Without further ado, and all that, I'm working on the ending of chapter 98 now, will potentially be done with 99 by this time next week, and working on the final chapter! Well, that's the hope, at least. Once I finish, I'll begin uploading two chapters a week (One on Sunday, one on Wednesday) in order to just have this out!

Chapter 92: The Worst Possible Scenario

Sasuke slammed the doors of the Hokage Building open with his shoulder, taking the flights of stairs that led up to Tsunade's office two at a time. When he got to the top, he knocked very, very briefly before entering, his eyes widening at what he saw.

Tsunade stood at the back of the room, panting as she applied some of her own Healing Jutsu to her left shoulder, which had a massive gash running across it as if it'd been raked by a blade of some kind. Surrounding her, with their ribcages or other sections of their bodies collapsed in around them, were three White Zetsu, very clearly dead.

"You one of them too?" Tsunade asked him, leaning off of the wall and drawing her fist together.

"No, it's me, really!" He held both hands up, trying to calm the evidently rather shellshocked Tsunade down. "I came here to warn you that this very thing might happen!"

Tsunade stared at him for a few moments, before nodding her head, and leaning back against the wall. She continued to heal herself as he stepped forward and inspected the corpses of the Zetsu around them.

"What'd they come in disguised as?" He questioned, looking up at her.

"My personal guard." Tsunade explained, sighing. "All three of them entered at once and were giving a status report when I looked away for a moment, trying to get some work done in the interim. Naturally… they used that opportunity and struck. I was hurt, and badly, but I managed to fight them off even with that wound. Despite their ability to disguise themselves among anyone, they're not exactly the strongest fighters."

He nodded, having already gathered that himself. Especially with the Sharingan active, the Zetsu posed little to no threat to him.

"But there's a problem… not everyone is quite as skilled as you or I; or possesses the ability to heal off their injuries as we do."

He nodded, already gathering what she was saying.

"If they go after anyone else…"

"Then they may have a lot more luck."

He nodded as he stepped away, hanging at the doorway as he turned back around. "I'm going to check on some of the others. Will you be alright here?"

"Sasuke, with all due respect," Tsunade spoke, smirking slightly. "I'm the Hokage for a reason. Go. I'll be fine, no matter how many they send at me."

He took those words to heart, and dashed out of the doorway, and towards his destination.

/-/

Sakura was more than willing to admit that being awoken from her sleep at only eleven straight hours was a bit less than she was initially hoping for.

Sure, they had a battle coming up, so maybe she should be practicing her new Wood Style to try and nail down exactly how she'd done it before, but at the same time, she was also entirely out of chakra, which was one of those things was going to be a problem if she were going into battle.

Luckily, she'd managed to restore a good majority of it. Taking a few emergency supplements Anko had given her the night before for regeneration purposes (and yes, she had been about as suspicious of the pills as she'd ever been, but Anko had assured her that she'd had them rationed out for her specifically) and hitting the sack had gotten her reserves to about… she'd say 60 percent.

A knock on her door in the middle of the morning had her feeling rather curious, and as she heard her mother's voice saying for her to get it (which she couldn't help but feel was unfair, given that one of them was sleeping in because they wanted to, and one of them was sleeping in in order to have the energy to fight a massive battle to defend their home, but whatever) she got up, dressed herself, and headed out of her room.

When she opened her door, she found Anko standing there, smiling in a very odd way at her.

"Oh, hey Anko," She spoke to her master, clearing the way for her to step inside, which she did without saying a word. "Er… what are you doing here? I thought you were in the hospital?"

"I got out early." She explained, "Kabuto was quicker than I'd thought he'd be. Patched me right up in a jiffy."

"Ah, ok." She spoke, closing the door behind her as Anko hovered unnecessarily close to her. "Uhm… Do you want breakfast, or something?"

"No, I'm fine. Thank you."

"Oh… then uh… why are you here exactly?"

"Just to see you, of course."

She couldn't help but feel the tiniest, absent feeling at the back of her mind that said something wasn't quite right about this.

"Oh… is that so, huh?" She asked, leaning against the door. "Well… I suppose that sounds fine."

"Why don't you sit down?" Anko asked in a rather unsettling way, as if she was trying and failing to act like herself. "You must be tired from expending all your chakra."

"Ah, well…" An idea hits her, and she decides to go with it. "Those pills that Kabuto gave me last night certainly helped to put some spring back in my step. They did the same for you, right?"

Anko was still for a moment, before smiling, nodding her head. "Yeah, they were quite effective."

She hummed affirmatively as she took a few steps forward, subtly stretching her body and her muscles in preparation for what she was about to do.

"Ah well, I suppose I can get more sleep later." She spoke as Anko began walking into the kitchen, and she subtly recognized the way they were moving into a more open space. "By the way, though,"

She pushed the kunai in her hands against the small of 'Anko's' back, holding her at knifepoint as she wrapped her left hand around her neck.

"Who are you, exactly?"

'Anko' stiffened. After a second, she let out a guffawing laugh that was entirely unlike her.

Then again, that would be the case, given this certainly wasn't her.

She didn't think she'd have noticed anything was off if not for a rather stupid thing that'd occurred nearly four years ago now. That time Naruto had been kidnapped by other ninja in the Forest of Death, when that one had tried to impersonate him…

That experience… it'd been what her mind had automatically thought back to when she'd spoken to the person before her now.

"Fine, fine." 'Anko' spoke. "We'll go with plan B, then."

The door behind her shot open, and two more figures hovered in the hallway.

"Kill her."

/-/

Kabuto let out a small sigh as, nearly eleven hours into starting work at the hospital, he finally got his first real break. It wasn't a particularly long one, he had half an hour to do whatever he wished before they were back on duty, receiving the injured from the front and getting them back into fighting shape.

It was a particularly thankless job as well, given that there was never really enough time to do anything more than heal and move on to the next patient, and then repeat that for hours and hours on end. No time to allow him to talk with the patients, or to receive thanks (and honestly, even if that were a particularly selfish part of him, he couldn't help still wanting said gratitude for his work).

The only thing he did manage to have time to do was exhaust himself further, forcing him to take his third food pill of the evening, a practice he was fairly sure was rather frowned upon, but one they had very little choice but to partake of.

He'd likely need a visit to the hospital himself after the next few days, but hey, at least he'd make it through.

It was as he was focusing on this and that that the door that opened up to the break room behind him opened, and in stepped…

"Oh, hey, Anko." He spoke, smiling. "How've you been?"

"Eh, y'know, shitty, if I'm being honest." She smirked, sitting beside him, and letting out a horrid groan. "Leg aches like it was just wounded, and I'm expected to march out to the battlefield in like 12 more hours."

"Mm, well… I could give you some of my homebrew painkillers if that'd satisfy you, of course, not as a doctor, but as a friend."

"Is that you instructing me not tell anybody here that you're doing that?"

"It is indeed."

She snorted.

"Got it. And sure, yeah, I'll take some."

"Alright, I'll–"

A sound like a heavy object hitting the floor echoed out from the floor above them. Both he and Anko immediately quieted down as a second did the same. He stood, trying to hear a bit better, but it was Anko, ultimately, who moved first.

She reached over to the wall beside her and bored a small hole in it with a knife. Not a moment later, one of her snakes crawled into the plaster, and disappeared.

As it returned nary a minute later, her eyes widened.

"Two bodies, one floor up in the room directly above us. Both doctors."

His face paled immediately.

"What!?"

"Nothing on any of the lower floors, though, so I'm thinking they're starting top to bottom to avoid any chance of a body being found and alerting the rest of the Village." She spoke as she drew a second kunai into her left hand, and passed it to him, rightfully assuming he had no weapons on his immediate person. "They both had wounds on their backs, and I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't hear any sounds of distress, which means that whoever did this did it silently and stealthily."

He nodded, pushing open the door to the break room and checking the hallway. There were a few patients and doctors roaming the halls, and Kabuto found himself immediately approaching one of the elder doctors and speaking into his ear.

"The hospital has an attacker inside of it. Two people are dead at the very least." He spoke, watching at the older man's previously jolly expression died immediately. "As subtly as you can, get everyone on the lower floors out of here. We think they haven't gone past the top floor. If you can, get a message to the Hokage."

He looked to Kabuto and, without delay, nodded, walking over to one of the gentleman working at the help desk and whispering to him as he turned back to Anko.

They nodded to each other as they took to the stairs.

/-/

"I'm coming, I'm coming…"

The knocking only grew louder as he groaned annoyedly, stepping a bit faster towards the doorway.

"I said I was coming! Jeez!" Naruto shouted, wrenching it open and seeing that it was… "Oh… Tenten?"

"Hey," The girl waved at him, smiling. "Good to see you."

"Uh, yeah, good to see you too."

They stared at one another for a moment.

"May I come in?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, sure."

Tenten stepped into his room, and almost immediately sat down at his table. She waited patiently for him to do the same, and he did so without much complaint, wondering just why this was… well… happening.

"So… what's up?"

"I wanted to see you." Tenten said, a mild blush appearing on her features. "Is that not alright?"

"No, no, that's fine!" He held his hands up, feeling his face grow a bit hot. "Uh… It's good to see you as well."

"Mm… good to hear." Tenten let out in a rather sultry voice that had Naruto's eyebrows slowly migrating higher and higher on his scalp. "I'd been meaning to say this to you for a while now, and knowing what's coming… I just couldn't hold myself back anymore…"

"Uh… what are you–"

Her lips were soft and wet against his own, immediately causing him to let out a horridly loud, aghast noise as he pulled away, panting slightly as he held his hand up to his mouth, very confused.

"I can't hold in my love for you anymore, Naruto," Tenten spoke, stepping out of her chair and unbuttoning the first few pieces of her top. "I just want to… be with you."

Naruto's brain felt that it was entirely fair that it had completely given up trying to make sense of this. After a moment, Tenten pushed him down, and he fell backwards, hitting his head rather harshly on the wooden floor beneath him as the girl straddled his body.

She pressed her lips to his again, and he found his body wasn't responding to his commands, which must've just been his nerves acting up, because holy shit, was this actually happening!?

It was as he was basking in the revelry of that moment that a voice cleared itself from within Naruto's head, and he recognized the gravelly, low voice of his resident Tailed-Beast speaking to him.

"Y'know, normally, I think I'd just watch this happen and laugh at the consequences, but I feel like I should let you know that that's not Tenten."

His eyes bugged out as he focused into his mindscape, turning to look at the massive beast curled in its cage.

"What!?"

"Yeah, her chakra is the same, but her intent…" The Nine-tails hummed, thinking on it. "I can read it, and I think she, or, well, whoever this actually is, is going to try and kill you in a second."

He'd been awake for maybe ten minutes, and this day was already going down on the list of weirdest one's he'd ever lived through.

"Uh… so…" He wasn't about to admit that the reason he didn't want to believe that was because he was really enjoying current happenings… but that was definitely what it was. "How sure are you on that!?"

"Pretty sure. Seeing as how her lips were laced with a fast-acting paralyzing agent."

"Oh… that's why I can't move." He'd thought he was just really surprised. "Shit…"

"Luckily, in your state of stillness, you can charge Indigo Sage Mode. You should probably hurry on that, though, I don't think our assailant here is going to think they need all that much more poison before they can carve you up unimpeded. I'll expunge the poison from your body all at once to give you a moment to act. Be ready to move in fifteen seconds or less, otherwise you're probably dead."

"No pressure or anything." He almost scoffed. "Damnit… I was totally fooled. I actually thought this was really how Tenten felt about me."

"Wait, what do you mean?"

The way the Nine-Tails said that indicated he hadn't understood what Naruto meant, so he explained it to the fox.

"Well of course she doesn't, I was just being silly thinking she might. Obviously, this is an imposter, since the real Tenten doesn't think of me that way."

The Nine-Tails went silent for an awfully long time.

"By the gods you're dull."

"O-Oi!" His already blazing cheeks lit up further. "What's that supposed to mean!?"

"Figure it out." The Nine-Tails crossed its arms over its chest as it turned away from him, rolling its monstrous eyes. "If I could, and I'm a giant fox made of chakra, then you can, no matter how stupid you may be! Now, ready?

He pouted slightly as he finished gathering chakra.

"As I'll ever be, I guess."

"Three… two…"

He felt his muscles clear up, watched as Tenten's eyes went wide, and moved. Perhaps he was being soft, but just in case the Nine-tails was messing with him, he went easy on his strike. It would hurt, probably knock the recipient unconscious, but it shouldn't kill them.

Luckily, as Tenten slid down the wall opposite him, and Naruto pulled himself to his feet, it seemed like that wouldn't be a problem.

"Ksh…" The White Zetsu spoke as its form gradually changed. "How the hell did you–"

Before it could say another word, a Rasengan had been shoved down its gullet. Whatever was left of the white, fleshy glob that remained fell to the floor, entirely unmoving.

And only then did he allow himself to contemplate the horror of the situation he'd just gone through.

"Oh my god!" He grabbed his face, touched his right hand to his lips, and shivered uncomfortably. "A Zetsu just made out with me for a minute and a half."

"Ouch. Probably not the thing to say."

He was confused, even past the dread he was still going through.

"What do you–"

"Uhm… what did you just say, Naruto?"

In that moment, stuck in the middle of his apartment, having uttered the words of his own damnation, and turning towards the sight of his best friend, Sasuke, who was looking at him a bit concernedly, Naruto couldn't help feeling like he would've rather the world have simply ended in that moment, if only to spare him having to put himself out of his misery.

"Sasuke…" He laughed uncomfortably. Terribly uncomfortably. "W-What are you doing here…?"

"Well… to inform you that there were Zetsu in the Village who could be disguising themselves as our friends to attack us… but… uh…" He looked down at the pile of white pulp on the floor, his face red hot with embarrassment. "Seems you figured that out already."

"Yo, Nine-Tails, you can have my body. Do it quick."

"No-can-do, this is the most fun I've had in years."

Naruto's right eye twitched as he stared right at his best friends, looking him in the eye, and watched as the man regarded him as if he were a man dying on the side of the road, who he could do nothing to save. An object of immense pity, with a sympathy he wanted nothing to do with.

"Sasuke, I need you to understand that even as good of friends as we are," He spoke, entirely serious. "If you tell anyone…"

"No, I think…" Sasuke shook his head. "This… It's truly too horrible for me to make fun of you for. I mean it when I say you have my condolences."

He walked over to the sink at the back of his kitchen and began rinsing his mouth out as Sasuke began speaking once again.

"Ahem… so uh… How did you realize the Zetsu was a… well… a Zetsu, and not uh… I presume Tenten?"

He turned the sink back off and shot Sasuke an odd look.

"You presume Tenten?"

"Was I wrong?" The man looked genuinely concerned. "Because if I was wrong, then–"

"No, you were right, but how'd you know that?"

"Well, I just… you two are kind of…"

"Kind of what?"

"N-Never mind."

Well, that was suspicious.

"Anyways, I figured it out thanks to the Nine-Tails' ability." He explained, sitting down at his table. Sasuke took the opposite seat. "He can read the emotions of people, and he sensed extremely hostile intent from Te– from that Zetsu."

Sasuke shot out of his chair, slamming his hands on the table, evidently excited or something.

"Can you ask the Nine-Tails how large of a range that ability has?"

He shrugged, before popping into his mindscape for a moment. "Did you hear him, or should I–"

"I heard him; I'm just trying to decide if I feel like answering. Sounds like an awful lot of work for me for not a lot of upside in the future."

"Well, I mean if you could, it'd be pretty helpful. Whatever the situation, it seems like these Zetsu are pretty widespread, and if they manage to get the Leaf Village under their control, and subsequently me…"

"'Then I go too' is what you're saying?"

"In a manner of speaking." He admitted. "By the way, how're you feeling? Aren't you missing a sizable chunk of your chakra now cause of what Black Zetsu did?"

"Hah, kid, I've been missing more than a sizable chunk of my chakra for quite a while, believe me, a bit more won't be the death of me." The Nine-Tails answered him, and Naruto tilted his head in confusion as the great beast laid down in his cage. "And, if you must know, my ability has a range of about a hundred meters."

His eyes widened. "That's… not quite as small as I was expecting."

"Did you forget I'm the most powerful being in the entire world?"

He'd sort of been underestimating the Nine-Tails recently if he were being honest. He'd basically been treating him like a roommate that he mostly got along with these days, and less of a demon fox tied to his soul.

"No, definitely not." He answered instead.

"Ugh… you're ridiculous." The Nine-Tails groaned horrendously, but eventually acquiesced. "Right, fine, I'll offer assistance."

"Appreciated." He shifted back to the real world. "Says it's about 100 meters in all directions, and that yeah, he'll offer help."

Sasuke let out a loud sigh as he seemingly found an answer to a problem he'd been having.

"That's fantastic. In that case, we need you in quite a few places. Is the Nine-Tails' consciousness also copied when you create a shadow clone?"

He had no idea quite frankly, but Kyuubi answered his question before he could even propose it to him. "It is."

"It is, apparently."

"In that case, take this as an official mission from the Hokage herself."

He nodded, realizing that he'd be going out at about 40 percent power as things stood, having not had much time to replenish his strength, but having the Nine-Tails to help.

"First, we need you to head to the Leaf Hospital. Someone there killed two doctors, and critically injured several others that Kabuto and Anko were barely fast enough to rescue. Obviously, with the situation as it is, we suspect a White Zetsu is behind the attack. Unfortunately, we lack any way of differentiating between our suspects, given that all three are disguised as the same man. One is obviously an actual person, though the other two were Zetsu going about the floor, killing."

He nodded, understanding that mission easily enough.

"The second is that we need a few clones combing the general city vicinity, searching for Zetsu hiding within the general public and cutting them down. If you can, try to do it outside of the range of where civilians can see, but obviously, prioritize their lives over their mental health."

He nodded once more.

"Finally, we need your real body to head to the front. I have a bad feeling that Zetsu are disguising themselves as soldiers there, and, when the Zetsu attack, are cutting down their fellow soldiers during the chaos. You need to be able to eliminate every fake before they can cause any more damage."

He sighed mightily. "Sheesh, quite the job you've laid out for me here. I thought we were supposed to chat, too, but seems that's been put off once more."

"My apologies on that front, things just keep coming up." Sasuke admitted, scratching the back of his neck. "We'll have to chat once we've put these bastards down. Still… Can you not do it?" Sasuke asked, sounding genuinely worried. "Because if you can't, then I–"

"Hah, just who do you think you're asking?" He said, walking over to his bedroom, and pulling from out of his closet both his Chuunin Vest, and his Sage Cloak.

"I'm going to be the Hokage of the Hidden Leaf one day…" He spoke as he donned both articles and smirked at his best friend.

"You bet I can handle something as small as this!"

/-/

Sakura sighed wearily as she finished strangulating the final Zetsu, who fell to the floor of her parents home, its throat collapsed, a second after she released it with her vines.

Well, credit where credit was due, the Zetsu had certainly helped her to bring out that ability again. Surely, she'd also had to utterly wreck the floor of her parents house, but she hoped they'd find it in themselves to forgive her for that, seeing as how it had been for her to survive their assault.

She recalled the tendrils, and, upon taking the Three Zetsu and shoving them into the dirt path just outside of her home (and by into, she meant into, as in burying them in it), she took a look at the house she'd just emerged from.

She thought for a moment…

And decided that yeah, she'd get a few more hours of sleep.

She was tired.

The war could wait…

Probably.

End Chapter 92

The title "The Worst Possible Scenario" does indeed refer to Naruto smooching a Zetsu by the way. I thought it was funny.

Anyways, next week and all that.