((Uh-huh, so here's the finished product. This chapter is still shorter than all the others, sort of because I changed my mind at the last second about how to end it. The few who read this will probably be disappointed with the beginning to the next chapter too, but I feel the constant need to switch between scenes, as you'll see if you read "Whatsherface". Honestly, if I divided it into chapters based on scene-breaks, there would be twenty.

Anyways, that's not the point. I've kept you long enough, so go ahead and read the ending.))

CHAPTER 5: CONFRONTATION

For the second time that miserable, early, rainySeptember morning, Kakashi stepped into the foyer of a man he had met under dire circumstances and now seeked council with in a similar situation. Dripping wet once more, he noted that the muddy water from an hour prior to his current state of entry had been mopped away and slightly regretted the fact that he would dirty the floor again in a moment's time.

Jin stepped around the hallway corner, looking much more awake and presentable than he had when approached by tired guests earlier that morning. He beckoned silently for his lone visitor to follow him to the living area and the somber man obliged, sliding out of his soaked shoes and stepping on to the raised wooden floor only to descend a moment later into the room on his right.

((A/N: Yes, I quite like my run-on sentences. Bear with me until the flow of ideas gets stronger, mm?))

The two sat quietly on the flat cushions placed on either side of the low table, and went without a word for a while longer. After a quick breath akin to laughter, Jin prompted almost sardonically, "I don't suppose I need to ask if the situation is urgent or not."

"I apologize in advance for the trouble I've brought to your village," Kakashi replied earnestly, "but I cannot stress enough how bad this situation is."

Intrigued in what could only be a morbid fashion, the headman waited eagerly, if not anxiously for further elaboration.

"You're aware of the sentries from the Hidden Sound that have been scouring the area recently, are you not?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Up until tonight, they were searching for a certain Uchiha Sasuke (The dark-haired prodigy of the two unconscious men, Jin recalled.), and I'm certain that if things had not unfolded the way they have, they would have eventually infiltrated Konoha."

((A/N: Oi, now brackets inside dialogue? What am I thinking?))

"And for what purpose?"

"The time has come for Orochimaru to find a new host body, and I'm afraid he's had his sights set on Sasuke ever since that failed attempt ten years ago."

Jin knew of the events of which Kakashi spoke. In fact, they were the only reason he was of such high standing where he lived. Fuuma no Sato had once been but a simple frontier village, that had made the best of commerce between Konoha and the Hidden Sand and eventually begun to prosper quite nicely. It was just inside the Fire Country and thus a short distance away from the Hidden Sound, making it perfect for running reconnaisance at the time of the village's founding. And that's just what it had been tasked to do, after a successful coup-d'etat had been executed by none other than the Third Hokage's demonic student.

Orochimaru had had a pupil of his own, until he had finally cut all ties with Konoha and sworn vengeance on his place of birth. The young woman had been cursed with a mark on her neck that had quickly faded away, but upon her teacher's disasterous return it had begun causing her great pain and reappeared. If it were not for the fact that his arms had been greatly damaged in his titanic battle with the Third, Orochimaru would have surely hunted down the woman to which he had taught most all of his forbidden techniques and claimed her body as the golem into which he would force his immortal soul.

Ten years after the catastrophe that had nearly thrown the Fire Country back into the dissaray from which it had been born, war was on the horizon, and only because of the selfish ambitions of the most dangerous loose cannon the nation had ever seen. Jin recalled catching a glimpse of an inky black marking at the base of an unconscious Uchiha Sasuke's neck, and knew without asking that it was the same as that of the lady Chuunin examiner from Konoha. Now that he he had already planted his seed of destruction, nothing would stop Orochimaru in the pursuit of his future host.

Signs of this disturbing realization began to show on Jin's aging face. He asked, growing more and more worried by the second, "Is there nothing we can do to stop him?"

"Until we get more information, the only thing we can do is keep Sasuke as far away from Orochimaru as possible," Kakashi replied grimly.

"Is that possible, now that the cursed seal has been inflicted upon him?"

At that, the Jounin instructor looked troubled. Until this point, he had never considered that there could be a component of that technique that allowed the user a faint sense of where the one affected by it was. If such was true, keeping his student away from harm would be much harder than he had anticipated. But when he thought about it, Sasuke had always had a hard time avoiding conflict anyways.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Sasuke awoke in a daze, Sharingan spinning madly, traces of his startling nightmare still skipping and replaying like broken video cassette before his eyes. He took a moment to blink away the disturbing images and adjust to the darkness of the room as crimson orbs bled softly into deep gray once more. He felt his heels touching the end of a mattress slightly, his head atop a pillow that was neither soft nor rough. He lay on top of the sheets, as the room was quite warm as a result of the closed window nearby, though rain no longer pounded against its glassy panes.

Rain... What happened while it was raining?

Though not normally as slow on the uptake, Sasuke was having considerable trouble remembering the events of a few hours passed. Not after a second of puzzled pondering, however, he sat straight up in bed in a panic, ignorant of the resulting head rush.

There's no time! I have to escape from wherever it is I'm being held, and--

He stopped, and looked down at his current state of undress. His white ANBU vest had been removed and placed on a wooden chair in the corner of the room, along with all the hidden armour that had been underneath, and his gloves and arm-guards. His shoes were under the chair, beside which sat his dejected duffel bag, leaving him in naught but his black undershirt, pants of a similar hue, and the protective tape wrapped around his shins.

Beginning to feel rather silly at his jumping to conclusions, he took a quick observation of the room before allowing himself to fall back into the pillow at the back of his head. Judging from the appearance of the place, he was in a room of a small hospital or clinic. And he seriously doubted that if anyone had taken him hostage, they would bother to make him comfortable. It seemed that the others had managed just fine without him, and were probably sleeping somewhere nearby.

Sasuke turned his head in the pillow, and was surprised to see a folded washcloth, still slightly damp, right in front of him. He reached over to pick it up, and held it a small ways above him, speculating. There was hardly any moisture left in it, indicating it had been there for at least a few hours. For such an object to be necessary in the first place he would have had to have been running a fever.

How bad was I?

All he could remember from the confusing encounter in the hotel room was the mind-numbing pain, spreading all the way through him from the injury at the base of his neck before he had lost consciousness. He placed the washcloth down at his side and brushed his fingertips across where the wound would have been, almost worried when nothing happened.

There were too many things going on that he didn't know the answer to, too many unknowns in what should have been a predictable situation. It was but the second day of what he had thought would be over a week's journey, and the events that had just recently occurred had everything spiraling out of control. Caught up in a conflict between two nations, without a way to escape the web of difficulties that lay ahead. It seemed more now than ever that luck was forever against him.

No... This isn't just luck. I should have known nothing would be as easy as I thought it would be.

Nothing had ever been easy, Sasuke contemplated, wide awake and staring at the cieling. From the day he had been born, he had been trapped in a struggle to do better than his brother before him. Until that fateful day, life had been a competition. But now, shouldering the death of an entire clan, it was much more. He was charged with the responsibility of avenging his family name, a fate he had accepted ever since the tragedy that had brought it to light, and one he would carry until the day finally came when he struck down the very bane of his existance.

He had thought the end of such a sorrowful, lonely road was in sight, when he had been assigned the mission he had worked towards his entire life. Now he knew otherwise, feet worn from travel but with no end in sight. New paths had opened up, twisting and turning away from the main road until it was impossible to tell which had originally been which. His objective was dancing further and further away, always running and leaving him no chance to catch up. He felt that at this rate, he would fight through an entire war before finally reaching what he had set out to do. And a time later, he would discover just how close he was to the truth.

But for the moment, all Sasuke could do was lay on his clinic bed and ponder the increasing impossibility of his lifelong goal. He was in no mood for sleep, though he supposed everyone in their right mind was peacefully dormant in their own bed, in their own home. Though where he lived could hardly be called that, he reflected. It was a house, and nothing more. An empty place filled with unwanted memories, and far too large to belong to only him.

The entire neighbourhood was like that. Were he to step out the door, he would lay eyes on the streets that had been littered with bloodied corpses that moonlit night. When he walked down those roads on the way to the Hokage's office, he would pass his aunt's and uncle's ruined bakery and remember the two of them sprawled lifelessly across the dirt path, fingers still intertwined lovingly. And near the entryway he passed through every single morning, a telephone pole was visible, a telephone pole upon which he had caught a fleeting glimpse of a man perched before dismissing it as an exhausted hallucination, only to later find out it had been his very own murderous brother.

It made no sense that he lived there still, after all this time. What should have been a comforting and familiar environment was a distant and cold place he could never happily look at again. Though he supposed if he had really wanted to forget about all that had happened in that house, he would have moved out long ago. It served as a reminder of what he had yet to accomplish, but unfortunately nothing else.

The silence in the room was almost unsettling. There were no raindrops sliding down the window, making tapping noises on roofs and sidewalks. There was no wind howling through the trees, from which not a single bird chirped its song. And though he had long since dismissed a childish fear of the dark, the tense atmosphere was making Sasuke steadily more uneasy.

He sat up in bed once more, this time twisting his legs around and dropping on to the floor. His feet stuck to the humid hardwood as he treaded to the chair to slip his shoes on, and realised he would probably wake someone in the building up if he went down the hallway making noise. So he moved quietly to the window, brushing the wispy curtains aside with his forearm, and slid it open using his free hand.

The faint, summery sound of crickets chirping was oddly absent, and not even a breeze greeted him. Shaking it off as the silence after the storm, he studied the open space before him. It was just barely wide enough for him to crouch on the windowsill and climb through, which he would have done it it were not for the presence of a thin screen he had somehow missed before. A moment's observation, however, revealed that it too could be slid to the side.

After touching down on the ground, Sasuke turned and closed both the screen and window behind him. He didn't know how long he would be out, but it was better that no bugs got into the room should he still be away when they came out of hiding. He had thought that being outside would ease his mind, but it was even more eerily silent and uncomfortable. There were large, glassy puddles everywhere, and a thick dew had settled in over what grass he could see around the path leading around the outside of the clinic to the main street. Not even the shrill hum of a cicada sounded.

He made his way to the front of the building, walking slowly to take in his surroundings. While not spectacularly beautiful, the theme of the place was very rustic and natural. On either side of the street were many low buildings, with tiled, slanted roofs and old parchment signs identifying their nature. Large, flat stones were pressed into the ground and led off in paths towards the marketplaces and restaurants, and trees of all different sorts sprung up behind them in abundance.

While passing by all this, Sasuke was increasingly reminded of his dwelling back in Konoha. It seemed there would be no rest for the weary of heart, as he stopped in front of a large building akin to the Police Force headquarters that had long since been unoccupied. It had once been his dream to join such a service, but he had dismissed both the word "dream" and the career as useless long ago. Joining the ANBU had been the closest he'd ever achieved to his forsaken ambition.

He looked to the front again, and was surprised to see an old-fashioned red entry gate not too far off. The village he had been brought to was quite small. Just off the stone-paved path leading up to the gate were two dirt paths, each winding up a slope and behind the trees where the rooftops of a number of houses could be seen under the glow of the moon. Though the air was calm and most would consider such a sight serene, the utter personal signifigance of the ghastly light from above was too plentiful for him to be able to enjoy it.

He sighed. The only other thing he could do apart from thinking was reflecting; he had wandered off to avoid either one, and had ultimately done both. Even for a short while, there was no escape from the problems he faced. But he supposed life had always been like that, and he had been foolish to assume that even for a second he could shirk all the memories and responsibilities that came with being the last remaining Uchiha. It was his duty to avenge the countless lost lives, and he would have to deal with it.

That wasn't all on his mind. It was recent events that had brought on the questioning of his ability, not what had happened in the distant past. First, the trespassing of numerous ninja from the Hidden Sound. They had willingly attacked him, knowing full well what would happen between the two countries in the case of armed confrontation. And then someone who seemed to be deliberately targeting him, whose motives were still unknown. If the mark left by this being had such an effect on him upon infliction, he was almost certain it had other hidden side-effects he had yet to experience. High fever and intense pain were probably the least of it.

Sasuke realized he was asking himself these questions at the wrong time. Nobody was awake to answer them, and nobody would be for another few hours. The best he could do was speculate and wait for the explanations to come along with the sun. The best course of action was returning to the clinic and getting some rest before the truth of the matter was thrown to light. He could better decide which way to go about his journey after he knew about all that was happening.

Journey... That was right. With the consecutive battles in the hotel room, he hadn't had time to even suggest that the other four return to Konoha. And after the whole ordeal, he still doubted they would consent to such a request. So with that for something to ponder instead, he started back towards where he had come from...

... Only to stop dead in his tracks, as something malevolent, taunting, and all too familiar sent shivers all up and down his spine. He turned to face the presence, scanning the area in anxious disbelief. That was something he had felt only once before. Something that had occurred just before the disaster that had forever changed his life, something that could only be the entire reason he was standing there in shock with no inclination to deny what he was feeling.

Beginning to shake with nervousness, eagerness and anger, his heart raced faster as he searched every which way around him. And then, atop the painted, smoothed beam of wood held up above the way into the town, a fleeting shadow of a human form dropped silently towards the ground only to fade into the night before touching it. Abandoning any reservations, he rushed after it, unaware and uncaring of the loud clacking of his shoes against the path.

Only when he passed beneath the entryway did Sasuke catch a flicker of crimson silk laid into black, fluttering out of sight. He recognized the bright shape as that of the cloudy pattern imprinted into the cloaks of the Akatsuki, whose members' faces he had seen numerous times in the handbook given to each and every member of ANBU. The book was a list of the enemies of Konoha, and provided the criminals' rank of danger and ability along with what had lead to their addition to the village's blacklist. He didn't need a handbook to know why this S-rank renegade was wanted dead or alive.

Running after nothing but glimpses of red fabric and the occasional hard-to-see flick of a dark ponytail had lead him many hundred meters outside the town. The grass grew longer with every step, and he soon found himself smack dab in the middle of an enormous field. Under the silver light pouring from above, the grass was a pale, drab gray. Everything was still; not a cloud moved from its place, not a leaf rustled, not an insect stirred.

He found himself having stopped, from the sheer likeliness of the scene before him and the field from his dream. Right on cue, a chilly breeze wafted through the area and ruffled his hair, a gigantic shadow passing overtop and swallowing the landscape in the clouds' black embrace.

The land was covered in darkness. Not a shadow stood or flickered, for there was no light from which they could have sprung. And in the midst of the choking tranquility, he stood still, reluctant to draw breath. Doubt. Fear. Anger. He knew not which he felt.

But then the answer became clear has he heard smooth steel sneaking from its scabbard behind him, a voice following shortly after. One he had grown to hate in its fifteen years of absence.

"I wonder if enough time has passed."

A blade whistled through the otherwise quiet air and became visible as splinters of silver light began to break through the clouds. Sasuke leapt back to avoid it and slid a thin switchblade from the bottom of his shoe, barely managing to throw another strike to the side before straightening again. Not a second had passed before another gust of wind rippled through the field, tearing another thick shroud over the moon.

"Do you think it's been long enough?"

He lunged furiously towards the voice, only to be thrown back again in the effort of parrying another swift blow.

"Show me how much you've grown."

Whirling to face the voice again, he took a wide swing with the small knife in his hand and slid another from his back pocket, barely catching the tip of a sword between the two weapons as it made a small nick in the front of his shirt. Leaping back as the sword vanished, he waited, heart racing and shoulders heaving with every quickened intake of air, for any sign as to the whereabouts of his unseen opponent.

With every passing moment, Sasuke's breaths became more and more agitated as he looked feverently about him. Roaring frustratedly, he let his knees bend and thrust an arm down sharply, grasping his wrist so tightly his knuckles turned white. Clenching his teeth, he felt raw power manifesting in his closed palm until it shrieked to life, chirping shrilly like a thousand frightened birds. Blue-white energy exploded into view, swallowing his arms until his elbows and covering the blades in his hands entirely, dancing and writhing eratically.

Illuminated before him by the blinding light he held in his palms was his older brother, Uchiha Itachi. And at the mere sight of himself reflected in calm, crimson-washed eyes almost identical to his own, an uncontrollable anger raged over him like liquid wildfire.

oooooooooooooooooooo

"--In any case, the best course of action would be to wait for Orochimaru to make his move."

"Exactly. Konoha would be held accountable for instigating a war if it were to take the initiative, and though it doesn't seem likely that this will happen, avoiding an armed conflict would prove most beneficial."

"Though it's inevitable that we will have to make an attack on Orochimaru directly to put an end to this matter."

"We?"

"Of course. Fuuma no Sato was originally a refugee village for immigrated ninja, as you may recall. It was founded prior to the reconnaissance project. And as its leader, I'd like nothing more than to join the coming battles, but shirking responsibility for glory is hardly admirable."

"Well put. It's a shame most of the newer jounin haven't quite gotten that through their heads yet, talented as they all are."

"However, I will be organizing forces as I see fit and holding several strategy conferences. I'll have Namu look after things on the field."

"That's only to be expected. How has Namu been, anyways?"

"Oh, quite well. She's turning out quite like her mother. I sent her over to the clinic a short while ago, though she didn't seem too happy about it, considering the time of day and the weather."

"So she's become a medic ninja, eh?"

"Well, no. But she has several abilities that are very useful in that field, including her unwillingness to back down from a tough situation."

"She's starting to sound more like you, to me."

"You flatter me, but idle praise, I'm afraid, does very little to affect me lately."

"Well, that's unfortunate. But I can see where you're coming from."

"Indeed. I would say it's been nice talking to you after so long, but I doubt this is the last time we'll be conversing like this with the times to come. Matters will only get more serious from this point."

"I'd rather it weren't that way, but you're right, as usual."

"Mm. I thank you for allerting me of this situation."

"Not at all. Having strong alliances with other countries is very important during a war."

"You even had to doubt this alliance?"

"Well, no. But as silly as it is, Konoha's residents are still quite wary of the relationship between us and the other nations ever since the Sand and the Sound temporarily joined forces."

"With good reason, I suppose, even if the alliance has been re-established for many years."

"You would have been one of the very first to know, am I right?"

"A fact many would consider to be very fortunate, I'm sure, but the constant gossip can be somewhat overwhelming at times. Even so, the good does outweigh the bad."

At this final agreement, the two men became silent. They both seemed to be equally as lost in their thoughts, until Kakashi straightened abruptly, appearing to be quite alarmed.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, brow furrowing concernedly.

Jin strained his ears for a quick few seconds, but wasn't able to make anything out. Except for the fact that--

"--The rain's stopped..." he said, puzzled. "I hadn't even noticed until now."

"It eluded me as well," Kakashi conceded. "But listen closely."

There was a longer period of silence, until a very faint, very rapid "chii chii chii" noise gradually became audible.

"Birds?" Jin asked, much more confused than he had previously been. "They shouldn't be awake yet."

"I know. But I don't think..." Kakashi's eyes widened, and he stood up in a flash. "Oh no..."

"What?" There was another tense pause in the coversation, until Jin suddenly understood what the odd chirping noise he was hearing was. "That's Chidori! I thought you were the only one who knew how to use it!"

"There's only one other I taught it to, a long time ago." The jounin instructer looked perturbed beyond description. He turned back to Jin again. "Forgive me for leaving so suddenly without an explanation, but this is extremely serious. I have little time." And with that, he rushed out the door.

As soon as he set foot on the stone-paved path, an enormous blast of malicious intent forced him back a step, and he nearly tripped backwards into the house again. The very atmosphere before him waved and flickered like a mirage, and almost coursed with a dark aura. He attempted another step, and had to lean forewards with all his might to move even an inch.

But then like a taught string coming loose all of a sudden, he was thrown back as something in front of him burst silently, leaving an echo in his bones as he was knocked off his feet, letting out a startled yell. There was a thumping of footsteps in the hallway behind him, and Jin's voice bounced off the walls and out to him.

"Kakashi-dono, what's going--"

"Stay inside!" Kakashi called, his voice coming out with much more difficulty than was normal. "It's dangerous out here!"

At this point, he was in the process of struggling to stand, as the air pushed at him from all sides though there was no wind. By the time he had stood again, it felt as if every ounce of strength had been pressed further and further in until there was next to nothing left. Taking deep breaths, he readied himself, then launched forewards with all his remaining might.

There was a deafening roaring on all sides of him, and he felt as if his eardrums would pop at any moment. The air was like molasses, and a large starburst of sheer willpower that was both blinding and pitch black had begun to materialize before him. It shrieked suddenly, the ear-splitting noise growing louder and more shrill with every passing second of struggle. He held his arm behind him, breaking into a sweat as he gathered the very last of his energy into his palm. A new Chidori sparked weakly into existance, barely sustaining itself as its very substance was viciously snatched away before its weilder forced it into the heart of the power draining it and the two cacophonies were introduced to each other.

And then everything was quiet. Everything appeared to be normal again as Kakashi wearily stood straight again. That festering mass had been chakra, he realized, recalling the way in which it had sucked his own chakra reserves dry and added the stolen energy to itself. He had only experienced something of that magnitude once, and it had been from a distance, many years ago. Whoever such a terrible power belonged to wasn't human.

At that thought, he suddenly knew who it was, and raced forewards with reckless abaddon befitting of a man with a sense of urgency and danger he had neverfelt before.

((... Yeah, I kind of told Lauren I'd add her custom character in this chapter, but the scene I have planned just seemed really out of place in this serious installment. The next chapter will be pretty humorless too, but I'll try to add more of the funny after that, keeping in mind the somber setting for this fanfiction. I seriously doubt things will ever be as light-hearted as they were in the first chapter, though.

Anyways, sorry, Lauren! I promise I'll give Namu her debut soon.))