how cold that darkness was. He used to think that Mai was just aloof, just not very talkative, and just used to standing on the edge of the crowd.

It wasn't a habit. She genuinely didn't believe she could stand in a crowd. She never believed it.

"I……"

Sasuke clenched his fists so tightly that his knuckles turned white, and his nails dug into the flesh of his palms, drawing out several small bloodstains.

Something that had been stuck in his chest for far too long was now pounding wildly against his ribs. "How could I not have anything to do with you!" he finally shouted.

"I...were all these years you were just pretending?! I...the kind of relationship I wanted with you..." His voice suddenly lowered, but he still managed to say the last word through gritted teeth, "How could you not know?!"

Upon hearing this, Mai's lips curled up slightly. The curve was so subtle that Sasuke wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been staring intently at her face.

But she did smile. It was a smile that had nothing to do with "happiness" or "warmth"; it was a smile of exhaustion that she couldn't even be bothered to maintain her anger.

"Your personality... is really annoying."

"roar--!!!"

The next moment, Sasuke saw it; the enormous Nine-Tails appeared in his sight. It was a phantom of a demon fox formed from the purest chakra, its nine tails unfurling behind it, blotting out the sky.

An intense, almost tangible, hatred and evil chakra, as the Nine-Tails opened its blood-red maw and roared, crashed down on Sasuke like a tsunami.

"!!!"

Sasuke's body, faced with that hateful chakra, couldn't even muster the instinct to resist. His mind was completely overwhelmed by fear and oppression, his legs lost all strength, and he collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

His consciousness was being swallowed by darkness, his eyelids feeling as heavy as lead. But he bit his tongue. The rusty taste of blood spread in his mouth, and the intense pain jolted his brain awake just before it sank into darkness.

He knelt on the ground, panting heavily, sweat dripping from his chin onto the charred stone slab, blood trickling from the tip of his tongue down the corner of his mouth. He did not faint.

Mai stared silently at Uchiha Sasuke, who was kneeling on the ground, trembling and refusing to close his eyes, as he forced himself to stay conscious through self-harm. Then she turned away, no longer looking at him.

Her goal was simply to incapacitate Sasuke, ideally knock him unconscious, but it didn't matter if he didn't. As long as he couldn't stand up, that was fine.

"...Mai."

Naruto's voice came from behind her, "You know why Sasuke reactivated the Uchiha Police Department, right? Don't you know about all the people he arrested? Every single one of them who was arrested for spreading rumors and slandering you, he personally brought them back. You can't possibly not know..."

"You want me to play dating games with him?"

Mai interrupted Naruto once again, as expected. "What remains unresolved is nothing but a rotten shackle, not worth mentioning. I don't need to like him. He doesn't need to like me either. It's meaningless."

In the distance, Sasuke knelt on the ground and heard those words. He heard every single one clearly. He heard her say "it's unnecessary," he heard her say "it's not worth mentioning," he heard her coldly sum up everything between them as a "love game."

Then he felt a weakness he had never experienced before, a powerlessness that seeped from his very bones.

He could draw his sword, he could fight, he could storm the Akatsuki headquarters for her, he could stand against the whole world for her. But he didn't know how to change that deeply ingrained, scabbed-over thought in her heart—she genuinely felt that no one would ever truly be on her side.

Even Uchiha Sasuke, who stood in front of her and told her personally, "I want to have that kind of relationship with you," is included.

She wanted to push him back, back into the normal world she thought he belonged to, and then turn around and walk back into the darkness. He hated himself. He hated that he was too weak, too stupid, so stupid that he hadn't noticed the darkness hidden beneath her cold exterior all these years.

Even more tragically, he realized that he had been standing outside the line she had drawn all along, foolishly believing that he could cross it by simply taking a few more steps toward her.

Overwhelming emotions finally consumed him completely. Regret, resentment, anger, heartache, and something that had been crushed but then reignited.

All the emotions surged into his heart at once, making his chest feel like it was about to burst. The three tomoe in his eye sockets, which had been spinning wildly, suddenly stopped spinning.

Then, they began to merge. Circle by circle, they drew closer to each other, permeating each other, the edges of the three-comma jewels intertwining in the melting process to form a completely new, never-before-seen texture.

The patterns slowly unfolded on his scarlet irises, like the shadow cast by the Grim Reaper's scythe under the moon—cold, dangerous, and carrying a poignant beauty bordering on death.

Kaleidoscope Sharingan.