So, here's chapter three! Almost out of prewritten material, so chapters after the next might be a bit slow in coming (the next needs some editting as well...). Same deal as last time: I'm updating next Saturday (the 30th) no matter what, but I'll update a day sooner for every review greater than one.

Warnings: NaruSasu/SasuNaru, alternate timeline, probably will veer away from canon at some point, present tense, major character death

Chapter Three

The Story So Far: Naruto wakes up in his younger body the day of the first Sasuke Retrieval Mission. The team – plus Tenten and Shino – goes after the Sound Four, picking up Shizune and the chunin Iwashi on the way. Shikamaru and Chouji stay behind to fight Jiroubou, the big dude. Naruto manages to steal the barrel with Sasuke in it from Kidoumaru, the spider-dude, but Tayuya steals it back. Furious, Naruto chases after the remaining two of the Sound Four, but has to turn back in order to help his teammates escape from Kidoumaru.

Last Time:

Both chakras surge through Naruto, pouring out of his still ruined outstretched hands, the blood flowing with them in order to start forming into a pattern so familiar to Naruto that he could probably do it in his sleep. The Kyuubi's consciousness helps guide the formation, eliminating the necessity of a clone – a jutsu that would be problematic to use with Naruto's current mental state – to help stabilize it.

"OODAMA RASENGAN!"

...

(Now)

The swirling mass of blood and bright red chakra with thin threads of his own purple-tinged blue chakra winding through it fills the small clearing high in the tree tops, stripping the nearby branches of their bark and sparking nearly gale-force winds. Kidoumaru's threads snap, but he still manages to launch himself out of the way fast enough that the massive rasengan only clips him as he swings up onto one of the higher and farther branches. Regardless, even a glancing blow from the Oodama Rasengan – even one not nearly as powerful or stable as it should be, not when made without a clone and with this weakling body – is still enough to severely wound Naruto's enemy.

Kidoumaru snarls, grasping his freely bleeding side. His spider threads stretch to cover the gaping wound, staunching the flow of blood. He drops his other five hands as Naruto lands on the lower part of a relatively undamaged tree. The golden stuff (which Naruto vaguely remembers) pours out from his palms to form weapons even as Kidoumaru creates his impromptu bandage.

The sage chakra surges briefly within him, as if to remind Naruto of the limited timeframe that he possesses. Taking several deep breaths to steady himself, Naruto fights off the blood-lusting haze caused by usage of the Kyuubi's chakra. Acting swiftly, Naruto forms a multitude of clones – uncertain how many, just flaring his chakra and letting the ingrained motion do what it will with the energy – which move to help break the others out (Naruto clearly remembers Neji's trick: break the webs by forcing chakra into them).

Neji bursts out of the cocoon that he had been wrapped in on his own, immediately going to attack Kidoumaru. The real Naruto rushes forward to assist, running on all fours once more and drawing Kidoumaru's fire (as he had very obviously marked himself as a major threat with his rasengan). He dodges the golden projectiles easily – Kyuubi's chakra flows through his muscles, improving their efficiency and power (and therefore his speed) by an incredible amount.

He reaches Kidoumaru and Neji within a second or so, his entire body feeling as if it has been set on fire due to his haste and desire to get Sasuke back. Kidoumaru immediately ducks out of his way, and Naruto's fist impacts with the tree directly behind him, shattering the bark and leaving a sizeable crater in the trunk. The wood groans and the top of the tree begins to sway, unbalanced and unable to hold itself up.

All three shinobi leap clear as the tree-top slowly crashes into its neighbors before sliding downwards to stick in place close to the bottom. Kidoumaru jumps onto the sliding tree trunk and uses it to launch himself higher into the foliage, in order to create distance so that he can properly use his jutsu.

"Naruto!" he hears Shizune shout from somewhere behind him. "Get a grip on yourself! Let Tenten, Neji, and Iwashi handle him!" Naruto crouches and snarls, ignoring her – intent on finishing off his opponent. "We need to catch up to Sasuke!"

That does the trick. Naruto blinks, forcing back both Kyuubi's and the nature chakra until they hum just beneath his skin rather than pouring out in a palpable aura. Tenten attacks Kidoumaru as Naruto leaps away, picking back up the trail of the Sound Four – swiftly pulling ahead of his companions despite their head start.

Shizune catches up to him, clearly straining her chakra coils into something resembling a low-level constant shunshin more than a run. "Naruto, you need to calm down," she shouts over the rushing wind.

"The seal's not about to bust!" he shouts back. "I'll be able to remain in control up until probably about ten times this much, and even then the seal would remain intact. I know what I'm doing!"

Shizune frowns, but nods. "Regardless, I'm reporting this to Tsunade-sama and Jiraiya-sama. Not that I don't trust you, but I can't risk the safety of the village."

Naruto nods. "Reasonable." Shizune then falls back once again, unable to keep up the demanding pace. Growling, Naruto does as well, realizing that he can't keep straining his body like this and hope to make it through all the coming fights.

About half a minute passes and then, all of the sudden, an all too familiar chakra flares ahead, and Naruto can't keep the grin off his face. "Back-up's here!" he shouts over his shoulder to the others, putting on speed once more, accelerating past what any shinobi of his level should be able to maintain without tearing their body apart.

It would be an awful shame if he ran out of nature chakra before he gets a chance to gut Tayuya for stealing Sasuke's container-barrel-thing from him, after all.

He arrives not half a minute later to see Gaara, Kankurou, and Temari battling the remaining two Sound Four. Naruto immediately throws himself into the fray, cutting off Tayuya's escape attempt. "Be careful of the barrel on her back!" he shouts to the three siblings, "Sasuke's in there!"

"Right!" Temari and Kankurou both reply, while Gaara just nods. Tayuya scowls at them, jumping back to put further distance and raising her flute. Naruto curses, unable to remember what her abilities are supposed to be, other than the general mention of 'genjutsu expert'.

Considering that the only genjutsu expert that Naruto has ever seriously fought is fucking Uchiha Itachi, Naruto doesn't consider that to be a very good – or particularly reassuring – basis for an assessment of her.

Both Tayuya and the two-headed guy already have their curse marks splayed vividly across their bodies, and they have even begun to creep into the second level. Before Naruto can yell out, before anyone can make a motion, the sounds of Tayuya's flute fill the small section of forest. Sakon takes immediate advantage of their brief distraction, moving swiftly to attack Naruto – someone who has already demonstrated quite amply his identity as a serious threat.

Naruto dodges, vaulting over Sakon, scoring thin claw-marks across his back using fuuton jutsu to extend the edges of his claws. The sound of several large summonings fills the clearing, and Naruto curses, twisting around to see Tayuya's three demonic puppet-things. Damn it! He should've gotten more information from Shikamaru the first time this stupid thing happened!

He narrows his eyes, realizing that he might have made a mistake in leaving Shikamaru behind – it's going to be difficult to separate Tayuya from Sasuke's barrel otherwise, especially without doing damage to it.

He hears the clattering of Kankurou's puppets from behind him, clearly heading off an attack of Sakon's. Softly, under that, he can make out the rapid shifting of Gaara's sand. Apparently, though, Kankurou's attack on Sakon isn't going as well as it did originally – likely because of the lack of the element of surprise.

Naruto turns around again suddenly, throwing himself to the side to avoid yet another attack from Sakon. How did he get past Kankurou and Gaara? Naruto snarls, dredging up more of the Kyuubi's chakra – his nature chakra has already faded, and the demonic energy burns in his veins. He holds one arm out to the side, forming the swirling chakra of a basic rasengan as he jumps further back, mixing the Kyuubi's chakra in with the attack in order to stabilize and strengthen it.

Sakon gets distracted by the arrival of the rest of Naruto's team: Shizune, Kiba, Shino (have they already dropped that low in numbers?). Naruto takes advantage of his distraction to surge forwards, launching from the branch on three limbs, bounding towards his opponent like a fox. Sakon twists, his hands flashing out to latch onto Naruto's arm, forcing him to let the rasengan dissipate less it blow up in his face. Sakon grunts as the heat from Kyuubi's chakra (not enough to form a shroud, but definitely enough to cause pain) begins to burn his hands.

Naruto smirks, lashing out with his other hand – claws fully extended, fingers curled to direct them towards his target – almost immediately, trailing faint wisps of the Kyuubi's chakra. Sakon dodges again, pushing Naruto aside and throwing himself away, only to find tendrils of Gaara's sand wrapping securely around his leg.

Then, Naruto gets distracted by a sudden displacement of air. He has to throw himself backwards and off the branch to avoid being hit by one of Tayuya's demon-puppets. Her melody picks up speed and complexity, and Naruto sees his teammates struggling against the other two creatures. One hounds Temari relentlessly, not giving her the time and space that she needs in order to fight effectively with her ranged wind attacks, while the other moves to attack the newcomers.

A whoosh of air and sand... Sakon has vanished from Gaara's closing trap, moving to attack the Suna jinchuuriki head-on. Naruto growls and crouches, forming a rasengan in one hand, using the Kyuubi's chakra to form the shell, as the demon-puppet charges him. He dashes forwards suddenly, leaping up and over the head of the charging puppet, twisting in mid-air and slamming his rasengan into its left shoulder with a yell. It grunts and buckles under the brunt force of the attack, but even the rapidly spinning chakra has little effect on its strange physiology.

Naruto flips backwards, landing in a crouch on a branch just above and behind the demon-puppet. He glances briefly around while it stumbles to a halt, snarling when he sees flashes of Tayuya moving backwards towards her eventual destination even as she plays on her flute. He crouches and gathers chakra while the demon-puppet turns around and starts moving back to attack him, launching himself from the branch just as it reaches his location. Naruto rockets after Tayuya on all fours, the Kyuubi's chakra bubbling out of him, turning his movements into a crimson blur to outside eyes, leaving the demon-puppet far behind.

Tayuya curses and changes the tempo on her flute, into something twisting and fast, something that spirals into the sky and summons images of whirling colors and sound. The world warps around him, distorted as if seen through a heavy liquid in a dream. Naruto pitches forwards, fighting to retain his delicate balance of movement as nausea assaults his stomach and mind. He skids to a stop, shaking his head, crouching down as he scrambles to adjust for the sudden instability of the world. The notes continue to twine around him, moving like sinuous dragons among storm clouds.

Vaguely, he sees the wavering image of Tayuya as she escapes, senses the presence of her puppet as it gains on him, and bitter failure taints the back of his mouth like a coating of blood.

Helpless rage fills him, followed by waves of burning pain. His ears ring loudly, the hypnotic notes begin to sound as if they have to filter and fight through viscous water to reach his ears. Fiery tears build up behind his eyes before slowly training down his cheeks and lifting in narrow tendrils to swirl into the crimson chakra around him, lines of dark red that catch the sunlight.

The world shifts, changes color. An impossible shade of red tints the world, blues and purples and even greens washed out or nonexistent. The puppet reaches him…

And disintegrates in the maelstrom that pours through Naruto's veins and out of his pores, a tangible representation of his fury and frustration. Naruto roars, the wind rising to howl with him, trashing the trees and tearing suddenly autumn-tinged leaves from branches, stark against a colorless sky. All of his senses tunnel in on that one point, the beating of Sasuke's heart, the rapid, terrified breathing of Tayuya.

He springs, the world freezing and blurring incomprehensibly around him, pieces of dust and leaves suspended in the air turning into forceful projectiles that score quickly healed lines of blood on his skin. The song freezes on one keening high note, warbling in Naruto's perception, slowly growing higher in pitch as he rapidly approaches Tayuya's position. The sound fades in volume as she slowly, as if moving through molasses, lowers her flute and moves her other hand to her hip, preparing for the eminent battle. Her eyes are wide and pupils dilated with adrenaline, cheeks flushed and the toxic chakra of the curse seal throbbing, her pulse fluttering along her throat.

Naruto zeroes in on that spot, the faint sign of life, the distinct sound of a racing heart (dokidoki dokidoki, the most pleasing music of all), the sharp sweaty scent of fear carried faintly by the wind. He leaps high into the air, cracking the branch that he pushed off from, arm reared back and claws curled, crimson chakra and blood swirling with the wind that moves around his fingers in eddies, gathering and streaming behind him like koi flags in a storm.

She raises her arms and ducks her head in a desperate attempt to shield herself…

Uselessly, as Naruto's elongated claws slice clean through the flesh and bone, penetrating the delicate skin on her neck and ripping open her jugular, filling Naruto's vision with the spray of brilliantly vibrant blood that continues to flow as her heart struggles vainly for life. She gurgles, chokes and drowns on her own blood, her face twisted into a look of perpetual horror as she collapses, falling to her knees before the monster that stole her life before gradually folding in on herself. Kilometers behind them, her precious puppets disintegrate, their dust carried away by the gentle wind.

The barrel rolls half off her back and onto the bark with a thud, and Naruto smirks in triumph.

...

(Then)

"You're pathetic, Naruto." He didn't even tilt his head towards Naruto, made no sign that he acknowledged Naruto's presence except for that one sentence.

'You're pathetic.'

As if Naruto didn't already know that. As if he didn't whisper it to himself every night, after waking up from yet another nightmare (or, worse, dream) of Sasuke.

"Teme," he replied, but there was no venom, no snarl in his voice as there once would have been. Naruto was tired and sick of the war, of the never-ending separation from Sasuke. So what if he was pathetic? At least they weren't fighting (yet). "Why the hell did you call me here if you were just going to insult me?"

Silence, until Sasuke turned his head slightly so that the faint moonlight drew a sharp halo around the edges of his pale face. "You do realize that Akatsuki is after you, don't you, usuratonkachi?"

Naruto failed to answer, his breath stuck in his throat, his eyes burning with suppressed tears at the old nickname. "Yeah," he whispered at last, turning his gaze away from that tantalizing glimpse of Sasuke's face, intentionally failing to see the impressions of red clouds on black. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered with sudden cold. His eyes slid half shut. "What do you care?"

Footsteps. Soft, not ghost-like. Sasuke clearly intended for Naruto to hear his approach. The blond didn't particularly care to guess why.

A cold hand grabbed his chin harshly and pulled his head back around and up, forcing him to meet Sasuke's eyes. Naruto offered no resistance, even knowing the danger inherent in such an action. Sasuke's other hand, icy against Naruto's increasingly heated flesh, slid slowly under Naruto's shirt and jacket, resting firmly on the center of the Kyuubi's seal. Neither moved for several long moments as the wind rustled the treetops around them, knocking free a few loose leaves to swirl in the air. Sasuke's eyes strayed from Naruto's and down to the hidden seal. His hand fell from Naruto's chin to hang uselessly by his side.

"Do..." Naruto's voice failed, and his tongue darted out to wet dry and cracked lips. He swallowed. "Do you want it for yourself?" Sasuke's eyes slid ever so slowly back up to Naruto's, his gaze flat, giving no hint of ascent, refusal, or confusion. "The Kyuubi," Naruto clarified, mostly just to fill the empty silence.

Sasuke grunted and turned away, removing his hand from Naruto's stomach as he did so. "Sasuke?" Naruto prompted once the silence had stretched for more than a few seconds, internally cursing his inability to keep his mouth shut. Why couldn't he just sit there and enjoy Sasuke's company while it lasted?

"Would you be able to do that? Transfer it?" Sasuke asked after another few moments, during which Naruto's heart practically resided in his throat. Naruto breathed out, almost a sigh of relief but more a release of tension in preparation for the next blow.

"Yeah." The wind moaned loader than that single word, but Naruto didn't doubt that Sasuke heard him clearly.

"Why?" The question, delivered in Sasuke's typical monotone, nearly knocked Naruto off his feet. Why? He swallowed again, remembering with an ache in his chest a similar question from a similar boy so long ago. Blue eyes meeting brown (why help me?). Later, green to blue (why do you try so hard? Why do you reach out to me?).

He wanted to say 'because you're my friend', that old worn answer, that comfortable answer with no ambiguities or deep questions attached. But "because I love you" came out instead.

The admission took both of them by surprise. Naruto could clearly see the sudden tensing in Sasuke's body, and he immediately regretted letting his mouth run away from him yet again. But instead of screaming, instead of scoffing or insulting Naruto or just plain attacking him, Sasuke merely asked again, "Why?" softly that time, quietly, barely a whisper. Naruto wondered if he was talking to the blond, himself, or some nameless power.

"I- I don't know," he replied, to Sasuke and to his own silent question. "I- You... You were always there, and I still have trouble accepting that you're gone..." And it felt as if Sasuke was already dead to him, as if that thing in front of him was nothing more than a corpse, reanimated in some sick cosmic joke against Naruto. Sometimes it felt as if Sasuke had never been alive, never been real, and that perfect boy that haunted all of Naruto's memories was nothing more than a figment of a lonely child's imagination.

"You would accept death, on a whim of mine?" Sasuke asked at last, shattering the heavy silence.

Naruto shook his head, before saying, "No," softly. "I don't believe that you would... would kill me on just a whim," he continued, his voice rising in volume and confidence as he spoke. "You always plan everything, and... and I like to think that you'd have a good reason..."

Sasuke scoffed. "Don't pretend like you didn't research everything about me and my clan, dobe. Go ahead and say it. Mangekyou Sharingan."

Naruto averted his eyes, suddenly unable to look at Sasuke's silhouetted form. "If you want..." he offered quietly, feeling distinctly as if the world spun around him, as if he were trapped in some surreal dream, watching words come flowing out of his mouth without his direction.

A crack. Naruto looked back towards Sasuke, to see that his friend had punched the tree next to him, leaving a sizeable dent, the sharp scent of blood slowly wafting away from the shattered wood. "So sorry to ruin your plans for noble self-sacrifice, but you're too late. I already have the Mangekyou." Sasuke nearly growled, his voice low and terse, his figure tense and shaking slightly.

"How?" And Naruto cursed his loose tongue, cursed the way that his words had escaped from his lips before he could close the gates on them. And, more than anything, he wanted to continue, to ask 'who', 'why not me', 'am I not good enough?'

Sasuke yanked his hand away from the tree, leaving behind faint impressions of dark blood on the light wood highlighted by the moonlight. Terror, that he had fully and truly stumbled over the line once and for all, rose within Naruto, choking him. "My brother was innocent." Naruto would have thought the words to be nothing more than the wind and an overactive imagination, if it wasn't for the sudden stillness of the world and the terrible nightmarish reality of the situation.

He had nothing to say in reply. 'I'm sorry' felt so horribly inadequate, to the point where hated silence would be preferable.

Naruto fought down his nervousness at the lack of noise, his burning anger at the entire damn situation and world, his curiosity, his urge to grab Sasuke and hold him tight (or shake some sense into him). At last, when it felt to him as if years had crawled by, he ventured to ask, "What will you do now?" The question seemed incredibly stupid to him. He had never been blind, and Naruto hadn't failed to miss the Akatsuki cloak that Sasuke had dropped carelessly on the ground at the edge of the clearing, probably thanks more to the warmth of the night than to any courtesy towards Naruto.

"I... I'm not certain." Naruto blinked in surprise at Sasuke's admission. The Uchiha had never expressed doubt, at least not in front of him. "Madara... The leader of the Akatsuki... said that Itachi was ordered to kill the clan by the elders of Konoha, because they were going to rebel... That Danzou, the leader of ROOT, pushed for the order."

And the first thing out of Naruto's traitorous mouth was, "Do you have any proof?"

Sasuke whirled around, his eyes having flared into the terrifying image of what Naruto could only assume was his Mangekyou Sharingan. Naruto froze, feeling as if those eyes held more malevolence and hatred than even the Kyuubi's. "So you don't believe me?" Sasuke asked, his voice icy. Naruto gulped, realizing that Sasuke was far closer to boiling over than his calm visage would indicate.

"I do!" he quickly asserted, afraid that Sasuke would use his blunder as an excuse to resume their feud. "Just... Not everyone will. And Madara might have lied about or slightly changed some of the specifics."

Sasuke seemed to actually mull that over, his brow furrowed. "There's a comment he made... When I first saw him... I wasn't paying a lot of attention, and all I remember is being so angry and in so much pain..." Naruto stepped forwards, once, paused, and then when Sasuke failed to react he took the remaining step across that gap between them and wrapped his arms around his friend. Sasuke didn't move, continuing to look at something off in the distance that Naruto couldn't even begin to see.

"I'll be beside you," Naruto whispered, as the wind swirled around them. "No matter what happens."

...

(Now)

Tayuya collapses onto the branch and rolls, hanging loosely from the straps of the barrel, in such a way that Naruto can tell that, without its anchoring weight, she would have fallen to the forest floor far below. He straightens from the crouch that he landed in, bones cracking as he shoves the Kyuubi's tainting chakra down and his form slowly reverts to normal. He turns to the barrel and kneels by it, roughly pulling Tayuya's limp arms from the straps and pushing her to the side. She slides off the branch, leaving behind a wide and thick trail of blood.

Naruto's sensitive ears clearly pick up on the sounds of her body hitting several branches before dropping at last to the ground with a thud.

He presses his right palm to the wood, letting the slow pulse of Sasuke's awakening chakra flow over him, and prays that it's not too late as he scrutinizes the seal array. It is Orochimaru's usual sloppy work, and Naruto growls low in his throat at how Sasuke actually trusted his life to such an uncertainty. After forcing his mind back to the immediate issue, Naruto starts probing the seal with his chakra, not caring at this point that someone might find his actions suspicious.

"My oh my, Naruto-kun, your team doesn't seem to be able to manage themselves without your guidance."

Naruto freezes at the all too familiar voice before spinning around in a crouch. He snarls when he sees Kabuto standing on a distant branch, the white-haired bone-dude beside and slightly before him. The light gleams off of Kabuto's glasses as he smirks and raises his hands into an all too familiar symbol.

The world stops.

'He shouldn't be here,' the Kyuubi whispers in his mind, speaking up for the first time since this nightmare began. Naruto snarls in agreement with it and crouches, his claws digging into the tree-bark.

'What do you say we make a deal, fox?'

...

And here's where the story starts to get weird. (Seriously. My muse ran away from me on this one)

So, yeah. Majorly alternate timeline in the past.

What does everyone think happened with Kabuto showing up? Also, how was my grammer/ spelling? The story's flow? How were the fight scenes? Was Naruto OOC in the flashback?

Anyways, please review! Feedback helps me improve as a writer, and I seriously do want to hear your opinions, criticisms, compliments, etc. I will do my best to answer any and all questions, although I won't give spoilers.