Disclaimer: SHIT AINT MINE!
:Line Break:
Sakura and Naruto stared in shock at their long forgotten comrade and teammate the wind whistling through the space between them.
"Sasuke-kun!" Sakura cried out, taking a few tentative steps in his direction.
"Don't focus on me moron!" Sasuke shouted back, pointing accusingly at the orange clad nin. "Focus on him!"
"HEY! What're you talking about?!" Naruto screamed, his frustration evident in his tone. "YOU'RE the traitor!"
Sasuke reeled like he had been slapped. "W-What?! How am I the traitor, when you left the village and tried to kill the third Hokage?!"
"That's BULLSHIT!" Naruto screamed back. "And you know it is too!"
Sasuke shook his head, glistening drops sliding down his cheeks, glinting in the lustrous moonlight. "We were brothers once, Menma, to think that you have forgotten all of your ties to the village, all of your friends, and family… It just makes me sick."
"Yeah? Well you look sick!" Naruto shouted, before pausing. "Wait, who's Menma?"
"I'm so sick of your LIES!" Sasuke shouted either ignoring Naruto's question or attacking it. "Why can't you just fess up and admit that you're WRONG and that you NEED HELP?!"
"NO, Sasuke! You are wrong! And I will prove it to you!" The yellow haired nin shouts back.
"What can possibly be right about what you do?" Sasuke shoots right back, throwing his hands out to the sides. "Lies, deceit, betrayal, Murder? What in the whole of the Fire Nation could make you think that you are right?"
"I know that I'm a bit of a moron sometimes," Naruto began hesitantly. "But I'm pretty sure you accusing me of being a traitor and a murderer is just a little hypocritical!"
Sasuke shook his head slowly, the glasses sliding down his nose slightly as he did so. "I just don't believe this. You're twisted, I know, sick, despicable, dark, sadistic, and a veritable maniac, but I never thought you would be insane!"
"But all of that other stuff is ok?" Naruto asked, too confused to even bother correcting his one-time friend anymore. "Look, I have no idea what is going on, and all I do know is that those three" A finger pointed accusingly at the tumbled team ten. "you, and the masked man have all tried to fight me in the last half hour, and I am sick of it! If you want to fight, FINE, if not, let me go home!"
A silence falls across the field after the echoes fade from Naruto's shout. The three still conscious people standing stare at each other. Naruto leers at Sasuke, steady, his pulse racing but his eyes are unflinching. The Uchiha glares back at the Uzumaki, his eyes wild and accusing behind his glasses, and his stance already leaning forward, as if preparing to charge. Sakura stood somewhere in between, looking back and forth between her boys, trying to find what has gone so horribly wrong, struggling to realize what is right to do.
"Nooo, Naruto." Sasuke spits in a fevered whisper, the sound barely crossing the void between the fighters. "Not this time you son of a bitch. You are not getting away from me!"
With that last line, Sasuke whipped his hand down. "Take him down, NOW!"
A dozen men in matte armor leap from the bushes and trees surrounding the clearing. They immediately begin drawing a myriad of weapons and rush towards the lone figure in the center of it all.
Naruto stares back at the thirteen warriors, coming towards him. This is a dance that he knows well. The trappings of the previous conversation with Sasuke, and all of the worries and confusion brought up by his rival and friend from long ago fall to the wayside as he readies himself. None of that matters anymore as once again, he finds his center.
This is where he is home. In battle, more than any shitty apartment in the red light district.
As Sasuke rushed towards Naruto, the blonde haired sage with yellow eyes feels the dozen shady chakra sources rushing towards him as well. Looking to one such source, he caught a glimpse of black and grey, and a reflective blade in the moonlight.
'Three minutes fifty-two seconds,' Naruto thought to himself, dropping into the Frog Kumite stance he had learned what now seemed so long ago. 'I must be quick.'
Naruto closed his eyes, letting himself be guided by the flow of chakra that he could feel all around him.
Shifting backwards sharply, Naruto avoided the outthrust sword of one of the ANBU that had joined Sasuke, returning with a solid punch under the outthrust arm. The ANBU soared with the sage chakra enhanced force of the blow, and Naruto was given two seconds of breathing time.
Keeping his eyes closed and going by the feel of his opponent's chakra, Naruto bent in half as two swords slashed horizontally across where his torso had been a moment before. His quick hands grabbed both of the wrists holding the blades. Sliding his back foot into a better stance, he began twirling the ANBU about by the arms, using them to bat aside three more ANBU rushing him, before using his massive strength to hurl them away into the forest beyond.
The remaining ANBU slow, seeing their brethren fall quickly before the blonde maelstrom begin slowing down, electing instead to take a, wide rotating circle.
'Six ANBU left, and Sasuke' Naruto thought, eyes still closed as he concentrated. 'Two minutes thirty four seconds.'
"What are you doing?" Sasuke asked of the nearest 'stalking' ANBU. "Fight!"
"Sir, he just took down half our number in the initial assault." The Cobra ANBU spoke back in a tight, agitated tone. "Intel was wrong, close quarters is fruitless."
"Uzumaki has always been shit at close quarters, how the hell could he have changed that much in a month?" Sasuke spits back, the rhetorical question obviously going unanswered by his ANBU. It had a different effect, however, on the eavesdropping blonde.
'What is he talking about, close combat was always my best area!' Naruto thought to himself, frowning hard at what he was hearing. 'It and my chakra are the two things that allow me to make the best use of most of my jutsu.'
"Sakura," Sasuke spoke, startling the pink haired girl and grabbing the attention of the still listening blonde. "We need your help to defeat him!"
"W-What?" Sakura asked, voice high and thread. In a million years (outside of a select time when she may have been in the academy) she never expected her crush to say that he NEEDED her.
"Sakura, you're the only one that can fight him on equal ground." Sasuke pleaded. "Please, snap out of whatever he has done to you!"
Sakura's cheeks lit up at that statement, and all that it might imply. "He hasn't done anything to me, Baka!"
Sasuke recoils a bit, seemingly stung by the reply, but this goes unnoticed by Naruto, who is only concentrating on the feel of each person's chakra.
"Fine." Sasuke says bitterly. "We'll do this without you."
Whipping around, Sasuke pulls up the sleeve of his right hand, revealing a long cylindrical device on his wrist. A soft thump was heard as screaming out of the cylindrical device came a horde of senbon, each tipped with malevolent poisons that glinted evilly in the stark moonlight.
They made little plinking noises as they broke against Naruto's chest.
"This is impossible…" The Uchiha whispered, before giving his head a thorough shake. "No, it isn't impossible, and it answers how you got this good in so short a time."
Cobra turned back to Sasuke, tilting his masked head. "Sir? I don't follow."
"This isn't him. It's a technique, a jutsu. It's the only way to explain how he is not only beating us in close quarters, but why he hasn't been attacking at range or setting up any fuuinjutsu either." Sasuke spoke rapidly. "My bet is that this jutsu allows him massive strength and limited invulnerability, and maybe some gift at sensory, too, seeing as how he hasn't opened his eyes yet. But in return it takes away his ability to use other jutsu."
'One minute, sixteen seconds.' Naruto counted down internally.
"Or am I wrong, Naruto-chan?" Sasuke said with a smirk, before turning back to his partner. "Don't engage him until he opens his eyes. Then with melee and everything you have."
'Fuck.' Naruto thought, before focusing some of the sage enhanced chakra to his legs. 'It's times like these when I REALLY hate how smart Sasuke is.'
The ANBU with an ironic frog mask that Naruto leaps towards tries to dodge, but finds the blonde ninja holding his leg. A sharp blow to the knee cripples that ninja as Naruto tracks the rest of the ANBU.
"Get away from him, DO NOT ENGAGE." Sasuke shouts as Naruto flies towards his next target.
The Rat masked ANBU is already going through the first handseal for a replacement as Naruto gets within twenty feet of him. Realizing that he would not be able to hit in time, Naruto adjusts himself in midair and hits the lip of one of the craters littering the field.
Pausing in his jutsu, the ANBU makes a fatal mistake, as the shrapnel from the lip of the crater flies towards him from Naruto's improvised kick/landing.
'Thirty seconds, four ANBU, and Sasuke.' Naruto marked, turning to his next target. A pair of ANBU who had begun breaking formation and clustering together.
"NO, SCATTER!" Sasuke screamed at the two terrified ninja. It was too late however, as Naruto was already upon them.
A single punch felled the first ANBU, turning quickly to grab the second by the throat. Naruto's hand hit only smoke and bark.
'Kawarimi.' Naruto cursed mentally, already feeling to see where the ninja had fled to.
Naruto was stuck between two gatherings of ninja; The ANBU who had teleported over to one of his masked brothers' side, and Sasuke with Cobra.
Picking up the log that had been used in the last Kawarimi, Naruto had a devious thought, worthy of the prankster king of Konoha.
Whipping around, Naruto lobbed the log at Sasuke and his partner, then leaped after the other pair.
Sasuke looked strangely at the log as he sidestepped it neatly; focusing instead on what Naruto was doing to his other two 'team' members.
At the apex of his parabolic leap, Naruto could feel the chakra of the two ninja below begin moulding into the first stage of the Kawarimi. Smirking to himself, Naruto made an all too familiar cross shape.
Twin puffs of smoke in the air beside Naruto hazed into the image of three Naruto all holding hands in what amounted to a daisy chain.
"Kage Bunshin" One of the ANBU whispered in fear and realization as his friend was downed by a Naruto flung with Sage mode enhanced strength, before he too was taken out.
'Ten seconds.' Naruto thought with a grin, turning around to face Sasuke and forming a three seal jutsu.
Sasuke's eyes widened as Naruto was replaced with a log. A snap from beside him signaled Naruto efficiently knocking out the ANBU captain, and signaled for Sasuke to duck and roll.
'Zero' Naruto reached mentally, turning his grinning, face and now blue eyes to face the rising Sasuke.
Sasuke, in turn, felt his desperation increase tenfold as Naruto's eyes stared him down.
Taking a breath that ballooned his chest out to cartoonish proportions, Sasuke expelled a vile purple mist.
Covered completely in the mist Naruto was unable to be seen for over thirty seconds.
In those thirty seconds, the only thing that could be heard were the broken cries of the wounded, and the roiling of the poisonous cloud of gasses.
"I-I did it." The Uchiha utters, shock permeating his tone.
On the thirty-first second, however, a high pitched whine screeched across the clearing. Seemingly coming from the center of the cloud, Sasuke stared at the broiling mass in the center of the maelstrom of activity.
The cloud began circling around its center point, at first slowly, but then faster, and faster. The edges of the cloud of death kicking up a fair wind even outside of it's mass, as the Uchiha's own attractive ebony locks began being sucked towards the center of the cloud.
Quickly the cloud fell in upon itself, until there was only what remained beforehand. A blonde Uzumaki, now holding a large spinning blue ball in his hand, with four white blades around it's center circling the mass slowly.
"FUUTON:" Naruto screams, charging into his outmatched opponent. "RASENGAN!"
The spinning blue ball collided with the Uchiha's chest, bowing him with the blow.
Sasuke felt the skin of his chest being slowly ripped away as he screamed shrilly with the pain of it. Hearing the cries of his once friend, Naruto ended the jutsu, causing improved Rasengan ton explode, and fling the Uchiha painfully into a copse of trees on the edge of the clearing.
The avenger faded to unconsciousness, with only one thought on his mind and lips.
"…~monster~…"
Naruto, yards upon yards away, didn't hear the accusation. Instead, he focused upon something else.
Throwing his hands up in the air, Naruto began to whoop with victory.
"I WON! WhoooooOOOOO!" Running around in circles, Naruto began punching the air in exuberance. "I did it! I did it! I did it! I did it!"
Sakura, for her part, looked a lot more pensive, as she went through everything that had occurred since seeing Toby, the orange masked man. Something screamed at her, something that shouldn't be, that didn't correspond with facts.
"Naruto," Sakura spoke slowly, grabbing the attention of the over active blonde. "I don't think you did…"
"What are you talking about, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked, head tilted childishly to the side. "I totally won. The bastard is over there, knocked out, and all we have to do is keep him like that until we can get him to Baa-chan."
"He is knocked out Naruto, but I don't think that is Sasuke."
Naruto's frown became even more pronounced. "What are you talking about Sakura-chan?"
"Think about it." Sakura said holding up a finger. "First thing, we run into that masked bastard. Next thing we know, we are in this field. Then Ino, Shikamaru, and Chouji attack us, then of all people Sasuke shows up, with a squad of Konoha ANBU no less, and declares you a traitor and a murderer."
Naruto is silent and Sakura takes a deep breath. "I can only come up with a few possible conclusions, but none of them look good."
"Don't worry Sakura-chan, we'll make it through anything!" Naruto reassures her loudly.
"Idiot! I haven't even told you what they are yet!" Sakura speaks with a fury, causing Naruto to go silent once more. "So, my first conclusion is that we are inside of that Tsukuyomi technique, but I don' think so."
She begins pacing as she explains further. "If we were then one of us wouldn't be real. It's a one per person technique. So my second conclusion is that we are in a different location, specifically an area under that Uchiha's control."
"How does that work Sakura-chan?" Naruto spoke quietly.
A tic appeared on Sakura's forehead at being interrupted, so she might have spoken with more force than she intended. "I was getting to that, moron!"
Naruto flinched as if struck, unnoticed by his pink haired teammate as she continued obliviously with her explanation. "I think that we got transported using that same time/space jutsu that that man uses to teleport himself and avoid our attacks. And I'm guessing that maybe that Madara, or whoever he is began performing cloning other people after he started cloning all of those Zetsu creatures. Hence all of these people are our friends, but they are not quite right. Their skill sets are different than our friends back home, and their memories are certainly different."
Silence reigned for a moment, Naruto unwilling to speak for fear of reprisal, and Sakura not wanting to utter her third idea.
It was broken by Sakura as she gave a loud sigh. "Then, realizing that to even utilize that idea, Madara would have to have a working knowledge of all of the jutsu of Konoha, as well as the time and resources to both train them and to give them some semblance of the society that would match up with their fractured memories would be simply not worth pursuing, as the clones seem to be by and large weaker than the originals."
Naruto continued to be silent, clamping down on his ever-persistent curiosity.
"So, I think that we might not be in a land we can recognize anymore." Sakura said, taking a seat on the edge of a particularly deep crater.
"Where are we then?" Naruto asked in a monotone, finally speaking up.
"That's just it, Naruto." Jade eyes met his own. "I don't know."
Silence reigned once again as Naruto tried to come to terms with that statement.
'Thinking later' he berated himself after a moment. 'Action now.'
Naruto shrugged. "Well, wherever we are, we should probably get out of here before someone else-"
"STOP RIGHT THERE!"
"Oh for the love of-" Naruto cried out circling around to face this newest group of people who most likely wanted him as dead as the previous two.
In the fading moonlight, Naruto saw a large troupe of blank ANBU masks led by a trio of figures.
On the left, a woman with purple hair in a bun with chopsticks holding it stood. Pupil-less brown eyes framed by glasses leered at him. She was dressed in a professional ankle length green dress.
'Looks kinda like crazy examiner lady, but with less naked…and crazy.' Naruto thought to himself before his eyes rolled to the right side of the column.
On the right, a woman with spiky light blue, shoulder length hair leaned with arms crossed over a not unimpressive bust. Dark eyes were set below a standard Konoha forehead protector, with the rest of her being in similarly standard dress for Konoha Jonin. She was rather bland on the whole, except for the growth of crystalline spikes emerging from her arms.
'It can't be…' Naruto thought before all reason seemed to leave him as he clasped eyes on the leader.
A plain off white Kimono marked the man in the middle. His tan skin flowing out of the sleeves in long, dexterous looking fingers. His dark haired flowed from underneath a very peculiar red and white hair, triangular hat with the kanji for 'Fire' on the top-front. A hat that Naruto, as well as anyone else in Konoha knew marked the Hokage. And from underneath that hat a pair of yellow eyes stared strongly back into Naruto's own.
"Naruto Uzumaki" The man said in a deep tone, belying both his age and size. "You have been charged with High Treason, Murder, Slavery, Attacking Konoha Shinobi, and Desertion. The punishment for only one of these crimes is death, to be enacted by the nearest available shinobi. And by my power as Fifth Hokage, and by Konoha herself, you will fall this DAY!"
Naruto stared, some little piece of himself feeling broken off from all others as he stared at the man who had proclaimed his death.
The man who claimed himself Fifth Hokage.
The man who had once, long ago, ambushed him in the Forest of Death.
Staring into the yellow, eyes of the once dead Orochimaru, Naruto could only mutter to himself in the face of all of this.
"This must be what it feels like to go insane.
:Line Break:
The man known as Menma finished his chuckling, casting a dark look at his fellow masked man.
"I believe I have you to thank for bringing me here?"
The masked Uchiha studied his opponent carefully as he answered. "It was my technique that brought you here."
"So no thanks necessary, then?" The blue-robed man asked sarcastically.
"I don't know who you are," the Uchiha said, ignoring the other man's jibe. "And I don't know what you want. But what I do know is that you are a gifted individual, and that this new world will be a lot friendlier to you if you were but to join me."
"Still giving that whole 'let us rule this world together' speech, huh?" Menma asked rhetorically. "Yeah, I've heard that one a few times. But, my favorite one was when this one guy, you wouldn't know him. Anyway, he came up to me and gave me the whole speech, laying out how all would be fire and brimstone, and death and destruction unless I was to join him. Pretty standard, nothing really memorable."
The Uchiha stayed silent as the blank eye slits in Menma's mask glared at him. "The thing that really made it my favorite, though, was that it took all of about thirty seconds before I was force feeding him his own liver."
"Now you seem like a nice guy." Menma continued, before giving his head a small shake. "No you don't. Actually you seem like an asshole. I'll let that slide, though. But the point I am trying to make here, is basically just to stay out of my way. I have too many plots going on right now to deal with you."
"You just got here." The Uchiha fires back. "There is no way that you could have any plots going yet."
"Yes," Menma says grudgingly. "That means I am at the point of the most labor intensive part of any plot, the beginning. And for your information, I have a plot going right now."
"Really," the Uchiha drawls back. "and what would that be? Talking me to death?"
Menma laughs sharply. "No, not quite. Try to listen for that pitter patter sound."
Tobi strained his ears for whatever he was supposed to be listening for. At the edge of his hearing, though, he heard a large mass of feet and the shouting of many raised voices.
"Konoha responds to an internal attack." Toby stated with a shrug. "Is that supposed to scare me?"
"Of course not," Menma responds with a chuckle. "But it only leaves us about a minute to talk."
"So, tell me what you know about summoning techniques." Menma demands abruptly.
"It requires a contract with the summoned creature, animal or man. Then one may summon the creature or be summoned to it instantaneously through the expenditure of chakra and blood. In so doing it transports the body or the thing to the desired location."
"It doesn't actually, to any of those things." Menma corrected with no small sense of delight. "You see, the original reason for needing a contract was so that one had something to summon, like a person or a beast of some-type or another. The contract was a constant locater and written authorization both so that the summoner could summon a worthy battle companion. And the drop of blood is simply the price set by most summons in the aforementioned contract. Not to mention that it transports both the body AND the soul."
"Of course." The Uchiha said condescendingly. "If there were no summons to summon, then what would be the point of a summoning?"
"There are many reasons to bend the laws of time and space my deluded friend." Menma scathingly replied. "To someone oneself or to banish something, for instance."
"Yes, but again, one must have a locator or sealing array where ever the object or person would need to go."
"You would imagine so, but another way of doing it is to simply state direction and distance in the design of the seal." Menma explains again. "It's a lot more work as most seals done in that style tend to take a lot more effort, chakra, and time to construct on the fly, so it's understandable that in a world governed by strength underlying scientific principle has fallen to the wayside."
"What does this have to do with anything?" The Uchiha responds suspiciously, all too aware of the growing noise of the approaching ninja host.
"Well, let's take you for example. Let's say that I wanted to transport a man sized object a 100 miles straight up." Menma says pointedly.
"It would do nothing to me." Tobi responds peevishly.
"Let me guess, because of your eyes?" Menma asks sarcastically. "No, as I said, the technique transports body AND soul. So it's all of you coming for the ride, not just the bit of mental chakra holding the image I see in front of me. The rest of you would sort of snap back here like a cheap elastic before propelling you into orbit."
Tobi starts, shocked as the strange man ousted his single most reliable technique as if it were just some charlatan's trick.
"So you would pretty much start freezing to death and suffocating in the low atmosphere before you could even teleport yourself back. If you even could at that point, having used so much of your own chakra to teleport yourself into low orbit in the first place."
"Why are you telling me all of this?"
"I know, the ninja should never reveal his techniques, but I am doing this for three reasons. The first is that you asked what my scheme was. The second is that I should get rid of you early so you don't try to bump me off later down the line, as you Uchiha seem wont to do." Menma took a sigh and stared into the lone eye-slit of the orange mask. "And because I have had an earth clone drawing that seal to draw off of both your chakra and my own to achieve that high flying result, and I needed to stall you so that it had time to finish." Menma lectures, dropping his cloak and taking off his mask. Under the mask were the familiar blue eyes and whisker marks of Konoha's resident prankster and jiinchuriki.
Tobi's eye widens as he glances down, Sharingan spinning rapidly. The crowd breaks from around the corner, led by several recent partygoers in the form of the Konoha 12.
"As for my scheme," Menma whispers so that only the Uchiha can hear. "I call this one 'Menma Saves the Day'!"
Menma runs through five seals.
Tobi tries to transport himself, tries to move, tries to do anything, but finds only that he is stuck to that spot in front of the dreaded Uzumaki.
"Gyaku Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" Menma screams as the chakra pounds out of him, banishing a screaming Uchiha from Konoha.
Collapsing in exhaustion, Menma falls to his knee's amongst several cries of "Naruto!", and "Naruto-kun!"
Caught by the large and yet quite gentle arms of an Akimichi, 'Naruto' speaks to his 'friends'.
"I am all right everyone. But, please, help Sakura-chan!"
Several of the gathered nin immediately begin attempting to take apart his beautiful seal, and already Menma felt a warm feeling growing inside of his chest.
'So this is what total victory feels like.' He thought as his world turned to darkness.
AN
So this is me trying to get back into writing as much as I can.
I'm sorry that I'm not writing more on my 'real' stories, but I feel that with them there is a much bigger expectation for any chapter I write, then when I put out some nonsense chapters like these.
Not to put them down, but next to Fractured Fate or Breaking the Rules, I don't think as many people know Turn and Turn About.
So Yeah.
Been busy, will try to write more/better in the future.
As always let me know your feelings/interesting thoughts for the day in the reviews below
Thanks!
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