Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.


Bathing in Blood

20. Static Interference

But the worlds also behold thy fearful mighty form,

With many mouths and eyes,

With many bellies, thighs and feet,

Frightening with terrible teeth:

They tremble in fear, and I also tremble.

-The Bhagavad Gita

Naruto couldn't help it. He couldn't take his eyes away from the raven-haired boy, crouched behind the mossy barricade of a fallen log, as if that would protect him from whatever was out there. What happened to the real Sasuke? The calm, cool, collected playboy who lived for his image and not much else; the genius who had everything together and everything else going for him—where had that gone?

He couldn't look at his teammate, and yet he couldn't bring himself to look away. He knew he should be snickering, sneering, hopping around and gesticulating wildly, in keeping with the unwritten expectations he'd driven into his head. Those rigid, grid-like laws that regulated his daily life.

He knew he should be planning his spiel of ridicule, to be spun to the other boys once they got out of this goddamned creepy jungle (if they ever did), about how the infamous Icicle-san had melted into a simpering, childish puddle; reduced to one more tear-streak on the broad face of humanity. Because it would be cool to do that, right? Right?

Somehow, it wasn't funny anymore.

"...and we'll be the strongest ever. But you knew that, yes you did yes you did, when the purple and the gray and the yellow and the black are true, and then all the rest they just go like that one they just go POOF and then they're gone..."

Sasuke's voice rose like wisps of smoke among the thoughts, warbling crazily like some deranged, decrepit warning signal.

"...'cause there's a room and a window and a splotch on the wall, I don't know why it's there but we'll find out soon enough and ain't it just so looooovely don't you bastards agree with me, agree with me or you'll know why! And you don't wanna know why, do you? You don't want me to tell you why, do you? Oh, of course you don't, no hard feelings, friends are the friends in the best of friends of the friends of the..."

The blonde-haired boy clamped his hands over his ears, reducing the frail needling giggles to a dull murmur, faded to the background. Those words...those horribly mangled words...so many of them, marching along... Like a child playing peek-a-boo, he was.

If you can't see it, can it hurt you?

If you can't hear it, can it hurt you?

Was he going crazy, too?

Make it stop! This isn't funny anymore!

His suffering did not last long. Because the sleeping jutsu she'd used worked with unusual speed, and he fell like a leaden weight to the ground. Within a second, the mumbling Uchiha followed suit, scroll rolling lazily out of twitching hands. Sakura stood solemnly, waiting until the spell had worked to its full effect.

That should keep them out of trouble for a while. Now to get the other scroll.


Taro leaned back against the tree trunk, feeling the rough bark against his back. Dappled sunlight flickered in a phantasm of bright dots overhead, a mosaic of gold and silver. He could hear the twittering conversations of the birds above him, and the musical babble of the small river behind a screen of shrubbery. He turned to his teammate, swinging with jaunty grace from a vine-draped branch. "Hey, Koji...d'ya think I should ask Karen-chan if she's done with the fish yet?"

Koji nodded eagerly from his place on the branch, moppish brown hair flopping over his face. "Yeah!" He smiled frowningly, expression changing from enthusiastic to almost-worried. "She's been down there by the river an awful long time..." As if at the flip of a switch, the cheerful tone returned. "...and besides, I'm getting kinda hungry just waiting!"

Taking a deep breath, Taro stood. "Karen-chaaan!" he called loudly, in the direction of the shrubbery and the babbling brook. No answer. He tried again. "Karen-chaaaaan! Are you done with supper yet?"

This time, there was a response. A mad scrabbling from the wall of overgrown undergrowth, and then a high-pitched shriek. And then the deadly hush.

Both genin gaped at the bushes, and then at each other; faces twisted in terror. Cold sweat trickled down Taro's spine.

Karen-chan!

Silence laced the heavy air, a suffocating noose for the senses.

Karen-chan!

Butterflies warred in his stomach.

Karen-chan!

Without another thought, Taro and Koji leapt in unison over the green barrier. "KAREN-CHAN!" they shrieked desperately, but their screams stopped short. Karen-chan was not there. Her purse lay undisturbed, name neatly painted in white calligraphy on crimson canvas. Right next to it, the pool of dark-red blood, perfectly matching the color of the handbag.

And that was the last thing the two boys saw before the emerald flashes engulfed them, too.