Summary: What if the Naruto gang woke up in an insane asylum located just outside of Tokyo? What would happen if they all were there because they dreamed of places and things that didn't exist?

All disclaimers apply. Please note that all of the scenes that are in italics are like….a novel version of the manga. Just… from someone else's POV.

Important A.N at bottom. There WILL be another chapter posted soon (sometime between an hour from now and early tomorrow).

Italics- dreams


Interlude: Year 8

Uchiha Itachi

The twenty-one year old yawned before leaning back in his chair.

"Yo, you alright kid?"

Itachi shifted his eyes in the direction of the man who spoke. Hoshigaki Kisame. The man was rather large in stature and towered over Itachi and his desk at a startling 190.5 cm. He had imagined that if the man wasn't shark-like, like in his dreams, that he would be rather ugly. But Kisame looked just as normal as the next guy, just… huge. He was a 29 year old giant who was content with where his career was. Itachi was grateful when Kisami took him under his wing when he started working as an officer at the age of 20, fresh out of college.

He felt responsible for those he cared about. Because of his responsibility, he became suspicious of everyone. He needed to find his best friend and his brother; he needed to find Kakashi and Sasuke. They were Itachi's sole reason for striving to become an officer, a detective. He needed to be stronger to find those He wasn't going to be the same monster that he was in his dreams. He wasn't going to sit back and let the mystery of their disappearance remain unsolved.

Uchiha Itachi wasn't going to let the first thing Sasuke thought of when he thought of his older brother be a murderer.

Itachi started having the dreams a little less than a year after Sasuke's disappearance. And because of that, he had the benefit of gaining his dream-self's rather stoic appearance. When Itachi looked at Kisame, he could tell that the man wasn't having the dreams. Or at least not yet.

But the older man had instantly recognized Itachi. Or at least that was what he had told him when he started working with him.

Itachi was an intelligent man. Even though he had emotional attachments to the case, they had no choice but to let him on. He was a relative to Sasuke and a friend to Kakashi—one of the first people to go missing. And because of his closeness to them, they told him things. The day he found out that his little brother was having dreams, he did the thing that any caring, obnoxious older brother would do: he looked for any sort of writing that he could He had gone into Sasuke's room the day he was kidnapped and had went in to read the boy's diary when he found out Sasuke was having the dreams.

Itachi was immensely proud of his brother—he was just as intelligent as Itachi thought he would be. He wrote down every detail of his dreams, not leaving a single thing out. He was suspicious of almost everyone and everything and rightfully so.

And now Itachi only felt that he could trust Kisame with the full details of the case for he, too, was having the dreams—just like his brother.

"Itachi?"

Itachi blinked slowly and then focused his gaze back on Kisame. "Yes?"

Kisame smiled, a few of his teeth more unnaturally jagged than the others. "We've got a live one."

Itachi raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. "A 'live' one?"

"On the case." Kisame closed the door behind him and sat in the chair in front of Itachi's desk. "Those kids you were talking about having dreams about? Those 12 year olds?" At Itachi's nod, Kisame continued. "We just got a call in from a flower shop. It was one of those kids on a list of names you gave me. A Yamanaka Ino."

Itachi sat straight and couldn't keep the hope from showing on his face. "Does she have any connections with anyone else."

Kisami looked back down at his sheet of paper, trying to read through the chicken-scratch that was known as his handwriting. "Ah, right. A Shukaku Temari and Gaara were last seen with her. The two are siblings; old childhood friends, according to her parents."

Itachi furrowed his eyebrows in thought… "Shukaku… Gaara…" His face lit up. "Come on Kisami. We need to catch up with those two before something happens to them."

Kisami smiled a toothy grin before nodding to his partner. "Got it, kid."


-END INTERLUDE-

Next Chapter: Part XI: Year 8- Temari and Gaara

Author's Notes: So here's the interlude I intended to post before I went on my super-long hiatus. My explanation: A friend of mine had this… situation where she really did almost end up going to get help at some mental hospital and I was there when this event happened and…. It took me a few months to get over it. I couldn't even look at this particular story because the mental hospital thing made me think of it and… yeah. So I apologize. I hope to update every week after this. Another chapter should be out in a few hours/tomorrow. And it should be longer. A whole lot longer.

Finished: August 29, 2008
Edited: Pending
Published: August 29, 2008