A/N: Team 7's about 17 or 18 here. Don't know why they aren't jounin yet…maybe they had another Grand Adventure and couldn't get back to Konoha for a few years? Sure…that'll work. Anyway, that's why Sakura's not all "OMG! SASUKE-KUN!" and everyone's mature-ish and all that. Yay.
"Shinju Bessekai No Jutsu" – Acceptance (of truth) alternate world jutsu. I have NO Japanese skills, so feel free to ignore my attempt if it's truly painful.
Summary: A jutsu experiment sends Team 7 into a dark world where Naruto's been hokage of the ruined Konoha since he was 13, Sasuke murdered Itachi at 9, and Sakura's trying to kill both of them. What's going on? And how can they get back to their own world, when they barely know how they got there in the first place? SasuNaru, SakuIno (yep, femslash. It's new to me too…)
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, and I'm probably not gonna, no matter who I kill or sleep with it. Pity, that... Oh well. Don't sue me, yadda yadda yadda. On to the story!
Reality in Alteration
Revelation 1- Underneath the Rivalry
Sasuke eyed the scroll hesitantly, lips creased in a frown.
"Oh come on, it's just a genjutsu scroll!" Sakura stamped impatiently, mint eyes rolling at her teammates.
Naruto squinted at the scroll, and Sasuke's head tilted another 3.2 degrees to the right- a sign of intense contemplation if there ever was one. "But Sakura-chan, I don't get it."
"What's there to get?" Sakura defended. "It's a brilliant genjutsu scroll!"
"Which was found in Orochimaru's basement," Sasuke added, adding another 1.4 degrees to the head-tilt.
"That's just proof it's brilliant! Sasuke, in all the time you were there, did you ever see anything there that wasn't years ahead of everything chuunin-rank ninja know?" Sakura coaxed, brushing a bit of her short pink hair behind a newly pierced ear.
His midnight eyes looked right at her, a forceful bland expression on his still-tilted head. "I never saw anything that wasn't malicious or evil, either," he stated. "Or harmless."
Naruto was still examining the scroll, scratching his head. "What's this about…alteration?" He frowned. "I still don't get it. How is this a brilliant genjutsu?"
The head-tilt turned to a full-fledged 5 degrees. "That's what I'd like to know."
Sakura's eyes rolled again. "It's a genjutsu that doesn't just alter the perception of the target, it alters the thing being perceived!"
Naruto grinned. "Sounds like you don't get it either!"
"It can't be a genjutsu then," Sasuke said, ignoring Sakura's reaction and (since none of them seemed to notice his head-tiltage) went an extreme 10 degrees, and Naruto stopped fending off Sakura's super-charged fists to turn towards his rival. "Ninjutsu alter outside elements, genjutsu alter mental elements, taijutsu alter physical elements."
"I KNOW that," Sakura snapped, and sat back down on her side of the scroll, still flushed from her attack on the blonde. "But what else could it be with all these attributes? 'Mental displacement', 'truth in deception', 'reality in alteration'? If that's not genjutsu, I don't know what it is."
"Exactly," Sasuke said, and Sakura glared at him.
"No matter what we say, she's gonna do it anyway," Naruto shrugged to his rival, who frowned. "I say we just help her and make sure she doesn't blow anything up this time."
"That was ONCE, and it was an explosive ninjutsu anyway," Sakura muttered.
"And if it goes wrong, you can take us to the hospital," Sasuke added, the fact Naruto was practically indestructible ingrained in his memory ever since a boulder had literally squashed him, and only left the demon vessel with a nasty bruise on his back.
"Alright then! It's decided," Naruto grinned, and turned towards Sakura. "So! What now?"
She shrugged, smiling brightly. "We do the jutsu. You two are such pessimists. How bad could it possibly be?"
Surprisingly used to this sort of thing, Naruto and Sasuke flanked their pink-haired teammate as she began the seals, and finally slammed her hand onto the scroll, shouting out "OUSHI BESSEKAI NO JUTSU!"
A blinding black flash erupted from the scroll, consuming the three of them.
x---x
When Naruto's eyes opened, they were greeted with Sasuke glaring down at him from heaven, a blue halo of sky bringing out the navy accents in his hair. "Get up, dobe."
He complied, looking around gob smacked. Yes, they were still in Sakura's apartment, except it now had no roof, no furniture, and what had once been two windowed, structurally necessary walls was now a gaping hole that showed them that the rest of this Konoha district in equal disrepair.
"This is a fucking WEIRD genjutsu," Naruto muttered, and Sasuke nodded, scrounging around the room for anything that could be useful…oh, hey. "Where's Sakura-chan?"
"She wasn't here when I woke up, but she left a note," he said, negligently holding up a slip of paper with Sakura's distinctive handwriting on it. "Says she needs to investigate something and will meet us for dinner near our tree."
'OUR tree' was something Kakashi had smashed into their heads by giving them a nondescript, out-of-town meeting place so that if they ever needed to speak privately, they had an ideal location for it. And, of course, "dinner" meant at 7:22 PM exactly- another code that they'd grown so used to using on the road that they didn't even try to avoid it anymore.
"So what do we do then? Just sit around and wait for her to come get us out of the jutsu?"
Sasuke shrugged, finally picking up a misplaced shuriken from the dirty floor and slipping it into his weapons pouch. "I'm going to explore. I want to know more about the genjutsu, since the scroll was so vague."
"Yeah, yeah," Naruto nodded, and shrugged. "I might as well do that too." Stretching for a moment, the blonde grinned at his rival. "Never know when Orochimaru and his tongue might come after you- you sure you're okay to run away?"
Sasuke snorted. "You sure you have enough brain cells left to not slam into a tree, dobe? You were just knocked out by a genjutsu, after all."
Translation? Be careful, idiot. You die, I'll kill you.
The two smirked at each other, and tore off in opposite directions.
It wasn't too long until Naruto found himself in the forest outside Konoha, grinning to himself as Sasuke's all-to-familiar chakra could be felt chasing after him. Apparently it was time to regroup and do that whole 'information gathering' thing. Either that, or the Uchiha was bored and wanted to spar. Hell, he was fine with either. Naruto would never admit it, but Sasuke was fun to be around, even if it was just because of the enjoyment he got from driving the sullen boy insane.
Grinning, Naruto dropped down from the tree branches and onto the forest floor. It was more fun to fight Sasuke on solid ground, simply because Sasuke got closer and made funny growling noises when they fought on hard ground.
He didn't have to wait long, either- Sasuke was suddenly THERE in front of him (Naruto couldn't remember him being that silent before; he'd need to train more to keep up with the genius' stealth skills, apparently). Now wearing baggy black pants instead of his usual shorts and bandages, he smirked at Naruto.
"Shirking as usual, I see," Sasuke said, arms crossed over his shirt and just looking WEIRD to Naruto- or was it at? There was definitely something new in those charcoal eyes.
"I'm not shirking. I'm still exploring, bastard," Naruto grinned as Sasuke walked towards him. "What are YOU doing? Just chasing me around?"
Sasuke's smirk turned predatory. "That's not all I'm doing, hopefully."
…when had Sasuke gotten so close?
Sakura, Naruto decided as Sasuke shoved him against the tree's rough bark and continued to try and suffocate him with his tongue, was going to die. This, he determined as Sasuke ground up against him and Naruto couldn't help but moan into the dark-haired teen's smirking mouth, had been a bad idea, no matter how smart Sakura and Sasuke- oh god, SASUKE- were.
But as soon as the blonde felt his teammate's hand go from his waist down to the zipper on his pants, Naruto shrieked (yes, SHRIEKED, a sound that any banshee would have been proud to make) and shoved him away. Startled black eyes widened as Sasuke slammed into the adjacent tree, making some of the bark crack off from the force of it, leaves falling from the branches as Sasuke glared up at Naruto.
"What the fuck was that for!"
Naruto gaped at him. "WHAT WAS THAT FOR! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!" Naruto screamed, a panicked finger pointing shakily at his rival. "You…you…KISSED ME, you bastard!"
A stare was all he received. Still in shock from the FAR too pleasant activity that'd just been ended rather abruptly, Naruto was breathing harshly, shaking all over and close to either beating the shit out of Sasuke or having a panic attack or just jumping him again- which in itself was making him more inclined towards either beating the shit out of Sasuke or curling up into a fetal position and screaming for a few hours.
After a few more minutes, Sasuke shoved his hands into his pockets and walked towards Naruto. "Moron," he scoffed. "What's the brain trauma from this time?"
"I SHOULD ASK YOU THAT, ASSHOLE!" Naruto barked out, and Sasuke's amused smirk seemed to completely ignore his outburst.
"Need me to carry you to the medic-nin?"
Naruto scurried backwards, right into the tree from- something he wasn't thinking about. "STAY AWAY FROM ME, BASTARD!"
Sasuke rolled his eyes- holy crap, did Sasuke even KNOW how to do that?- at Naruto. "Oh yes, that's going to stop me. Insult me and run away. Very noble, hokage-san."
Naruto's mouth began its impression of a flailing, dying fish. "Huh?"
Before the blonde could notice, Sasuke had scooped him up (which was actually rather amusing, seeing as Naruto was about 3 inches taller and 20 pounds heavier) and was jumping along through the trees. "You're going to get yourself killed one of these days, idiot, with how many trees you smash into."
And that was when Naruto realized that Sasuke's seal was missing. The seal that Orochimaru left so long ago. The seal that Couldn't Come Off, no matter what anyone tried.
"Sasuke," Naruto's voice sounded strained, even to his own ears. "I have a concussion, and my memory's fuzzy and all that shit, so tell me about me and…and you."
Sasuke snorted. "What's there to tell, dumbass? You're hokage, I'm head Anbu, and we've been married since we were 15."
And that was about when Naruto passed out.
