Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Author's Note: Revised and corrected in preparation for actually finishing this story at last. Also, if you want to see what I've been doing in the last year check out Fimbulwinter, my original novel now available as a Kindle ebook on Amazon (just got to www_amazon_com/dp/B00KZ41LHM , or go to the main page and search books for "Fimbulwinter, by E. William Brown").


Naruto was precisely on time for his meeting with the Hokage, a detail that both she and her assistant missed completely. He breezed into her office with a smile and a wave, ignoring her usual early-morning funk.

"So, what have you got for me granny?"

He ducked the pencil she threw at him, cheerfully ignoring the way it embedded itself six inches deep in the concrete wall behind him.

"Something fun I hope. Form a clone army to invade Sound? Teach the ANBU how to secure a records office? Maybe some gardening work, digging up old Roots we don't need around here anymore?"

Tsunade had to chuckle at that one. "If only it were that easy, kid. I've been at this for nearly three years now, and I'm still trying to figure out which ninja are actually loyal to that bunch."

"Well, if it comes down to it you know Jiraiya and I will both back you." The young ninja said seriously. "Throw in Asuma, Gai and Shizune and that gives us most of Konoha's combat power without even considering anyone else. But I guess they wouldn't realize that until after we kicked their asses, so it'd end up getting pretty bloody."

"That is one of the problems with hiding your strength," the blonde Sannin agreed. "But I didn't ask you here to talk about that. After yesterday's performance I've decided to give you a shot at something a little more complicated than your average combat mission." She slid a personnel file across her desk.

Naruto casually pulled up a chair and opened the folder. "Anko, huh? Yeah, I remember her. Jiraiya-sensei's still kind of pissed about not being able to get that cursed seal off her." He turned the page, and whistled. "Ouch. Looks like she's had some bad luck in team leaders. Oh, right, her seal was one of the experimental ones that didn't come out right. Something about mixing up bloodlust and, um, the other kind."

"Yeah, that's about the size of it. The poor girl turns into a homicidal nymphomaniac when she's under stress, and after the training she's been through she's damned near irresistible. She could be an incredible asset if we could just keep her problems under control, but since Konoha doesn't train seduction specialists there hasn't been much hope of that. Until now."

Naruto's eyes went wide. "Whoa. Yeah, I can see how there'd be some problems there. So that's why she's been stuck with village work and solo missions for so long." He considered the file for a moment. "I think I see where you're going with this, but what about the fact that I'm still technically a genin?"

Tsunade laughed. "Oh, did I forget to mention that? Here, it turns out you volunteered to join ANBU this morning." She slid another form across the desk.

Naruto bent over it with a puzzled frown. "Did I? Huh, my memory must be going." He signed the form and passed it back. "Ok, but what good does that do?"

"Nothing, by itself. But did you know we never signed a peace treaty with Sound? So, by my authority as Hokage, I hereby promote ANBU member Uzumaki Naruto to the rank of jounin…"

"What?!" He exclaimed.

"…and place him in charge of Team Naruto, currently consisting of himself and Special Jounin Mitarashi Anko. Do a good job, and you can have your pick of the chuunin for the other two slots."

Naruto gaped at her for a moment longer before regaining his composure. "Tsunade… thank you! You won't regret this."

"See that I don't. But next time we spar I'd better be looking at the real you, and not some fancy clone."

"Um…"

"Are you even in Konoha?"

"Ah, no?" Naruto rubbed his head sheepishly. "But I'm not going to pop like a shadow clone either. I can bleed and heal and recover chakra just like a real person."

"Good. It's not fair if I'm the only one who has bruises the next day." She paused, and her expression turned serious again. "Can you handle this

"Seriously?" He considered it. I've never even done it as a guy, and the concept of Anko in some kind of crazed sex-and-bloodshed frenzy is kind of intimidating. But she needs help or she's going to end up going completely nuts, and I've certainly got plenty of experience from my girl-clones to fall back on.

"Yeah, I think so," he finally decided. "Even if I'm wrong, well, I'm never alone."

"Good point," Tsunade agreed. "Well then, time for introductions. Shizune!" She called.

The door opened just enough for Shizune to poke her head through. "Ready?"

Tsunade nodded, and her assistant threw the door open to allow a bemused-looking Anko to enter. The buxom assassin took in the room, and particularly Naruto's expression, and frowned.

"Joint mission?" She asked as Shizune closed the door.

"Not exactly. Anko, say hello to Naruto. Jiraiya's apprentice, Konoha's newest jounin, and your new team leader."

Anko looked the orange-clad blonde up and down thoughtfully. "The kinky toad pervert's apprentice, huh? Sounds interesting." She perched herself on the arm of his chair with a cheerful grin. "Just don't blame me if he comes back begging for a reassignment, boss."

"Yes, well, try not to be any more difficult than you have to be," the older woman replied sourly. "But in the interests of getting that issue settled as soon as possible I've got a mission assignment for you."

She retrieved another folder from the piles on her desk and passed it over. "There's been a bit of bandit trouble up near the northern border, and we've received a request to take care of it. Normally we'd send a genin team, but I've got a Nara analyst telling me he thinks it's a trap. Something about the timing of the attacks being a little too neat for real bandits. Anyway, I want you two to run a little impersonation scam and see what you can turn up."

"Sounds like fun," Anko commented. "We can't have those Stone fuckers killing off our cute little genin before they grow up, after all. Or maybe it'll be Lighting, they're always fun to dance with."

"Or maybe Orochimaru is collecting experimental subjects again, which gives us a shot at finding leads on him," Naruto added. "We'll get right on it, granny."

This time he caught the thrown pen a few millimeters from his nose, and calmly used it to sign the mission acceptance form.

"I'll leave a few clones around town just to confuse any lurking spies, and if we run into anything interesting I'll relay word back so they can let you know. Maybe I should leave you a couple of spares as bodyguards while I'm at it? You do seem to be slowing down a little."

Tsunade growled. "Watch it, kid. I can still order a full physical for you any time I want."

Naruto shot out of the chair with an expression of mock panic. "Well, we're burning daylight here! We'd better get on that mission, Hokage-sama. Wouldn't want to waste any more of your valuable time, after all."

Anko snickered as she followed him out the door.

Neither member of the newly-formed team spoke again until they were safely out of the building. Anko tipped her head slightly in the direction of ANBU headquarters, but Naruto shook his minutely and indicated the Hokage monument instead. Five minutes later they were on the deserted trail behind the great stone heads.

"Kind of open, don't you think?" Anko commented as she looked around warily.

"I'm an S-rank wind user." Naruto replied. "No one's going to get close enough to listen in here unless they're phased into the rock or something, and I've had the place staked out since yesterday."

"Fair enough." She conceded. "I can't believe the boss wants to try this again. I appreciate the thought, but… well, I assume you know what happened to my last few team leaders?"

"Yeah. I was pretty surprised too. I mean, usually she freaks out at the slightest hint of anything perverted…."

"…and now she's basically putting you in charge of screwing me senseless anytime I need it," Anko went on with a cheerful leer. "You really think you can handle me, stud? I'm not gonna go all gooey and doe-eyed just 'cause you lay a Kiss of Surrender on me or something."

"Please. I wouldn't use that crap on an enemy, let alone my teammate. But before we get all caught up in planning the post-mission party, why don't we put some thought into the actual mission?"

"Spoilsport." She stuck out her tongue at him, and he laughed. "Ok, ok, we can do the mission first. How are we going to impersonate a bunch of kiddies anyway?"

"Heh. Check this out. Persistent Genin Team!"

A pair of thirteen-year-old boys and a girl the same age appeared in a puff of smoke, and looked around with interest. They wore Konoha forehead protectors and reasonably practical clothes, but all three were festooned with equipment pouches, canteens, bags and backpacks. Pretty typical for a genin team on their first long-distance mission.

"So we finally get to use this trick, huh?" The taller of the two boys looked up at Anko while absently tugging at his pigtail. "Guess you'd be our jounin sensei, then. Hi, I'm Ranma, the best taijutsu specialist around."

"Quit staring at her chest, you bastard," the other boy growled. "I'm Ryouga. I'm an earth specialist, and one of these days I'm going to kick Ranma's ass."

"Yeah, yeah, you and what army, bacon-breath."

"Don't forget about me!" The girl chimed in. "My name's Akane, and I'm a ninja too!"

"Yeah, her cooking is so deadly the Hokage declared it a forbidden technique," Ranma commented mockingly.

"Ranma! I heard that, you jerk!" The insulted girl tried to bash him over the head with a spiked club she'd pulled out of nowhere, but the boy nonchalantly sidestepped the attack. Unfortunately one of his canteens wasn't properly strapped down. The club smashed it apart in mid-air, and water went everywhere.

Ryouga vanished as the water struck him, leaving behind empty clothes and a pile of gear. But as his overloaded backpack crashed to the ground a small form struggled out of the falling clothes and leaped clear.

A piglet?

The tiny pig squealed indignantly and launched itself at Ranma, who was now a redhead and starting to wring out his shirt. No, her shirt. Ranma was quite definitely female now.

"Ow!" The self-proclaimed taijutsu master complained as the piglet bit her ankle. "Quit that, you little porker! It wasn't my fault!"

"Ranma, stop picking on P-chan!" Akane dropped her club to scoop up the angry pig and cuddle it against her chest. "There, there P-chan, mommy won't let the mean old pervert hurt you."

Ranma rolled her eyes. "Great, here we go again."

Akane stopped and looked around in puzzlement. "Hey, where'd Ryouga go?"

Anko giggled. "You're holding him, kiddo."

The younger girl looked at the pig in confusion. "What? No, this is my pet pig P-chan. He's always wandering off and getting lost, but he finds his way home eventually. Don't you, Mr. P-chan? Yes, you do. You're a smart little piggy, aren't you?"

"Don't bother." Ranma groused. "She'll never get it. Hey, are either of you a fire type? I need to heat up some water to change us back."

Anko chortled. "Naruto, you're a genius. Anyone who meets these three is gonna be so busy trying to figure out what the hell's going on with them that they'll never think to wonder if they're clones. Did you make them up, or are they real people?"

"Beats me. I got into tech summoning awhile back, and of course I pulled in all kinds of random crap from the Elseworlds before I got any control over what I was summoning. I got this bunch from some books I summoned, but I'm not sure if they were fiction or not."

"But either way no one else is going to recognize them, which is perfect for random genin." Anko nodded approvingly. "But are they really gonna hold up long enough for this kind of mission? We're looking at a couple of days to get out to the border, and probably a few more of poking around before we find anything."

"Not a problem," Naruto answered proudly. "My persistent clones can last for weeks as long as I'm close enough to recharge their chakra, and my range on that's more than twenty miles. But the real trick is the transformations."

"Yeah, I did wonder how pig-boy does the empty shirt trick. An illusion wouldn't do that." The piglet squealed in protest, but the special jounin ignored him. "Let me guess. You figured out a way to make clones based on something besides yourself?"

"Better," he grinned. "They're just chakra constructs. If you overload a Transformation the right way you can reshape them into anything you want, and the change is just as real as the clone was. See that bird?" He pointed to a raptor circling among the thermals high over the city.

"No way!" Anko stared at the distant bird, and then at her new team leader. "That's a clone? Damn, that's a hell of a trick! I wish I could do that."

"I'll show you if you want, but I'm not sure how much good it will do you. A hawk clone ends up taking about three times as much chakra as a regular shadow clone, and that's awfully expensive for a normal person."

"Yeah, too much to be worth it," she agreed regretfully. "But if that's your plan, can you make a clone for the kid's sensei too? No one who knows anything about Konoha would buy me being trusted with a team of rug-rats."

-oOoOo-

Some days Naruto could actually keep a secret from his sensei, but not today. One casual question about virginity seals, and the old man smelled blood. It took nearly an hour, but eventually he wormed the truth out of his student.

Surprisingly, the revelation failed to trigger the expected teasing. Instead Jiraiya's mood took an unusually serious turn.

"You've really got your work cut out for you if you want to go there," he said finally. "Hyuuga seal work is damned tight, and they've been perfecting that crap they use to control their own clan members for generations. There's a reason branch family members don't just defect and get their seals removed."

"Yeah, I figure those Caged Bird seals have more booby traps than one of Orochimaru's hideouts," Naruto grumbled in reply. "But the Seven Virtues doesn't explode when you activate it, so it would be a lot harder to make tamper-proof. The thing is, they've got the sensitivity set so high I can't even get close to it without setting it off."

"Exactly. That's how they do it," Jiraiya explained. "You'll burn out her abdominal tenketsu if you try to peel it off while it's active, which would leave her sterile and probably crippled even if she survived. The trick is to avoid activating the seal while it's being removed, but they've closed off all the obvious loopholes over the years. When I was your age you just had to get a woman to do the removal, but they figured that one out when Yohko turned out to be a lesbian. These days they tune it so any foreign chakra other than the girl's own father will set it off."

"But that's stupid." Naruto protested. "What if he dies before they get married?

Jiraiya shrugged. "What can I say, these guys are paranoid. They'd rather take a chance on that than have a possibility of someone outside their clan getting the Byakugan."

Naruto frowned, then suddenly stopped with a look of surprise on his face. "Wait, you mean they do that to the guys too? No wonder Neji was always such an ass. But how do they… um…"

"Rub one out?" The toad sage chuckled. "They can't. Even without foreign chakra around they'll get zapped if they get that worked up. Like I always say, that is one messed up family. Did you know they even invented a fidelity seal for when they get married?"

Naruto shook his head. "Unbelievable. Let me guess, that's one's designed so there isn't any way to remove it, like the Caged Bird seal. So if your spouse dies or something you're just out of luck."

"Yep, you guessed it."

-oOoOo-

The genin settled noisily into their campsite, bickering constantly over everything from the placement of their tents to the division of chores. Their sensei, a clone based on an ex-ANBU named Uryuu, made a half-hearted attempt to supervise. In less than ten minutes Ryoga was a pig again, a topless Ranma-chan was wringing out her soaking-wet shirt and muttering under her breath about uncute tomboys, and Akane was merrily cooking away at their small fire. When Uryuu noticed her adding camouflage paint and boot polish to the pot he gave up on trying to control the chaos, and slunk away to gnaw on a ration bar and mutter incoherently to himself.

Six miles away Anko was cheerfully camouflaging the entrance to a small hide Naruto had tunneled into a hillside, while he finished drawing an array of concealment seals on the walls of the burrow.

"Good call on the seals," she commented as she finally slipped inside. "It's always nice to be able to use camping jutsu without worrying if some passing asshole is going to sense them. But I thought your element was wind?"

"It is. My earth techniques are so slow you'd think a genin was doing them."

"Oh, ho!" She chuckled. "Just the right level to play 'Ryouga', huh? But doesn't that mean you had to do that leaf training thing twice to get two elements down? Jiraiya must be more boring than I thought if you had time for that."

Naruto placed one of the smokeless logs he'd brought into the small fire pit at the mouth of the hollow, and lit it with a tightly-controlled fire jutsu. "Five times, actually. Jiraiya thought I was nuts, but the biggest advantage I've got is the fact that I can do insane amounts of training. Running thirty or forty clones at a time adds up when you do it for months on end."

"Of course, it didn't work out like I'd hoped. I thought since my chakra is so huge I might be able to get around the usual limit on using elements you don't have an affinity for, but no such luck. I can do low-level techniques from all five elements, as long as I don't mind burning a ton of chakra. But I can't convert chakra to elemental form fast enough to make high-level techniques practical for anything but air."

Anko finished positioning a pair of ration packs over the fire and nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. Still sounds pretty useful though. That gives you all the basic utility stuff, and a bunch of deception potential for your clones. Although," she paused and cocked her head thoughtfully while she did the math. "You're actually older than I am, aren't you?"

He shrugged. "Depends on how you count. I've done a few decades worth of training in the last two years, but absorbing memories from clones doesn't age you the same way living the same length of time would. There's a difference between living for a month, and having thirty yesterdays."

"Thirty yesterdays, huh?" Anko sighed and settled herself on the ground next to the young/old blond. "Too bad we've got to stay on alert here. I'm getting curious what else you learned in all that training time."

He chuckled, and slipped an arm around her waist. "I'm sure you'll find out soon enough, Anko-chan."

Then he relaxed his chakra concealment technique, allowing his massively overdeveloped aura to expand into the space defined by the seals. Anko's sarcastic comeback was promptly forgotten as she found herself submerged in an ocean of foreign chakra. It was a thousand times more powerful than anything she could have generated, and she felt a brief moment of panic before realizing that her companion was the source. That, and unlike the projections of killing intent she was used to it wasn't hostile at all.

No, it was… protective? No one had tried to protect her since she was eight.

"Naruto, what are you doing?"

"Just relaxing. Suppressing your presence all day is murder when you've got this much chakra, but I have to keep building it up anyway because it's my one big advantage over guys like Itachi. Oh, wait, did you mean the empathy thing?"

"If that's what's pushing those feelings at me." Not just protectiveness. Amusement, curiosity, affection, desire. Was this what friendship felt like? "That doesn't feel like a seduction technique. What's it for?"

"It's an empathic projection. I was trying to figure out a way to set up actual telepathy between my clones, but so far all I've managed to do is make it so I leak emotions when my aura isn't suppressed. It's kind of an embarrassing problem for a ninja, but right now it takes some concentration to keep it from happening."

"So it's real? Not some kind of trick?" Anko bit her lip. Real or not, it was so damn good to feel safe for once.

"Anko, we're teammates now. I might joke around with you, but I'd never trick you about something serious."

It was impossible to miss his feelings about that. You take care of your teammates. Protect them, trust them, sacrifice for them. Bleed and die for them if necessary. Most people cared less about their own children than Naruto did his teammates. And he was offering that to her? The girl who'd betrayed her village and then her sensei, and couldn't be trusted with anything for fear of what traps might still be lurking in her damaged mind?

"Do you want me to stop?" He asked gently.

"No!" She replied fiercely. Then, a little calmer. "No. I kinda like it."

-oOoOo-

Anyone from Konoha would have panicked at the sight of the nine-tailed fox lounging beside the moonlit lagoon. It was only the size of a large dog, and despite the number of tails it barely held more chakra than the average jounin. But the malevolent aura it radiated was unmistakably the Kyuubi's, as was the alien red chakra that swirled around it.

Naruto wasn't worried. Oh, the fox could be tricky, but that was his shadow clone it was possessing. He could still dispel it with a thought, and it hardly had enough power to be dangerous anyway. Their discussion was of more concern.

"Two weeks, but you have to stay on the island," he offered. "If you go causing havoc word'll get back to Konoha, and then the old men on the council will panic and try to have me killed."

"I suppose," the fox grumbled. "But sniffing the breeze isn't so great if I can't kill anything fun. What I really want is some progress on that dismissal technique."

Naruto snorted. "Yeah, I wish. Where am I supposed to get six tails worth of native chakra and a holy kami willing to risk its life to send you home? I've never even heard of anyone meeting any kind of celestial kami, let alone a holy one."

"You won't," Sirasa commented from her spot on the lake. Swimming was still a novel experience for her, and one she insisted on repeated as often as possible. She'd put up with having the fox around if it mean she could swim.

"They all left. Some of their children are still around, but I've never seen one whose chakra was actually holy."

"So call one back," the Kyuubi insisted. "Sacrifice a few villages or something. There's got to be some way to get one here."

"What, so you can eat them too? They're not stupid, Mr. Grumpy-Pants."

The Kyuubi growled at the air spirit, but she simply giggled and dove underwater. After a moment he huffed and turned back to Naruto. "One of these days I'm going to kill that little airhead."

"Uh huh. So, are you going to show me this soul transference technique or not?" Privately Naruto had to concede that, whatever his other moral shortcomings, at least the Kyuubi was honest about what he was. Sure he was a psychotic monster by human standards, but at least he just wanted to kill you. He wouldn't spend weeks torturing you first, or try to gain your trust just so he could betray it, and he thought the human practice of using little kids as weapons and living sacrifices was disgusting. By ninja standards that made him a real stand-up guy.

Not that Naruto was dumb enough to trust the fox's word on how these demonic techniques worked. He was pretty careful to pick them apart and rework them using his own skills before relying on them too much. But honestly, who else was going to know anything about building techniques that take a whole tail of chakra to pull off?

"Oh, what the hell. Make it two weeks on the next island over, and don't bitch if it isn't there anymore when I'm done. But you realize this isn't some touchy-feely sugar-plum angel resurrection thing? Demonic Soul Transference rips the victim's soul out of its rightful body kicking and screaming, and the harder they fight it the more it damages their mind in the process. Sure, you can stuff them into another body if you've got one handy, but that doesn't make it theirs. Usually they don't integrate with it right, and you just get a raving zombie."

Naruto frowned. "You can't repair the connections between the soul and the chakra circulatory system?"

"All those little fiddly bits?" The fox guffawed. "Please. I'd die of boredom first. What the hell do you want a technique like that for, anyway? I can't see you ever using it."

Sirasa surfaced again, and Naruto turned to watch his friend chasing a fish through the warm waters. Finally he said, "Demonic Blood Transformation doesn't actually have to be done on your own blood, does it?"

The demon fox froze, and turned to stare at him. "You are one scary little monkey, you know that? Yeah, that would solve the compatibility problem alright. Where do you come up with this stuff?"

"In the next year or two I have to kill ten of the toughest ninja in the world, or everyone I care about is going to die." Naruto smiled grimly. "Just call me highly motivated."

-oOoOo-

"So, how are we going to find these bandits anyway?" Ryouga asked. The ersatz genin team was walking along a trail in the target area, moving at a normal civilian pace to facilitate conversation.

"Maybe you could get lost and stumble on their camp?" Ranma suggested.

Akane rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Ranma, can't you stop picking on Ryouga for five minutes? Obviously we'll have to check the local villages to see where they've been operating. Then we can either disguise ourselves as merchants, or just sweep the roads until we find one of their scouts. Right, sensei?"

"I don't think that will be necessary, Akane." The older ninja replied as his eyes swept the trees. "It seems they've already found us."

There was a nasty chuckle from the trees, before a figure bearing a gigantic sword stepped out into view. His oddly shark-like face would have intimidated most genin, but the black robe decorated with red clouds was more of a concern for those in the know. Uryuu paled.

"I gotta admit, I was starting to think this scam wasn't going to catch us anything in time. Tell you what, little man, you tell me everything you know about the Kyuubi container, and I might let the kiddies live."

"Hoshigaki Kisame," Uryuu observed evenly. "S-rank nuke-nin, originally from Hidden Mist, currently a member of the criminal organization Akatsuki. We'll have to take this one seriously, everyone."

Ranma looked the missing nin up and down with a confident smirk. "This freak? He don't look so tough."

"Fine, you charge in and get yourself killed." Ryouga muttered. "I'm going to be ready for this guy. Earth Golem Armor!" The ground around the heavyset boy rushed up to engulf him, and continued on until a fifteen-foot giant of earth stood in his place.

"I'm not a kid!" Akane growled, as her aura spiked into the visible range and a vortex of wind sprung up around her. "Don't dismiss me or you'll regret it!"

"You kiddies think you're going to fight me? This is rich! You'll never even touch me. Water Release: Instant Lake!"

Water erupted from the earth all around them, in a thundering mass that inundated the whole area. Ryouga's earth form was quickly submerged, and Ranma yelped as he found himself female and struggling to stay afloat. Uryuu stood atop the rising waters and faded back a bit, watching for an opening. All pretty much what Kisame had expected.

Akane was different. Her eyes narrowed and she launched herself forward in a crash of thunder, splitting the rising waters and crossing the twenty yards between them in the blink of an eye. He was so startled he barely got his sword up in time. A delicate fist sheathed in more wind chakra than any genin could possibly produce impacted the massive blade, and blew the missing nin back through forty yards of trees to fetch up against the side of a nearby hill.

"I told you not to dismiss me." The girl smirked, and formed a pair of clones before following.

"What the hell is with that girl?" Kisame shook his head to clear it, and found himself looking at a pair of boots. His eyes scanned up to find long legs, a curvaceous figure barely covered by tight mesh armor and an unbuttoned trench coat, and a manic grin beneath a mop of dark purple hair.

"I get my very own S-rank nuke-nin to kill?" She clasped her hands together and squealed like a giddy schoolgirl. "Naruto, you shouldn't have!"

'Akane' landed on a tree branch behind her, and blurred into a considerably older and more curvaceous kunoichi. "Knock yourself out, Anko-chan. But I think I'll hang around to back you up if you don't mind?"

Kisame heaved himself back to his feet and chuckled. "Cute. This might actually be fun."

Back on the trail, Uryuu was startled by a sudden comment from behind him.

"Interesting. So this was a trap."

He spun, and found himself looking into a pair of Sharingan eyes. "Itachi!"

"Indeed," the legendary ninja confirmed. "But you were caught quite easily for a jounin. Are your skills that poor, or did you think you could actually defeat my Tsukuyomi?"

The world fell away. Uryuu found himself hanging from a wooden cross in a dead winter forest, with a crimson moon overhead. But unlike most victims of the dreaded technique he merely smiled. "You could say that."

Itachi leaned closer to examine him. "Really? You have no Sharingan, and no lesser genjutsu can match my power. So what…. ah, I see. You're a clone."

"So you can see the chakra connections at close range? Good to know. But what I'm really wondering is, how many times can you use these funky eye techniques before you run out of chakra? Bye now."

The clone dispelled himself, and the technique collapsed. Itachi scanned the water-logged forest for enemies, but he needn't have bothered. Four Naruto clones arrived in swirls of leaves an instant later, and began circling to surround him.

"You know, Itachi, your brother's going to be pissed if I kill you before he gets the chance. Sure you don't want to call off this bijuu-collecting nonsense before your boss blows up the world or something?"

"No." The four Narutos became sixteen, and Itachi frowned. "You're all clones," he commented.

"Yeah, but that won't stop us from kicking your ass. You're pretty tough, but I'm the worst kind of opponent there is for a guy like you. So, are you going to make an excuse and run away, or are we going to do this?"

Catching the real one will be difficult, Itachi thought. I need to see what else he can do. "You cannot defeat me, Naruto. But you are welcome to try."