Notes: I actually wrote this a couple of days before "Konoha's Tragic Orange Beast," but held off on posting it for some unknown reason.

Summary: Sasuke going home is a bad idea waiting to happen, and this proves it.

Never Go Home Again

A Naruto Oneshot by

Nate Grey (xman0123-at-aol-dot-com)


Uchiha Sasuke does not know it, but he will be responsible for the destruction of Konoha.

Not in the way he planned, however.

It will begin with the Kusanagi, as it is buried deep in the belly of Haruno Sakura.

Sasuke will watch the light leave her green eyes, see the tears and blood drip slowly down her face. But instead of tossing her aside, as he knows he has every reason to, he will instead hold his sword steady, and watch as she slowly fades away.

That will be the death of him.

In the next instant, Naruto will be upon them, the air filled with his inhuman howls of rage, and both Sasuke's and Sakura's blood as Naruto rips them to shreds. At any other time, Sasuke would be shocked that Naruto would ever harm a hair on Sakura's head. Now, though, he knows better.

With Sakura dead, nothing else would matter to Naruto, not even destroying her corpse, if it means killing her killer.

The only problem is, Sasuke's death will do nothing to ease Naruto's pain, because the moment that Sakura dies, Naruto will cease to feel anything, at all, ever again. Yet the demon sealed inside of him will revel in the bloodlust, and even if Naruto can no longer distinguish pleasure from pain, he instinctively knows that some part of him is pleased by this.

So he will continue to kill anything in his path, so long as Kyuubi continues to share the pleasure with him. Naruto will kill until Konoha is nothing but blood and ruins, and then he will burn that to ashes.

Then, he will move on, and do the same somewhere else.

Everywhere else, actually.

And it is only when Naruto is the last living thing in the world that he will finally, genuinely feel anything resembling human emotion: despair. By then, he will only recall how to kill, having long forgotten what he lived for, who he fought for, and what the seal on his belly means.

On that day, he and Kyuubi will die together, but only one will be powerful enough and knowledgeable enough to move on to another world. For as unpleasant and inconvenient as death is for Kyuubi, if it were truly such a formidable and final foe, he would've defeated it long ago.

The End.