Replica
By TwinEnigma
Warnings for Chapter: AU, language, violence.
Chapter Eight
Tsunade narrowed her eyes at the seals, radiant under the black light, and traced her finger contemplatively over one or two here and there. She then clicked off the lamp, nodding as she stepped back from the copied teens. "You can put on your shirts, now."
Not-Sasuke and his companion wordlessly complied, slowly turning around to face her.
"Those seals," Tsunade paused, frowning. "Whoever did these was either a genius or completely insane."
"So, you're familiar with these seals?" Sai wondered aloud, both eyes widening in surprise even as Ino elbowed him in the ribs.
Tsunade harrumphed, crossing her arms. "Of course I am."
Really, Ino thought, that boy should know better. This was the legendary Lady Tsunade!
"Is it bad?" Juugo slurred, wincing a little as he shifted in his chair. They'd woken him while trying to move him from the gurney, but he'd been so out of it, it'd been like moving a giant rag doll. He'd sat through the whole story and the revelation regarding the hundred or so others with the type of calm one only gets by being so thoroughly messed up that any further shocks to the system just aren't getting through. On the good side though, the man looked a lot less like death warmed over now that he had some color back.
Not-Sasuke rubbed his arm, fidgeting nervously, and then let his hand fall, his fingers automatically threading between not-Karin's fingers. It was almost like they were magnetically attracted or something. Then again, Ino supposed it did sort of make sense: if she'd been in their shoes, she wouldn't have wanted to be separated from the only person she really knew either.
"You could say that," Tsunade said dryly. "Most of the seals are pretty simple – a larger seal to cover up the scars the two of you would have normally, chakra suppressors keyed to adrenaline, and that that kind of thing."
She paused, shot a look at both Kakashi and Shizune, and added, "Then there are the other ones."
Not-Karin squeezed not-Sasuke's hand as she looked to him. He nodded, patting their intertwined hands gently to assure her. Ino resisted the urge to say something about how cute it was – this was not the time or place to say anything.
"Several of the ones on your faces affect memory centers in the brain," Tsunade explained. "It looks like they were trying to cut off your memories without destroying your abilities to understand speech."
"That's right," not-Sasuke said quietly. "I remember. They kept showing us pictures of things, asking if we knew what they were."
"What about their memories? Can they get them back?" Juugo asked.
Tsunade shook her head. "No, it's not likely. What they did with these seals was effectively induce psychogenic amnesia. The few cases we've seen with that diagnosis haven't been met with a lot of success in recovering anything more than fragments. And because it's induced artificially, I'll need to do more testing to see if there's any serious damage to their ability to form and retain long-term memories. But that's hardly the worst seal on there."
Both copied teens paled.
"Are any of you familiar with the concept of a dead man's switch?" Tsunade asked, scanning the room.
Neither Shizune nor Kakashi looked terribly surprised and Ino couldn't say she was that surprised either, if Tsunade was talking about the seal on the back of their necks. Seals like that, involving those systems and organs, weren't good news. The copied teens and Juugo looked a bit lost, though, and Ino discreetly elbowed Sai in the ribs, quickly quirking her head in their direction.
Sai cleared his throat, turning to address the three: "It's a form of a fail safe, meant to stop something in the event the operator is incapacitated."
"Correct," Tsunade said, crossing her arms over her chest, and looked back to the copied teens. "The seal on the back of your neck is a dead man's switch, with one purpose."
She paused and pointed at not-Sasuke: "To kill you in the event of her death."
"What - why? I don't understand," the copied boy breathed in horror.
His redheaded companion clung to his arm in wide-eyed disbelief, shaking her head, and Ino could swear she was murmuring that it couldn't be true.
"You were probably meant to be used as weapons," Kakashi piped up, deadly serious, "I doubt they wanted ones that would be easy to capture. Doubly so, since you have the Sharingan eyes."
There was another reason, too, a less savory one that undoubtedly would have been more necessary in the case of the original Sasuke. The seal ensured he'd protect Karin, even if only to protect his own life. But without memories, they didn't need to be threatened or bribed. All they needed was to be retrained and aimed in the right direction by their handlers.
Ino shuddered in disgust at the thought of it.
"The one good thing those sadists did was add another seal to it," Tsunade harrumphed, glaring at the copied boy. "A sort of vigilance seal, a really subtle one. It connects you to her empathically at a subconscious level. You probably haven't even noticed, but you've been reacting to her emotions."
She pointed at their entwined hands and both copied teens looked down, as if noticing for the first time. Immediately, they let go, as though burned.
"Can the seals be removed?" not-Karin asked, one hand drifting to the back of her neck.
"No," Tsunade said, shaking her head. "And no sane medical ninja or sealing specialist would try to take them off either. It's far too risky. The location and targets of the seals mean one misstep and both of you could either die or end up brain dead."
"So, I don't have a choice about staying with her, do I?" not-Sasuke murmured, looking thoroughly ill.
Ino wanted to hit him for saying that as she saw the hurt flash across the redhead's face, but then she saw the way he stiffened and looked even greener. The poor bastard already knew.
"If she's in danger, yeah, you'd probably have a gut feeling about it and come running," Tsunade agreed. She then snorted, shaking her head, and joked, "You know, most men would kill to know what their woman is feeling. You can actually do it."
Kakashi made a funny choking noise as the copies, Shizune and Ino gaped in horror at the Fifth Hokage.
Sai raised his eyebrows, opened his mouth, and promptly proceeded to make it worse: "The se-"
Ino slapped her hand over his mouth and stomped on his foot for good measure.
Juugo laughed a little, wincing, and shook his head, smiling.
"It's not funny!" not-Sasuke protested, pouting.
"A little bit," Juugo admitted. "It's sort of ironic, actually. And if Suigetsu were here, he'd agree with me."
Not-Sasuke donned a completely petulant expression, stubbornly crossing his arms.
"It's because I can feel him, right?" not-Karin piped up, her fingers drifting over her heart. "That warmth..."
Juugo smiled at her. "A seal can't tell you how you feel. I believe you remember somewhere, even just a little, that you cared for him, just as he must remember somewhere that he needed you."
Not-Sasuke visibly bristled, huffing as he turned away to hide the spots of color high on his cheeks. Meanwhile, not-Karin smiled softly, mouthing her gratitude.
Ino's eyes widened – oh dear, that would explain why they set it up that way, actually. They couldn't force something that didn't exist, but they could reinforce something that already existed. It was very, very cruel the way these two – and probably all the others – had been toyed with and Ino wished she could do something to hurt the people who did this to them.
It just wasn't right.
"Well," Tsunade said, pulling over a chair and sitting down. "This brings us to our next point."
Kakashi cleared his throat, leaning forward. "The base needs to be destroyed."
"We'll get to that in a minute," Tsunade said, raising her hand. "The more pressing concern is what to do with the copies. We can't bring them back here. The alliance has put all eyes on us. Our standing with Cloud is already shaky enough as-is. If we're caught with them, it'll look like we've been in bed with the Akatsuki the whole time. Not only will we lose support of the alliance, the other nations will go to war with us and we can't afford to be fighting a war on two fronts, not now, not if what you say about Madara is true."
Shizune nodded, adding, "Not to mention, there's no real places left we could hide them after Pain's attack, even if it were possible."
"And then there's the matter of the ones here and the originals," Kakashi sighed.
Juugo noticeably tensed and both copied teens turned worried gazes on the Fifth Hokage.
Tsunade leaned back, her fingers pressed together. "There's no avoiding it – the originals will have to be arrested."
"No," Juugo protested sharply. "You can't. It wasn't their fault. Madara blackmailed us!"
"I'm sorry, but our hands are tied on this one," Tsunade said, frowning. "And, by all rights, I should have the ANBU turn you over, too. As much as Madara is known for his ability to screw with minds, the fact remains that Sasuke led your team in an assault on the kage summit and attacked the leaders of the five nations. The most we can hope for is to petition to retain control of the trial, keep it here where we'll have a more sympathetic crowd and hope that we can prevent him from being executed or, worse, extradited to a nation that's not as sympathetic."
"And Cloud is going to fight us tooth and nail the whole way," Kakashi agreed. "They want Sasuke's head on a platter."
"It's not right," Juugo complained.
"Nothing about this is right," Tsunade sighed, "But we're just going to have to try our best to sort this out."
There was a moment of awkward silence.
"Kakashi, take the sanitation team and head back," Tsunade ordered firmly. "As soon as the base is destroyed, have each member of the sanitation team take a pair of the copies and relocate them throughout the country. They are to teach them how to take care of themselves, return here, and then forget where they left them. I don't want to know. I don't want it in any of the mission reports. As far as I am concerned, knowledge of their existence is a triple S-ranked secret and that base never existed. Go, now."
Kakashi bowed stiffly, turning on his heels and exited the tent.
"Now, for you three," Tsunade said, sighing as she pressed her fingers together again. "What shall I do with you?"
"I'd like to stay with these two, if I can," Juugo replied.
The two copied teens gave each other an awkward look and then slowly smiled at each other.
"We'd like to stay with Juugo," not-Sasuke said, finally.
Tsunade harrumphed and leveled a critical eye at the orange-haired man. "You, you're the source of the curse seal enzyme, are you not?"
Juugo stiffened for a moment and then hesitantly nodded in the affirmative.
Tsunade gave a long-suffering sigh. "Well, I suppose we might as well have a look at you. I'll bet you've never had a proper examination by a sane medical nin. That idiot Orochimaru probably had you on the complete wrong treatment."
She paused, looking over her shoulder: "Shizune, run and see if the old South Palace safe house is still intact. It's about time someone got use out of that heap."
"Right!" Shizune beamed, quickly turning and leaving.
Juugo just stared, blinking.
"Don't thank me, idiot," Tsunade grumbled, waving her hand dismissively. "You're a material witness. Naruto will need you to help bail that idiot Sasuke out of the hole he's dug himself into. And those two idiots still need more medical testing – not to mention some names, real, proper names! Can't run around calling them Sasuke and Karin Zero-Zero-Three, can we?"
Ino couldn't help giggling at the faces the two copied teens made.
The sky was drawing ever closer as the freight elevator rose and, with it, a rush of fresh air. One hundred and two sets of eyes were seeing it for the first time. It was almost amusing in a way to watch the copies staring up at the sky in confusion and utter bewilderment. More than one got to their feet, reaching curiously for the ephemeral blue.
"What do you think's going to happen to all of them?" Naruto asked, crossing his arms.
"Don't know," Shikamaru said honestly. "We'll just have to wait for Kakashi and Yamato to get back."
The unspoken 'hopefully, they will not all be killed' hung in the air between them with leaden seriousness.
"Naruto," Shikamaru paused, looking down, "You know what's going to happen to Sasuke when we get back, right?"
The blond sighed, shaking his head. "It's not over yet. We now know Madara's pulling the strings. If we can prove Madara's been messing with Sasuke's head –"
"Naruto, what if we can't?" Shikamaru asked, bluntly. "You've seen Sasuke. Does he look crazy to you, right now?"
"No, he was a little confused and pretty upset about the whole... well, copy business – who wouldn't be – but he seems pretty normal now. From what I heard happened at the summit, it was like he was a whole other person!" Naruto protested. "Think about it, Madara could have had him under some kind of mind control jutsu the entire time. That guy's crazy powerful! Who knows what sort of stuff he's got up his sleeve?"
Shikamaru sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Look, Naruto, I know you want Sasuke to be okay and come back, but it might not be possible anymore. You have to understand that when we take him back, he is going to have to answer for what he's done and we can't change that. Willing or not, he stepped on that path and he has to pay the price."
Naruto shook his head. He knew that, he did, and yet... He was not ready to give up on his first real friend yet. Not now, not when they were so close to succeeding.
Hell, that idiot even had something to live for with all these copies of him.
"Just promise me this, Naruto," Shikamaru said, sighing again. "Promise me that when the time comes, you won't interfere with what needs to be done."
"I can't," Naruto said, shaking his head as he started to walk away. "I just can't."
His feet wandered to where the original Sasuke was standing and leaning against his redheaded companion almost automatically.
"Discussing my inevitable fate, were we?" Sasuke curled his lip in a sneer as he made a sign for Karin to be quiet.
She made a face at them, but complied.
Naruto sighed, looking away. "Don't say it like that. There's still a chance for you as long as they think you were under Madara's control."
"And what if I wasn't?" Sasuke asked, quirking an eyebrow. "What then, idiot?"
Naruto clenched his hands into fists. "Don't say shit like that. You're not like that."
"How do you know?" Sasuke asked, looking up at the steadily growing sky. "You haven't seen me in years and the only reason I haven't bolted yet is because of this gaping hole in my side."
Sasuke paused, snorting, "Besides, what do I have to look forward to when I get there? A village of people happy at the expense of my family's lives, who asked my brother to do the unthinkable, and my own special place on the chopping block?"
"It doesn't have to be like that," Naruto said, frowning. "Look around you! All these guys... they're your blood. You could live for them. They need you!"
Sasuke lunged forward to punch him, even as Karin cried out and tried to hold him back, and hissed, "Just because they're me, doesn't mean they're my family, you dumb fuck!"
Naruto stumbled back, wiping the back of his hand across his lips. "They could be, if you just fucking tried, asshole."
"I can't believe you! I lost my family, my whole clan!" Sasuke raged. "And you want me to replace them with a bunch of mentally crippled copies of myself?"
"That's not what..." Naruto began, grinding his teeth. The temptation to hit back was growing stronger.
"Stop it," Karin interrupted, moving to stand between the two of them. "Back off, now, before the two of you do something you'll both regret."
Naruto glared, his eyes flicking to her and then back. With a snort, he took a step back, letting his hands fall loosely at his sides.
Sasuke grunted, wincing a little as he leaned on Karin's arm. He waved his hand at her, indicating he was okay, and then shook his head, cursing under his breath. "Do me a favor. Adopt one of those copies. Turn him into the friend you always wanted and let me go to my execution in peace and fucking quiet."
"I'm not giving up on you," Naruto said, recognizing a dismissal when he heard it.
"You're a complete fucking idiot," Sasuke said, turning away.
Naruto shook his head and looked up into the sky as the elevator finished its ascent and locked into place with a heavy, hydraulic thud.
A completely shocked and incredulous voice broke through the silence: "No fucking way!"
Sasuke started, immediately whipping his head in the direction of the voice. "Suigetsu?"
A pale haired teen, matching the description of Sasuke's other teammate, the swordsman Suigetsu, stared at them from the bushes, completely slack-jawed.
"Where the hell have you been?" Karin fumed.
"Suigetsu, what's going..." a familiar male voice asked.
They watched in mute shock as Sasuke Uchiha emerged from the brush behind the swordsman, followed by the all-too familiar form of Karin. Both were dressed as they had been at the summit, though it looked like they'd recently been engaged in a fight.
On seeing everyone standing stock still on the field, this Sasuke's words trailed off, his face suddenly pale.
"...I told you it felt familiar," the newest Karin said, adjusting her glasses.
This had to be the single most mind-bending, awkward event Suigetsu had ever had the misfortune of being involved in. His only real consolation was that he wasn't alone in his suffering: everyone looked just as confused and unsettled as he felt.
"You know who I am?" he asked, pointing to the Sasuke in the group who'd called his name, the only one dressed the same as... well, Sasuke. "Prove it!"
Said Sasuke scowled, giving him a look that plainly said he was asking a stupid question and getting on the Uchiha's normally paper-thin nerves. Meanwhile, the Karin said Sasuke was leaning on glared acidly at Suigetsu and said, "You're a dick."
Yep, that was definitely them.
So... who the hell had he rescued, then?
"Okay," Suigetsu breathed, scanning the crowd. "Wow, you've been busy."
The other Sasuke's glare turned withering.
A hand tugged on his arm, the Sasuke he'd been traveling with staring at him, clearly shaken. "Suigetsu, why do they look like us? Who are they?"
"I'm Sasuke Uchiha," the other Sasuke stated coldly. "And this is Karin. We were Suigetsu's teammates, along with Juugo."
"But... I thought we were..." Sasuke murmured, looking back and forth between them and Suigetsu. "You said... I... I don't understand!"
"Calm down!" Suigetsu barked right in his face, resisting the twinge of guilt that flashed through him when the teen jumped back in fright. He then turned back to the crowd. "Someone will tell me what the fuck is going on here!"
This was insane.
One of the Leaf ninja, a blond in orange and black, cleared his throat and approached Suigetsu. He kept his hands visible, making it blatantly obvious that he wasn't interested in a fight. "It's complicated," he said, and looked back over his shoulder. "Sasuke, Karin, Sakura, come and join us for a second."
He turned back, a sheepish expression on his face, and added, "Sakura can explain it better than me."
Suigetsu let them come to him, discreetly observing the other Sasuke and Karin's state. It was clear the other Sasuke was injured and by the way he was favoring one side, it seemed like the wound from before they'd been separated. The other Karin seemed to be holding it together, but only just. Her chakra was likely still very, very low. Both the other Sasuke and Karin looked like they'd had one hell of a shock and Suigetsu didn't need to ask what it was – that much was pretty obvious.
The two he'd arrived with didn't look like they were taking it much better.
"I'm Sakura, I'm a medical ninja," the pink-haired Leaf ninja said, approaching the group – again with hands visible to show she meant no harm. "I'll try to keep this as simple and brief as possible."
She paused, taking a moment to think, and then continued, "Earlier today, we found your teammate Juugo in a clearing. He was severely injured and traveling with what we assumed were the original Sasuke and Karin. We assumed something had been done to them, so we sent all three back to Konoha for treatment and retraced Juugo's steps. It led us to an underground facility, where we discovered all these copies you see behind us and what appeared to be the actual originals."
"Appeared to be?" the other Sasuke asked, his eyes narrowing sharply.
Sakura hesitated: "Give me a second."
Suigetsu may not have been a genius or have been capable of reading people's feelings, but he had this gut sense that whatever she was about to say, the other Sasuke wouldn't like it. The Leaf ninja in the orange looked like he had the same feeling and had changed his stance to effectively get to her faster.
"The copies we've seen so far have similar features," Sakura explained. "They lacked scar tissue and weapon calluses and their chakra has been moderately suppressed, but otherwise they are in very good health. They do, however, lack memories. They seem to recall and understand words just fine, but they really don't have any memories of people or places."
Both the Sasuke and Karin that Suigetsu had been traveling with stiffened, exchanging a frightened look. They hadn't remembered anything at all, but they'd been able to speak just fine. The thing was that they definitely both had scars and calluses. He'd seen them when he'd rescued them from that fat merchant in town. The only thing really weird with them was that they'd lost their memories. Other than that, they were almost normal.
Actually, in many ways, they were an improvement to normal, in spite of being hopelessly screwed up.
"Something else couldn't cause that?" Suigetsu asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Seeing them wigged out was getting to him a little.
"Emotional trauma, maybe," Sakura admitted, "It could trigger a form of stress-related amnesia, but for two people to get it at the exact same time? And it wouldn't explain any of the other things going on."
She paused again, turning to the pair Suigetsu had found. "There is another distinguishing feature of the copies. Each one bears a sequenced serial number on the right wrist. May I please see your right wrists?"
Karin blinked, raising her right arm to look at it as if for the first time. Next to her, Sasuke did the same.
"It's okay," Sakura said gently, reaching out to catch Karin's hand. She gently rolled up the redhead's sleeve and then turned to Sasuke, pulling back his armguard.
Printed in small, precise, black digits on both of their wrists was B2-002.
So it was true, Suigetsu noted, a little disappointed.
"We're... fakes?" Karin managed shakily, staring at the damning mark.
"Not necessarily," Sakura said, her face somber.
The other Sasuke frowned, his eyes narrowing, and the Karin next to him shifted uncomfortably.
"In cloning experiments, cells are cultivated and the cloned organism grows at a normal rate. They aren't the same as their originals. All kinds of differences pop up due to phenotype expression, environment, diet, and all kinds of variables," Sakura added. She licked her lips nervously and threaded her fingers together, continuing: "But you... You're identical. You have the same build and muscle mass, same features, even the same haircut, things traditional cloning can't reproduce! The changes are only made afterwards, most likely through extensive seals. This means – and, mind you, it's just a theory – that you're not clones as we understand it. It's more like you're duplicated matter."
"I don't understand," Sasuke managed, now clutching at his wrist. "Are we fakes or not?"
"That's the thing: if all of you really are matter duplicates, then none of you are fakes. Moreover, it means that if the duplication process was interrupted early enough, it would be impossible to distinguish the duplicates from the originals," Sakura paused, turning to the other Sasuke and Karin. "May I see your right wrists please?"
Suigetsu gaped.
Oh yeah, this was not going to end well.
The other Karin raised her arm, staring at it in shock, while the other Sasuke shook his head.
"No," he said, still shaking his head. He pushed the other Karin's hand down. "No, no... I know who we are. We're not... We're not."
"Sasuke, you were there," Sakura stated matter-of-factly. "You saw it. All the copies started out with their memories and scars intact. If Juugo interrupted the process in the first stage, before the seals were applied..."
"No!" the other Sasuke cut her off, turning away. He started to head for the trees, half-dragging the shell-shocked other Karin with him.
The blond Leaf ninja started to follow, but Sakura put a hand on his arm and quietly said, "Naruto, give him some space. He won't go far. Not with that wound."
The blond, Naruto, gave her a stormy look, but acquiesced.
An awkward silence descended.
"What will happen to us?" Karin asked. Her thumb absently rubbed at the numbers on her wrist.
Naruto fidgeted and stated honestly, "We don't know."
A second, longer and even more uncomfortable silence followed.
"Who are we if we aren't Sasuke and Karin?" Sasuke asked, looking up at them with a thoroughly lost expression.
The two Leaf ninja seemed at a complete loss for words and, to his disgust, so was Suigetsu, although he couldn't fathom why.
It should be simple enough. The other Sasuke and Karin were definitely the real deal – there was no mistaking his cocky, cold brat attitude or her hate of him and cling-to-Sasuke nature. Sasuke's wounds and Karin's low chakra were pretty close to what Suigetsu remembered from before they were separated from him and Juugo. And that Sasuke probably hoped he'd follow him again, back to Madara for another whack at that Danzo guy.
Except, Suigetsu thought sourly, that's how they got in this whole mess in the first place. Sasuke had gone crazy, taken Karin, left them to fend for themselves, and she ended up carrying him back to them when he got his ass handed to him.
And that's what it would be all over again with them, except maybe next time, Suigetsu and Karin would both lose their lives.
The other two didn't have their memories and were about as good for his extended life as turning into the water on the women's side of a public bath – good times, good times. They were clumsy, needed to be completely retrained as ninja, and were lucky they even could find the right end of a kunai. They were stupidly hopeful in spite of their ignorance, asked too many questions, and threatened to drive him completely insane.
Yet, he liked them and actually felt pretty bad for them right now, which didn't make any sense at all. They must have actually succeeded in driving him insane.
That had to be it, because otherwise he was going soft and Mist ninja do not go soft.
"Fuck it," Suigetsu murmured under his breath, turning to his Sasuke and Karin. "What the hell are you talking about, you idiots! You are Sasuke and Karin! As if I wouldn't be able to tell the difference... And quit moping! We still have to get Juugo!"
The two of them stared at him in shock and then both slowly started to smile.
Suigetsu inwardly cursed.
He was so going soft.
There was a crack of displaced air as Kakashi and Yamato appeared in front of Shikamaru with fifty cloaked ANBU.
"You're late," Shikamaru said dryly.
Kakashi smiled behind his mask. "And a good thing, too, since you've relocated. I gather things below got a little crowded?"
"You could say that," Shikamaru agreed. "As far as the Hyuuga can tell, they're still down there. Seems that when we collapsed the bottleneck, they figured structural integrity was compromised and aren't going to move until they've verified its all go."
Kakashi nodded absently, as if he'd expected that's how it would go from the start.
"Do we have any new orders? Say, about them?" Shikamaru asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
"For now, we need you to move them over there," Yamato said, indicating the line of trees and brush to the east. "We're going to cave the whole thing in."
Shikamaru nodded, making a hand sign to the others to move towards the trees. Within a few seconds, he heard Kiba, Lee and Chouji calling out, asking the copies to head towards the tree line.
Kakashi made a signal of his own and both Yamato and the ANBU disappeared, scattering in all directions. "As to our other orders," he paused, "The original two are to be arrested and returned to Konoha. How many of the copies did Sakura manage to wake?"
"All of them, for a total of a hundred and two, if we include the four that were already up," Shikamaru replied. "Two more also popped up with Sasuke's other teammate, the swordsman. They were dressed like the originals, but they were missing their memories, as far as I could gather from the shouting."
"Sounds like someone wanted to keep people from figuring out where the originals were," Kakashi observed. "It makes me wonder if there isn't another set out there somewhere."
It was definitely a possibility. According to Naruto, the last pair they'd pulled out of the tanks was numbered B2-054. Shikamaru didn't know the numbers on the two new ones that had appeared or those first two they found, but he knew the ones they'd found wandering down there before they started waking the others up had the numbers B2-004 and B2-005 respectively. That left about three sets and, provided the other two sets had the missing numbers, then that meant there was at least one final set missing.
How troublesome, he thought. "What's going to happen to them?"
"The sanitation team will relocate them to safe houses across the nation and then from there, they'll be integrated into the civilian population," Kakashi paused, starting to walk towards the tree line. "It's the best way."
Shikamaru nodded, following. It was really the best they could hope for in this situation.
A series of explosions ripped through the air from the south, large plumes of dirt and brush flying into the air. He could hear the copies start to panic and the voices of his teammates trying to calm them down and assure them everything was all right, even as the explosions got closer and closer.
"Where are the originals, by the way?" Kakashi asked, scanning the crowd.
Shikamaru resisted the urge to curse as he started looking for Naruto.
The blond had his back to them and was observing Sakura, who appeared to be doing a brief medical check on the two newest copies.
"Naruto!" Shikamaru shouted, "The originals!"
Naruto turned, paled, and suddenly raced off into the trees.
Now well into the woods, Sasuke let go of Karin and dragged himself to a stump. He sat, breaths coming in big, ragged gulps of air that made the hole in his side hurt. His face was wet and, dimly, he realized he was crying, though he wasn't sure whether it was from the pain or just the sheer concept of that impossible thing.
He knew who he was.
He remembered.
Meals with his family, Itachi sneaking dango before supper and making him promise not to tell – our secret, little brother -, the way their mother smelled of laundry and spices and home-safety-love you, the way the fireball rolled off his lips that first time and spat through the air in a beautiful oily blast, his father's pen scratching across the police reports and everything Uchiha, everything ruined. The horror and confusion of that night, the way Naruto grated on his every nerve and Sakura was so stupidly focused on love that he was always wondering when she'd get herself killed, bruised knuckles, oh god, sand, he hated sand so much but he can melt it all to glass now with Ameratsu. Orochimaru thought he had him, but he had a plan and that old snake would never see it coming. He brought down Deidara and Orochimaru and this idiot host wanted to rap? Rage, rage, burning against that name, the man who did this to his brother and he was losing too much blood, Karin was carrying him, and then there were trees...
Surely, if he remembered these things, that meant Sakura was wrong.
Because he couldn't be a copy.
He couldn't be.
His eyes drifted to his right wrist, covered by the armguard.
There wasn't going to be anything there. He didn't remember there being anything there because he was the original, so it shouldn't be necessary to look.
And yet...
He raised his left hand and reached for the edge of the armguard, distantly aware that Karin was watching him closely. His fingers caught the edge of the cloth and he stopped.
"If Juugo interrupted the process in the first stage, before the seals were applied..."
His hand shook.
"There you are," Madara's voice cut through the air. "I've been looking for you."
Sasuke turned his head, just in time to see the orange-masked figure materialize. "We ran into a bit of a problem."
"I noticed," Madara said dryly. "Quite the little dilemma the Leaf has there. Dealing with those replicas will keep them busy for a while."
"You knew about it?" Sasuke asked, glaring at him. He wouldn't put it past the old lunatic. He seemed to have information about, if not a hand in, a lot of things.
"Matter replication, the creation of a flawless copy, identical in every way," the masked man said, almost reverently. "When Orochimaru fled Konoha, he left behind many notes, particularly on cloning theory. Danzo managed to obtain some of them. He then sold them to private civilian interests to fund his little operations, one of which used the notes to develop the basis of matter replication. Obviously, the military applications of such a discovery were endless. Danzo wasted no time in funding more research. He even got Orochimaru to contribute as part of their little exchange of services."
Madara paused, glancing at Sasuke. "Do you remember when Danzo said that knowing where he got those eyes would only anger you?"
Sasuke stared. He'd assumed they were from the corpses of his kinsmen.
"B2," Karin whispered, horror dawning on her face. "B2. Batch two."
"They were...?" Sasuke murmured, paling as he looked from her to Madara.
His eyes.
His eyes in that bastard's arm.
Bile rose in his throat.
"Your first few months of training with Orochimaru were brutal," Madara added. "They transported you when you were unconscious, replicated you, and had you back before anyone was the wiser."
He'd been knocked out a fair number of times during those first few months and was out sometimes for hours on end. He could almost see himself waking up in that facility like the others had done, naked and disoriented, but so much younger: twelve instead of sixteen, weaker, stupider. And while every time he'd woken up and went back to training, those ones had woken up only to be murdered for their eyes.
Sasuke growled, choking down the urge to vomit, and clenched his hands into fists. Death was too good for that bastard, far too good.
"I am going to flay that bastard alive and feed his body to the crows in pieces!" he spat.
A series of explosions started to sound from the south, drawing closer.
"As you wish," Madara said and he sounded almost disturbingly gleeful. "I can take you right to him. Shall we go?"
Sasuke nodded, wincing as he stood.
"He's going to need to rest up a bit first," Karin said, hesitantly approaching Sasuke and letting him lean on her arm. "It'll take me a few more hours to regenerate enough chakra to safely heal that wound and have enough left for combat."
"Of course," Madara said. His eyes slid from Sasuke to Karin and back as he held out a hand. "I wouldn't have it any other way. Such a useful girl you have, Sasuke."
Sasuke resisted the urge to shudder as he took the masked man's hand. Something about that knowing tone made his skin crawl.
"Sasuke!" Naruto shouted from somewhere nearby, too late.
And then they were gone.
AN: And that's the last chapter - next will be the epilogue.
This one was hella long, 12 pages exactly in Word. Well, most of this stuff in this chapter is explanation anyway.
Jesus, did I get laser guided amnesia, sliding scale of idealism versus cyncism, cloning blues, mind screw, ambiguous clone ending, body horror and nightmare fuel in one chapter?
By the way, this troper would like you to know most of the notes, including the timeline, will be available following the epilogue.
