Author's Note: hi everyone! sorry this update is so overdue! i'd like to thank everyone for reviewing, agaiinn! it means a lot and i hope you don't hate me for taking a break from writing for a while. i've just been a little busy over the past week or two with college and everything. enjoy!

-Squeak

Disclaimer: Kishisss

He couldn't sleep, impossibly oblivious to the world around him, only choking on his own nightmare that seemed to swallow him whole in the darkness.

The sky was red, on fire, even, with two, vicious yellow eyes protruding from the smog. The eyes seemed to draw closer, closer, before the rest of the animal began to take shape. First, there was a paw, clawed and fearsome, black nails sharply digging into the hard earth beneath it as if it were butter. Next came the leg; Long and treacherous, covered in an orange fur and emitting a heat so insufferably hot that it burned his pale, whiskered cheeks. The rest of the creature came all at once, bounding through the dense fog, covered in an red, lava-like substance that almost looked like liquid floating in midair, the bubbles rising from it's back and dispersing into nothingness before re-emerging again.

It was snarling, nine, feral tails squirming like living things behind it, reminding the blond of a rogue brushfire. Black gums were pulled back harshly over long, yellow, blood-covered teeth.

"Naruto....." the creature quelled, mouth not moving but a deep, booming voice permeating from somewhere within itself.

Naruto said nothing, shrinking away from the vile beast and swallowing hard. He seemed to have lost his voice.

"Naru-chan, you need me. You need this. Come, take it."

The bubbles and lava advanced towards him, like a great, overflowing lake, tickling Naruto's ankles painfully. He resisted the urge to cry out, and he didn't even think that he could have if he wanted to.

"Naruto, you know why they don't like you. You know it's because of that "thing" inside of you. Me, inside of you."

Naruto felt a shiver crawl down his spine, unable to move any further. The lava had cemented him in place. The Kyuubi pressed it's black nose to Naruto's. He screamed in pain as a response.

"I won't!" He growled fiercely through the uncontrollable quavering in his voice, narrowing his wide, azure eyes in a new-found anger that was boiling in his stomach. "I don't need this! I don't need you!"

But it was already too late; The demon had seized him, and the anger that he thought was his own was in truth that of the nine-tailed fox, sidling into his body through his exposed pores. His blue eyes had gone red, turning into firey, cat-like slits, his canines extending over his bottom lip, cruelly drawing his own blood.

But before it could take him completely, deep, raven eyes snapped open. Sasuke had felt like he'd been swallowed by a dream, not that he really ever slept or needed to. He had simply been sitting, spine arched gently so that his hands came to rest on the curb, knees bent up to his chin, when all of a sudden images gripped him behind the blackness of his eyelids...Not only had Sasuke encountered the thing inside of Naruto; He had become him.

But why? What sort of premonition was this? He was still dressed in Naruto's tattered orange jeans and shirtless, and the sun was starting to peek over the buildings effortlessly, sparkling delicately in the listless fog from the previous rain. Sasuke was soaked, but since when did the cold bother him? His blood had always been blue.

/Was it a sign? Had something happened to Naruto?/

/Hell, what the fuck did it matter? He was Gaara's now. Gaara. A red-headed piece of shit that seemed to have sand stuck permanently in his asshole. /

/Jealous? Ne, Sasuke. How can you, one of the most powerful demons in your verse, succumb to such a human emotion?/

/But if you aren't jealous, if you don't love him, then why are you afraid to go back to Hell?/

Sasuke swallowed and lifted his head slowly. He felt like there was something burning in his eyes, which had grown very wet and confusingly uncomfortable.

/Am I crying?/

He brought his hands to his forehead and grabbed fist-fulls of wet hair as his shoulders shook methodically. Demons weren't supposed to cry. Had he grown weak? So many questions were branding themselves into his mind, dying to be answered, but only tearing his soul apart more with each passing minute. Naruto, Naruto, Naruto.

/Soul? What soul?/

He was almost shocked when a pair of feet and two wheels squealed to a stop in front of him. Two, black, tattered converse sneakers padded up the sidewalk to greet him, the gray, soggy laces dragging languidly across the wet pavement.

"Hey, you! Are you alright? Huh? What happened? You look sick! Are you crying? Hey!"

The voice belonged to a little boy, probably twelve years of age. Sasuke turned his head towards him and looked up ashamedly. The kid had brown hair that looked like it was the product of sticking his finger in an electrical socket, and on his forehead rested a pair of enormous green goggles that appeared to have no function other than to look cool. The blue scarf around his neck trailed down to his ankles, and was obviously in danger of being stepped on or caught in his bike spokes. He was holding a heavy looking bag filled with newspapers.

"What happened to you! You look like shit!" the boy squeaked, laughing and dropping his bundle off of his right shoulder, before plopping down next to Sasuke and stretching. Sasuke was puzzled by the boy's bluntness. He couldn't help but be reminded of his stupid, blond Dobe again.

"You've got one hell of a mouth," Sasuke snapped, resting his head in his hands.

"Hey, it's not my fault you're down in the dumps. Want some candy? I've got hi-chews."

Before Sasuke could respond there was an apple piece of candy in his hand. He unwrapped it slowly and chewed. It didn't taste too bad...At least there was something human (besides sex) that he could stomach.

"Didn't your mother tell you not to talk to strangers?" Sasuke said, chomping away, giving the brown-haired boy a sideways glance.

"Didn't your mother tell you not to take candy from them, either?" the boy replied, grinning cheekily and stuffing a pink-colored one in his mouth.

"What kind was that?" Sasuke inquired.

"Strawberry. Here." The boy handed him another one. Sasuke unwrapped it and popped it onto his tongue.

"What happened to your clothes?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"You're just a kid."

"Fine."

Sasuke, expecting more persistence from such a young boy, looked at him with a pair of surprised, open eyes. The boy shrugged.

"I'm Konohamaru," the boy offered between mouthfuls of candy.

"Sasuke."

"You know, whatever is bothering you probably isn't such a big deal. You know, none of this really matters in the end, Sasuke."

"Pretty deep words for someone like you."

"Hey, kids can be a lot smarter than you think. We're more open. You see the world the way /you/ want it to be. I can imagine the way it /really/ is."

Sasuke looked at him tentatively, dropping his candy wrapper on the ground and blinking at Konohamaru curiously.

"Take todays paper, for example," Konohamaru continued, pulling one of the rolled up newspapers out of his bag. "Something weird happened not too far from here. The papers say it was a bomb. I think it's something different. Something....Out of this world. People just want to convince themselves that they are the center of the universe, that they're the only things out there, and that strange, extraordinary things can't happen because that's not reality. But, the thing is," he said, pausing for a moment to rip open the paper to the appropriate page. "-they don't realize that extraordinary things /are/ reality. Look."

Sasuke peered over Konohamaru's shoulder, genuinely intrigued by the young boy's advanced philosophy. The picture shocked him. An entire half of an apartment complex had caved in, the rubble extending to the other side of the street. There was old blood on the cement, and a single body in the foreground covered with a pristine, white sheet, which looked out of place because of the filth that encompassed the road. The brief article read as follows, which Sasuke muttered aloud:

"Four AM e.s.t., an apartment complex just outside of Chinatown was demolished by what appeared to be a makeshift bomb, although no evidence of the bomb or who planted it there has been relinquished to the public. Only one death has been reported, but that name has also not been released. Very little is known about the surprise attack, but an eye-witness we will call 'John' for safety's sake, characterized the scene as, "...strange, something I had never seen in my life. It didn't sound like a bomb, really. Just...Snarling. Almost like a wild animal was out there. I thought I had been dreaming, but then my ceiling fell in," (he chuckles goodnaturedly). "I came outside to see what had happened, but there was nothing but blood on the ground. That and the pavement had been smashed in in two places. It almost looked like there had been some apocalyptic fight! Seriously!" A young man currently residing in the apartment complex was also missing when the individual residents were questioned, but neither him, nor his body could be located."

Sasuke swallowed as the picture grew more and more familiar by the second. That was Naruto's apartment. Sasuke's jaw dropped and he turned to his right, a million questions for Konohamaru springing up invasively in his mind.

But he was even more bewildered to find the bike, the papers, and the boy gone.