(AN:Yes, I promised a much longer chapter last time, and yes.. you will get it.. but not this time. You see, I've written myself into a bit of a corner. If I continue from where I have it stopped... I'd run into the snag that has delayed this posting. I know it's short, and I know it's a bit of a cliffhanger. But I have my reasons. Oh yes, I also have two Anonymous reviewers who need a reply. DarkMan: Always glad to hear I've got a fan, hope this chapter dosn't dissapoint despite it's shortcomings. I intend to finish it, though I might have to put a hold on it for several months if things work out right IRL. And... uh.. doyoulikelikethename: Thanks for the praise, I know.. I'm godly. -grin- Alright. to answer your question? I'll give it a possible. But I'll be honest, I'm not a major fan of NaruSaku, simply because of how she acts towards Naruto. They do make a cute pair when pulled off right though, so it just might happen. If you'd have asked for a NaruHina however, I would be much, much-much less polite about my answer. In fact, you'd probably hate me and my story within a couple chapters. Also, because threesomes are always breeding grounds for amusement, jealousy, and pain in the ass scenes... well, it could happen. -mind currently on the perverse aspect of what Naruto in a relationship with two most attractive females of the Rookie Nine would entail- Ahh.. also. I just saw the word count on this, and to be honest.. I'm emberassed.. but I still can't put much more in yet. )
(ANC: In other business though, those of you who are desperate to see the romance that the story sorting promises.. keep waiting. It'll happen.. but I despise when it happens in the space of a paragraph... so it'll have to build... and the others aren't even introduced yet, so yeah, it'll be a while.)
Chapter 2
Familiar faces in unexpected places.
There were screams in his ear, but to Naruto, such thigns hardly mattered at the moment. All around him was a battlefield, and the prize was Konoha. "Reinforcements to the wall!" "Medic!" "KILL THEM ALL!" The roaring of the accursed Atkatsuki's allies reached every cornor of Konoha, matched evenly by the eternally laughing flame of utter destruction. Konohagakura, once hailed as the strongest of the Five great Hidden Village's, was now little more than a collection of rubble beneath a defaced mountain of faces. The collected soldiers and zealots of the demon reinforced Red Dawn collective had appeared as if on a whim, nothing and no one had been able to even slow their initial assault. By the time the Konoha Shinobi had rallied, the citizenry that was the back bone of each and every Leaf Nin there had been broken.
Naruto ducked in between buildings, fighting when necessary and fleeing more often than he had ever imagined doing in his entire life. Three of the great nations had allied themselves to Atkatsuki, seeking to follow in the powerful wake the remaining 5 had stirred up. Some months before this very moment, they had appeared, 10,000 strong, on the border of The Hidden Sand. Their troops, a raging horde of hypnotized barbarism, had swept in without warning and left the village a ghost town by morning. Without the seemingly infinite power of Shukaku behind the Kazekage they had only been a relative few to the juggernaut mob. Gaara, despite the loss of his demonic co-inhabitant, had stayed to nearly the last, sacrificing himself so that a few remaining merchants, children, and innocent citizens could survive.
So now here he was, in charge of what could possibly be the last orders that his grandmotherly Tsunade would ever give - "Konoha is no longer feasibly defensible. Withdraw to the hidden retreat until such time as a pilgrimage to safe territory can be made. Kami-bless." She had been near death when Naruto left the Hokage in the care of two young medicnin', and by the grevious looks on their faces, Naruto doubted he would ever see her alive again.
He was currently in the process of wending his way through the rubble strewn neigborhood that had once housed his childhood apartment in such a manner as to inhibit pursuit, in hopes of loosing his three tails before he got to one of the many pocketed resistance groups. Delivering these orders went against everything he knew, to retreat before an enemy that was invading his home, but he knew it to be for the greater good. It didn't help his feelings any to see the rage in each fighters face as he delivered the message.
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Outside of Naruto's tortured dreamscape, Lin and J'Uko hovered over him with mirrored looks of concern in evidence. The visitor's body had begun to thrash mightily around on his sleeping pallet, moaning pitiably and generating enough chakra to light the room. SO it was with great trepidation that Lin reached forth slowly to wake him.
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A group of Cloud Nin had surrounded Naruto now, and he was in trouble. Carrying wounded on his back wasn't the best time to awaken an ambush, never the less, he had done it. There were five, four Jounin and one Chuunin, and all of them were armed to the teeth. The initial attacks were all dodged with relative ease, but Naruto landed badly on an unstable pile of rubbble, turning his ankle painfully. Three days of no sleep and constant adrenaline as his only sustenance had weakened his body considerably, and it was telling in his movements.
Removing a speer, and whispering a prayer over the body of the fallen man he'd taken it from, Naruto launched into action. The Fuma Shuriken that approached him from the side was batted away by the heavy steel shaft, and the offending thrower was soon impaled. Just as he turned about to face the rest pf his attackers, a lancing pain tore through his left pectoral just above his heart. The offending arrow was, for Naruto's personal survival, a bit of a mixed blessing. Despite the fact that it rendered his left arm temporarily out of commission, it had finished off the injured man lashed to Naruto's back, and thus relieved him of a burden.
Naruto… Wake up…
He jerked to the side, bothered by the sudden voice. It didn't belong here, or was he closer to death than he had thought, and the messengers of Shinigami had come for him. He wasn't sure, but he still had other worries present. His sudden move had thrown things out of sync for only a moment, and the Cloud were attacking again with renewed vigor. Suddenly, one was upon him, threatening to choke the life out of him. So he reached intent on choking the life out of the man. With his eyes ablaze in prime-evil fury, he began to squeaze, stareing into the eyes of this hated nin, watching as his -
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- Her breath ran low. Lins eyes began to flutter as she made tiny muted gasps. The old man was beating on him with all his might, But Naruto wouldn't let go. He would kill the son-of-a-bitch cloud if it was… but it wasn't a Cloud at all. Lin looked at him with muted horror and a desperate plea, but even recognizing her, he was still unable to release the tension in his fist.Finnaly, just before Lin lost consciousness, he let her go with a jerk and bat the attacking J'Uko aside. He stood without a word to either of them and began to dress, collecting all the little bits and pieces he'd brought with him and since bought. Finnaly, just as he reached the exit to the hut, he turned to them, a sorrowfull look on his face. "I will leave now, you people have been entirely too kind to me for me to stay after such an act." With silence as the only reply, Naruto left the quiet hamlet and never looked back.
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His first emotion was joy. Uchiha Sasuke was not a man possessed of a vast emotional well, so such a thing required truly remarkable circumstances. At this moment, the events taking place were certainly remarkable. His last rational thought was absolute hatred as he watched his hated brother dispatch Orochimaru - his only chasnce of defeating said brother. There after, he'd lost his mind and become the vessel of something far greater than himself. The pure hatred and malevolence that had taken over his body had awed him to no end, but despite that, he had loathed it. The presence forced him to work with his brother and Atkatsuki, using the Sound village as just another group of Atkatsuki storm troopers.
Later, he'd been defeated and put to rest by his second most hated opponent, the very person he'd loved more as a brother than his biological sibling Itachi; Naruto. He had gone to the grave hating life in its entirety, and because of this, he was being given a second chance. The hateful sentience had somehow gotten wind of a plan set for it's demise, and had acted to fix this. The result being that Sasuke had been sent back in time, fully empowered to stop said plan. He would now get the chance to avenge his own death, kill Naruto, and finish off the world that operated on such unfair principles.He stood now, in a body constructed in the likeness of his fully adult body, but much stronger. He'd been informed that, in order to fight Naruto on equal terms in power, he would be reborn with a Void Demon firmly connected to his soul. This was something Sasuke fully enjoyed.
He had been called back to a time roughly a year and a half prior to his birth. Unknowingly, he entered the world in a much less painfull fashion than Naruto had before him. He awoke alone in a graveyard, several earthen mounds ripped asunder in his periphery, fully naked, but in full possession of his faculties and memories. Looking around himself, he happily noted the drunken stagger of an amazed crypt keeper. It was quick work to relieve the man of his sodden rags and bury him in still open grave. His body was blessedly free of that annoying cursed seal, and better yet, he was even more powerfull for it. The remainder of the imported bottle the aging crypt keeper had carried was downed, quenching his indomitable thrist for a minute and helping ease the slight buzzing in his head, and he weas soon walking swiftly to the cabin on the north side of the graveyard.
With the assistance of a large brass skeleton key, Sasuke made his way inside to greedily devour the remains of the late owner's last meal, and then rapidly finishing off the remaining bits and pieces in the mans fridge. In the hunger that came from a completely empty stomach, even the partially soured food tasted as if it were a dream. After he'd eaten, he took time to check himself in the cracked bathroom mirror, mildly amused at his new complexion; a light smokey blueish color that spread in waves across his skin like some sort of tribal tattoo. Sasuke approved.
Feeling in much better spirits now, he gracefull fell onto the empty bunk inside the small cabin and proceeded to meditate until his chakra levels had built up properly. After a while, he fell asleep without meaning to - his nearly empty chakra levels providing him with vast fatigue.When he woke up some ten hours later, he nearly felt himself, or at least, what he thought he could remember himself feeling. But then, he must be more powerfull now with the demon, or perhaps it had to be unleashed as Shukaku with Gaara, or Kyuubi with Naruto.
After much debate and observation, Sasuke decided that the demon could wait for the moment, as he had other things to attend to. A quick visit to the bathroom, and a much smaller secondary meal then his first, along with a quick raid to the crypt keepers closet saw him standing by the door, wrapped up inside a heavy trench coat, ready to go. "Places to go, people to see, future generations to erase." His laughter trailed him into the darkness of predawn.
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Naruto had been traveling for roughly six months as he had it figured, and the constant travel had been good to him. His body had regained much of it's former tone. His memories, though, were still incomplete, but only to a limited extent - childhood. His brain felt like swiss cheese when he tried to remember anything that had to do with friends and his surrogate family, but that was to be expected after all. The Demon Lords were busily sifting through his brain to find suitable hosts to train, and so they had only given him memories that weren't associated with those of potential. It was odd, to know most of the candidates that were beign chosen since his youngest years, yet remember nothing about them. Three of the lords had chosen but, for the moment, the rest remained undecided
He was currently on the hunt for a notoriously bad gambler, and world renowned peeping tom - two of the three great Sennin that were legendary even before his own day. The only major snag he'd run into up to this point in his journey had been information gathering. He didn't intend to head into Konoha at this time, so he couldn't be entirely sure if either had officially left yet. Regardless of whether Tsunade had left, Naruto knew for a fact that his old perverted sensei was already on the out-and-about, because of the little orange book he kept in his pocket - for those lonely evenings.
Despite any real lack of findings, Naruto was not disappointed. He remembered well the effort it had taken to track down Tsunade, along with unbelievable amount of skill the old pervert had possessed when it came to making himself scarce. Besides which, it wasn't like he hadn't made progress in other areas. He was just picking up the search again after all, having recently finished a trip to Snow Country. 'Matter of fact,' Naruto thought to himself, 'might as well take a break. I hear the ramen calling, and I mustn't keep it waiting.'
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Naruto had quickly located the nearest restaurant and ducked inside, intent on filling himself with the ever so delicious miso-beef-naruto-shrimp-ramen. Having been on travel rations for the past week and a half, Naruto had been impatiently waiting to sink his teeth into real food and could only think of a few things he'd rather do at the moment then get ahold of his food. It was even debatable which he'd have chosen at the time had he been given a choice: Find the Sennin', or eat his ramen.
However, he was rather happy to not be given a choice, sicne this allowed him to eat his ramen guilt free. Eating guilt free was exactly what he had been doing - gobble, gulp, snarf, chomp - when a familiar voice interrupted his enjoyment as readily as kunai to the balls.
"Still making a pig of yourself over those disgusting noodles, eh, Dobe?" The voice had been eerie, but until the last word, Naruto hadn't even given a thought. He froze in place, chopsticks halfway to his wide open mouth, the moment the word dobe had been spoken. Slowly, so as to calm his suddenly pounding heart if nothing else, he put his bite back in the bowl, took a sip of sake, and turned his head to the occupant of the booth behind him. There, in the flesh - though it appeared to be put together from several other peoples flesh - sat Uchiha Sasuke, calmly eating a sashimi plate and sipping at his own mug of sake.
(AN: Okay.. so now that you see my cliff hanger, and the unbelievably bad shortness... Let me explain my reasons, and my snag. Okay, reaons first... All I had left to write before I hit the snag was gonna be a fight between Naruto and Sasuke... but I didn't want to include it in this chapter because I wasn't sure if I wanted them to fight yet. The snag? Alright.. a bit of a hint on the future here, The next chapter is going to be much more plot advancing.. but I'm not sure where I want it advancing yet. So I put it to my readers... Should I simply write out the rest of Naruto's time in the past, or move onto to the time of his birth? If I write out the next year and a half, you will get alot of detailed insight that might possibly expose some future developments and ruin a bit of the surprise... or be an exciting adventure all on its own. Orrrrr... I could simply move onto his birth after Naruto and Sasuke have their little get together... Drop a line and let me know what you guys want, alright? Oh yeah, once I clear this up, I'm going to reload the chapter after adding much and reworking some so that I may keep my promise. Hang with me until then, allright guys 'n gals?)