Chapter 1: Dreams and Bad Mornings

Disclaimer: ......I don't own Naruto........

Hiya, sorry about the dividers disappearing.

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Flashes of thunder light up the landscape. Even with the disorienting lights, the two young shinobi did not blink or lose sight of their quarry.

Years of searching and hoping to find him had brought them to this exact moment. Sasuke was standing fifty yards away from them; his sharingan eyes staring coldly back at them.

That smirk, mocking and confident, was set on his face as if the two shinobi standing before him had never been anything more than a nuisance.

Suddenly everything began to blur as if reality were just water colors, once clearly defined outlines became impossible to distinguish. Then all the colors which had been blurring began to swim around and reorganize themselves into an entirely different arrangement.

What had once been an open field with tall emerald grasses, small deposits of rain water in puddles, rolling hills and large boulders littered throughout. Now it seems like a vision of hell. What little remained of the plant life was either withered from fire or still burning. The field was now filled with large craters, many of the boulders have been completely decimated or cut into pieces. There was no water to be seen anywhere.

The only thing he could recognize were the two people standing before him. The pink-haired girl had her arms wrapped around the other. Tears were rolling down her face, she was pleading with him. Although the girl clutching him tightly was sobbing, Sasuke's face may have been carved from the same steel as his blade.

She never even had seen him raise his blade. With one swift motion, the sword disappeared into her chest and exited out of her back.

She stumbled away from him, the blade sliding out of her torso. She brought her hands to her chest. When she moved her right hand away from her chest, she seen her hand was coated with a red thick liquid. She returned her gaze to the young man who was responsible for this, looking for answers.

His cold eyes were all that met her and as if in slow motion she began to fall backwards. She dropped into one of now endless craters that cluttered the landscape.

The blond standing 10 feet away was paralyzed. The scene he just witnessed ripped a hole in his chest. Drops of blood followed her body as she fell from sight. Each instant spanned an eternity in his mind.

A red haze was creeping into his vision, the details of his surroundings falling away as this rage began to boil.

Naruto's eyes glazed over and he heard a growl from within himself and he was yanked to the eerie and dank sub-basement of his mind. He stood lifeless staring at his reflection. The enormous red fox crept closer to the bars of his cage. The water around Naruto began to bubble up, the fox's chakra seemingly about to consume him. The bubbles were at eye level and about to touch Naruto when the Uchiha suddenly appeared next to Naruto.

"You don't learn do you, dobe?" Sasuke said as he used him sharingan to suppress the chakra of the fox.

A ferocious growl emitted from beyond the bars, Naruto however didn't hear the growl nor did he ever look up from the reflection in the water. The fox whispered something but Sasuke couldn't make it out, Naruto though, snapped to attention.

"I am ancient beyond your pathetic mortal years will ever last." Naruto spoke but it was not his own voice. As Sasuke looked from Naruto to the cage he noticed that Naruto was both standing next to him and standing inside the cage as he was moments before, the fox was missing completely. The Naruto inside the cage was staring at his reflection in the water.

The world around Naruto began to fade away.

Naruto's senses were suddenly assaulted as he regained control over his body. Sasuke's body was on the ground in front of him, lifeless and drenched in blood.

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Naruto awoke with a violent shake, covered in sweat. He had that same nightmare again. It had been several months since the deaths of his former squad seven teammates, but still he was haunted by the dream. Naruto looked at his clock to see that it was only three in the morning.

".......Three hours of sleep, how pointless....." he mumbled jumping out of his bed and heading to his bathroom.

Since receiving his inheritance from his clan after it was revealed that his father had been the Fourth Hokage, Naruto had resided in his family's old estate. It was a fairly large manor, three stories tall with a cathedral ceiling on the top floor. The manor was in the center of large compound which was surrounded by a twelve foot tall wall. Naruto felt that this amount of space was unnecessarily large, but who was he to complain.

Naruto examined himself in the mirror before his shower. At 20 years of age, his body has never been in better shape. The scars though were a constant reminder that he didn't belong anywhere. He traced his fingers around his scars on his chest. Some of them he received while on assignment, the majority of them he received from the villagers. When he was younger the members of the village who had lost family to the Kyuubi would find him on his birthday and attempt to inflict as much pain as they could. Sometimes he was able to get away from them. Other times.........

After his shower, Naruto geared up and donned his black overcoat and mask. He had been assigned to Anbu just after returning from his mission to recover Sasuke. It seemed to him that Tsunade wanted to keep him busy in order to keep him from brooding over the death of his comrades. He performed his tasks well, despite constantly being in trouble with whoever was his captain. He didn't resort to goofing around, but he talked almost nonstop. Three days ago, he went down to Anbu headquarters for his most recent disciplinary meeting, however instead of the usual, getting yelled at and assigned patrol duty, He was promoted to captain. There were only a handful of captains in the black ops and they reported directly to the Hokage. He was utterly shocked but the reasoning that he had been told was that despite his mouth, he had grown into an excellent battle field tactician.

Naruto looked out into the stillness of the night, deciding that he should go to the Anbu headquarters instead of staring at his ceiling until dawn again. Besides he had an important requisition filed and needed to know if it had been approved.

Once Naruto had made it outside, he leapt onto the perimeter wall of the estate, jumping to the nearest rooftop and disappearing into the night.

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Out in the desert, Temari is leaning up against her war fan. She had been outside nearly the entire night training and now the sun was rising. Glad that she had avoided the blazing sun for her training. She was completely spent, every muscle in her body ached. 'I guess I am at my limit for now' she shrugged while swinging the war fan into its harness on her back.

Just as she was heeded back she heard something that made her stomach drop. The gate claxons nearest to her were ringing loudly, something is terribly wrong here. Despite her exhaustion she bolted back into the village. But someone was waiting at the gate, perhaps just for her......

"Hey, Temari, what's the rush?" the voice came from the figure leaning up against the gate. As she neared with her war fan drawn and prepared to do whatever she was capable of in her condition, as if the darkness were just a blanket that just was ripped off, she could see who was there and she realized just what was going on here.

"KANKURO, WHAT THE HELL, I THOUGHT SOMETHING THE VILLAGE WAS UNDER ATTACK!!!!" Temari was livid, but Kankuro was on the ground laughing hysterically at her. With each passing second her face was becoming a little bit scarier and the 4 shinobi patrol guard could see this was about to go poorly for people wearing face paint..... With one draw of the war fan, Temari's ability with her fan sent Kankuro sailing through the air and connecting with a large boulder. She drew the war fan behind her and despite her exhaustion, summoned a massive amount of chakra.

"Wind Style; Howling Vortex Crusher" she bellowed, as she brought the fan down overhead it seemed to move too slowly as if she were entirely under water. As the fan came down a concentrated blast of chakra infused wind crossed the distance in the blink of an eye. Kankuro almost didn't have time to dodge since didn't think she would be able to produce that kind of power.

He had went to bed when she left to train and came out to see her still training when he woke. She could barely stand much less attack when she got to the gate after his joke. Yet still, the boulder she hit exploded into dust and a few pebbles.

"Now, come on, that wasn't that bad." Kankuro realized she wasn't done yet as she raised the fan again. Kankuro took off as he seen that she was not going to take it easy, Temari ran in pursuit sending the same technique after Kankuro.

Standing up on top of the Gate was Gaara, crossing his arms. Upon seeing his siblings he shook his head. Kankuro had been messing with Temari a lot lately. On top of that it seems like Temari is a little high strung as of late. He furrowed his eyebrows, trying to decide on what to do with these two.

While lost in his thoughts, he didn't notice Kankuro rounding back towards the gate and his Ultimate Defense Sand suddenly formed a barrier around him and a missed blast from Temari sent sand and rock fragments flying at him.

'Lucky the sand doesn't get lost in thought' Gaara sighed

After his barrier of sand slowly returned into his gourd, a shinobi landed on top of the gate beside him.

"Kazekage-sama, we received a message from Konoha for you." Gaara didn't acknowledge that the young man has even spoken to him.

"Uh....Gaara-same?" he said while raising his voice to get a response. Gaara shook slightly and turned to face the young man. It was one of his aides, still a chuunin in rank. Nevertheless he has been expecting this message. It was a reply to a message concerning an incident where shinobi infiltrated the village just recently; he needed desperately to hear from Konoha. A shinobi was captured during the event and he was wearing a leaf forearm protector.

"Yes, thank you Matsuichi. I will return to my office then to receive it." Gaara was glad he managed to remember the lad's name on the fly. The young ninja seemed particularly pleased by that.

Just as Gaara was about to leave for his office he seen something out the corner of his eye which drew some panic from him. Temari had chased Kankuro back around towards the gate.

"Wind Style; Wind Dragon jutsu" came a familiar voice..........

Chapter 1....