Naruto watches the backs of his arms with interest as the bold rune-lined ink painted across his skin sinks away, invisible now that he's no longer actively channeling chakra into the seal space. Kurama claims that rest alone should be enough for him to regenerate the remainder of his chakra now that he's out of the danger zone, so Naruto leaves him to it. He has a bit of a puzzle to sort out anyway.

"What the heck am I supposed to do with all this?" He asks, running his eyes over the stacks of books and shelves of strange artifacts looping around the room. A fresh little wave of relief washes through him when he gets an immediate answer, Kurama's voice and presence slotting back into his consciousness like a missing puzzle piece.

~You said you activated a blood seal to get in here, right?~

"Mhm."

~That seal was likely the only thing protecting this place from raiders. Now that you've opened the box, so to speak, it's likely that protection is gone for good.~

Naruto looks around at the plethora of treasures and knowledge strewn about in this section of the repository alone. The thought of any of it being torn apart or carted off by bandits is physically painful.

"What do I take?"

~This is your legacy kit. Uzushio let you in here for a reason. Best not leave anything behind.~

"How the hell am I supposed to get all this back to Konoha?"

~You puzzled your way around an elite level seal in little more than a day. I'm sure you'll figure it out.~

He ducks out into the main portion of the chamber again and repeats his circuit of the room, scanning the clan names and digging for some kind of internal clue, something that will lead him in the right direction.

He's not disappointed. His eyes catch on a clan symbol on the opposite side of the room from clan Sumiran, a partially unfurled scroll with three spirals tucked together on its surface. The longer Naruto looks at the spirals the more they appear to be moving, curling deeper and deeper into stone in some kind of hypnotic optical illusion. Clan Kikan.

Inside he finds a few shelves of books on several different kinds of theory, most having something to do with dimensional spaces or the dynamics of barrier jutsu, but almost the entire space is dominated by dozens of enormous scrolls, some that come clear up to his shoulders, much like the Kinjutsu scroll Naruto had found Kurama's seal in. The similarities, however, end there.

These scrolls are ornate things, rolls of dark steel grey and shimmering silver and burnished gold. They're organized by their size and their colours differ depending on how large they are. The smallest scrolls are a dark earthen brown like tanned hide and about as long as his forearm, the size up from that is steely grey and the length of his whole arm from wrist to shoulder, the second largest of them are bright silver trimmed in blue and come up past his hip, and the largest are brilliant darkened gold like a low hanging sun, trimmed in inky black along the edges, and are tall enough that the ends tap his collarbones standing up. There are exactly thirteen of these huge golden scrolls, and Naruto doubts that's a coincidence.

~Clever.~ Kurama rumbles. ~That's a contingency plan if I've ever seen one. Must have taken decades to draw up cargo scrolls that strong.~

Naruto picks up one of the smallest scrolls and rolls open the canvas-thick length of paper, eyes tracing the twisting lines of seal script inside.

"Whoa." He murmurs aloud. The seal lines are so precise and intricate it makes his head spin– he can't imagine how many hours it must have taken just to ink in the structures, let alone channel the needed lattices of chakra at the same time. Naruto doesn't have the patience, much less the chakra control, to pull off even a portion of it.

"These look like they were made to seal specific stuff." Naruto judges, based on the lock and key mechanisms he can see woven into the design. "Paper?"

~Books and non-chakric scrolls, I would guess.~ Kurama remarks.

Now that Naruto thinks of it the leathery scroll does look a bit like it was hewn from the bindings of books, like a hundred tome covers stripped off and stitched end to end.

"So like some kind of library scroll?"

~That's certainly one way to put It.~

He places the scroll back on a stack of its fellows and reaches for one of the dark grey variety, longer and thinner than its smaller cousins. He unrolls the layered vellum and scans the contents.

The library scroll's storage seals had been elaborately linked and tiny. These are larger with sharper lines and deeper curves, and the structures vary in clusters, separated by blank space. One of these clusters brings the distinct image of a sword to mind, while another reminds him faintly of shuriken.

"Weapons?"

~Likely. Arranged by type. If the pattern continues, the big silver ones will be for artifacts.~

Naruto refurls the grey scroll and reaches for one of the metallic silver ones lined in cobalt, rolling it out on the floor in front of him. This one flexes like a thin sheet of metal and the seals within are carved instead of inked, the lines filled with some kind of black lacquer. Kurama is right it seems; the seals inside are large, singular and intricate, cordoned off from one another by dividing wards meant to keep any chakra in the seals from mingling together.

He rolls the silver scroll back up and looks over at the large gilded ones.

If the little ones are for books, and the grey ones for equipment, and the silver for clan artifacts, then what…

He doesn't finish the thought. He strides towards where the golden scrolls are leaning against the far wall on delicately carved wooden stands, glinting in the firelight. For the first time he notices the clan signs painted on the end of each one, and the fact that some of the golden scrolls are thicker than others– the one with the Kikan clan symbol is only about as wide as his spread hand, while the one bearing the Sumiran symbol is nearly twice as thick.

~What did you tell your sensei when you left?~ Kurama asks as he rolls out the golden Kikan scroll and starts going through the tomes nearby for instructions on how to work them. Naruto freezes, guilty.

"I uh… didn't."

~What?~

"I left him a note! What was I supposed to say? 'Hey Iruka-sensei, I won't see you for a while, I'm going to whirlpool country to alter my jinchuuriki seal.' He would never have let me go!"

~I wouldn't have blamed him, kid. It was reckless.~

"I don't care." Naruto insists stubbornly, a book on dimensional stacking theory open in his lap.

~I know, kit. All the more proud of you for it, really.~

Naruto ignores the surprised flush that warms his cheeks and tries to focus on the words and diagrams on the pages that detail mass capacities and chakra nets.

~So what did the note say?~

"I said I was going to be gone a week for training. I've done it before, so Iruka-sensei shouldn't find it too strange. And he's the only one that bothers checking up on me."

~We don't have much time left then. You figured it out yet?~

Naruto nods. "I think so. The library and equipment scrolls just have a weight limit, and the artifacts scrolls are keyed into specific objects so I just have to match them up. Also…" Naruto scans the scrolls, counting as he goes. "I'm pretty sure there's exactly enough scrolls to fit everything, if I load it all right."

~Best get to work then, brat. We need to get back before you're missed.~

Thirteen golden scrolls, thirteen repositories. He starts with the Uzumaki, the largest and thus the most difficult. It's like the world's most annoying puzzle game; the gold scrolls have specific storage seals for a set number of brown, grey, and silver scrolls, and Naruto has to figure out what fits where and with what and how much and it sucks. Naruto isn't the most organized of people on a good day, and after all the time he's spent sitting still his hyperactive energy is coming back in full force to the worst effect.

He finds out about halfway through sorting stacks of books to go into the leather scrolls for a third time because they fit in the first two but not in the freaking third, that his attention span obviously will not cooperate if there's not some kind of crisis.

So hell, he invents some. He starts giving himself imaginary time limits for certain sections, which mostly works because he does need to hurry. It helps, a lot, and instead of it taking a whole day to do one repository, like he thought, it only takes him a couple hours.

~You function best under pressure, kit.~ Kurama comments offhand. He's been sleeping on and off the whole time, really only surfacing from slumber to quip at Naruto as he darts back and forth around the room with stacks of books that go past his head and armfuls of weapon packs topped with rolls of strange serrated ninja wire. ~Not all that surprised.~

He does the Kikan clan next because it's the easiest and he needs a break, before moving on to reassess the Sumiran clan's section. By now he's got it down to an art; he drags all the containers of powdered ink together and sets the catalysts down in neat rows beside them, occasionally checking back on the golden and silver scrolls for a reminder of what goes where. According to the seal sections on the golden scroll he can tell he needs six library scrolls, one equipment scroll and two artifact scrolls, all of which he unfurls close to the entrance to the room so he won't trip over them until he needs them.

He's so tempted at times to sit down and flip through some of the descriptions of the ink ingredients or the elemental effects of mixing in catalysts, but he doesn't have the time– he has maybe a day and a half before Iruka-sensei starts to get worried, if he hasn't already, and if Jiji discovers he's been gone at all he's in for a whole lot of trouble.

As he begins to clear the room, filling seal after seal with inkstones and jarred liquids and powders, he notices a strange chest in the back of the room. It's relatively unassuming at first glance, a dusty black lacquer box that comes up to his knee. He kneels in front of it, giving the lid and experimental tug. It doesn't budge. He smears a hand through the grey coating of dust in the top and starts when the entire box vibrates under his hand.

Gilded seals twist in clockwork patterns across the surface of the chest like the mechanism of some enormous two-dimensional lock. They spiral and rotate until one by one they click into place with audible snaps and the lid jerks upwards.

Wary now, Naruto lifts the lid slowly, crinkling his nose against the strong smell of pinewood and musty leather.

The entire inside of the box screams Kinjutsu.

Containment seals are carved on every flat space available, wards against whatever rests wrapped in leather at the bottom. Never one to be cowed, even when he probably should be, Naruto reaches inside to pull the bundle from its resting place. The leather is warm and supple, odd considering how old it must be, and lighter than he expected. He sets it atop the closed chest and slowly unravels the length of hide. The wrapping itself is also sealed, chakra containment wards of some kind painted on the inside.

Within is a macabre array of wickedly sharp needles, far too long and thick to be senbon. There are five sets in varying sizes, each one carved with odd seals Naruto doesn't recognize and each set hewn from a different substance. One set seems to be made of bamboo, another looks like it was carved from bone or ivory, and another looks to be made entirely from volcanic glass.

"Hey, Kurama."

~Hmm?~ Kurama mumbles sleepily, not opening his eyes.

"What are these supposed to be?"

Kurama does crack an eyelid at that, and Naruto can feel him peering at the world from behind his retina. ~Well what do we have here?~ he drawls softly, and Naruto ducks his head back a little so that Kurama can see the whole of the array through his eyes. ~If I'm not mistaken, those are tattoo needles.~

"Tattoos? For what?"

~For placing permanent seals on living skin. Seals that could not be undone through the work of chakra alone. Dangerous work, that.~

"So it is Kinjutsu."

~Yes. Powerful stuff. Best keep it locked up until we know more, okay kit?~

Naruto nods and folds the needles carefully back into the leather before tucking the bundle into the chest and closing the lid. As soon as the lid shuts the gear-like seals lock the lid to the body of the chest with another cacophony of clicks and snaps. Naruto hauls it up and sets it down beside an artifact seal, only to find that there's no more space in the scroll, and even if there was, none of the seals seemed to be keyed to this particular box. He checks the other silver scroll, just to be sure, and is starting to contemplate checking the equipment scroll as well when an image flashes to mind, another piece of Uzushio's memory.

It's a pair of scrolls, smaller than even the library scrolls. They're jet black and metallic and strapped shut with sealed leather and metal clasps, one trimmed in silver, the other in gold.

Instinct guides him back into the Kikan clan repository, now bare of its treasures, where he pulls the carved wooden stand that had held the golden scrolls back from the wall. Naruto feels along the wall with both hands, searching for the warm pulse of chakra that would give away the cloaking seal…

He finds it at the base of the wall near the floor; a small compartment that becomes visible as he breaks the subtle cloaking seal with a sharp burst of chakra. A little too much chakra apparently, if the way the wall heats up and cracks is any indication. He pries the compartment open, hissing when it burns a little at his fingers, and pulls the two scrolls from their clever hiding place.

They're extremely heavy for their size. Like lead ingots. He flicks open the clasps on the one lined with gold, unfurling it slowly. Like the golden and artifact scrolls, the substance that makes up this one is less like paper and more like sheet metal, the seals within carved across the surface and then filled in with gilded lacquer. This one in particular contains thirteen seals crafted with broad, powerful strokes, keyed into each of the thirteen golden scrolls.

I was wondering how the hell I was going to drag those things out of here. He muses, re-rolling the scroll and clasping it shut again. The seals within the platinum lined scroll are the complete opposite of the broad lines in its gilded twin, thin silvery lines that spiral in fractal patterns meant to control and direct stray chakra. For sealing Kinjutsu.

Tools in hand, he returns to his task.

Uzushio's clans obviously prided themselves on their ninja niches. The jutsu and usage of seals he finds from clan to clan are varied and specific– one used seals only for mediation and sensory training, another worked only in in seals that generated or disrupted genjutsu.

The Tsubasa clan was known primarily for their work with ninja animals, a little like the Inuzuka clan back in Konoha, and they developed seals meant to bond living beings to one another and even some kind of jutsu meant for swapping eyesight. The most interesting portion of their repository is an enormous sealed glass case containing four massive blood contract scrolls as large as a full-grown man. Each one is bejeweled and decorated in vibrant colours and strange symbols; one is dark twilight blue covered in elegant golden patterns, another is amethyst with stylized designs of fire in bright vermillion, one is white and striped with azure like a tiger's back, and the last is the colour of a bloody sunset covered in geometric shapes cast in eye searing turquoise. Below this case is another one, longer, and filled with nearly a dozen more summoning scrolls, equally decorated and as big as Naruto's torso.

The Komorebi clan was a sort of sister clan to the Sumiran, and their treasures came in the form powerful medicines and poisons, herbal cocktails that could keep you from death even if you were at the brink, and soft clear toxins that could keep you paralyzed indefinitely without the cure. They had maps and diagrams that detailed every nerve, bone, and muscle fiber in the human body, and detailed Fuinjutsu meant to hone chakra flares down to a knife-like point.

The Kurogane clan were skilled blacksmiths, capable of pounding sealwork into steel and silver, folding chakra into everything from swords and kunai to rings and bracers. Old and musty diagrams detailed the art of producing forge fires hot enough to sear together metal and chakra, and their Kinjutsu came in the form of a set of strange tools that Naruto can't touch at all lest they burn his skin to the bone.

The Ido-Senshi were the most interesting, in Naruto's opinion. They focused almost entirely on the art of Taijutsu, and their katas fell into five categories detailing a set of distinctive styles– Tiger, Dragon, Crane, Leopard, and Snake. Their training implements consisted of things like bands that restricted blood flow to the limbs and fabric so heavy that a single hand's worth weighed as much as a slab of stone.

The Kinkoro clan ends up being the… hardest for Naruto to deal with, personally. This particular clan was home to ninja who made their living through trade– guarding shipments or moving goods important to the welfare of the village or securing trade agreements with other villages. Some of the clan weren't classically trained ninja at all, they preferred the business of commerce and chose that trade over the militaristic life of a ninja. The clan was known for their wards and trap seals, but mostly, they were known for being the treasurers of Uzushio's wealth.

A great deal of it isn't even ryo, so much of it is art and jewelwork and great scroll paintings depicting foreign landscapes in rich colour. Standing amidst the gold and wealth, Naruto feels like a thief.

~It's your inheritance, kit.~ Kurama assures from out of nowhere. ~If Uzushio didn't agree, she would never have let you down here.~

Naruto doesn't answer, at least not aloud. But when he swallows hard and takes a step forward into the vault, it's answer enough.

Getsuga. Sozo. Tenrai. Hansha.

He folds the last of the Ryokosha treasures into their respective seals, feeling both humbled and deeply tired all at once. He rolls up both the black scrolls and seals them shut with final sounding snaps. He's finished.

They feel even heavier now as he straps them to his hip, and he can't help thinking about how so much can be folded up and sealed down into something so small.

Instinct and memory pull at him and he lets himself be lead back down the long corridor and into the circular room where he first entered. He notices for the first time the intricate sun and moon symbol carved into the floor and the slanting grooves in the walls that spiral upwards in a corkscrew. He pricks his thumb with his canine until blood pools in his palm, kneels down, and presses his hand over the seal, bringing his chakra to bear.

A long high tone echoes over the walls like a wrung bell, and the circular panel of the floor lurches upwards, spinning upwards on the carved tracks. Below him, he can see the chakric fires of the repository dying out. Light of a more natural kind starts filtering in from overhead, and Naruto starts to feel tiny droplets of rain filter down to mist his face with water. The platform locks into place in the center of the plaza and Naruto steps off into a thick soupy fog that casts everything in grey except for the stubborn greens of the forest. Rain drizzles lazily overhead, and all around plant life blooms at its touch. Thick vines prickled with pale orange blossoms wind over the once desolate buildings, new pines and elm trees peek up from between heavy stones, the grass as far as he can see is coloured with wildflowers.

He takes a deep breath, lets the cool air chill his lungs. He walks down the hills, across the black sand beach, and steps out onto the water of the bay. When he turns back to tell the island goodbye, he's being watched. A dark shadow appears through the white ribbons of fog and the wolf emerges from the gloom at the tops of the basalt columns, looking down at him with keen, unblinking eyes.

Naruto faces the dark beast, tucks his left fist into his right hand, and bows low. When he straightens, the wolf tucks a foreleg, ducks its head, and bows back.

By the time he reaches the outskirts of the village, it's past midnight. He'd slept the afternoon away in a redwood once he'd gotten far enough back into fire country, and hadn't woken until late evening. Kurama is still asleep.

He's crossed back into the village proper when it hits him like a blow to the chest. He feels suddenly like a part of him is being ripped apart, like some wound cord anchored deep within him has been wrenched free. It's not until a pained and feral roar thunders through his head that he realized the pain isn't his.

Sorrow and anguish flood him from Kurama's seal, followed quickly by a frustrated guilt that is entirely his own. They mix and fold together, nothing to separate them, and Naruto is knocked breathless by the sheer power of the emotion. Tears burn his eyes and he lists sideways, clutching at the bark of the tree beside him so had that splinters drive through his palms as the wood cracks under his hand.

Another tailed beast has disappeared. Another of Kurama's siblings is gone.

"Who was it? Who did we…" Naruto can't finish the thought because he's not quite sure how to end it. Lose? Fail? Both would work.

~Kokuo~

The word is no more than a pained moan– Kurama isn't even fully awake.

Naruto stumbles into the street. He has no idea where he is and doesn't have the presence of mind to care, practically tripping over himself until he finds himself standing at the edge of the street in the sallow lamplight, staring off in the direction the pain had come from.

He doesn't move for a long while.

Sasuke wrenches himself from the grip of his nightmare so violently he nearly falls out of bed. Cold sweat pools, clammy and unwelcome, between his shoulder blades as his lungs heave for air they don't need in preparation to run from terror that isn't real. Itachi's sharingan eyes spin across his vision, dark and mocking where they had once been bright and kind, and it is that transition that haunts Sasuke more thoroughly than any ghost.

Why?

His stomach rolls and he swallows hard against the urge to vomit, cold prickling against his arms and down his back like the tips of frozen knives, cold that has nothing to do with temperature.

He braces himself up off the tangled sheets with one arm, pressing a hand over his mouth.

Get ahold of yourself, this is pathetic.

He takes another hard breath but his heart refuses to be calmed and his stomach roils with another bout of nausea. Sleep is far away now. His clock reads 1:40 am.

A walk to calm his nerves then.

It's become so common that his walks through the village in the shittiest hours of the morning might as well be a routine. The route is always different but the purpose is always the same– a reprieve from his ghosts.

"Being haunted has nothing to do with the presence of the dead, and everything to do with the memory of the living."

The strange shinobi's words have been chasing across his mind for days now. What mistake could have been so terrible as to cause such pain? Whose loss could be so devastating it left such scars? Sasuke had lost his entire family, a brother he'd loved dearly, but somehow that man knew even greater loss. Somehow the loss of a single life had left a deeper crater than the loss of a clan.

He passes the Yamanaka flower shop, swiping a hand carelessly through the damp misting of humid dew across the broad windows. The monsoon had left the air stifling with humidity, even at night.

He turns the corner and stops dead in his tracks.

Naruto is standing on a street corner less than half a block away. Sasuke hasn't seen the blonde boy in nearly a week and the thought of him hadn't even crossed his mind until yesterday, when Kiba had run by the training grounds looking for him. According to the dog-nin, no one had seen hide or hair of the Uzumaki since before the storm set in.

He looks… different. It's subtle, but the blonde boy seems stronger somehow; the perpetual hunch in his neck from tucking his head down is gone, and he holds his head higher and rests his shoulders further back.

The closer Sasuke looks the further his eyes widen.

Sasuke has seen Naruto cry only once before, long ago when they were both very young. He'd been sitting on the swings not far from the academy, practically bawling, and no one has so much as stopped to look at him.

This is very different.

He's standing painfully still, eyes fixed on some vague point in the sky just above the treeline. He's not sobbing, in fact Sasuke isn't entirely sure he's even breathing. The sorrow's only tell is the stream of tears leaking steadily from the corners of his eyes, tracing simple paths along his cheeks to collect in droplets along his jaw. Naruto makes no move to wipe them from his face, no effort to disguise his pain. It's a different kind of sadness from that of loneliness, from that of abandonment. Sasuke knows this brand of sorrow well enough to recognize it on sight.

Grief.

Sasuke doesn't understand it. He stands, transfixed, eyes darting along what he can see of Naruto's expression, as if that might give him some clue to solving this enigma. But it gives him no answers, only more questions– Naruto's face is disturbingly steady, and the grief is written in the corners of his eyes, but nowhere else.

The sound of a shutter snapping shut, a light turning off at just the wrong time, and the moment is shattered. Naruto turns, catches sight of Sasuke standing in the shadow of the flower shop, and his eyes widen to saucers.

Another half a second, another moment of a deer caught in a spotlight, and Naruto's expression grinds and shifts, turns from sorrow to frustration to fury in the space between Sasuke's heartbeats.

And just like that, he takes off like a shot.

Sasuke's brain must not be functioning, fried somewhere between the grief and the anger on Naruto's face, because his body moves without his permission.

He gives chase.

He tears through the trees on the blonde's heels, eyes tracking golden hair in the dark. Naruto is fast, nearly faster than Sasuke, and it's starting to look like his instincts were right– Naruto has been holding back in class. Anger chases surprise through his system, because that means every spar, every fight, every win that Sasuke lorded over him was hollow.

Naruto is difficult to track in the darkness and someone with eyes any less sharp would have lost him between the trees within seconds. But even without an active sharingan, Sasuke's eyes are still keener than any Jounin's.

He almost loses him anyway however, when Naruto leaps into the trees like a goddamn jungle cat, and Sasuke almost takes a header into a briar in an attempt to follow him. But he senses chakra at work, has seen Chunin walk up trees like it's nothing, so he channels chakra into his feet and leaps after him.

The first few steps turn the wood and bark beneath his feet to pulp, but Sasuke has always been a fast learner, especially under pressure, so he dials back the charge and keeps going.

Naruto is darting about in zigzag patterns, flashing back and forth through the woods like a flitting bird, gaining ground on Sasuke fast.

Shunshin. He realizes. Body flicker technique.

That's definitely not something they were taught at the academy, but Sasuke calls what he knows of it from his personal studies and forms the correct hand sign. He almost crashes into an elm the first time when he overshoots how much chakra he needs, but it puts him that much closer to Naruto's speeding form.

The blond darts left so sharply at one point that Sasuke shoots past him and is forced to backtrack, chasing him through a grove of trees so thick that the branches rip entire chunks off of Sasuke's overshirt. He pulls it off with a frustrated growl and keeps moving, wincing as the branches rake across his now bare arms.

Naruto seems to know this area far better than Sasuke, which is becomes obvious when he cuts sideways off a blind turn to land unerringly on one of the rocks jutting out from the river rapids, leaping from stone to stone up the creek with grace Sasuke knows Naruto hadn't possessed a week before. He follows blindly, unwilling to let the Uzumaki out of his sight for even a second, tracing Naruto's path over the river stones.

The woods widen out suddenly and only the adrenaline in his system and his hard honed instincts keep him from running headlong into what's waiting on the other side of the curtain of trees. Out of the dark comes Naruto's voice, a harsh growl that rumbles deeper than should be possible for their age.

"Doton: Crashback."

Before he can even contemplate how the hell Naruto knows a C-rank earth jutsu of all things, a crash of rock slashes in front of him, missing his right shoulder by a centimeter. He barely has time to leap over the first point of rock before the second comes surging up behind him and the two just of stone smash together with force enough to shatter bone.

He lands in a clear split down the middle by the river's origin, winding from a waterfall basin pressed up against the far cliff. Naruto stands on the opposite side of the river, breaths panting out around teeth a tad too sharp to be normal. The red scrapes on Naruto's face and arms are already fading, some kind of unseen chakra bleeding steam into the air as the cuts close and vanish. The sharp sting on Sasuke's own arms only serves to sharpen his focus.

They stand in a deadlock, blue eyes fixed on black. Fury rages unchecked behind cerulean irises and Sasuke shifts his stance.

The spell breaks.

They lunge at each other, all power and no grace. Neither of them have any physical weapons, but their bodies crash and glance off each other like they themselves are the blades, each parry and clash shooting magnetic sparks into the air between them, drawing them back together harder, faster. Jutsu neither of them are supposed to know as academy students fly through their fingers, and even though Sasuke's jutsu classes are more powerful, he's still only capable of spitting fire.

Naruto is something else entirely.

His jutsu are all C or D-rank, but he fires off one element after another with hardly a pause between them, and the landscape around them starts to change rapidly as a result. They go at each other full throttle, no hesitation, no holds barred.

And something in Sasuke starts to thrill.

Naruto like this is more than a challenge, he's a goddamn equal, some bizarre perfect match, and he's affronted and enthralled by the idea in equal measure. Sasuke lands more strikes, but Naruto's ability to roll with the punches exceeds Sasuke's ability to do so, so every hit Naruto lands is worth two of his own. Naruto's brazen attitude and unrestricted passion is still in every move he makes, but's it's honed down to a blade-like edge instead of the forced bluntness Sasuke is used to, and his usually inept energy has turned from aimless to deadly.

For the first time in his memory, Sasuke is forced to up his game just to match him. He can feel himself running low on chakra, but Naruto doesn't seem to be having the same issue. Even as Sasuke shifts to rely more on taijutsu, Naruto lets another ninjutsu fly that sets his hair on end.

"Raiton: Sparkshot!"

An array of electric needles launches into the air between them, and Sasuke has to twist through the air and away from the river to avoid being electrocuted. It's the first time Naruto's used a Raiton and something in the atmosphere pulls taught, the unseen tension in the air comes to a head.

They clash again, even harder than before, and this time it's Sasuke struggling to keep up. Naruto flights like an animal in human skin, quick and feral and brutal. Sasuke's only saving grace is that the more rage and power he puts into his strikes, the less coordinated he becomes.

He lands a blow to Naruto's solar plexus, hard enough to damage trees, and hears Naruto's lost breath go past his ear. It barely slows him down though, and an elbow cracks across Sasuke's temple in turn, making red explode across his eyelids and forcing them apart again.

They stand across from one another, that strange spell holding them still again as their eyes lock across the water. Sasuke feels blood, warm and wet, start to drip down his brow. Naruto stands straighter, spits blood into the grass and wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist.

Something changes.

The hostile charge in the air seems to clear and dissipate, leaving only that strange tension holding the atmosphere tight. It sits on a fulcrum, capable of tipping one way or another.

Then a small, sharp smile cuts the corner of Naruto's mouth, a little wry, a little feral.

Something jumps into existence under Sasuke's breastbone from nowhere at all, pushing hard on his throat so that a soft breath forces it's way out between his teeth.

He feels a tiny smirk curve his lips entirely against his will.

Naruto's sharp smile cuts wide into a grin that's all teeth, into something potent enough to be a weapon all it's own. The blonde shifts his leg forward, quick and abortive, but it makes Sasuke tense automatically. The smile reaches Naruto's eyes, turns teasing.

A feint. A playful one.

That something in Sasuke's chest swells, pushes his stomach and lungs out of the way to make room for itself dangerously close to the vital pulsing muscle beneath his ribs. On reflex he tries to squash whatever it is out of existence, tries to reach for his indifference and calculated anger in an attempt to exorcise this strange new sensation. He finds both are oddly absent, and in their place is a strange new energy that eaves him feeling both giddy and tense.

He feints back without thinking. Plays the game.

And just like that, it turns from a brawl to something else.

It's not quite a spar, something closer to a dance, and a far cry from anything Sasuke has ever done. They fight with holds and twists, more showing off than actual fighting. Their blows are meant to be glancing, to bruise instead of break bones, all grace and no power.

They go on like this until they're both exhausted, of chakra and of stamina, and to Sasuke's annoyance, he realizes that Naruto's reserves of both are deeper than his own, and the only reason they're even is because Sasuke had been far more conservative with his energy than Naruto.

Sasuke's muscles are burning by the end of it and they're both dripping in sweat. The fight has gone out of every cell, leaving them breathless and boneless with exhaustion when they finally finish how they started- standing feet apart with fire in their eyes.

For the first time, Naruto speaks.

"Crazy asshole." He breathes, but it's without heat, without that strange fury that had gripped him so completely not long ago.

"Idiot." Sasuke fires back, but it different from all the times he's said it before. It carries with it the end of something, or maybe not an ending.

Maybe a beginning.