If you feel I've jumped the shark with this one, you're entitled to doing so. But still, I do urge you to at the very least give these following developments a chance, no matter how stupid they might seem at first glance - Creed of the Fanfic Writer with Self Esteem Issues.

Anyway! That's a warning. Some people might think I jumped the shark with this one, but worry not, there is a reason for everything! And if there isn't, I'll make up one! Yeah! Reviews feed me the fuel that I need for the fire to burn and produce more fanfic!

Also, do please take a look at some of my Naruto one-shots, yes? I'd be most thankful if y'all did. It might not look like it, but I do place effort in them, honest! Somewhat!

Somewhere in The Land Of Fire…

"Just admit it. We're lost." Sakura snapped, her tone sounding like someone who wanted to strangle their audience.

"Maa, we're not lost. We just don't know where we are." Kakashi helpfully informed her, smiling like someone had just given him candy. He was clearly enjoying this too much.

"You could solve this, you know, in two seconds flat. I refuse to believe a goddamn jounin got lost in the Land of Fire." Sasuke added, purposefully not acknowledging the fact that Sakura was right and they were indeed lost. Stupid border patrol missions. "Seriously."

Hatake Kakashi was a man who knew how to get under people's skin, and he was the best at it. Sasuke was beginning to consider the brief moments where he'd be serious enough to actually teach them shit, such as when he'd taken the time to get them started on the jutsu he'd promised not too long ago.

"Anyway, let's rest up here. We've got a pretty big leeway on when we're supposed to return and since I've already sent our report, I'm going to go ahead and claim the rest as a training trip."

In truth, Sasuke was irritated that Naruto had already gotten the basic wind jutsu he'd been given down (he'd even managed to cut a leaf in record time!) while he was still struggling with the relatively simple Jibashiri (Electromagnetic Murder). Really, this was just humiliating.

He'd been practicing Raiton for far longer than Naruto had Fuuton, but not only had the blond little boy blazed right through developing his affinity (to the point that Naruto was right now sitting in front of a rock trying to slice it to ribbons with wind chakra alone) and had even managed to execute a workable Reppusho (Gale Palm) on his third attempt. Heck, Sakura with her chakra control was still trying to make water bend to her whims.

He was also a bit angry that he was not allowed to simply burn down the forest and pin it on Kakashi. As all Uchiha, Sasuke was a bit of a pyromaniac and had a tendency to solve his problems through violence in most cases, whether verbal or physical.

But the worst part was that he was bored. As some would say, he was bored as shit.

This would normally not be such a huge issue. He was bored much of the time he spent in Konoha, but usually he was too busy getting the crap beaten out of him by Naruto, which usually left him in too much pain to bother analyzing his current mood, or instilling into Sakura the many ways in which one could increase one's own strength, at the cost of one's own comfort, to notice it.

"I'm going for a walk." He announced.

Kakashi sat up (when had he laid down?) and looked at Sasuke over the pages of his book. "Take your teammates with you. I'll be here taking a nap." Kakashi informed, before leaping up and disappearing into the treetops. Absent mindedly, Sasuke wondered if he should've brought his copy of the small orange book…

… It had been a gift from Naruto and the least he could do was take a look after all…

… And he totally ended up reading it for the plot, or so he says, anyway.

"Well, I was getting pretty damn bored of trying to convince a water bottle to fly." Sakura informed, cracking her neck to get rid of the kinks formed from several minutes of remaining still. She absent mindedly drank her water bottle and tossed it into her pack. "It's harder controlling substance than I'd thought." She offered as an explanation.

Sasuke sighed. "I know the feeling. Pressurizing Chakra to heat it up wasn't fun for me, either." He said. At her blank stare, he decided that maybe he had to elaborate. "It's how you create fire-natured Chakra to use in Katon jutsu." Explained the Uchiha, turning around and looking at where Naruto still sat in front of a boulder conjured from one of Kakashi's Doton jutsu. Or was it a rock?

Meh, the distinction was unimportant at this point.

The blond seemed to catch on to the fact that he was staring at and turned an inquisitive gaze towards his gathered teammates.

"We're going for a walk." Sakura informed. "Wanna come with us?" She asked. A little over a month ago, she'd be so giddy at the prospect of a walk alone through a forest with her crush that she'd most likely go weak at the knees from the mere thought of what they could do alone. Right now, however, Sakura was aware that all that their walk might entail would be dialogue regarding their few common interests and anything interesting they came across.

Naruto stood up, sent one last glance at the boulder he was trying to slice, which only had a small dent on it, and wordlessly joined Sasuke and Sakura as they set out to brave the depths of the forest, all the while marking nearby trees as they moved through what little open space they could find.

Oddly enough, there was an almost visibly formed path that they chose to follow. If there was hard, packed dirt beneath the vegetation, it'd long been consumed by the plants' growth, and if there wasn't, then it might just be a freaky coincidence that there was an easy-to-traverse (for Shinobi, anyway) path that they could follow.

It had taken them about five minutes to find the tail end of it, at which point they'd turned around and decided to follow it the other way. It ended on a small pond that was basically a hole in the ground, probably dug from a jutsu, filled with rainwater. The other end might hold something interesting, however, so they walked.

The silence was broken, multiple times, by either random dialogue on their parts, mostly Sakura, or by the sounds of the forest itself. Along with that one bear who'd foolishly attacked them and gotten knocked out for its trouble.

"Why the hell are there even bears in a place like this?" Sakura asked.

"We're deep into the forests created by the Shodaime Hokage's bloodline, Sakura." Sasuke informed. "As far as I know, freaky things happen in the forests created with Mokuton. Ever heard of the Forest of Death?"

Sakura nodded. "That forest where everything is lethal, right?" She asked, seeing Sasuke's nod, she continued. "Was it made by the Shodaime?"

"Bingo." Sasuke informed. "The Uchiha archives have a lot of information on the Senju. A lot of it has been proven wrong with the years, mind you, but since we're one of the founding clans of Konoha along with the Senju themselves, we have a lot that they provided themselves."

"And I guess that information on the Mokuton was in there somewhere." Sakura concluded. "But I thought that even the Shodaime wasn't fully sure on the limits of his power." She admitted.

"Who knows?" Asked Sasuke. "Given that most of the archives I've read were penned by someone with a clear bias against Hashirama as a person, all I can say is that he was an idiot." He explained. "It's hard to get something about the Senju that's not insulting from the Uchiha library. We don't like them very much."

Sakura stifled a giggle at Sasuke's predicament.

"Life." Naruto said, suddenly, almost causing both of them to stumble. Sakura was about to open her mouth to voice her shock, but then she closed it as Naruto turned to them. "Mokuton was just a name… It was… control over life itself."

Sakura was almost ground to a halt by that point, but they managed to still walk and talk. "What do you mean?" She asked, clearly perplexed.

Sasuke was also entirely too curious for his own good. "Control over life?" He asked. "That sounds… incredible. Ridiculous, even." He said, frowning. He doubted Naruto would speak for no reason, and the blond boy had not proven himself well informed before. Well, at least not enough to make Sasuke believe his words instantly.

Then again, the boy WAS the Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi and that alone meant that Sasuke was not truly aware of the depths of either his power or his knowledge, as the beast itself might have imparted its knowledge on its host.

However, with a quick glance at him and then at the ground, Sasuke found himself dropping the issue. There was no point in further trying to pry the information from him. Other than Kakashi suddenly turning up and ordering him to speak about it, that is, and Sasuke was not willing to force Naruto to do something he didn't want to do.

He was, after all, loathe to betray the trust that Naruto had implicitly placed on him by granting him knowledge of his status as a Jinchuuriki and as the weapon of Konohagakure no Sato.

"That's difficult to believe." Sakura agreed, distantly. "Though, from what I know, isn't the Senju clan supposedly descended from the Sage of Six Paths himself?" She mused. "It could be…"

"So are the Uchiha." Sasuke replied, shrugging. "We don't do any of that, though."

They were nearing the end of the path on the forest. They could see as much, because it ended in a cave. Though calling it a cave was giving it too much credit. It was more of a bunch of rocks pilled together in the form of passable shelter over a hole. Not all that bad, for it had obviously endured very long, if the green wildlife clinging to the rock was anything to go by.

Deciding they might as well explore it (under the pretense of checking for enemy ninja hiding within, if anyone asked), the three wandered down, carefully walking down the ramp that still vaguely had some of the steps of what used to be stairs carved into it.

It was not a very deep cave, however, thought past a certain point it still became dark, as no light filtered from above. "Housenka No Jutsu(Phoenix Flower)" Muttered the Uchiha, letting out a very underpowered fireball that floated for a few seconds, lighting the room long enough for the Uchiha to spot a nearby piece of dry wood.

Without a second thought, he grabbed it and inspected it up close, once they retreated back into the light. "It's a workable torch." He said, absent mindedly. "It's not particularly ideal as one, but it'll work." He said.

He took a deep breath and blew a VERY underpowered Goukakyuu No Jutsu, one he didn't even need handsigns for, into the torch to light it.

Once it was lit, he heard Sakura cheer. "It was getting pretty scary down there without anything to light the way." She said.

"You're a goddamn ninja." Sasuke said, narrowing his eyes. "You can't tell me you're afraid of the dark."

Sakura scoffed. "I'm properly paranoid about wandering into a goddamn dark cave in a forest created by the Shodaime Hokage, forests which have been known for holding all manners of creatures that are lethal to even chunin." The pinkette explained. "Need I say more?"

Sasuke opened his mouth to retort, but then he noticed that they were walking inside anyway and bit back on it. They were already past the area they'd found the torch in and going deeper, until the cave widened and, like Sasuke had assumed, turned out to be not all that deep, really.

It ended in a rather large dome-shaped room that had a simple hole in the center with what appeared to be a couple of sticks in a crude imitation of a standard well you'd find on a village to extract water from the depths of the earth. There was no bucket, though.

There were also a few bones off to the side that were clearly gnawed. If Sasuke had to guess, someone had built this place to be a safehouse at some point and had either abandoned it or not been there for a very long time.

Well, they'd report it to Kakashi who would make sure it wasn't a threat and from then on, nothing more would change. Despite the lack of a bucket, Sasuke decided they might as well try to get a little water, he was getting pretty thirsty already.

He walked up to the hole and peered down… only to find the water only a foot or two away from him. Well, that was convenient. It seemed clean, too, as the hole had probably been made with a jutsu and on solid rock. There was, however, the simple fact that they couldn't simply trust it to be clean like that.

There was no water expert with them, but he could go with Sakura in a pinch, and she needed the practice anyway. Nodding to himself, he turned to Sakura. "Can you try to get clean water from here?"

Sakura quickly realized where Sasuke was going at. "I can try." When she manipulated water, she only moved the water itself, if she did so in a specific manner. It was slower and probably more tiring than simply bringing up a stream of water, but the water would most likely be safe for drinking. She took a deep breath and concentrated on her Chakra and let it flow into the water…

… Only to gasp and jump backwards when the water lit up. Symbols started to appear etched on the wall, their effulgent glow making them readable even in the penumbra brought on by the low light of the torch. Well, readable to the extent of seeing them, anyway, as they were indecipherable.

Most likely seals. "We triggered a trap mechanism!"

"It doesn't seem like it…" Sakura reasoned, as she stood up and looked around. "Nothing seems to be happening." She said. "Just the glowing symbols."

Sasuke's eyes instantly went to his smallest teammate, who seemed to be looking around with an almost bored expression. He sensed no danger, apparently. The blond walked around, inspecting the seals on the wall briefly, before sitting down in front of the hole that had the still glowing water.

"What is this place…" Sakura muttered, as she herself inspected the seals, only to find nothing that she could decipher about her situation.

There was a loud growl that startled all three of them. Sakura's eyes widened to immense proportions as she saw a colossal figure emerging from the entrance to the wide room. She took a few steps back when she noticed both her teammates had frozen as she had in sight of the…

She had no idea what to call that thing. It was sort of like a bear, but it was too huge. It had very long and sharp claws growing where there shouldn't have been any. There was also the fact that it opened its maws to roar and showed its glistening teeth, dripping with saliva.

"Dammit!" Sasuke yelled, as the bear thing rushed forward and broke their group, though Naruto remained perfectly still as the beast went flying over him. Sometimes, being pitifully short has its advantages, it seemed. The beast skid past Naruto's sitting form but quickly turned around and lashed with its left claw, forcing Naruto to jump back, lest he get smacked.

"Give me wind!" The Uchiha commanded.

Naruto replied with a nod and a jump to position right next to the Uchiha.

Sasuke grinned, seeing that the creature was backed against a corner. He began to go through handseals, a sequence he remembered very well. "Katon: Goukakyuu No Jutsu!" Sasuke yelled, expelling the Grand Fireball compressed into a much smaller, but hotter form.

This was the pinnacle of his training with the jutsu, the ability to manipulate it far beyond the point where most Uchiha cared to. He was not all that good, in general, with the usage of fire jutsu. He could do some of them alright if he put his mind to it. He was far, far better with the use of Raiton.

The few Katon he knew, though, he knew well. He was probably second only to the dedicated fire ninjutsu specialists in his usage of the Goukakyuu and the Housenka, both of which he could manipulate fairly well.

And all of this from merely a week of Kakashi actually teaching him how to keep his lightning chakra in check to help him properly use his minor fire affinity.

The ball of fire was approaching a bluish color as it approached the suddenly very, very afraid giant-bear thing that had probably planned on making them its dinner.

"Fuuton: Reppusho!" Naruto's soft voice carried a weird sense of power behind it, as Sasuke felt the wind suddenly ripple. That was odd. Wind jutsu, like fire jutsu, were usually expelled through the mouth. Anyway, there wasn't time to ponder the jutsu's oddities.

The beast had prepared to jump to avoid the small fireball. However, when the gale palm's after effect struck the small fireball, all hell broke loose. Sasuke had severely underestimated the potency of the combined jutsu. He hadn't expected it to be this strong. The simple fact that he hadn't deigned to test this combination in a controlled environment was probably caused by the fact that Naruto had just learned Reppusho that same day.

Regardless, he was actually glad when Sakura knocked both him and Naruto to the floor by diving for them and smacking them against the hard rock floor. It'd probably bruise, but it was better than the searing wave of heat that passed over them. He briefly saw a flash of white as the flames exploded against the poor creature.

It got incinerated within instants.

So did mostly everything else in the cave near it. Given that it'd been close to the middle and the glowing well… the water had gotten vaporized and turned into the now heavy and hot mist that was making their stay in the cave all the more annoying.

It took a long few moments for the mist to finally cool down enough for it to be safe to stand up, or so it felt. None of them was sure how long they'd spent just laying there and trying their hardest to ignore the blistering hear. Sakura was also heard muttering a few colorful curses and ranting about how idiotic it was to use a jutsu combination like that.

The torch was out, and even if it'd been on, the mist would've made it close to impossible to see. So, muttering a curse, Sasuke decided that they might as well just walk out already…

However, he only managed to take three steps in the direction that he believed his teammates had been thrown at. His body made a dull thudding sound when he hit the ground against the ground.

Sasuke groaned. Then his eyes fluttered open. Then he groaned again and shut them tightly. He rolled around and brought his hands to his eyes. A hiss of pain escaped him as he rubbed them. The pain subsided a few minutes afterwards, however, he still did not dare open his eyes. Giving them a few more rubs just in case, he decided to open his eyes…

… That's odd.

His recollection of the events leading up to his unconsciousness was a bit vague (one could even say it was foggy), but he still recalled a cave, not soft green grass.

"Hn. You're awake." An unfamiliar, cold voice rang through the air. Sasuke blinked. His surroundings were still coming into focus (and his eyes still stung slightly from the light), so he was only vaguely aware of them. A blindsided Shinobi is a dead Shinobi, and Sasuke had, on pure reflex, given whoever had just spoken his backside.

"Oi, teme, I brought Sensei and Sakura-chan!" came another one, this time it was high pitched and kind of grating to Sasuke's ears, but it was still notably warmer than the one that had spoken before. "Now, can you tell us what you found?"

Sakura?

It wasn't all that uncommon as a name, Sasuke supposed. Still, he blinked the last few specks of blackness still swimming in his vision away and turned around, only to come face to face with…

… Himself.

"Huh."

Both he and his doppelganger stared at each other for a full ten seconds. The other him seemed to have a guarded, almost outright hostile disposition. He held himself with an almost palpable air of distance. It was not unlike what Sasuke noticed Itachi often acted like to his fangirls (ironically, he did it entirely because they loved it, for they had a tendency to gift him sweets and thus he felt obliged to keep them content in turn).

"The hell?" Sasuke blurted out, quickly reacting and leaping back to put some distance between himself and his doppelganger. His eyes strayed, for a brief instant, to the rest of his doppelganger's entourage. Sasuke's eyes, however, stopped on a blond boy slightly shorter than himself, with whisker marks on his cheeks who sported an outright baffled face, his jaw gaping.

Sasuke blinked. "Naruto, is that you?" The Uchiha asked. Then he shook his head. "What am I saying… this must be a genjutsu." He concluded, mostly to himself. It was a terrible genjutsu, even. Then again, he had to consciously decide not to question WHY someone would make a genjutsu this dumb.

He decided he had to check everyone else out for inconsistencies. Sakura was, in terms of height and overall appearance, mostly on the spot, but Sasuke had been the one to note the changes in her body to encourage her to train. Up to and including the slight difference in her bust as well as the fact that her arms had started to look like such instead of stiff noodles.

Sakura was also off, then.

Kakashi was perfect, though, down to the bored expression. Seriously, the man was terribly easy to imitate.

There was also a man that Sasuke instantly assumed had to be a drunken hobo, from the beard, the bottle of sake on his hand, the expression that said 'I'm not drunk enough to be seeing this shit yet' and the fact that his brown shirt had sake stains on it nearly everywhere.

His doppelganger also had one single difference with him. Sasuke was one inch taller than him, if his estimates were correct.

"There are… Two… Sasuke-kun…" He saw Sakura breathing heavily, with a very bright blush on her face. That was the same she'd acted before she'd gotten her act together. So apparently they had some knowledge of their targets. He filed it for later questioning.

If Naruto hadn't been so brutally different from the one Sasuke knew, he might have been fooled. His eyes flashed red with the Sharingan and the genjutsu crashed to pieces…

…

…

"Okay." Sasuke began sighing. "So it's a very advanced genjutsu, if the Sharingan can't break it."

The doppelganger growled. "He's got the Sharingan!" the fake-Sasuke yelled.

"Of course I do, jackass. Everybody in my direct family does!" Sasuke instantly retorted. "Now, who the hell are you and why do you look like botched versions of my teammates!?"

"You're the one who's transformed to look like me!" The doppelganger retorted, before rushing forward.

With his Sharingan active, Sasuke saw the charge coming five minutes before it actually did. It was a very standard move of the Interceptor fist, namely, it was a charge that deliberately left the user defenseless, or at least looked like it did. The whole point of it was provoking the opponent into doing something stupid.

The doppelganger tried to punch Sasuke in the face, but he sidestepped the attack. Absent mindedly, the Uchiha noted that his doppelganger recovered commendably fast from getting a knee to the solar plexus. Then again, he had lessened his own momentum greatly by planting his feet.

"Maa, Sasuke, you should calm down so we can straighten this out." That lazy, bored tone… It was picture perfect for Kakashi's. Seriously, that one was freaking perfect.

Kakashi had appeared right between them as the doppelganger prepared to continue the fight. Only when he dropped it did Sasuke notice he had been smiling. He raised one eyebrow at Kakashi. "The other henge suck." Sasuke noted, crossing his arms and looking at Kakashi. "Yours is perfect, thought."

"That's 'cause I'm not transformed, other-Sasuke-kun!" Kakashi noted, a cheerful note in his voice.

"Hey, can we keep this one? At least he's polite!" The Naruto-lookalike said, his voice teasing as he folded his arms behind his head and grinned.

Sasuke sent him a look that showed his outright shock, before shaking his head. "Then why don't the other two look anything like Naruto and Sakura?" Sasuke said, crossing his arms and looking deadpan.

"What do you mean?" Kakashi asked. "They've looked like that for all the time I've known them." Kakashi admitted. "I think there's something weird going on here. State your name, rank, team and Registration ID."

"Why would I give a fake sensei any identification?" Sasuke asked. Wait… It could all be some trick by Kakashi to train them. Certainly, someone would've had to drag him out of the cave he'd been in. But Kakashi wouldn't make it this ridiculously easy. He enjoyed watching them squirm, after all.

"Just humor me." Kakashi said, giving him an eye-smile.

Sasuke sighed. "Uchiha Sasuke, Genin of Team 7 under Hatake Kakashi, ID 063793." He said.

"That's not my ID." Fake-Sasuke informed them, quickly.

"Of course not, it's mine." The real Sasuke said, raising an eyebrow.

Kakashi rubbed his chin. "What's your favorite food?"

"Tomatoes." Sasuke informed.

"True." The other one said, narrowing his eyes.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Blue."

"Also true."

Sasuke glared at his doppelganger for a few seconds before turning back to Kakashi, who leaned back and looked up at the sky, seemingly at a loss of what to do. "What the hell are you asking me questions for!?"

"Well, that one over there is the real Sasuke. I don't know who you are, but you don't act like Sasuke. You may look like him, but looks can be deceiving."

Sasuke blinked. "Why did you just use a genjutsu on me!?"

"And then your Sharingan is real too." Kakashi said. "Though the real Sasuke hasn't unlocked his Sharingan yet, yours is fully active… though it's still not fully matured…"

Sasuke glared at Kakashi, his glare enhanced by the Sharingan.

"I still say we keep this one. I already like him more than the one with the stick up his ass." The blond one spoke.

"Seriously, that is NOTHING like the Naruto I know." Sasuke said, exasperated.

Kakashi raised one eyebrow. "Oh, really?" He asked.

"Yes, really." Sasuke said, deadpan.

"Well, I've got to capture you now for questioning, no hard feelings. We'll leave you tied to some tree. ANBU will come later to pick you up, okay?" Kakashi said, smiling widely under his mask, like he was just saying a joke.

"That's assuming you can beat me in a fight." Sasuke said. "Imposters." He added, falling to a fighting stance.

"I'm quite confident on my ability to beat you, actually." Kakashi said, smiling. "Though I'm willing to let those two fight you instead." He gestured to fake-Naruto, who stretched to get rid of the kinks on his arms and upper body and fell into a…

…

…

He fell into an utter mockery of Naruto's stance. It was still full of holes, but whereas Naruto was always completely aware of every single one of them, this one seemed to think he was actually covered, from his cocky smirk. "Finally! I didn't get to do anything with those two guys, now I finally get to fight!"

"Dobe, you won't even scratch him." Fake-Sasuke said. "He's all mine."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. Then the blond one rushed at him, throwing a whole bunch of ridiculously predictable and slow attacks that Sasuke had no trouble dodging entirely, with minimal movements. Then again, he WAS actually using his Sharingan, so it was to be expected that attacks would be lower than normal but…

This was utterly pathetic. Naruto's attacks were very hard to predict using the Sharingan, as he was usually a whirlwind of movement. This one was slow, predictable even without the Sharingan and just weak.

Sasuke swatted away the blond's clumsy punches (he hadn't even tried to kick once!) and when the effortless parry left him wide open, he countered with a simple straight to the face that knocked him on his ass. No wonder, since his balance was shit from not standing properly.

His expression of shock at how ridiculously easy it'd been to defeat this lookalike must've been quite angering, because the blond on the ground flushed red with embarrassment and rage. "Kage Bunshin!" He yelled, crossing his hands in front of himself. At once, there were at least twenty clones summoned.

Sasuke swore under his breath, as they all swarmed him. He jumped and saw two of them collide onto each other, unfortunately not managing to hit each other hard enough to dispel. No mater, he swung his leg and smashed it against a clone who'd jumped off another's back to get to him, dispelling that one instantly.

Another clone jumped at his back and Sasuke countered with an elbow to the face.

Yet another came, this time from his front. Sasuke raised his other leg to meet it foot-first, and when the clone crashed, face-first, onto the sole of his sandal, he applied force just before it dispelled, allowing him to backflip further up and away. While doing his flip, he noticed the tree behind him and decided sticking to it was his best bet.

Once he had landed against it, he quickly went through the handsigns of his most practiced technique. "Katon: Goukakyuu No Jutsu!" He yelled, before exhaling and feeding chakra onto a giant ball of fire that consumed most of the clones.

Two of them had managed to throw the original away before the fireball consumed him. "Kage Bunshin!" The original yelled again, this time making a dozen clones.

Sasuke groaned in annoyance before taking out two kunai on each hand. Each of them was connected by an almost invisible, yet razor sharp metallic wire, to the other one on each hand. He let the kunai sail in between six clones each.

"Hah! You can't aim for cra-"

The clones' taunt was cut off as the wire cut right through them and killed them all in one shot. Sasuke hated to waste the special wired kunai he carried around (wiring them was a total bitch, but they'd proven so useful he had taken to carry multiple pairs of prepared kunai), but it was clear from the blond's shock that he hadn't expected that.

"What the hell!? He missed! How did he take out my clones?" The fake-Naruto yelled.

Sasuke grunted as he jumped off the tree and glared at both of his opponents. That fight had taken more of his chakra and weaponry than he'd wanted it to, but the clone spam had merited it. The blond yelled and rushed at Sasuke…

… Only to get punched in the face, knocking him to the ground.

"Hn. I told you, dobe!" The Not-Sasuke yelled, as he adapted the Interceptor fist stance.

They weren't a very good team if they hadn't even tried to work together.

Sasuke grunted when they engaged in melee. In contrast to Naruto, whom he'd easily beaten with one punch, Sasuke The Clone was a much more difficult opponent. There was absolutely no doubt that whoever it was had a mastery of the Interceptor Fist that went perhaps beyond even his own. However, Sasuke knew that it was bloody useless without the Sharingan's cognitive abilities.

While they both used the interceptor fist, they were at an even ground, although Sasuke should've been winning due to the sharingan being active, his opponent was plainly more skilled, if a bit weaker.

The tables changed, however, when Sasuke stopped using the Interceptor Fist. His opponent knew everyone of his moves inside out, so there was no point in using that style. He fell onto what he recalled from getting the crap beaten out of him by Naruto multiple times. Fake-Sasuke reacted to the abrupt shift surprisingly well, managing to actually keep up for a while before falling to the defensive once the attacks were starting to overwhelm his ability to block them.

Once he couldn't predict them, he was simply outmatched.

The other Sasuke leaped back and started to go through handsigns. Sasuke knew that jutsu by heart, but momentary fatigue prevented him from rushing in to stop his doppelganger before he could unleash it. "Katon: Housenka No Jutsu!" Not-Sasuke yelled, spitting several fireballs as he did.

Sasuke swore under his breath before throwing himself into a roll forward that caught the Uchiha by surprise. As the fireballs had been aimed at his chest, they all missed him when he went down. However, when he went for a lethal attack by taking out a Kunai and stabbing forward with it, his hand was held back by Kakashi.

"I can't let you do that, you know." Kakashi said, absent mindedly, as he applied pressure and forced Sasuke to kneel down or suffer extreme pain on his arm.

Not-Sasuke took the opportunity to retreat after getting a shock from nearly being stabbed through the chest, as the tip of the kunai had stopped uncomfortably close to his heart right then.

"Get your hand off me before something bad happens to you." Sasuke warned, his tone almost a wild growl.

Kakashi raised his visible eyebrow. "Now I'm curious." He informed. "What, pray tell, would be the bad thing that could happen to me?" Asked the silver haired man, looking down on the boy he held tightly onto.

There was the sound of rustling leaves and then there was the swoosh of something cutting through the wind. Sasuke grinned when Kakashi's visible eye widened impossibly and he leaped back as if by magic.

The spot he'd been in was covered with a bright silvery flash that cut diagonally in such a way that all Sasuke felt was the displaced air, as the sun glinted off a metallic surface. There was the sound of something very heavy striking the ground and a cloud of dust rose into the air. "Geez, Sakura, why are you always late in these team fights?" Sasuke asked.

Holding onto the massive axe stuck onto the ground was a form very much familiar, as a curtain of pink hair covered the wielder's face from Sasuke's direct sight. With a mighty heave, the pinkette pulled the giant axe back and threw her head back, getting her hair out of the way as she did so. "I'm fashionably late!" She informed him, grinning as she did so. "'Sides, I saved your bacon, you could at least be a little thankful."

Sasuke snorted. "I'll be thankful when we're out of this mess…"

"Okay. I did not expect that." Kakashi admitted, looking outright confused. "There's another Sakura too?"

"T-Two of Sakura-chan!?" the blond one yelled, with a bright blush on his face.

"Is that supposed to be Naruto?" Sakura asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah." Sasuke replied.

"… This is hilarious." Sakura admitted, giggling slightly.

"Sakura, we're stuck on god knows where with three obviously hostile ninja, one of whom is a jounin whom we couldn't even take out with the element of surprise. There's nothing funny about this." Sasuke said, deadpan.

"I'm trying to make light of our situation, Sasuke. Someone has to." Sakura said, shrugging.

"Eh, we'll get through this." Sasuke said. "As soon as I figure out how."

"Your chat is very interesting and enlightening, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is starting to get a bit weird…" Kakashi started, before he abruptly stopped.

From his face, he must have noticed their stares, Sasuke surmised.

"S-Sensei… Why is my clone so tiny!?" The fake Naruto called out, indignantly.

Sasuke snorted.

There were four sounds of steel cutting through wood and Kakashi suddenly turned into four pieces of a sliced log, before poofing back into being a few feet away from where he'd been. The smoke cloud surrounding the log gave way to reveal a very small blond boy with whisker marks on his cheeks and blue eyes.

On his hands were two swords, each as long and wide as his arms, which wasn't really all that much, given he was the shortest on the clearing by far, one of a shiny ebony color and the other of a dull, pale white. Neither had seen polish in very long, that much was apparent. The little boy then turned to glare at the only other blond.

Sakura smiled slightly. "If I were you, I'd run now." She said, looking at Naruto. "He doesn't seem to like you very much."

Not-Naruto raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, Other Sakura-chan?" He asked, with a smile that Sakura found kind of endearing, really. "He's tiny! What could he d- ACK!" He was quickly cut off by the feel of Naruto's own short, but considerably powerful leg, hitting him in the abdomen and sending him flying off.

"Naruto! You don't need to attack them!" Sasuke scolded. "We were handling it just fine." He added, glaring at the blond.

The smaller blond merely ignored him and simply rushed forward.

"Tajuu Kage Bunshin No Jutsu (Mass Shadow Clone)!" cried the larger blond.

Then there was a veritable sea of orange and yellow.

This gave the smaller Naruto pause. He spun both swords until they pointed to the ground and stabbed them against the grass. The smaller blond's hands met in a cross shape. "Kage Bunshin." He whispered, as only two clones appeared beside him, one on each side.

While the larger clones took a few moments to coordinate a charge, the smaller ones almost instantly sprung to action, both tossing several Kunai and Shuriken forward almost lazily while the original went through handsigns again.

"Reppusho." The original whispered another name, before bringing both of his palms forward.

The wind rippled and the air distorted. The kunai and shuriken that were but a few feet in front of him quickly shot forward, going straight through the horde of clones, cutting a swat through them with no problem.

Each one of the smaller Kage Bunshin grabbed one of the swords stuck on the ground and held them with both hands (having small hands helped do this despite the small handle), before charging forward to meet the still charging, if thinned, horde.

It was a slaughter, the deafening popping sound being the only thing that interrupted the clones' screams and flashes of black and white occasionally contrasting with the orange everywhere until only the original fake-Naruto was left alone with the two killing machines in front of him. The clones both tossed the swords into the air and dispelled. The fake seemed to sigh in relief until he felt something incredibly tough hit his chest and felt a noticeable sting on his neck, along with the feel of coldness that only steel carried.

Naruto was straddling him, one knee pressing down on his chest and keeping him pinned while his swords were in a scissor shape close to his neck.

The fake gulped, his expression of clear fear and shock.

"That's enough!" Sasuke yelled, this time with a hint of anger to his voice. "We don't know what's going on, Naruto! It's better if we don't kill anyone until we figure out what's happening!"

The blond little boy pressed the swords harder against his doppelganger without breaking skin for an instant before he leaped back. With another leap, he was next to Sasuke, holding both swords at the ready and glaring at the Kakashi doppelganger.

"Sheesh! What's wrong with you? You're usually much more reserved than this…" Sakura muttered, before sighing and deciding to let the matter drop when Naruto simply looked at her as if there was nothing different to how their days usually went.

"I agree with the fake Sasuke. It might be best if we sat down to talk. I could take all three of you, but I'm with a client here and I really don't want to lose one of my genin here." The one-eyed jounin spoke.

Sasuke blinked. The henge was so good that Sasuke had mentally been referring to him as Kakashi throughout the entire encounter and only now had noticed that he'd been doing so. "Eh. Kakashi-sensei always said that if we banded together we would probably beat him or very seriously injuring him. Even if you're just as skilled as he is or have a sharingan… you've got dead weight with you and we've got a trump card." He said, placing a hand atop Naruto's head.

Kakashi blinked. "Okay, we need to talk. I need to know what the hell is going on here."

If you all have your concerns, you're free to voice them over a review or a PM. I'll be delighted to reply to them. I know that more than one of you will have concerns regarding just what the hell is going on, and if you can't truly wait until the characters realize it themselves (it should be pretty easy to guess, really), I will freely spoil it for you.

If you truly feel I jumped the shark with this... I do really apologize for ruining your enjoyment. But I have reasons for doing what I do. There's a certain trope that must be dealt with.

You know, I actually debated having Sakura pull a Takei and say "You are made of stupid." When Sasuke tried the Wind/Fire combo in a freaking cave. Certainly an idiot. Then again, he's twelve, he's bound to do stupid things, since he doesn't have a powerful sense of self preservation and he's still too young to know when you have to stick to smaller explosions.

The idea of Sakura with a massive axe? It actually came from her being depicted with large weapons in official art. I just thought that the idea of the Girly Girl that is Sakura wielding an axe larger than she is would be funny. Plus, I don't want her to be a Tsunade clone. Similar, inspired by her, maybe, but cloning another character is not in my plans here!

It seems that I might need to explain one of the references I used on the last chapter. The 'dood ur so retarded' thing comes from My Immortal, the most famous Harry Potter badfic out there. If you don't think it's funny, well, it just means I suck as a humorist, which is entirely plausible and is in fact true, if you got it and found it funny, then I will give you an ethereal cookie.

Something that some people wonder is why I still keep to simply straddling the line... well, in truth, it's because it simply gives me more freedom to work with. If I don't have anything stablished as hard fact, but rather as bendable, I can make things change at a moment's notice. Also, they're twelve. While Ninja mature psychologically a tad earlier than other children and they have those idiotic notions we had in our childhoods beaten out of them, they still don't get hormones until they're older than that, so they're not really 'defined' until they 'discover' their identity on their own.

Of course, I know which side they bat for, if they bat for any sides at all, or if they bat for both. FYI, bisexuality is not uncommon in the ninja forces at all...

If you guys want the story as to why Team 7 is no longer allowed to take a certain kind of D Rank missions, you'll have to convince me that you want it really, really hard.

And no, I'm not gonna tell y'all what Naruto was doing until it becomes relevant to do so, :3

If you're wondering about the delay, I recently obtained a certain thing called 'Cosplay Fetish Academy' and have been trying to unlock the second Harem ending to no avail. Why is it that you must escape me so, Akari?