For whimsicaldream, who requested a continuation. Sorry it's so late! Real-life drama prevented its completion. Hope it is worth the wait! This is only the first portion. (There's a lot more coming.)

I do not own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does. I just like playing in his world.

WAKING DREAM

With one hand gripping a rock, she braced herself with the other hand that was on the ground as she opened her eyes. When the dust in the air settled, she could see Naruto and Sasuke on opposite sides of a clearing, facing each other with determined looks on their faces. Something was odd with Naruto's appearance. He had odd circles around both of his eyes - like double black eyes, except reddish. It took a moment for comprehension to sink in – he was in Sage mode. Upon further scrutiny, the clearing looked like a crater and had probably been created in the explosion she had heard. It looked like Sasuke had managed to avoid Naruto's attacks for the most part.

She realized that her left hand was not resting on a rock, but Sai's cold, clammy hand. She turned her head to look at him. His head was thrown back in a silent scream, his eyes were rolled back into his head, and there was drool seeping out the corners of his mouth. She almost screamed. He was also sweating profusely. His breathing was erratic and strained. He must have been trapped in Tsukuyomi ttrying to help me, she thought with chagrin. It was clear his mind had been damaged by it. She tried not to move much, so she would not draw any attention to their location. However, she desperately needed to know his pulse in order to determine the best course of action. She could flood his body with healing chakra, but it would definitely be noticeable. She slowly leaned as far as she could towards Sai and extended her left arm so that she could feel his jugular artery in his throat with her index and middle fingers. It was irregular and weak. It was bad, the injury to his amygdala must be causing some swelling. The only thing she could do for him right now was to put him into a medically induced coma with an injection of pentobarbital. It would cease all brain activity, saving him for the hospital's intensive healing sessions and later recovery. Then again, he would die without machines to keep his blood and chakra pumping. She'd need to move his body somewhere safe and summon a slug like Tsunade's Katsuyu in order to preserve his body. Another problem is that the pentobarbital is in her medical kit, which she could feel behind her back on the ground. She'd need to wait for them both to be distracted.

Upon slowly, subtly turning her head back to the clearing, she saw that the two fighters were still posturing. She wished they'd hurry up, she didn't know how long Sai had before irreparable brain damage occurred. Although, once he was safely away, it would just be Sasuke, Naruto, and her - like it should be. We'll finally settle this once and for all. The two rivals started exchanging shuriken and a few blows. She started forming a plan as she reached behind her into her kit for a syringe and the bottle of pentobarbital. Unfortunately, she only had a rough estimate of how much Sai weighed. She really needed a precise number to correctly dose him, but they would have to make due. She cautiously drew up what she thought would be an appropriate amount of the barbiturate, when she heard her opportunity to act coming. Sasuke's new chidori sword still sounded like a chorus of birds and it was causing the hair on her arms to stand up. Naruto would probably counter with a Rasengan or RasenShuriken. She quickly injected Sai in his jugular vein. He stopped moving. He would soon stop breathing – she needed to quickly summon a child of Katsuyu to prevent his death. When Sasuke and Naruto lunged at each other, she grabbed Sai's body and bolted.

After going as far and as fast as she could force her body to go, she stopped behind a large rock formation and took a few ragged breaths. Which one of Katsuyu's kind should she summon? One big enough to encapsulate and take care of Sai's body functions, but that hopefully didn't sap too much of her chakra. She bit her thumb to draw a drop of blood, made the hand signs, and used her chakra to summon Katatsumuri, the most protective healing slug. Exhausted, she fell back against the rock formation and watched Katatsumuri go to work. As she watched the lifeless body of her awkward friend and teammate be ensconced in healing fluid, she remembered all the kind things he had done for her. He'd always send little critters to help her out. A bat umbrella when it began to rain and she had to walk home after visiting Naruto when he was trainging. Mice to help her clean when she neglected her place when she'd been busy training and working at the hospital. She hoped her tactless friend would not suffer any brain damage from what she'd done to him. She wanted to teach him more about fitting in socially, maybe set him up with Hinata-chan. They would be adorably awkward together. It would never work out of course, because of her clan. Hopefully, it would make them both more able to interact normally in the social sphere. When Katatsumuri's hard shell formed over the two of them, she knew everything had gone well. She exhaled the breath she hadn't realized she had been holding in. What am I going to do now? I've depleted most of my chakra reserves just to get here. CRAP.

Unfortunately, since she was out of normal chakra, she would have to break the seal of the stored chakra Tsunade had insisted she save. At first, it had been a great burden to store so much chakra per day. However, she found that after awhile it was like Lee's leg weights – you stopped noticing the effort they forced you to make. You adapted and grew stronger. She silently thanked Tsunade-shishou for forcing the seal upon her. Now, she could call on her carefully saved reserves to help with this crisis. Fortunately, her seal was different from Tsunade's healing power storage, it wouldn't take years off her life. Tsunade-shishou didn't seem to think that kind of seal was necessary at the time. This seal stored pure, raw chakra. As she finished the last of the seals, she felt the chakra rush into her body. She waited a few moments for it to establish equilibrium with her system.

After a minute, her system was reenergized and she was focused enough to form a plan. She knew she couldn't waste the element of surprise. Surely, Sasuke had noticed they were gone. Perhaps he thought that an ally had arrived to help Naruto. No one has even been known to break out of Tsukuyomi's grasp on their mind. It was considered impossible, unthinkable. When she reappeared, she would make for a great distraction. She needed to use that to her advantage. What could she do in one instant? Inject him with a neurontoxin? Was he immune to snake venom after all that time with Oorochimaru? After a moment, she sighed and grimaced. She was planning how to kill Sasuke, after Sasuke had already tried to kill her. It didn't seem real, like a nightmare she was having. She paced back and forth trying to think. She made her way back over to where she had left Sai and ran her hand over Katatsumuri's shell. She felt Sai's heart weakly beat a few times. The beat was very weak, but regular. He was stable. Feeling Sai's heart beat made it real. There would be no waking from this nightmare. She started planning again. Sasuke had almost certainly noticed our missing bodies. He would probably be expecting someone to come back with a surprise attack. He's amazingly fast, too. The instant of distraction I could buy probably wouldn't be enough time for anything significant. But if he doesn't know I'm alive… All of a sudden, it came to her. She knew what she could do with her new water chakra. She smirked. Sasuke would never know what had hit him.

To be continued…

つづく

The next two chapters are basically completed, but I'm still fidgeting with them.

Please let me know what you think of my work! I am always appreciative of constructive criticism.