I'm sowwy dis took such a horrifyingly long time to post but... I just didn't get inspiration to write it. I have to admit, it was hard to follow up the cliffhanger I set, and I don't think I've truly made your expectations... But here's to hoping I do!

As always, thank you all for reading my fic and giving me a chance. I hope you weren't disappointed.

"DAMMIT!"

Sakura's yell broke the silence of an instant that seemed to stretch into eternity.

A roar of anger and hatred tore through the aftermath of Sakura's yell, and a red haze covered the shape of the boy who had just been impaled. The ice that was buried in his gut exploded into a million clear splinters, gaining the consistency of snow, and then the monster wearing Uzumaki's skin rushed forward, intent on slaying the terrified ninja in front of him.

It took three seconds and four handsigns, the fact that it'd taken that ridiculously long proof of the hunter nin's nervousness, to erect a barrier of ice in front of the roaring monster. It shattered away into nothingness the moment the red haze of chakra came into contact with it.

"N-No! G-get away! GET AWAY!" fear lead to an adrenaline rush that sped up the handseals, and it only took a fraction of a second to complete the jutsu this time. Several spears of clear ice formed from the already existing moisture in the air, and they rushed at the monster, only to disintegrate before they could hit.

The monster raised its hand and a massive claw of chakra formed. It brought it down, and only a hasty jump back prevented the hunter from becoming a permanent fixture on the road. The crater left had three large claw marks sprouting from it, as if the paw of a great beast had descended upon the ground and scorched it.

When the hunter tried to back away again, the gender unidentified person fell back and was frozen by fear and horror, capable only of staring at the juggernaut that had calmly ignored each and every single one of the attempts made to bring it down. It was over, Death Incarnate was coming. The ultimate certainty of death washed over everyone, pining them into place and leaving them frozen to stare as the wounded boy readied another chakra claw to rip appart the hunter nin.

That is, until a long, leathery and thin rope-like object wrapped around the arm, diverting the attack and pulling it aside, causing it to smash on the ground next to the hunter, causing it to shake.

A whip. A simple weapon that was difficult to use and difficult to predict, thanks to the many different ways one could use it.

"STOP!" yelled the voice of one of the Uchiha, as he tried his hardest to approach the roving monster. Every instinct in his body screamed for him to turn tail and run away, as fast as he could. This thing, it would kill him. It would kill him, his brother, his parents, his clan, his friends, everything. This, this was the reason why Konohagakure feared Uzumaki Naruto.

The whip that had held onto Uzumaki's arm disintegrated as a burst of dark red chakra exploded into a vaguely humanoid form, as if it were armor over the blond's body. Sasuke didn't mourn the whip's loss. It would be easily replaced, and it was a training weapon for the one he truly intended to wield, one much more complicated and dangerous.

He had other fish to fry at the moment.

This monster was the Kyuubi no Kitsune, the mighty creature that Naruto's will kept in check every single moment of his life. The greatest and most powerful beast of them all, an invincible, unstoppable and indestructible killing machine that had consumed entire countries in the blazes of its wrath and which had once almost stomped Konoha flat, were it not for the greatest hero in its history sacrificing his life to stop it.

Seeing this, Sasuke wondered, somewhere in the back of his mind, if he truly knew anything about Naruto. He had thought Naruto fragile. He had thought Naruto was, deep down, someone who needed to be protected, no matter how much he tried to pretend he was not. Yet now, Sasuke wondered, how deeply out of his depth had he been all this time?

Had THIS been the burden he thought he could help Naruto shoulder? COULD Sasuke even help Naruto shoulder something of this weight and magnitude?

Despite his doubts and worries, Sasuke found himself admiring the small little boy that was unthreatening and unassuming. How strong was Naruto, truly, to be what he was when he hid something like this deep within? Sasuke squashed any envy. This burden was as terrible as it was great, and that was completely unambiguous.

It didn't matter how much power one could access.

"STOP! STOP NOW!"

Because he knew, he knew very well, that Naruto did not desire it. Neither his, nor this world's Naruto, desired such a terrible and amazing power.

Not when it turned them into this. Naruto, who didn't ever attack except in defense, would not want to be turned into a raging, raving monstrosity.

"Sasu...ke..?" the hesitant voice was at odds with the monster's roars. Naruto's voice. Boisterous and loud and obnoxious, yet warm and friendly. So at odds with the soft, slow, guarded and cold voice Sasuke was so used to, yet so... familiar at the same time.

"Yeah... Stop goofing around already," Sasuke continued, offering Uzumaki a smile and extending his hand. "You're making a mess," he added, trying to make his features as soft as possible, a real challenge with the sharpness inherent to them he inherited.

The red chakra stopped. The wound left on Uzumaki's stomach was shallow and bleeding far less than it had before. The jacket and shirt were ruined, but this wasn't news to him. The blond wobbled on his feet, his eyes glazing over in exhaustion, as every emotion showed clearly for all to see. Fear, sorrow, guilt... all in great amounts.

"H-Hey... Sasuke... Your eyes... you're bleeding..." Uzumaki murmured, as he fell forward, falling into Sasuke's open arm.

If the Uchiha were to be honest, he would say he felt the burn of his eyes, even as he closed them and hugged the blond to his chest, ignoring the way his weight sagged, a clear sign of unconsciousness, but he would never be honest. Sasuke didn't care, and he wouldn't burden Naruto, either of them, with telling them they were the cause for Sasuke's current eye problems. He'd have to ask Itachi when he got back to Konoha.

The Hunter, behind Sasuke, held up a hand with three needles, but it was shaking and it was clear that only the hunter's prodigious willpower and discipline allowed him... or her... to do that much. Shaken to the point of incoherence from the full burst of the demonic chakra, the hunter could barely string together coherent thoughts, let alone throw a set of senbon with the perfect accuracy required to do anything more than temporarily annoy the target.

Sakura, a grim expression on her face, prepared her weapon, the axe that she had used against few live opponents, to do her duty. She knew that the others were too green. Unblooded. She had killed. She had been prepared to kill. She had only had a brief breakdown. She could do this. The axe raised, and Sakura made the swing.

"HAKU!"

The sound of steel against iron was heard before she actually saw that she had not attained her target. Instead of cleaving through the flesh of her enemy, Sakura had instead been blocked by the Demon of the Bloody Mist, Zabuza himself, who had raised the sword that marked him as one of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist, and put it horizontally in place between her and Haku, just barely managing to divert the blade of Sakura's axe.

This lapse in combat, however, had been just enough for Kakashi to plunge a Kunai in the back of Zabuza's neck, killing him instantly and unceremoneously. The copy nin was clearly wounded, and from the fact that he'd used a kunai that was broken in half, it was clear that he'd run out of good ones in the fight against the much larger blade, using them to defend against Zabuza's weapon.

"ZABUZA-SAMA!" the hunter, presumably named Haku, yelled seeing the blood flowing freely from Zabuza's neck wound. If Sakura had to make a guess, it was likely rage, anger and hatred at the copy nin were good enough motivators to get Haku to stand up and try one last ditch effort to kill the copy nin.

Exhausted, wounded and incapacitated, Kakashi saw as the hunter went through handseals and prepared for his death. He didn't care he would die this day. He'd died fighting for his teammates, knowing that if he hadn't killed Zabuza right then and there, then Sakura would've been killed by Zabuza's retaliatory strike. He would die knowing that Sakura would get enough time to kill the hunter ninja before he (Kakashi was pretty sure the hunter was male from smell alone) could recover from using a jutsu to continue the battle.

Kakashi would've died content...

… if someone hadn't interrupted the hunter.

A kunai, an accurately and expertly thrown kunai, buried itself to the ring an inch or two to the left of the hunter's ear, spraying blood as it pierced the skull on both sides. With his arm still stretched, frozen on the last movement of the throwing motion, the orphan Uchiha stared, with almost detached impassiveness, as the first person he'd ever killed fell to the ground.

Surprising even himself, he felt incredibly empty inside.

He didn't like the feeling.

Nightmares abounded.

Kakashi dreamed of his failures, of the times he'd failed his teammates. He dreamed of a man who begged him to restore their family's honor, as his guts spilled on the carpet. He dreamed of a boy crushed under an avalanche of stone who congratulated him on his promotion and asked him to protect their only mutual friend.. He dreamed of a girl who stared gratefully at a lighting encased hand as it plunged into her chest, who begged him to protect the village she loved by ending her life. He dreamed of a man who gazed lovingly at an infant, silently asking him to protect, and love, and cherish the boy, because he could not do so himself.

He dreamed of a blond boy with a hole in his stomach, wondering why his teacher had been unable to protect him as he fell to the ground, dead.

He dreamed of a bunch of lovable brats stuck in an unfamiliar land without guidance, with nobody to protect them from the whims of those who would seek to do them harm. And he cursed his own weakness. He cursed how readily he had accepted death.

He cursed himself because he knew that, at some level, he'd WANTED to die. He'd liked the thought of dying, of meeting up with all of his friends and his family once again. Was he truly this weak? He'd thought himself a strong man, of strong convictions and moral fiber, despite his profession (a twisted sense of morals though it might be, it was a sense of morals nonetheless). So why was he so ready to discard life to pursue a dream?

He couldn't just give up. He had much to do.

His kids. His genin team. They didn't know any of the joys of life yet. The so called shinobi vices, they knew none of them. Kakashi wanted to be there the first time they got royally plastered, to be the one that dumped them in their homes and smiled fondly as they puked all over themselves.

He wanted to be the first to pat them in the back when they lost their virginities, possibly to each other.

Kakashi wished he could be the one who would take them to their first casino and to be the one who would laugh quietly in the background as they gambled their first A ranked paycheck away only to lose it all in the stupidest of bets.

All of the things that he had wanted to do with a younger sibling, or hell, even his very own child. He loved them, much as he liked to pretend he didn't even like them, and he had ever since they proved they could understand his lessons, ever since they became a true team willing to kill and die for each other.

Kakashi couldn't allow himself to die, to give up now, not before he caught up with his interdimensional counterpart and taught them the joys and wonders of Icha Icha! And then, when they were ready to step up and take his place, he'd retire and continue on with the pilgrimage of the one true faith, its orange bible in hand at all times.

But first, he had to kick his own ass so he could kick their training into gear. Leaving a shadow clone to alert him in the case of trouble, Kakashi snook out of their camp late at night. While Sasuke, his own Sasuke, was actually pretty vigilant, as was the Sakura accompanying him (Kakashi honestly couldn't tell them appart, now that they'd both grown quiet from the shocks they'd suffered, and he surmised they were the least affected by whatever circumstances had made their worlds different), Kakashi was a goddamn jounin and it'd be years before they could detect him if he wanted to be sneaky. Being an assassin, and thus required to be sneaky, was only gravvy at this point.

Once he was far away, he created another shadow clone. This was as symbolic as it was practical. Kakashi would first need to defeat himself, to break out all of his bad habits, before he could lead by example.

The clone looked lazily at him, its stance designed to provoke Kakashi into doing something rash by being condescending and insulting in all motions. It was actually one of the many tricks Kakashi had developed to safely deal with weaker opponents.

With weakened muscles that threatened to have their wounds reopen (the interdimensional traveller Sasuke was passable at first aid, but knew nothing of medical jutsu to prevent such a problem) and chakra reserves so depleted it was a wonder he'd even managed the two clones he had, Kakashi engaged himself in battle.

The dance they started would have been a thing of deadly beauty, weren't it so clumsy.

As he collapsed from exhaustion once again in twenty four hours, Kakashi could only further remark on how far down he'd slipped since his depressed youth.

Kakashi was not the only one to have nightmares that night.

Sakura could not lay still. Neither could the other Sakura. So close, had they both been, to death. To falling in combat.

For one, it was yet another time she had been far further away from the edge of the knife than her teammates, and the fire that kept her awake through the night was that of anger, both at herself and at the world. Anger at herself, for continuing her record of ineffectiveness when it came down to it... Because of course she didn't put much stock in the fluke that had once saved one of her teammates' life, since she was a girl who was currently on a guilt-induced nightmare.

For the other Sakura, however, this situation was new, new and terrifyingly so. She had never thought that she would really, truly, face such danger. She was a little girl playing at ninja. She didn't have the support network that her counterpart had. She didn't have a boy who had grown up tending to another messed up ninja to put her back together when she crashed into pieces. She didn't have the strength of character tempered with the fires of conflict to fall back on.

All she had was herself.

On a certain level, that Sakura knew she could be better than she was. She knew she could kick just as much ass as her counterpart, who carried around a huge axe that you wouldn't think she would be capable of lifting, let alone wielding with any degree of dexterity, with such thin arms. Having helped dress the scraps she'd gotten from the hunter nin's ice, Haruno knew that beneath the soft, supple skin lay rigid muscle.

While Haruno herself had but weak and pliable flesh.

It was unacceptable. How could she be so inferior to someone that was just like herself? Was there truly that much difference just because of Sasuke? Of course there'd be... Sasuke was Sakura's inspiration, Sasuke's effort to keep up despite a less than ideal situation, to say the least, was what had motivated Sakura to keep up in the academy.

Uchiha and Haruno had a similar relationship, except while with their interdimensional counterparts it was a symbiotic relationship, Haruno felt she was more parasitic to her Sasuke. He didn't get anything from her. He didn't get support, either in combat or outside of it, and she didn't give anything he couldn't bring on his own.

While her chakra control was much better than his, it made absolutely no difference in the end because she didn't know anything that could make use of that chakra control. She'd have to take medical jutsu.

She wouldn't be able to train herself to the extent her counterpart had, to make up for years of deficiency. They were different. The other her had grown up with a more functional Sasuke who, while still kind of aloof and a loner, wasn't incapable of functioning in society. Haruno had no delusions about just how truly fucked up Uchiha was, but she hoped, dearly hoped, that she could help him overcome his trauma.

She had neglected physical exercise to just trying to be there for the wounded Uchiha... to watch him as he trained, to get herself motivated to go on in a world that she clearly never belonged in.

Yamanaka Ino had helped, but she had been driven away by a dumb brat too stupid to realize the kind of treasure she was throwing away without a care in the world, just for an emotionally crippled boy she deluded herself into thinking she could heal.

Perhaps it was for the best, in the end, as Ino had her own slew of psychological problems, not the least of which was a sense of entitlement that made Sakura, both of them, it'd been revealed, want to smack Ino right across the face many a time.

But even so, as the night passed, Haruno found herself turning in her sleep. She couldn't come to terms with how truly pathetic she was, when compared to the real, the outside, world. She had been thrown into a lake and told to sink or swim, and had only survived because the people thrown along with her had been capable of swimming well enough to carry her back to shore. But would it happen everytime? Would the threat always be within the scope of something her team could handle?

Would they always have the safety net of a more experienced and more powerful version of themselves?

Would they all have died if the interdimensional Team 7 hadn't conveniently shown up to save their asses? She understood, and accepted, that the other team 7 could probably beat Kakashi if they worked together. Sasuke alone could probably take on the dysfunctional Team 7 on his lonesome, because they just sucked at working with each other.

And the other Naruto...

He was almost, no... he was definitely cute. Adorable, even, and Sakura wondered if Naruto had been that ridiculously cute when he'd been ten, and Sakura just hadn't noticed before. Without being loud and obnoxious, nothing detracted from the image of an emotionally crippled little boy that just made you want to hug him, and she hadn't spent enough time being utterly ignored by him to be annoyed by it.

Even though he seemed smaller, frailer and much, much shier than the one she was accustomed to...

The difference could be called that between night and day, but it was not enough. The Naruto she was used to was loud, incompetent and managed to pull through with determination, a clever ploy and a heavy dose of luck.

She had no doubts that the dual wielding version of Naruto relied on skill. Whereas Uzumaki summoned dozens upon dozens of nigh-useless clones, just two of the smaller clones had decimated an entire army of Uzumaki's own, and it was clear he would've been very dead if the fight hadn't been stopped.

It was a sobering thought. While she had already been vaguely aware she was far behind her teammates in terms of power, no matter how much it hurt to admit she was worse than her blond teammate at anything, she had never thought that THIS was the massive gulf that stood between her and a real ninja. A real, experienced genin that was tested in combat and found capable.

Sakura hadn't known how incredibly lucky she'd been, to wind up in a team that was guaranteed a spot amongst the elites. She hadn't known that she had barely even been considered for the post before being discarded as a grunt. Haruno had even less of an idea, having never been anything but top notch kunoichi material in her own opinion until now.

Until she got the rudest awakening to the reality that no, she was nowhere near close to acceptable.

She was at the bottom, and that much was obvious.

But you know what they say.

When you're at the bottom, the only way to go? It's up. Even if it took her ungodly effort... She'd show them. She'd show them that she could be more than a placeholder. She'd show them that she could be just as good as her teammates, even if she didn't have that strange, terrifying power Naruto had, or Sasuke's funky eyes...

Thinking about the odd power Uzumaki had displayed got her thinking. Specifically, it got her thinking about a certain comment she'd heard from her counterpart.

"I guess I have a weak spot for foxes," Haruno murmured to herself. Foxes. Foxes... Why would she have a soft spot for foxes? She didn't like the creatures in the least. Sure, she didn't want to randomly harm a fox but then again, that was just her not being a violent person by nature (no matter how often her blond teammate provoked her into violence). The nine tailed fox had attacked Konoha and that had caused the village to irrationally hate foxes, and while Sakura didn't outright hate them, she didn't have any sympathy for the creatures.

So why did her counterpart actively like them?

Maybe the nine tailed fox hadn't attacked her village? No, it was unlikely. She was certain the differences would be far more reaching if an event THAT big was different. Haruno was vaguely aware of the butterfly effect, to the level of a layman, which told her that such a change would make massive ripples.

So... why, then?

And why did the thought of foxes come up right then and there? She felt that there was a hint there, somewhere. She had related it to the strange power Naruto had displayed. She had often thought of Naruto as strangely similar to the few foxes she'd seen. The whiskers, the squinted eyes, the trickster nature... it reminded her of the ancient fox spirits she'd read about in her spare time. And then there was the red, horrendous chakra that evoked a sense of dread and despair that almost physically knocked her over.

Haruno was a smart gal. Smart enough to have actually read the history books in the library just so she could know of the mistakes made in the past so she herself wouldn't make them when she was the wife of the head of the newly reborn Uchiha clan (embarrassing though that dream seems in hindsight, Haruno still cherished it). She had read about the invincible, unkillable juggernauts that were the Tailed Beasts.

So why was the Fourth Hokage said to have killed the Kyuubi, when it's supposed to be impossible?

Through a long period of time, blind belief in the incredible, peerless might of the Yellow Flash had driven a lot of children that didn't know any better to just believe that the fourth Hokage had found a way to permanently slay the beast. That he'd been the greatest sealmaster ever and thus had figured out a way to permanently kill off a tailed beast in exchange for his life...

Haruno knew better, though.

The Kyuubi had most likely been sealed into a human being. That was standard practice for the tailed beasts, and it was not news to Haruno. It didn't take very long for her to connect the dots once she had laid them on the metaphorical table.

The Fourth Hokage could not kill the Kyuubi, for that was impossible. So he sealed it into a human container. That human container had characteristics reminiscent of folklorical fox spirits, most likely inherited from contact at soul-level with the fox. It was clear as day.

Uzumaki Naruto was the container of the Kyuubi.

And it'd taken this long for Haruno to learn this.

This was not, however, what affected her the most.

Sakura, her counterpart, knew this already. Had known this for a while, it seemed. It was obvious that she didn't care in the slightest.

Before, when she had been given the same lecture she just gave herself, Haruno had been affected for a while, more pensive and thoughtful, but ultimately had come to the conclusion that her counterpart couldn't understand her, couldn't look at it from Haruno's own shoes...

Haruno had thought that she had the worse situation and was doing the best she could, all things considered, until she realized that the other girl had exactly three friends.

A somewhat emotionally stunted boy who Haruno was starting to think was more likely than not interested a little too much in sword fighting, if you know what I mean. An emotionally crippled boy that seemed to be almost impossible to make friends with. And last but not least, Yamanaka Ino, the girl with an ego the size of the Hokage Tower.

This, coupled with the recent events, finally cemented into her head that she needed to improve.

Next time, there wouldn't be a second Team 7 to save them.

Next time, they would be in lethal danger.

And they would be depending on her.

Haruno would be damned before she disappointed her teammates, this time!

Sasuke sat, arms crossed and face frozen in a thoughtful frown, next to the unconscious blond he'd just bandaged fully. This made the two even more similar, he surmised, as he stared at the chest that in the warm, humid night was only covered by copious bandages and a thin blanket.

Not for the first time, Sasuke's thoughts fell on his errant teammate. Was he safe? Was he making progress on finding a way to get them back to their world? Naruto WAS the strongest of the team, so him going off on his own made the most sense, but... Sasuke didn't truly agree with that thought. Sasuke would've pointed out that without someone minding him, Naruto was liable to forget he had to eat, dress his wounds or do any number of important things.

Heck, even with someone trailing after him, he still forgot to do those things half the time! He'd probably get weak if he didn't eat enough, and if he got into a fight, it could end with him killed! He'd misjudge his stamina or his chakra reserves and then boom, he'd be dead, and all because Sasuke let him go off on his own!

But if he hadn't, if Sasuke had accompanied Naruto, then this other Naruto, the one that lay next to him, would very likely be dead.

It was a no win scenario, and it was driving Sasuke spare! And he was the spare to begin with!

"What am I to do with you..?" he asked, mostly to himself.

What could he do? To him, this was yet another mission gone to hell, and while it wasn't a common occurrence, it wasn't exactly rare, either. It was just something that happened. He was far less struck by the reality of the situation, helped by being raised and trained for such a thing (even if the first time had still been something of a nasty shock). All that he truly worried about was Naruto, both of them.

It didn't matter how strong they were. All the power in the world means nothing if you're an idiot, and they both were massive idiots, if in different ways that ended up producing similar results.

A sigh escaped Sasuke's throat, and he stood up to do a bit of light stretching. Tired though he might be, he was still perfectly alert, and didn't miss the shifting of his teammates as they tried to sleep through their nightmares. Absent mindedly, he walked towards the two pinkettes and put a hand atop each of their heads, and they calmed somewhat. He'd realized that the one he'd come to refer to by her surname had been less than asleep, contemplative of something instead...

… But he couldn't muster up the energy to care.

He hoped Naruto returned soon. Worry was eating at him from the inside.

Well, at least he distracted himself by comforting the blond next to him when he woke up. It did take something like an hour to assure him that no, he wasn't a burden and that he would only improve with practice and he'd been plenty good during the fight, it was just an opponent he really wasn't ready to face yet. Sasuke was even being truthful, it really was Kakashi's fault they'd been pitted against such opponents without being ready for them.

Uchiha's nightmares were much different to those of his teammates, interdimensional or not. His nightmares centered on a set of images engraved into his mind by a deranged psychopath. Why had he chosen that method of execution? The motions had been preprogrammed into his mind, he knew before he even thought of using a throwing weapon, how exactly to throw it so it'd pierce the skull in the way it needed to so as to ensure instantaneous interruption to any chakra technique being used.

Uchiha had known all of that because his brother had done it to no less than four of his clan members during that fateful night. Every last motion was perfectly executed and calculated. Not a bit of effort was wasted and it had all been flawlessly reproduced from that memory.

They had thought he had been sick because nobody had prepared him to kill. Uchiha had assumed he would need to kill, and kill many, since a long time and it wasn't the kill itself that had affected him this way. No, it was the implication of what he was becoming. It was knowing that he'd used his exact same method and reacted in the exact same way he had.

Cold indifference. Another one bites the dust. Move on. And another one gone. Move on.

The same speed and efficiency... It scared the last loyal Uchiha of this world. It scared him because what was the point of taking revenge on the kinslayer if he ended up becoming a carbon copy of him? Was it even truly worth it, to take revenge if he would continue to stain his clan's honorable name through his actions?

Was that even revenge?

Or was that exactly what the kinslayer had wanted? Was he playing into the bastard's hand? He'd taught him to cling to his anger and hatred, to live an unsightly life and strive for the Mangekyo, the cursed eye that belonged only to the worst of betrayers, those willing to exchange love for power.

A calm and quiet night following a storm was a great time to sit down and just think. To put his life in perspective. It was not something he usually did. Regardless of how long he spent brooding, thinking of the tragedy that was his life, it was rare for him to sit down and THINK of what he was doing, where he was going and how he was going to get there. For all of what people called him a calm and collected individual, at some level Uchiha knew himself to be rash and impulsive (yet another flaw that made him inferior to the kinslayer).

When he gazed upon the abyss of what he had been becoming, he was horrified of what stared back. He hadn't a mirror, but he didn't need one to know that his face was set into a near permanent frown, and that it was physically trying to smile after such a long time. He thought he must have looked ridiculous, trying to curl his lips into a facsimile of a smile...

There was nothing truly enjoyable in his life. Nothing that made him want to smile. All he had now was people who had been trying, desperately, to reach out to him, and which he'd tried his darnedest to push away. Even when others had pointed out his flaws to his face, he'd tended to ignore them and just plow forward.

Even from himself, it'd been just words. It didn't matter what his counterpart said, in the long run, because it wasn't him. It was someone who hadn't felt his pain, who wasn't truly him. It was someone who could not truly understand him, and was aware of that fact. The only one who could truly reach him was... himself.

Indeed.

It took one good look at himself to find out that Uchiha Sasuke, last loyal Uchiha and heir to the clan, was disgusted with what he'd been becoming. They'd triumphed almost solely because of their interdimensional counterparts' aid in this battle. It was unacceptable to be the weak link simply because he refused to work with others. He was not his brother. He wasn't the best at everything and he couldn't do everything by himself.

And now?

Uchiha Sasuke realized he did not wish to be like his brother. The cold indifference he'd felt about the death he'd caused had not been pleasant, and it wasn't something he wished to experience again. It was an old shinobi saying that the day you stop feeling anything when you kill, that's the day you ought to retire, maybe teach the academy a few years or take a genin team if you're high ranked enough.

Or do D ranks for a while, with a good team of affable people so you can make some friends and have a good time.

That had actually been in the lessons Iruka and Mizuki had imparted them.

Perhaps there'd been wisdom he'd been too caught up in himself to realize.

It'd be worth a look, at least. He'd been hurting and in pain for far too long, and no amount of effort put towards achieving his revenge had soothed the pain...

All good blades need a sheathe, if they're naked too long they'll rust, grow weak and break. Ninja were no different, in that sense, and the Uchiha heir needed to find his sheath. He just hoped he found it soon, while his head was still clear, before he became impatient once again.

The next morning, Team 7 was awoken with a shock as a message had been delivered to Kakashi. With a grim expression on his face, he read the message delivered by a courier nin who had made himself scarce. "New orders. There's a massively dangerous criminal loose in the Land of Fire. There was a massacre at the Fire Temple, and the report says that it was a single person who performed the slaughter. The monks are truly tough, and someone who could take out all of them is most likely A rank, possibly S. We're on alert for any sightings of suspicious people, and in case of any suspicious activity, we are to report it immediately. Other than that, we're to continue our mission as scheduled."

Tazuna let out a string of curses, mostly having to do over someone being enough of an asshole to massacre a group of pacifistic monks that wouldn't harm anyone to start with.

Sakura and Sasuke, meanwhile, went whiter than fresh paper. "Oh god... Naruto is out there, alone, with such a ridiculously dangerous criminal on the loose!"

It wasn't until the team 7 of this dimension, minus the wounded Naruto who couldn't do much, got to picking up the camp that Kakashi separated the new additions to his usual team and, once he was far enough from listening ears, turned at them with a rather grim and determined looking eye. "According to the report, there are traces of the Kyuubi's chakra all around the temple... which is why the report was sent to me first. Naruto was the prime suspect, but he's right here, which means that..."

"NO!" Sasuke yelled, nearly snarling at the jounin. "You can't be insinuating that Naruto would massacre a bunch of defenseless monks! Much less that he would utilize the Kyuubi's power at all-" then he stopped, gaping at Sakura, who rolled her eyes.

"It isn't a very well kept secret, Sasuke!" she admonished, sighing. "I knew since before he told you. I didn't want to say anything because it's his secret to tell. Anyway... I don't think it was Naruto, either. If we count distances, the time it'd take for the news to get to Konoha, and from Konoha to us, it doesn't make sense for it to be him."

"That is true, and I thought of it too," admitted Kakashi, "but for shinobi of that caliber, it would be a possibility. I don't think it was him... but all the evidence points to that. We'll wait for him to rejoin us, and we'll ask him then."

That did not help the sinking feeling in Sasuke's chest rise any. It couldn't be. He refused to believe that Naruto could do something like that! It wasn't possible.

There had to be some sort of explanation! Something! Anything at all!

And Sasuke would rather die than condemn Naruto of a crime so heinous as genocide before exhausting every possibility to prove his innocence.

Team 7, both of them, survived the encounter with Zabuza and Haku! Zabuza and Haku, did not. No dramatic tragic backstory reveal, no last 'ZOMG I loved you!' last words... just gritty, unforgiving combat. Also, we're reaching the end of the 'Alternate Universe' arc. I foresee, at most, three chapters before we return to the EH world. Until then, just bear with the confusion a little longer. The two teams will separate next chapter, though that will probably become even more confusing...

Anyhow... this little mystery...

Was it Naruto? Was it not? Ah, you'll have to read and find out!