Authors Comments: Alright, so I temporarily fixed that chapter, at least enough to where it makes sense and doesn't jump from one point to another. I made a few smaller edits to that most of you probably won't notice. Nothing that changes the story, just a few consistency issues.

Also: So I really like the 4000 word chapter length. It seems long enough to be a decent read, but not so long as to seem like it goes on forever. But, if you think otherwise I wouldn't mind knowing about it.

I had forgotten what it was like to wake up in a strange place. still was a stranger waking up next to me. Sleep had eluded me for most of the night. I had most recently woken up only a few minutes earlier. There was still a little time before we actually needed to leave. I laid still, mostly just pretending that I was still asleep, but partly to gain a little information. Gaining intelligence on everyone around me was nothing short of second nature, almost to the point of being involuntary.

I considered the alliance between the great nations to be rather shallow. That was proved enough when Kumo attacked, just to get to me. Though Naruto considered it the ambition of a crazed man. The Raikage did have it out for me. I hadn't yet heard if a new one had been selected yet. The selecting of a new Kage could take some time.

The girl exited then tent, in all likelihood she was just going into the woods to relieve herself. While she was gone I decided to start getting ready, Kakashi was already outside, cooking food on a small fire. Inside his tent I could hear the other woman rustling, apparently getting ready as well.

"Care for some breakfast?" Even through the thin mask he always wore I could see a smile, likely a fake one. I still had a hard time accepting that he hand picked me for this mission. "Might be your only chance to eat for a while."

I accepted his offer. It wasn't like it would tear down the fence between us. As I munched on what appeared to be some kind of squirrel the other new girl came back from out of the forest. I was right about what she went off to do. Though I was more curious as to what ability landed her on this team. Maybe she was some kind of genius. That's how Kakashi got here, it was easy to forget that the sharingan wasn't what made him great. The girl was only a few years younger than me at the most. It was hard to be certain though.

"You two get along last night?" It was a question that could almost be taken the wrong way. It was meant to be innocent though.

"Yeah, just fine." Even though I didn't even learn her name, or what to even call her. She would likely use an alias of some sorts, as would I. Though I could just go by Sasuke, and not give my last name. It was a decently common name after all. "So do you know that woman?" I motioned to his tent.

"You could say we go a ways back." He turned back to look at her as she exited the tent. His answer could have meant any number of things. That was one of the more frustrating things about him, you could never get a straight answer. Even after years of knowing him, neither I nor Sakura knew much about him. We hadn't seen him without the mask as well. Sakura had some rather wild speculations. It had been my understanding that he had worn it ever since he was a young child, maybe something happened to him when he was younger. No one without something to hide wore a mask.

The others joined us for our breakfast after finishing getting ready. The purple haired woman kept throwing nervous glances my way. She had been watching me from behind yesterday while we were in formation. I wondered if she was intimidated by my presence. It was pretty clear that she knew who I was. She was around Kakashi's age, everyone older than me knew my face well. I was officially last Uchiha, for now at least.

After we finished packing the campsite up we headed off. It would likely be a uneventful day of travel. I couldn't help but wonder what Sakura would be up to. I knew she had been working on the house a little. Mostly to keep herself busy. Though she did mention something about working in the hospital a bit. She missed it, as much as the hours killed her. It would be good for her though, she had been spending a lot of time just around the house, doing some kind of medical training. I didn't really follow since I had no interest in learning about the medical field.

My dojutsu training had been taking up most of my time. The sharingan held many secrets, and achieving the rinnegan was my goal. All of this only reminded me of something. Kakashi was able to unlock the mangekyou sharingan, despite not being an Uchiha. It wasn't supposed to be possible, though not much information existed. Still, it couldn't hurt to at least ask him about how he managed to do it. This of course wasn't the best of times. It would be a while before he told me, if he ever would.

We had been traveling sometime before the young girl piped up. It had been fairly quiet the whole time. I didn't sense anything, and neither had Kakashi, or the older woman. It made me wonder what startled her, maybe she was a sensor type. It would make sense. Karin was the same way about things. Maybe this girl had a similar ability. Though Karin seemed to believe that she was unique. A quality that I once believed in as well.

"Whats out there?" Kakashi seemed to notice, despite being in front of her. Maybe he knew that we should be running into something about now. He must have had some intelligence on this mission before hand.

"There's about four people watching us, one-hundred meters to the left. Their attempting to mask their chakra. That's why none of you sense them." That proved she was a sensor type, maybe one even as good as Karin. If she had any combat skills whatsoever though she would definitely be better. So far I liked her, she was tolerable.

"Are they following us?"

"No, they haven't moved as best as I can tell."

"We'll leave them be then for now, it's unlikely they're with the man we're after. Plus we're a ways off for people to be standing watch." He said that, but if there was one thing I knew, it was that nothing was ever set in stone. I had seen plenty of strange things, and that was in this region alone, there was a whole world out there.

We kept going ignoring the people who managed to notice us. It was possible that they also had a sensor type with them. Luckily for them they decided not to follow us. Things wouldn't have turned out so well for them.

The rest of the day was uneventful, we stopped for a short break at one point to eat and rest up before taking off again. By the time the sun was setting we could see the town we were staying at. It would be nice to stay in a room instead of outside. Regardless of how many times I had spent sleeping in the dirt, on in a tent, I had never gotten used to it. I liked familiarity despite the fact that until recently in my life I never had.

The hotel wasn't exactly what I would call nice, after changing in the woods we staggered our arrivals in random intervals. I went in last spending my time familiarizing myself with the village a little. It wasn't large by any means. Quaint would be a good way to describe it. It was strange though, having a room all to myself. I hadn't slept alone in some time. I hadn't even truly gotten used to sleeping with someone at this point. Often I found it difficult to get comfortable enough to sleep. Every so often I would just lay awake, holding Sakura until the sun rose.

It wasn't an easy task quieting my mind. Years of laying awake at night envisioning things had taken it's toll. Sakura though had procured some pills for me to take that helped quite a bit. I popped a few into my mouth, chasing them with a quick swig of water. It took about twenty minutes for them to truly take effect. It was a nice guarantee for a full nights sleep. The only downside was it made me quite the heavy sleeper, which made me reluctant to take them at times. I had a creeping notion that sleep would elude me tonight, and since I would need the rest for tomorrow I took them. I glanced out the window before falling crawling into the bed. A light snow had begun to fall, even on my walk the air had become rather cold.

The cold made it all the easier to fall asleep, even if the room was still warm, I liked the cold air. Konoha had a rather humid atmosphere for most of the year. It was a pleasant change. The drowsiness eventually started to take it's toll as I felt myself drifting away.

Sasuke had been gone for over a day now. I knew in my heart that he would be alright, but deep down I couldn't help but worry. I didn't like the fact that some made him out to be some sort of invincible monster. He was far from invincible though, though I wish I could say that the latter wasn't once true. I couldn't change the past though, the future however was looking bright. The beautiful sunrise cast warmth on my cheeks as I stared out into the village. The crisp air, and the warm cup of herbal tea I had helped calm my nerves and lift my spirits up.

I had another appointment today with Tsunade, it had been over three months now, and I could finally learn whether it was a boy or a girl. I had been debating with myself as to whether or not I even wanted to know, or wanted the surprise. Sasuke was indifferent on the matter, and in the end I decided I wanted to know. So this would hopefully be an exciting day for me, I had been hoping for a girl for some time now. As much as I enjoyed Sasuke as a guy, I wouldn't mind having some more estrogen around the house to help even things out a little. I would be happy of course though regardless of the babies gender.

I headed for the hospital, a long walk, but it was nice to get out of the house. Tsunade had basically taken over at the hospital, which no one was complaining about. Since she was bogged down with being the Hokage anymore she was able to focus medical things more. Which was by far closer to her true calling.

"You're really starting to show!" A comment that killed my self esteem. I knew she was right though. Within the next month there would be no hiding it. I had never prided myself on my looks, though I did value guys opinions on the matter, though I had been called "Not cute" on a plurality of occasions. Mostly by guys I had just rejected. So I knew I must have had some appeal in the first place, otherwise they wouldn't have asked me out in the first place.

"Gee thanks. So what's this thing supposed to be?" The room we had gone into contained a strange looking machine attached to a monitor.

"It's called a sonogram. It's something that I managed to procure. It's going to let us actually see your baby."

"That's incredible!" I had actually heard about one of these before, but to me they had always come off as a little unnecessary. I could potentially sense the baby with chakra, though I wasn't having much luck, I kept getting strange results, most of which I attributed to my lack of practice in the matter.

"Now, I'm going to put this on your stomach, so lift up your shirt a bit." After I did so, she poured a strange gel on to me, which felt near ice cold. "Sorry, it's going to be a little cold." in my head I scorned her for not warning me earlier, but the worst of it was over already, I hoped at least. "Now let us see what we can see."

She flicked the monitor on and pressed the device to my stomach area, pressing into me a little. On the screen an almost indescribable image appeared. I had no idea what I was really looking at, but Tsunade seemed to.

"Well this is interesting! Look here." She pointed to a spot on the screen that showed something beating. "That's a heart right there. A strong one from the looks of it." My eyes quickly darted to another section of the screen, one that had an identical looking beating section.

"So what is that other thing?" I pointed to the other corner.

"That's whats interesting, you're having twins." At that moment I swore my heart stopped.

A persistent knock on the door woke me from my sleep. It took me a moment to remember where I was, a fun little side effect from the pills, mornings were groggy.

"Sasuke?" It was Kakashi. "Are you in there?"

"Yeah, sorry I overslept."

"Well hurry along, we're leaving in a few minutes." A few minutes was more than enough, I was virtually ready to go already. My things were already packed, but only because I hadn't bothered unpacking. All I needed to do was throw on my armor, and then the black robe over it. We would stick out, but no one would pay much mind to us. I doubted that most of them would even notice us. We would be on a dead bolt back into the forest, made all the easier since the hotel was on the outskirts of the town.

Nothing but tracks in the snow left any evidence that we had ever been in the town. We would be at the hideout in a few short hours. At this point we were all on guard. There would most certainly be guards, with sensor types among them.

"Alright, start jamming them Kaede." He motioned to the younger girl, the one who I shared the tent with two nights ago. So she finally had a name, though it was possible that it wasn't her real name. Not that I actually needed to know her real name. Still she was clearly gifted in a few different ways. The ability to jam other sensors was invaluable, and being a sensor type herself only made her more invaluable. It was clear now why she made this team. We would need to element of surprise, if we could do that Kakashi and I, and maybe even the other woman would have plenty of silent killing techniques.

"Yūgao, you're with me, Sasuke, you need to guard Kaede, while she jams their sensors, if they catch on that we're here, join in if you can, but protecting her is your primary mission. As you can imagine she's a rather important asset."

"You got it."

"And Sasuke, you're authorized to protect her by any means."

"Any means" Could be taken in quite a few different ways to most people but I knew what he meant. If I was lucky though, I wouldn't have to give myself away to her. Though I still was struggling to determine why we were hiding the use of my sharingan from her. That was the only piece of the puzzle that wasn't making any sense to me. Things had a way of coming out though.

Within a few minutes we could see the hideout, a few shinobi stood at the entrance. One man sat on the ground holding his head like he had some sort of headache. I presumed that it was Kaedes' doing. A side effect of her jamming perhaps. Another man was attempting to help him. The upside was that we had made it undetected.

Kaede and I stayed put while Yūgao and Kakashi broke off from each other. They would take out the guards first. The enemy had no idea what was about to happen to them and I thirsted to be in the battle.

Authors Notes: Sorry about the delay on this chapter, had my birthday stuff going on and all.