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Chapter 36: Run!

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A/N: Whoops! Forgot my computer when I left to go to the family's house for Christmas. Hope everyone had a happy Chistmas/Channukah/Solstice/New Year/Winter Holiday! I certainly did. Blizzard cum power outage non-withstanding.

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The black fox ran for his life. He wasn't sure what exactly had happened, one second he was sleeping, the next he was being hurled though the air. 'Go toward the pull.' The voice was in his head and he was confused. But he had no better option- the world was a colorless blur. The pull he felt was the only thing that seemed to make any sense at all. It was warm and comforting.

He raced as fast as he could with his new four-legged status. Mostly it was instinctual, but sometimes he would think about it too much and he would trip fuzzy ass over teakettle.

"This... sucks." His voice came out in a sad series of yips, startling him and making him run all the faster. "Brother- where are you?"

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Deidara's ant crawled down the sleeping, battered form of Sasuke,and into his throat, causing him to sit up, choking and clawing at his throat before his entire head exploded into a shower of blood.

"Hah! That's art, yeah!" Deidara cackled.

"Creative." Sasuke said from behind the clay-nin.

"What the?" Deidara whipped around, his hand out with a mouth open in it, chewing furiously.

"What? Did I embarrass you too much yesterday? You should see what my mother can do. I don't make people hallucinate, only collapse." Sasuke smirked, his eyes pure red, pupils wide in excitement.

"What the fuck are you talking about kid?"

"Oh, right!" The henge fell away and Tobi scratched his head sheepishly. "I did help that brat escape last night. You thought that I was him! Hahah!"

"You what?"

"I'm kidding, of course." Tobi laughed. "But he did escape." His face turned abruptly serious.

"What!"

"Are you having a speech impediment? I mean, more than usual? I think you should stick with the 'yeah' thing."

"You..." Deidara snarled, leaping towards Tobi. He didn't make it more than half a step before he collapsed again.

"What do you think you are doing? I said the red eyes were the Mangekyo. Idiot." Tobi snorted. "Though not believing me is probably wise, in this case it seems to me you have some form of proof." He knelt down and poked his finger in one of Deidara's hand-mouths. The tongue twitched under his touch, making a shudder run up Tobi's back. "How revolting." He commented, before slinging Deidara over his shoulder and walking out the door. "Does have some potential..." He added musingly. "Kinky."

"Tobi." The Leader snapped shortly at the Uchiha.

"Yes?" Tobi bounced forward on his toes, ready to dodge Pein's push/pull technique while keeping an eye out for any of the other bodies. "I'm all packed and ready- my toy is turned off for travel purposes." He grinned and shook Deidara's limp form. "Let's mosey."

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"I'm getting a signal." Itachi said excitedly. "It's getting stronger!" The team fanned out, sweeping the forest in front of them. They were in a bit of a clearing and the trees were turning into scrub. The plants were old and dried and rattled if they brushed by it.

"Quiet." Shisui hissed.

"We aren't making the noise." Anko replied shortly. "Something is out there."

The team froze and peered into the night, both Uchiha with Sharingan blazing into the night.

A small fox burst through the trees and skidded to a halt in front of Itachi. Its ears were swiveling wildly, nose twitching and whiskers spread, eyes wide with fear.

"What the?" Itachi said in disappointment. "Shoo!"

The fox whimpered.

Itachi squinted his eye in confusion. "It says that he is right here."

The fox jumped up on Itachi, causing him to lose his precarious balance as the slight but significant weight settled onto his chest. "Get off of me, you mangy mutt!" Itachi cursed, frustrated. He glared up at the fox's... red... sharingan... eyes?

"Itachi!" Shisui pulled the fox off of Itachi and held a kunai to its throat. "We should take the head back for testing. Did it bite you?"

"No!" Itachi yelled, scrambling to his feet. "Don't hurt him!"

"Eh?" Shisui asked in confusion.

"Sasuke?" Itachi breathed, nearly fainting when the fox solemnly nodded his head. He snatched the fox from Shisui and crushed it to his chest in a hug. He wanted to yell in happiness, but his body locked into stillness instinctively. Itachi felt a prickle in the corner of his ruined eye and his other one was watering slightly. The fear and tension that had taken up residence in his heart loosened and he did not know what to do with the flood of emotions that came in its wake.

"Itachi..." Anko said uncertainly. "That's a fox."

Itachi turned the fox's head around so that Anko and Shisui could see the Sharingan eyes. Both of his teammates automatically shouted 'kai!' which did nothing to dispel the illusion. Shisui made sure he was facing away from Anko and flashed the Mangekyo sharingan. Nothing revealed the fox to be anything other than a fox with a hereditary eye technique.

Shisui took the paper from the ground where Itachi had dropped it. His blood sang with the presence of Itachi, whom he had gotten very used to sensing, and another. "Huh."

"Sasuke?" Anko asked.

The fox nodded vigorously, then tucked his nose under his big brother's chin as his whole body shook.

"How in the world did you manage to get yourself turned into a fox?" The special jounin asked, tilting her head to the side with a frown.

Sasuke's dejected ear droop did not reveal any secrets.

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"Heya Chi-chan." Musume bounced over to where the sannin was walking slowly down the hospital hallway.

"Sue-chan." Orochimaru replied evenly.

"Don't call me that!" Musume snapped without much vehemence.

"I don't see why I have to be the only one with a short name." The sannin looked up at her with his golden eyes, then looked back quickly at the railing he was holding onto.

"It's because yours has so many syllables. O-ro-chi-ma-ru. That's five! Most people's are three." Musume stated seriously.

"I'm sorry to so inconvenience you." Orochimaru replied without inflection, his voice hissing a bit on the 'ss' noises in 'inconvenience'.

Musume looked at him with a quirked eyebrow, wondering if the sibilance was due to illness, humor, or simply normal.

"You can't bring that in here!"

Both the sannin and the kitsune leaned out the doorway, looking at the group running past into the emergency room, bearing a squirming black something.

"Like hell we can't!" Snapped Inuzuka Tsume. The bag that she was toting over her shoulder looked something like a oversized blackberry.

The nurse who had made the initial protest ran after the scowling woman and her dog, as well as the strange procession. The action earned a lot of respect from Musume. The dogs could be almost as intimidating as a fox when they wanted to.

"Take that animal back to your facilities! You can't bring things like that in here. It will spread disease! If Tsunade was here..."

"Yeah, well, she's not." Tsume snapped, shutting the door on the nurse's spluttering face.

"She's not?" Musume asked.

Orochimaru gave her an incredibly quick speaking glance that clearly said 'where have you been' before his gaze snapped back to the door.

"Hey, Chi-chan, what's so interesting?" Musume asked. "Chi-chan?"

The sannin's eyes seemed to almost glow with the intensity of his look. He rushed forward once the nurse had turned her back and whipped through the door. Musume followed him, intrigued. She didn't quite manage to squeak through the door before it was shut again so she flashed through the solidity of it and partly through Orochimaru before settling to the side of him.

"Tobi..." Orochimaru breathed, looking down at the squirming form in the center of all the fuss.

Musume's attention snapped then to the black bundle- a fox, she could now see, a fox with red eyes. She sucked in a breath so sharply she coughed and then started to sneeze.

"I don't know how it happened, but we know what we saw!" Shisui was shouting at Tsume. "Itachi is not crazy!"

"I believe you that this is not a normal fox, Itachi." The canine lover was surprisingly not raising to the bait of the volatile Uchiha. It seemed that injured dogs (or foxes, in this case) took precedence to a good rumble. "But it seems more like a summons than a human. And besides, no one can actually turn into an animal. There are only clone-type techniques that make it seem that way." Tsume argued back.

Musume angrily forced her airways to heal as she pushed past the humans surrounding her kit. Orochimaru looked at her warily, though the others didn't seem to think much of her suddenly appearing.

"Where have you been?" She hissed, almost too low to hear even by the fox into whose ear she spoke. "I have been looking for you everywhere."

The fox's ears quivered with hope, lifting slightly, even as they swept back in fear and apprehension. The eyes would flit to hers and then away.

"No excuses!" Musume snapped. Though at the submissive response she shifted uneasily. This did not seem to be the words... or rather, body language, of her son as she had met him last. And the eyes didn't seem quite right, either.

"Stop yelling at him. He can't help it." Itachi all but growled, trying to shove Musume from beside the fox. It did not accomplish much beyond the two of them leaning heavily against one another in a battle of wills. One which Musume could easily win, of course, even without her demonic strength. Itachi still needed to fight every moment for the balance to remain upright.

Musume ignored the other Uchiha and glared down at the source of her confusion. It was definitely the pelt of her son, but something was not right.

"This is not Tobi." Orochimaru stated.

"What? Who's Tobi." Shisui asked.

"It's a fox." Tsume sighed. "A starved, dehydrated, battered young fox."

"It's Sasuke." Itachi corrected chilly.

"Sasuke?" Musume blinked. That did sort of explain it. Maybe. The pit of her stomach felt hollow. Of course her kit would not come back to her. She grabbed the scuff of fur at the back of his neck, ignoring the protests of everyone in the room, and yanked the pelt off angrily. "Hn." She grunted, the hollow feeling flaring into a discomfort that had her feet angrily striding from the room before she even knew what she was doing. Once she realized, however, she did not stop.

Back in the room, only Orochimaru watched Musume go, his golden eyes hard and metallic as he tracked her. No one else seemed to care in the face of the fox instantly changing into Sasuke, but the sannin knew the significance of that pelt. He just wasn't entirely certain what the significance of Musume's easy familiarity with it. He followed her out of the room, but no one noted his leaving.

"Sasuke." Itachi said flatly, his face completely still.

"Big brother." Sasuke said faintly. Before he completely passed out.

Itachi was able to somewhat slow his younger brother's fall but stumbled slightly into the huge grey dog behind him. The elder lowered the emaciated form of his brother to the table, his face frozen completely into marble.

"It will be alright now, Itachi." Shisui soothed. He knew that the colder Itachi looked, the closer he was to shattering.

"Hn." Came the strangled grunt in reply.

"Fang of my father!" Tsume barked. "It is Sasuke. How did he do that?"

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Orochimaru followed Musume to the wall but did not approach her when she finally stopped and perched, staring off into the forest. The Uchiha was stroking the soft fur absently, her face twisted into a frown.

Finally the sannin couldn't take the silence anymore. His naturally inquisitive nature forced him to ask the question. "How do you know what that is?"

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. "This is my son's coat." The said, pulling it toward her but then almost setting it down. She looked sad and lost.

Almost so caught up in misery that she missed the look of shock on Orochimaru's face. A look that was quickly followed by a wide-eyed look of realization and then an open-mouthed one of horror.

Red eyes snapped to Orochimaru's face. But they were not the sharingan eyes of the Uchiha clan. "What did he tell you?" The eyes narrowed.

The sannin almost took an involuntary step back. If he were right... "He told me many things."

The red eyes narrowed further. Faster than he could follow, the pelt was secured around Orochimaru's form, leaving a yellow-eyed fox in its place. Scales started to flake the fur off of the areas around his eyes.

"Now, now, Mother. No need to be jealous." Came a chiding voice. Both snake-in-fox and fox-in-human looked over the wall just in time to see Tobi leap past their faces. He was grinning madly and toting a willowy blond over one shoulder.

Orochimaru squirmed within the skin while the two Uchiha stared at each other. He was able to get his left foot out with little difficulty, but then got stuck on the tail.

"Jealous?" Musume snapped, her eyes flashing in annoyance and confusion. Her nose twitched with the first stirrings of relief and hope.

"Absolutely! I confess to someone and you get all antsy that I don't trust you more."

"That... is a unique way of looking at it." Musume said finally.

"Unique, or only?" Tobi's eyebrow twitched up.

"Unique." She replied flatly. "And what are you doing with Deidara?"

"Oh? Him? I made him pass out, but we have an invasion to do today. Or tomorrow. Or something like that. But that means that I couldn't just leave him in the base, you know? It would have been cruel to make him miss the fun." Tobi bounced onto the balls of his feet. His smile seemed rather forced to Orochimaru as the sannin stopped his struggles to stare at the younger Uchiha in disbelief.

"You are invading Konoha?" Musume's voice rose as she continued the sentence. "You?"

"Well, not just me." Tobi allowed.

"Even with the entire Akatsuki, there is no way. What are you thinking?" Musume said in a daze.

Tobi dropped Deidara, whose head hit the top of the concrete with a dull thunk. "I was thinking that prodigal sons need to get revenge. Since Sasuke decided not to take me up on my offer, that leaves me and Nagato. And maybe Danzo. But who knows what he's doing at any point in time, really?"

Orochimaru felt a shiver of fear running from the tip of his tail to the top of his head. Which seemed to dislodge the back half of the fur, but that was not his main concern. He was much too distracted by the horrific idea of Konoha's enemies coming together and attacking the village.

"Why are you doing this?" Musume sounded like she was trying very hard not to wail in despair.

"I'm trying to distract you. Is it working?" Tobi asked cheekily.

"Distract me from-" An explosion flung debris and rocked the section of wall that they were standing on. It blew the pelt right off Orochimaru's back and he slid sideways on all fours. Deidara was sent over the edge from the force. Neither Uchiha seemed much effected beyond their hair whipping wildly on the wind.

A yellow flash followed quickly after the explosion. Minato stood on the other side of the massive hole in the wall, looking around wildly.

"Minato!" Musume called, her body swaying towards her mate.

"Ah, ah, Mother. It is time for some mother-son bonding, don't you think? Let's catch up." Tobi said with a wild grin. He dashed forward and snatched his pelt, flung it neatly about his waist before spinning on a heel and kicking at his mother's head.

Musume ducked and backed away, shaking her head.

"Let's play, Mother! Time for a bit of a battle!"

"Please, don't do this." Musume begged, backing up until she was walking along the back of the wall, bent at almost a sitting posture in order to still look at her son. "Destruction and chaos are admirable traits, but..."

"But?" Tobi asked, as he lashed out again and his mother dodged.

"But... you are associating with child-betraying, underling-betraying, insane human... assholes!" Musume yowled, bouncing off the ground and running from her son.

"Well." Diadara said from behind the sannin, making Orochimaru start at the sudden revival. "I guess that means that he will be able to keep his word, yeah?" The blond slid a sly look at Orochimaru. "You are looking considerably more healthy than the last time I saw you. Did you dye your hair?" He smirked.

"What?" The sannin asked, his mind not totally on the conversation as he tried to see if he had enough chakra to do anything of use. He rather doubted that he could summon much more than a grass snake at this point.

"Your hair- it's rather black, isn't it? Especially your roots. You should dye the whole strand, yeah? Otherwise it looks stupid."

The sannin shifted into a more ready stance. He felt a tapping and barely managed to get the small spider off of his shoulder before it exploded. He used the force to leap to a building inside the village itself, closely followed by the demented blond.

"I almost missed the opening stanza! I would have been really been irritated with him if he had made me sleep through the explosion." Deidara cried as he lept after Orochimaru. "Pretending to be asleep was a drag, yeah!"

Orochimaru scurried away, feeling rather useless but unable to do more than escape with his low levels of chakra.

"Don't bother with something as pathetic and useless as this pervert."

Orochimaru felt hope bloom in his chest. He turned to the blond visage of his former teammate with relief.

"I'll take care of him." Tsunade said with a smirk. An army of yellow eyed children and their grey haired keeper streamed through the streets behind her, purposeful and intent as they set things on the buildings and killed any villager who happened to be in the way.

"Tsunade?" Orochimaru would have been ashamed with the squeak in his voice if he hadn't been so thoroughly shocked by the horror and realization.

"It's cursed." Tsunade said matter-of-factly. "It's all cursed."

"It's something alright." Orochimaru muttered warily, getting the oddest sensation of being the only sane person in sight. What the hell kind of reverse reality had he landed himself in? The children looked at him. "Tsunade... what have you done?" He asked in horror. A sea of slit pupiled yellow eyes stared at him like looking in a mirror.

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A/N 2: Tobi takes a phrase from me reading too many Final Fantasy VII fanfics lately- if you can get from whom he quotes, good for you. :D

Hopefully this thing will be wrapped up in two more chapters. And/or an epilogue.