Today was not a good day for Sakura Haruno. Actually, most days haven't been good for Sakura, nor for the rest of Team Seven. One couldn't blame them, though, seeing as the whole world was kind of wiped out and they were probably the last humans left. Well, maybe some remote tribe off in the Land of Whatever was still thriving, but as for the rest of civilization—poof! Gone in an instant.

Try as she might, though, Sakura couldn't really bring herself to care. True, she felt sad but it was kind of a detached sadness. Occasionally, she would look around the dark cave that she and her teammates had holed up in and think, Huh, I used to have a house.

As of right now, however, she was oddly fascinated by the little spider in front of her. It climbed up the wall, its legs somehow finding a grip on the slippery surface. Carefully, Sakura prodded it with a nearby stick, and the spider started to climb up the wall faster. Resilient, then. Determined. Sakura's smile grew. He's the perfect friend! Absolutely convinced that Sasuke would be as excited as she was, she yelled, "Ke, look who I found!"

Sasuke, who had been devouring the leg of some animal or another, looked up. He squinted, wiping some of the blood off his cheek. Maybe I should cook it next time. Nevertheless, he called back, "What is it, Ra?"

"A spider!" Sakura turned to look at him, smiling. "You know, To told you to not eat raw meat anymore," she said offhandedly.

Sasuke scowled and took another large bite from the chunk of meat in his hands. "To's paranoid, and I don't care about the spider unless I can eat it."

Sakura got a thoughtful look on her face. She took her stick up and once again prodded at the arachnid. "I mean, you could theoretically eat him. He's not poisonous."

Sasuke paused. He looked up and squinted at Sakura. "Really?"

"He probably wouldn't fill you up very much…" She stared off into space, lost in her own head.

Sasuke, meanwhile, looked back down at the unfortunate creature that had wandered into the cave. It was a little larger than his abdomen; he could probably finish it in a few more minutes, and it definitely wouldn't fill him. A spider might help. And so, Sasuke Uchiha stood up, walked right past a contemplating Sakura, grabbed the spider on the wall, and swallowed it whole.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence in the cave. Then, Sakura let out a horrified screech. "Ke, you ate him!"

Sasuke swallowed a second time, satisfied when the spider finally stopped trying to scurry back up his throat. Then, he gave Sakura a confused look. "You said I could eat it."

"Theoretically!" Sakura snapped. "We had a friend, Ke, and you ate him!"

Sasuke scowled. "It was a spider and I was hungry."

"You don't just go around eating your friends!"

"I don't," Sasuke agreed. "I go around eating food!"

"Friends aren't food!"

"My friends aren't, I don't know about your's!"

"You don't have any friends!"

"Neither do you!"

They both glared at each other, full of venom. Nearly in unison, they both pulled their arms back, hands fisted, ready to throw a punch, when a voice yelled, "Not again! I swear, you two will be the death of me!" Naruto Uzumaki stomped into the cave, his shirt missing and nearly every visible inch of skin caked in mud and blood. He stared at them, scowling. "I left for twenty minutes and you two are already ready to kill each other!"

Immediately, Sasuke and Sakura pulled back. Sakura hung her head in shame but Sasuke just looked away, not making eye contact. "I'm sorry, To," they chorused, and Naruto sighed.

"Yeah, whatever, I guess I should have—" Naruto froze, eyes zeroing in on the bloody carcass in the middle of the cave. "Sasuke! I thought I told you not to eat raw meat! Either cook it or wait for me to cook it!"

"I could cook it," Sakura said.

"Yeah, I don't trust you with fire." He turned back to Sasuke. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Sasuke scowled. "I was hungry cooking it would take too long."

"You're always hungry. Sasuke, you could have gotten salmonella—is that what it's called, Sakura?"

"Yeah," she muttered. "It can be deadly."

"See, Sasuke? You could have died!"

"I'm not going to die."

"Says who?"

"No one."

"Exactly—no one because everyone is dead!"

Sasuke waved his concern away, flushing a bit when he realized that his hand was still stained red. Clearing his throat, he said, "You're exaggerating."

"Exagger— Oh my god, Sasuke, you're insufferable." Sighing, he sat down on the floor. "Whatever, it doesn't matter. What does matter is this!" He pulled something out of his pack and placed it on the floor, smiling. "It changes everything."

Sakura examined it closely. Her eyes widened. "It's a scroll!" she said, delighted. "I can keep all my friends in there now—"

"No," Naruto interrupted, "you cannot. This is not a storage scroll, it contains a jutsu."

"You mean it's storing a jutsu?" Sasuke muttered.

Naruto ignored him. "The jutsu...is a time travel jutsu!" There is a bit of silence, and Naruto took that as a cue to continue. "We can go back and save everyone! Sai and Yamato and Kakashi—"

"Kaka-sensei's fine," Sakura interrupted.

Sasuke nodded, though Naruto noticed him eyeing the rotting carcass again. "Yeah, he's over there, like always."

Against his will, Naruto turned toward the corner of the cave. There sat a skeleton, propped up against the wall. Its legs were folded, in its arms was an orange book, and a hitai-ate was slanted over one of its eye sockets. More importantly, though, a rusty kunai was jammed into its rib cage. Naruto glanced at it, then glanced back at Sasuke and Sakura. Flatly, he said, "Oops. Sorry, easy mistake."

Sasuke snorted. He turned to Sakura and muttered, "And he calls us the insane ones."

"Yeah," Sakura agreed. She turned to the skeleton and called out, "Hey, Kaka-sensei, how are you?" The skeleton's head promptly tumbled off of its body and shattered into a hundred pieces. Naruto stared, wide-eyed, but Sakura just nodded. "See, he's fine."

"...I'm not having this conversation with you two. Look, let's get back to the scroll. We could...we could save Itachi! That's great!"

Sasuke tilted his head, considering. "How would we do that?"

"We could kill Danzo!"

"But wouldn't that create another complicated slew of problems?"

"But we can survive them!"

"No, I really don't think we could."

Naruto scowled. "You just said that you weren't going to die!"

"Don't twist my words."

"Sa— Ugh, whatever. Look, this scroll is a good thing. Let's do it."

"Do what?"

"Go back in time!"

"We could," Sakura agreed, "but what if we cause some kind of rip in the space-time continuum?"

"That won't happen."

"How do you know?" Sasuke asked.

"I just...what's the point of having a time-travel jutsu if it just destroys everything?"

"Then how come we didn't know that it existed before?" Sasuke said. "If someone has a time-travel jutsu, then they could go back in time. They could sell it and make millions."

"They might want to keep it a secret."

"But wouldn't they fix everything?"

"I...maybe they fixed things for themselves."

Sasuke rolled his eyes. Sakura hummed. "What if we end up in each other's bodies by accident? What if we end up in someone else's body?" A pause. "What if we end up in the body of a sea slug?"

Naruto stared at her. "I...whoever made this probably—"

"And what would happen if we were shoved into the body of a dinosaur right before the meteor hit Earth?" Sasuke asked. "Because that would be bad. Do you know how to control how far back we go?"

"I'm sure—"

"What if," Sasuke continued, "we ended up in one of our parents' bodies while they're having se—"

"Stop it!" Naruto snapped.

Sasuke shrugged. "It could happen."

"But—"

"It could."

"Ke," Sakura said, "stop it. You're ruining it for To!"

"I'm sorry, I'm just laying out all the possibilities." He sighed and turned to Naruto. "Sorry, To, you can do the jutsu."

Naruto, however, was just staring down at the scroll in his hand. "I don't think I want to go back anymore…"

Sasuke shrugged. "Fair enough." He grabbed the scroll out of Naruto's hand and threw it to Sakura. "Here, use it for your friends." Sakura squealed in delight. Naruto stared blankly as she opened it, scratched out the jutsu that was written on it, and started to draw a storage seal. After a few moments, Sasuke awkwardly patted him on the back. "Don't feel too bad, To. It was doomed to fail."

"...yeah."

Realizing that he hadn't really cheered him up, Sasuke sighed and rummaged through his pack. Finally, he pulled out a deck of cards and said, "You want to play Crazy Eights?"

Sakura's head snapped up. "I do!"

Flatly, Naruto said, "I refuse to play cards with you two."

Sakura smiled. "You can play with Kaka-sensei. You haven't been talking to him much lately—I think he's starting to get worried."

Naruto stared at her, then looked back at Kakashi's skeleton. Well, I could get some peace and quiet for once. "Give me the damn cards."

And that is how Naruto found himself sitting in front of the headless skeleton of his dead Sensei. A bit too late, he realized that he forgot how to play Crazy Eights. Hey, Kurama, do you remember?

There was a low growl followed by a groggy No, and Naruto's head was once again filled with loud snores. Normally, Naruto would kick and scream and do everything in his power to get the fox to wake up—and it would never work—but he didn't really care at the moment and, quite frankly, he was tired of being the sane one. So, he looked up to where the skeleton's skull would have been and asked, "You got any twos?"

.fin.