It took Gaara three days to wake up.
Traversing the underground caverns of the Land of Rivers, it was difficult to tell exactly how much time had passed. Or rather, it would have been if I weren't Uzumaki Naruto. The perceptions of a sage made it easy enough to gauge the time of day based off the sleeping patterns of the wildlife, among other things. So when Gaara finally began to stir on my back, I had a good idea as to how long he'd been out.
I'd been making better time than expected. The caverns were even more extensive than I remembered them being, meaning I didn't have to worry about digging my way out to get to my destination. That, coupled with the extended view of the world Mother Nature shared with me, let me pull ahead of Team 7 without too much effort.
I had pulled so far ahead that by the time Gaara woke up I'd slowed to a casual walk. Couldn't crash the party before it started, after all.
"Wh-" Gaara's voice broke, swallowing the tail end of the word. He groaned, shifting uncomfortably on my back, and I formed a pair of clones to rummage through the pack I had swung across my chest.
"We didn't pack shit," clone on the left reported. I blinked.
"Not even an extra bottle of water?"
"No, remember we had to ask Sasuke for some on the way to Hot Springs? She did the weird kiss thing?" clone on the right reminded me. He tapped his chin. "Which, now that we know she's back, was pretty-"
Clone on the left slapped clone on the right over the head, dispelling him. He glared at the chakra smoke with icy blue disgust and turned on me. He jabbed two fingers at himself, then at me, and dispersed.
Clone on the left never really warmed up to Sasuke romantically.
I frowned. "Could have sworn I picked up water in Haru. Sorry, Gaara."
"What?" Gaara rasped, forcing the word from his battered throat.
"Was gonna offer you a drink, since you're so parched." I glanced around, having long since adjusted to the darkness of the caverns. "I've been burning chakra and drinking from the streams to keep me going for the last three days, mostly. I can dip you into one if you want."
"What?" he repeated. "I don't... What happened? Why aren't you..."
"Dead?"
He nodded.
I shrugged. "I'm pretty tough."
"But..." He cleared his throat, a painful, grating sound. "I've never been hurt before. Nobody has ever gotten past Mother. How did you do it?"
"I hit you hard."
"That's it?" he asked after a beat of expectant silence.
"Really hard."
"If that's true-" Gaara stiffened against my back. "If you put me to sleep, and I've been like this for three days, what happened to Mother? Why- why can't I hear her? What did you do?"
"I hit her harder," I said.
"Hit her," Gaara said blankly. "You hit Mother. And she didn't kill you."
"Really harder."
Gaara chewed on that for a good few minutes, leaving me to my idle musings on my team. They were close to the edge of my range, but close didn't mean a whole lot to a sage. I could feel their chakra as clearly as if they were right next to me, especially Sasuke's. It was as eye-catching as it had ever been, though smaller than it would be in the years to come. I wondered how frustrated that was making her. The drop in my own chakra reserves after the transmigration had been enormous, but that didn't mean much in the grand scheme of things.
Sharing chakra space with the Kyuubi in the womb, being born an Uzumaki, and then becoming the jinchuriki for said Kyuubi meant my reserves were going to be larger than I needed them to be no matter when I was. Sasuke, on the other hand, had dropped from a Kage's chakra reserves to an above average genin's in the span of a day. I could only imagine how restrictive it must feel.
"I don't understand," Gaara finally admitted, pulling my attention from the tiny blue star of chakra that was my crazy girlfriend.
"Understand what?"
"Anything," he said, frustrated. "You're just a genin, and I'm a monster. How could you have beaten me so decisively all by yourself? Only the Kazekage has ever managed it."
"Makes sense," I said, lips quirking. "Since I'm a Hokage in the making."
"Not only that!" Gaara said, rolling right over my nostalgic declaration. "But you- you shut Mother up. Not even he could do that. How did you? Why is it so quiet?" He groaned, thumping his forehead against the back of my head. I held back a snort.
"How are you carrying me?" he suddenly asked, shifting around on my back. "Mother should-" He cut himself off, having apparently reached the right conclusion, and I nodded.
"Yeah, Shukaku's locked down tight. No more automatic defense, no more sleep terrors, and definitely no more crazy murder whispers in your head."
"How?" Gaara asked desperately, and I wondered just how sharply his world had been turned on its axis by all this. In the first timeline it had been more of a gradual thing, seeing the way Konoha treated its shinobi, trying to beat his world view into them, and failing. Here... well. Maybe I had a bit more work to do.
"Look at your hands," I said. Gaara's arms twitched from their position around my shoulders, struggling to move and failing. He inhaled sharply.
"This is..."
His hands were locked together by a cocoon of chakra-infused wood. The conjoined manacles wound from the tips of his fingers down to his elbows, leaving my fellow jinchuriki's arms to dangle over my shoulders, keeping our piggyback balanced. The wooden manacles shimmered and pulsed to my senses, infused with a ridiculous amount of natural energy. Enough to suppress, say, a Bijuu.
"Those'll keep Shukaku's mouth shut until I take 'em off, and in the meantimeyou can sleep as long as you want!" I explained happily, walking across a stream with only a couple stumbling steps.
"Then why..." Gaara hesitated, as if afraid to finish his thought, before cautiously continuing. "Why haven't you killed me?"
Hm.
"Why would I kill you?" I asked, once I had moved on from mentally screaming assurances of our friendship at him.
"I am weak. Helpless." Gaara spat to the side, whether in disgust or in an effort to clear the bloody phlegm from his dried out throat, I wasn't sure. Maybe both. "You've proven that your existence is worthier than mine. I would not be able to stop you."
"That explains how I could kill you," I agreed. "But not why."
"... What?"
"Gaara, were you listening to me while I beat your ass?" I asked. He nodded mutely, and I sighed in relief. It was a pain getting worked up for a good, convincing speech like that if your blood wasn't already pumping.
"Then you know why I haven't killed you."
"Friendship," he said quietly. I nodded.
"Friendship."
"But what does friendship have to do with strength?" he asked. "You beat me because you were stronger. Faster. You even beat Mother. What does that have to do with having friends?" I hummed, considering the question. I hadn't been forced to spell it out for him the first time around, and certainly not like this.
"Why do you kill, Gaara?"
"To validate my existence," he said immediately.
"How does killing other people validate your existence?" I asked, tilting my head back and raising an eyebrow at him. Now that I looked at him, he really was in rough shape. The blood that had been covering his face before had blackened and crusted, and fresh crimson trails were leaking from the sides of his mouth. He was alert, though, in a way he hadn't been before. He looked thoughtful.
He hadn't realized it yet, but time away from Shukaku's influence was already starting to change him for the better.
"By killing those who seek to kill me," he said slowly, mulling over his words. "I prove that my desire to live outweighs their own. They can fear me, shun me, despise me, but they can never take away my right to live. In killing another, I prove that my life is worth more than theirs. I deserve to exist more than they do, no matter how much people love them more than me."
I accepted his words, his ideology, in silence. He hesitated to continue, waiting for me to confirm or deny his beliefs, and when I didn't he settled into uneasy silence.
I gave him a minute to squirm, and then asked, "How does it feel?"
"Incredible," he said. "The feeling of blood staining my sand, of crushing the life out of another, there's nothing that can compare."
"Is that really how you feel?" I asked, no particular inflection in my voice.
"Yes," he said firmly.
"Then, do you want to kill me?"
"Of course I-" Gaara fell silent, and I grinned.
"It's just you up there right now, Gaara. I don't care what Shukaku thinks. Tell me how you feel."
"I... don't want to kill you," he said, voice raspy with disbelief.
"Friendship!" I cheered.
"That's- what-"
"All this time, you've been alone with the Shukaku," I said, the words falling into place moments before I said them. "Your mom died when you were born, your dad might as well have died too for all the good he did, and your village was terrified of you. Even your brother and sister, the two people who should have loved you the most, were convinced that you were a monster. Something to be avoided."
Though not as thoroughly as they might have believed. Even now I could feel Gaara's team tracking us at a very, very healthy distance. Call it common sense, call it preserving a weapon for their village, but they were worried for him.
"I know how that feels," I continued, smiling sadly. "I know how suffocating it is to have your worth as a human being denied. A person's right to exist should never be a question, but it was for us."
"You know?" Gaara asked. "How?"
I patted my stomach. "Shukaku's only one of nine, you know."
"Demon," Gaara breathed.
"Yep."
"How..." he hesitated again, struggling to come to terms with this new information without Shukaku to guide his thoughts. "How do you stand it? The looks, the words. Don't they madden you? Don't they kill you?"
"They do," I said softly. "They always have."
"What's different?" he pressed. "What happened to you that made you so much stronger, so much happier-" The answer struck him all at once, and I tilted my head again to smile at him, genuinely.
"Friends."
We walked on for a good long while after that in silence, Gaara hanging loosely off my back while I took us to another battle, another pointless conflict. At one point, deciding we were still far enough ahead to take a quick break, I formed another pair of kage bunshin and tapped the wooden shackles joining Gaara's hands together. They parted like strands of fine silk beneath my touch, separating into two gauntlets that would continue to suppress Shukaku's chakra while I answered nature's call.
When I returned, whistling a tuneless little melody that Sasuke's aunt used to sing to her, I found my clones carefully holding Gaara above one of the caverns' many streams while he drank greedily.
"He's gonna need food at some point," clone on the right said, waving at me. I waved back, rummaging through my pack for a rations bar. I doubted he'd thank me for the tasteless crap, but it'd keep him going.
Clones on the left and right heaved Gaara up onto my back once he'd had his fill, and I sealed his gauntlets back together with another tap of my finger. I tore the wrapping off the rations bar and poked it at his mouth. He turned his head.
"Look, I know they don't taste good, but it is what it is. You need to get something in your stomach." Being a jinchuriki meant you had some leeway that others didn't when it came to eating and drinking - survival in general, I guess - but it couldn't keep you going indefinitely. Trust me. I knew.
"Who was your first friend?" Gaara murmured. Ah.
"His name's Iruka," I said, shoving the rations bar in a pocket to be forgotten like it deserved. "He taught me in the Academy, or tried to. I was a terrible student. The other sensei didn't like me, my classmates ignored me, and I really didn't work as hard as I should have. He didn't care, though. He gave me the benefit of the doubt, and when push came to shove he chose me over a friend he'd known for years, because he knew I didn't deserve the abuse.
"Me. The village brat. The nuisance no one wanted anything to do with. The demon." I chuckled. "I don't know what he saw in me, but I'm glad he did."
"I see."
"My first best friend took a little more work," I continued, heaving Gaara up into a more comfortable position on my back as I walked.
"Best friend," Gaara said, testing the term. "What is the difference?"
"It's a little hard to explain," I said. "A friend is someone that brightens your day. They take you out to eat ramen, they help you clean your apartment out when you can't find your favorite orange jacket, and they make the stares and the words from the rest of the world bearable. You'd die for them, no questions asked."
"Die?" Gaara gasped. "Would that not defeat the purpose of living for them?"
I laughed. "Why do you think I'm so strong?" I asked. "If I have to choose between my death and a friend's, I'll die every time. That's why I need to be strong enough for us both to live. Living for yourself will never lead to true strength. Living to protect another day is the only way to break through your own limitations. You're always strongest when you're protecting those precious to you."
"Wise words," Asura said. I rolled my eyes, accepting the compliment with a small smile.
"If that is the value of a friend," Gaara said, "then what is the value of a best friend?"
"A best friend is just a friend, but more. They'll do all the stuff a friend does, but they'll do it no matter how many times you ask, no matter when you ask. Hell, no matter where you ask," I said, fond memories resurfacing of Godaime Kazekage Gaara receiving my invitation to stop by Konoha for ramen sometime and appearing at the village gates the next morning. Poor Suna had been so shaken up by his disappearance that they'd gone into lock down.
"A friend will only ever see the best sides of you, because that's what they deserve to see. They're already holding the rest of the world at bay for you. They don't need to deal with your angst on top of that. But if you slip up around your best friend, it's okay. They won't tell." I breathed deeply, in, out, lessening the pressure that had crept through my chest, encircling my heart.
"A friend makes the rest of the world bearable. If you have a best friend, the rest of the world doesn't even matter. You'd die for a friend, but you'd have to beat your best friend to the punch before they died for you."
"I see," Gaara whispered. "That sounds... nice."
"It is."
"Who was your first best friend?"
"He was a real jackass when I first met him. Most best friends are, though," I said, grinning. "Went on and on about how he was going to tear me apart if I didn't get out of his way, I knew nothing about his pain, I was a fool, yadda yadda. Y'know, best friend stuff. It took one helluva beat down on both sides for me to realize he wasn't nearly as bad as I'd first thought.
"He was mostly just me, if I hadn't found that first friend. He was sad and angry, and his only company was even sadder and angrier than him. He covered it up, but after a real good fight you can sorta tell. He didn't want to kill, deep down. He wanted someone to realize he wasn't the monster he pretended to be, and love him for the human being he was."
I glanced sidelong at Gaara, and found him staring back at me with wide eyes. "He looked a lot like you," I decided. "His name was Gaara."
"You-" he choked. "You..."
"Me," I agreed. "All you need is a plain old friend to pull you out of the darkness. I'll give you one better."
"Why?"
"No one deserves the life we lived," I said. "I've had a lot of enemies, but if there's someone out there I'd condemn to that, I haven't met 'em. We're all people in the end. We all have the potential to do good." I reached back and tapped him on his love tattoo. "You could do so much more good than bad, Gaara. And you will." And you have.
"I don't know how to be a best friend," Gaara admitted, ashamed. I laughed again.
"Don't worry about it. You're a natural."
"How do you know?" he asked, though without the scorn or the doubt that had permeated our conversation before. Now he just sounded mystified. "I could have sworn I'd never met you before. How do you know me so well already?"
I tapped my own forehead, right on the crimson dot where Mother Nature had prodded me awake, and smiled.
"The best friends always do."
"The arcana is the means by which all is revealed."
"The arcana," Sasuke echoed, marveling at the ridiculousness of it all. "Those are playing cards."
"They are symbols," the Rikudou Sennin corrected her, flicking a finger and splitting the deck of hyper-dense chakra cards. Individual tarot drifted through the air between them, one following another in a slowly expanding ring. Sasuke counted twenty-two before the black chakra constructs lit up with scalding white light.
"The tarot are stand-ins for the arcana," the Sage said, gesturing at the completed ring of twenty-two cards. The white light burned through each of them, carving out numbers and pictures that were vaguely familiar for reasons Sasuke couldn't recall. "The arcana is no physical thing. It is a concept, a series of steps-" And here he smiled. "A story."
"What does this have to do with bringing Naruto back?" Sasuke snapped. This talk of a dead man's children and storytelling cards meant nothing to her. She had no time, either to listen to this or to fix things. Even in the perfect health that this strange dream had rendered her, she felt her eyes burning and her chest constricting around her heart at the fresh, bleeding memory of Naru- her- his-
It was too much. He wasn't supposed to die. Damn him, damn the rest, he shouldn't have to die for them. He should have saved himself.
"The arcana," the Rikudou Sennin said gently, "Is the journey that will bring you together again."
Sasuke sucked in a breath, finally looking down at the woman standing in her reflection for some sort of confirmation. She didn't like the idea of some woman who couldn't manage her own feelings claiming Sasuke's soul in any capacity, didn't like it at all, but if she could bring Naruto back...
Indra's reflection met her frantic gaze, and smiled with barely restrained anticipation. Sasuke's heart leapt.
"How?" she demanded of history's most powerful shinobi. "What do I do? What do you want from me?"
The Sage waved a placating hand. "I want nothing from you, Uchiha Sasuke, but for you to continue walking the path you are already on."
If this cryptic dialogue was a person, she'd have already stabbed them.
"How do I do that?"
"As I said, the arcana is a story." The Sage plucked a card from the air, its scalding white decal showing a man with two zeros beneath his feet. "It is the story of a Fool's Journey, and every card is a step along their path."
"You're calling me a fool," Sasuke said flatly. In her peripheral vision, she saw Indra's reflection raise a hand to cover her amused smirk.
"We are all fools in the beginning," the Sage said, his godlike eyes - how she hated those eyes - dancing. "Though, admittedly, some more so than others.
"The Fool's Journey is a story of self-actualization. In progressing through each stage of the arcana they bring themselves closer and closer to nature and the elements. A fool is a fool, from beginning to end, but that is not necessarily bad." The Sage twirled the Fool's card in his hand, and the rest of the tarot began orbiting it. "The Fool is the first of the arcana. It is the number zero- nothing and everything at once. It possesses infinite potential.
"Unfortunately, that potential is not always realized."
"Indra," Sasuke said, and at Indra's offended look added, "And Asura."
"Precisely." The twenty-one tarot broke off from the Fool's card and drifted over to Sasuke, orbiting around her in its place. "You know of the power my line wields, and by now I hope you know of the burden that comes with that power."
Sasuke thought of herself and that woman, of bleeding eyes and ever encroaching madness. She thought of Naruto, of brave smiles and merciless crucifixions. She inclined her head to the Rikudou Sennin and his daughter, because she did know. She knew more than she had ever dreamed of knowing back when her own brother had torn her world out from under her.
She knew more than she could ever hope to forget.
"I thought you would," the Sage said, twisting the statement into an apology. She ignored it. "You know the burden grows heavier the deeper you delve into that strength. The constant pressure of it weighs on your sanity, sharpens your pains, and eventually, you break beneath its weight. It happened to my children. It happened to Madara and Hashirama."
"But not you," Sasuke realized, the Sage's eclectic speech finally coming together in her head. He smiled.
"Sasuke... What is it you want to do? What do you hope to gain through this fight? I want to hear what it is you honestly think."
What did she want? Sasuke reeled at the question, and the weight behind it. She knew instinctively that this was a turning point in the conversation- one way or another, the riddles ended with her answer. She couldn't afford to be wrong.
So what did she want? What had brought her to that battlefield? She hadn't expected to win, not really. The odds were stacked against them, and they had been for years. Why had she thrown herself into the open maw of the Juubi's restless corpse, fought for an entire nation of people she couldn't care less about, and killed herself trying to strike down Uchiha Madara? For what?
For who?
"I..." she whispered, blinking angrily against the tears. "I just want him back."
"So that is your answer," the Sage mused. She held her breath. "I understand."
The tarot revolving around Sasuke drew in closer, and she gasped as one of them brushed the skin of her shoulder. The hyper-dense chakra surged through her like lightning, and along with it came memories. Memories of battle, of the clean burn of a black flame, and of rough lips against her own. She found herself falling into laughing blue eyes all over again at the tarot card's touch.
She pulled back from the chakra construct, looking at its design with wide eyes. A heart supported by a tree, with a man and a woman standing on either side of it. Above it all, a sun.
The Lovers.
"Desire found in the arms of another," the Sage said, amused. "Perhaps more literally than usual."
Another card brushed her left ear, and Sasuke hissed as darker memories struck her. Memories of cold, slithering things, of corpses and screaming and blood red eyes that for once were not her own. Shame and self-loathing, past and present, coursed into her from the card. She jerked back, refusing to look at the card, but knowing its name nonetheless.
The Hierophant.
The Sage sighed. "The first level of understanding. A reevaluation of one's understanding of the world and its structure."
She supposed that if any word fit that particular day, reevaluation was it.
The next card she dodged, watching its scalding white chariot drift innocently by with some contempt. Another promptly grazed her ankle, and she found herself flooded with memories of sunlit canopies of leaves and deep, relaxed breaths. She felt cool bark against her back and warm skin beneath her fingers. Sasuke took a moment longer to remove herself from this card, but only a moment. The card, depicting a lantern above an eye ringed with concentric circles, floated lazily on.
The Hermit.
"Comfort in oneself, found in the withdrawal from another."
And so they went. One after another, Sasuke found herself drawn into memories from her past by the Rikudou Sennin's tarot. Almost all of them were violent, and all of them involved him in some way. Her stupid, stupid lover.
Eleven of the twenty-one cards revolving around her came and went, and then the Sage flicked the Fool's card from his hand towards her. She hesitated. The memories before this had all come from very specific points in her life, very specific occurences, all with a general theme connecting them. If this was the first card, the first memory, she had a good idea of what it would be.
Nevertheless, she reached out and touched the card.
Closed her eyes.
And pushed it away.
Some memories did not bear dwelling on.
"A beginning for two young fools," the Sage said quietly.
"Then this journey," Sasuke said, watching the tarot drift away one at a time with some relief. "It's how you became as strong as you are without breaking?"
The Sage nodded. "Every step of the Fool's Journey unlocks yet more of one's hidden potential. My children never finished their journeys, and neither did any of their descendents. My sibling and I have been the only ones in our lines to manage it, and so we were the only ones to withstand the curse of our family's power."
Sasuke accepted this information, processed it, and-
Paused.
"Your sibling?" she asked, tilting her head. From the corner of her eye, she found Indra's reflection looking at her father with similar intensity.
"Yes. Ootsutsuki Hamura."
"Hamura," Sasuke murmured. A masculine name. It seemed to be a trend. "I thought you said this cycle of love and hatred began with your children, sage."
The Rikudou Sennin remained silent. Indra's eyes widened in outrage.
"Was it different for the two of you?" Sasuke asked. "Did you accept her feelings where Asura and Hashirama did not?"
The Sage closed his eyes, looking well and truly his age, and admitted, "I like to hope those feelings did not exist."
Sasuke scoffed. "Of course you do." It figured that her idiot would be the man with the most sense of this entire line.
"So you see," the Sage said. "My children and their descendents fell short in their journeys because they could not face their own desires and accept them. And how could I guide them towards doing so, when I had never experienced such a thing myself?
"That is why you're different, Uchiha Sasuke. You and Asura's descendent managed to do what none of your predecessors have done. You accepted your feelings for one another, acted upon them, and made them your strength. My children know it too, which is why Indra remains by your side even now. She knows that you have the greatest potential to complete your Fool's Journey, and in the doing unlock the full potential of her power."
"But I didn't," Sasuke said. The twelfth memory, The Hanged Man, had been far too recent for her to have worked through the rest of the tarot between then and now. She had failed like all the rest.
"You haven't," the Sage agreed. "Not yet." And suddenly, the thirteenth card, the one that had never stopped orbiting her, rose up . It rotated slowly, its scalding white design that of a human skull. Sasuke didn't even need to touch it to know its name and the memory it possessed.
Death.
"Death, contrary to what you might think, does not imply the end of a life. It is an end, but a good end. It is the greatest transition, from the first half of the journey to the last." The Sage spread his hands, and every one of the cards but Death rushed back to him, melting into one another and splitting off into six spheres of dense black chakra once again.
"If you wish to continue your journey, Sasuke, save the world from the threat that Uchiha Madara poses, and return to Uzumaki Naruto, you must embrace Death."
Yes. Yes. "How?"
The Rikudou Sennin reached out and offered her his left hand.
"Transmigration."
"What's going on, Sasuke?" Sakura asked for what must have been the dozenth time in as many minutes. I rolled my eyes, but didn't otherwise snap at her. I was in too good a mood.
"We're following the caverns," I said.
"But where? And how do you know we're following the caverns?"
Because I've been here before. I've turned these caverns inside out, for various unseemly reasons. On top of that, I could feel Naruto's awareness on my skin. It was unmistakable. The one fatal flaw of his otherwise unparalleled sensor abilities.
You felt Naruto. In the same way a shinobi unconsciously felt the chakra of the world around them and adapted themselves to it, Naruto's influence could be felt in the trees, the flora, even the wildlife. If Naruto wanted to find you, all of nature was against you.
It would have been unnerving if I hadn't worked it to my advantage years ago.
"Hard to explain," I finally said.
"Another topic for later?" Kakashi asked. I grimaced and nodded.
Convincing the elite jonin to leave Naruto for the Ichibi hadn't been easy. It had taken a promise of more than a few explanations in the future, ranging from my knowledge of lightning manipulation to Naruto's use of the rasengan. He hadn't mentioned the names of our ancestors, but I doubted he'd missed it. That would probably be another explanation he'd demand of us once this was all said and done.
And even so, I doubt he'd have gone along with it if I hadn't guided him along the same path he'd taken us the first time around. This path was familiar to him, and he knew that it would eventually lead us to safety in the form of a Konoha outpost on the eastern border.
It was a happy coincidence that this same path would pass by an opening in the underground network of caverns. A happy coincidence that I didn't doubt Naruto had taken into account.
We were close. My memory was fuzzy this far back, except for the flashes of clarity that came from the moments I'd had my sharingan active. I knew our final destination, though, and that was enough. Naruto's constant presence kept me on track. He would know exactly where he was going.
I realized I was smiling again, and schooled my features.
"Someone's in a good mood," Kakashi observed.
"Quiet, Hatake."
"Sasuke, he's our sensei-"
"Quiet, Sakura."
I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to focus on the fight at hand, and how I was going to handle it. I could stall until Naruto got there, of course, and from that point on there wouldn't be much thinking required. There was only one insufferable cunt in the world capable of defeating both of us at the same time, and she was almost certainly dead at this point in the timeline. They wouldn't stand a chance.
Assuming Naruto made it to the fight in time, and that Kakashi didn't die first.
I had to be smart about this. I'd been conserving my chakra well, and in the short breaks between runs most of my reserves had been restored. By my measure I could safely handle two genuine chidori, or a single chidori nagashi. The former could be useful in putting down the monkey, but the latter might allow me to clear the battlefield of all opponents but said monkey, leaving Kakashi to face off with him until Naruto arrived.
But that was assuming Kakashi could handle the monkey for any length of time. Not a risk I was thrilled to take. Amaterasu knew I'd never hear the end of it if I let Naruto's sensei die when there had been a chance to save him.
So I had to be smart. I had to map this fight out in its entirety. I had been thinking about the people involved for weeks. I knew enough of them from the first timeline to use now. I could flip this entire encounter on its head and have things wrapped up in less than a minute if I only-
"Stop!"
Hn.
I plucked a kunai out of the air with contemptuous ease as it came hurtling towards me, twisting and flicking it into another. They glanced off each other with a metallic chime and hurtled off in two different directions, each intercepting another two kunai on their way to Sakura and Kakashi's throat and eye, respectively.
I landed on one of the flimsier branches, swaying up and down with the wind as I called upon my chakra. My pulse redoubled in my veins, heart beating a tattoo against my chest as my newly advanced sharingan whirled to life. Two tomoe in each eye, along with the rediscovered ability to copy actions and techniques. Out of date, but getting better.
Kakashi landed in front of me, to my chagrin, while Sakura took up a position to my left. The chunin rounded up the rear with our woefully conscious client trembling on his back.
And in front of us came the Iwa contingency.
The Sandaime Tsuchikage's granddaughter touched down a mere tree's length from Kakashi, her pink eyes narrow and serious. Kurotsuchi was only a few years older than I would have been the first time around, standing a full head shorter than Kakashi. The jonin flak jacket worn over her tan and red uniform, however, suggested that she was just as advanced for her age as I had been for mine.
Well. In the same league, at least. Maybe.
Behind her, a complete dozen Iwa nin assumed formation. In comparison to the trash that had been in the process of ambushing the client and his team of Konoha nin before we sabotaged them days ago, this was a far more competent group of shinobi. Chunin vests still abounded, but mixed in here and there were flak jackets that could only belong to a tokubetsu jonin. This was an elite team, composed of the most highly skilled shinobi that a village could afford to restrict to a single team.
And it was twice the size it should have been.
The reason for this plowed through a branch, hitting the forest floor in a crouch and bouncing back up into the treetops in the time it took Sakura to gasp. The monkey stood by the Tsuchikage's granddaughter as an equal, crossing his arms and surveying our group with unimpressed eyes.
The monkey humphed, flicking a contemptuous hand through his bristly red beard. "Pulled my team off track for the Copy Cat and a few brats? What happened to bein' a big bad jonin, Kuro-chan?"
"Don't call me that," Kurotsuchi growled. The monkey shrugged, the slabs of muscle layered over his neck and shoulders rolling with the motion.
He was powerfully built, for all his years. He wore a long-sleeved shirt colored Iwa's signature muddy red, parted to reveal a mesh shirt stretched to its limits across the man's barrel chest. Dark grey pants fell just past his knees and tucked into thin shin wraps, completing the outfit. Every one of the monkey's movements broadcasted strength, and his clothing only amplified that message.
He was Yoton no Roshi, jinchuriki to the Yonbi, and aside from the Tsuchikage himself he was the oldest and most powerful shinobi Iwa had to offer. That, and he would be Kakashi's murderer in the very near future if I didn't do something about it.
"Yoton no Roshi," Kakashi said. His single uncovered eye flickered back to me, and I could practically see the thoughts and plans rushing through his finely honed mind. "Is there something we can do for you?"
Roshi sighed. "Look, kid. I was supposed to be home, in a bath, and hammered half to hell two days ago. I don't have the patience for diplomacy right now. Do what Kuro-chan says or I'll burn ya to the ground."
"Stand down and surrender the noble," Kurotsuchi commanded Kakashi. "What you did to Udo's team won't be forgiven, but the Tsuchikage will consider your salvation if you come peacefully. Stand down."
"This Udo," Kakashi said, in a soothing voice that seemed completely wrong for him. "He lead a team of chunin, correct?"
"That's right," Roshi drawled.
"Then I'm afraid there's been a misunderstanding. Udo's team attacked a team of Konoha shinobi without provocation in our own territory. My team only came to their lawful aid." The elite jonin splayed his hands, a gesture of peace that brought his left hand conveniently close to his headband-covered eye.
"Her granddad wants the noble," Roshi explained. "Udo's team was pursuin' him in the Tsuchikage's name, makin' their actions most lawful by default."
"That's not how it works," Sakura blurted, no doubt without thinking, and quailed beneath the sharp looks that Kakashi and the Iwa contingency sent her.
Roshi laughed.
"We're in neutral territory, girlie," he said genially. "Konoha laws don't mean what they do back home." His chakra rippled and pulsed in time with the words, revealing lakes upon rivers upon oceans of chakra roiling inside him. Chakra enough to sustain a bijuu. As much chakra as my beloved fool.
Well. In the same league, at least. Maybe.
Kakashi stared off against the Tsuchikage's granddaughter and his most powerful shinobi. Seconds ticked by with naught but the heavy breathing of our client and the presence of Naruto's chakra to keep me company. Then Kakashi sighed and lifted his headband from his stolen - borrowed? - eye.
"Sasuke, Sakura," he said. "Leave. Find Naruto. Now."
Roshi rolled his eyes and his chakra came unbound, rolling red hot over us like a physical thing. Sakura wavered on her feet, clamping down on a terrified whimper. She looked to me, terrified, panicked, looking for guidance.
"Chidori..." I whispered, gripping the hilt of my chokuto.
"Sasuke!" Kakashi snapped, already moving as Kurotsuchi started blurring through hand seals. The monkey turned the full weight of his attention on me, tensing-
"Nagashi!"
My blade leapt free of its sheathe alight with electricity, and with a single vicious swing I bathed the forest in its light.
Lightning and chakra rushed out of me and into the air, parting around Kakashi and converging on the next closest target- the monkey. He fell from his branch with a startled grunt, and the lightning branched back out, tagging every shinobi in sight. Startled shouts and screams of pain careened from the throats of a dozen veteran Iwa nin, music to my ears.
Over half of them fell to the forest floor in convulsing heaps, acrid smoke coming off their skin in plumes. Four, three tokubetsu jonin and a very lucky chunin, managed to collect themselves in time to stick the landing on the forest floor. Wind specialists, perhaps, or some other miscellaneous technique I hadn't caught.
I was a bit preoccupied dodging the monkey for all I was worth.
Roshi shed the paralyzing effects of the chidori nagashi in seconds, took one look at Kurotsuchi's fight with Kakashi, and disappeared in a seamless shunshin. My eyes just barely caught the motion of it, immature as they were, and I dashed to the left. Even using my own shunshin, I only avoided his hammer blow by a margin that was two fingers thick.
"Helluva sucker punch!" Roshi complimented, yanking his arm out of the tree trunk he'd buried it in. He flexed his hands along with his chakra, and the temperature between us jumped a good ten degrees. "Wonder how much y've got left to give."
Not enough. "Enough."
"We'll see, won't we?" He disappeared in another shunshin, and I had no choice but to respond in kind.
The world dissolved into a stream of high speed motions, one after another. The shunshin wasn't a particularly chakra-intensive technique, being a simple improvement on the natural augmentations that all shinobi performed unconsciously. I could use it just about non-stop until Naruto arrived, whenever he arrived, even with my greatly reduced reserves. That wasn't to say I wanted to, though.
The shunshin's primary drawback, and the reason it wasn't the standard for all shinobi conflict, was that it was too fast. The naked eye couldn't keep up with the sheer intensity of movement that the shunshin provided, meaning that a shinobi using it in battle was running on instinct, muscle memory, and depending on how much they had of the first two, dumb luck.
A shinobi with Roshi's skill and experience could utilize it flawlessly almost every time. With my sharingan, I had enough awareness to avoid the absolute worst collisions and keep up with the fight. With a fully matured sharingan and the skill and experience that could only come with years of repeated use?
There was a reason Shunshin no Shisui was such a dangerous shinobi, despite specializing in a D-rank jutsu that lazy sensei taught their students in place of actual techniques. I had been close to that level of mastery before my transmigration. Now, I was just barely proficient enough to keep the fight going.
Roshi appeared to my right a scant second before I came out of my own shunshin, reoriented himself as I emerged from the technique, and barreled into me with all two hundred plus pounds of him.
"Sasuke!"
I thrashed in his grip, struggling to bring my chokuto around, but there was no moving him. I crashed into and through one branch, then another, and another, until all that was left between Roshi and the ground was me. I looked up at him, at the confident, almost relaxed set of his eyes, and snarled.
Lightning exploded to life between us, striking Iwa's jinchuriki at the arms and chest in a miniature chidori nagashi. Like the one I'd used in the fight three days ago, it was far less powerful for the reduced chakra cost. Roshi didn't even release his grip.
He did loosen it, though, just enough for me to move my sword arm.
I drove my chokuto into the juncture between his third and fourth ribs, aiming for the heart, but my blade had barely cleared three inches when his bear hug tightened and then tightened again. I arched into his grip, my vision flickering white, and then Roshi let go and I hit the ground.
I had the presence of mind to shunshin to the right as soon as I felt firm earth beneath me, scrambling to my feet and dashing away with just enough speed to avoid a pile driver that would have ended my life.
I panted harshly, my back an uninterrupted plane of screaming flesh, and chanced a glance around me as Roshi straightened up. In the first timeline, Kakashi had fielded both the monkey and the Tsuchikage's granddaughter while Naruto and I tried to do something against the entourage of chunin and tokubetsu jonin. Taking some weight off of our sensei had to have had some positive-
The forest was on fire.
I disappeared in another shunshin, avoiding a low jab that would have broken at least one rib, and kept moving towards what I assumed was Kakashi's side of the fight. Around me, trees burned. A quick application of wind chakra bent the smoke that was beginning to choke the forest, allowing it to hug my skin without actually impeding me. Easier to move through, with the bonus of obscuring me from my opponent's sight.
It was possible that he could sense me anyway, but something told me Roshi wasn't much of a sensor. That didn't usually come with a heavy hitter's skill set. Naruto was, as always, an exception.
I froze at the roar of a nearby flame, and hopped sideways as an honest to Amaterasu meteor slammed into a tree some ways off, shattering it at the base and setting the corpse alight. The meteor, its diameter as wide around as Kakashi was tall, kept going unimpeded by the first tree. Then it hit another. And another. And another.
Yoton no Roshi. Right.
Flames of a more banal nature followed the jinchuriki's shot in the dark, lighting up the forest on by one. It seemed a couple of the living tokubetsu jonin were katon specialists.
I narrowed my eyes, peering through the smoke to the chakra beyond, and found my target. It was hard to miss him, as densely packed with chakra as he was. I considered my options for a moment, watching him hock and spit another meteor at a patch of forest dangerously close to my teammate, the chunin, and the client. Sakura cried out as the heat of it washed over them, and Roshi immediately reoriented on them through the smoke.
I paused. Watched him rear up for another meteor. Considered.
... Best not.
Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu!
My own fireball hurtled through the smoke, one amongst dozens, and consumed the monkey from hips to the tips of his violently red hair. Of course, he was still standing when the flame passed, and said violently red hair was only marginally singed, but it interrupted his technique.
And brought his attention back to me.
Blinded as he was by the smoke, there was only so much I could do before he found me. I dashed off again, but this time he was on my heels, and soon enough he'd overtaken me entirely. I twisted halfway through a shunshin and lashed out with my chokuto right as we came level with one another, opening his forearm up with one clean stroke.
I might as well have missed for all the mind he paid it. He humphed and kicked out at my wrist, seeking to disarm me. I hissed in pain as bone crumpled and broke beneath the blow, but I held onto my blade all the same.
Then Roshi planted his feet and twisted his fingers, dog ox hare snake, and threw his head back.
"Well now," I murmured, watching the chakra boil and surge up his throat.
The meteor erupted from his mouth no farther than five yards away from me, burning uncomfortably against my skin before it even took shape. I gathered chakra for another shunshin, knowing as I did that it wouldn't be fast enough. I was going to suffer for this hubris, one way or another.
Death or disfigurement. Depending on Naruto's reaction, I wasn't sure which was worse.
"Heads up!"
A silver-haired blur that utterly baffled my immature sharingan hit me in the core of my stomach, driving the breath from my lungs and wiping away the world around me. I blinked and found myself outside the meteor's area of effect, struggling to catch a breath while Kakashi carefully set me on my feet. By the time I did manage a short gasp he was already gone, diving back into the fray with Roshi in hot pursuit.
"... Hn."
"Sasuke!"
I turned, raising an eyebrow at Sakura as she touched down in front of me. She was wild eyed, frayed around the edges, and clearly out of her depth. For all that, she had a kunai clenched firmly in both hands and didn't look like she intended to move before I did.
At least she was doing her job, I supposed.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"You're hurt," she said, as if I couldn't feel the ache in my back and the tension in my sunburnt skin. Hubris, indeed. I needed more chakra and a better body. Better as in stronger, not- well, perhaps both.
"I'm fine. What's the situation?"
"Kakashi-sensei beat the Tsuchikage's granddaughter back," Sakura reported, inching back a step as a tree heaved a tortured groan and went down in flames. "I don't know where she went. The other Iwa nin tried to gang up on him, but he was too fast, so they turned on the client."
"And?"
"I don't know. Tatsuno took him and fled, but I lost him. I'm not sure how far he could have gotten, though." Sakura looked bleakly around. "There isn't much forest left."
I inhaled, sulfur and the cloying scent of burnt life filling me to the brim. I idly wondered how many fire specialists one Iwa team could have as I drank in the ruined forest, the trees burnt to the roots and the grassy grounds wiped bare. I exhaled, easing my chokuto into the hand with the functioning wrist, and leapt into another shunshin.
Sakura shrieked as I threw her over my shoulder and rushed deeper into the flaming ruin. Behind us, the Iwa chunin and a tokubetsu jonin riddled the earth we'd been standing on with metal. They rushed after us, one gripping a katana in two hands while the other dug in their pockets for more kunai. I pivoted and threw us into another two shunshin in quick succession, vanishing into the smoke.
"You- you-" Sakura sputtered while I deposited her from my shoulder to the scorched dirt.
"Not all of them went after the client," I explained. Perhaps unnecessarily, perhaps not. You never knew with pink-haired girls.
"You saved me."
I rolled my eyes, pulling a roll of medical tap from the pouch on my thigh and winding it around my broken wrist. "Didn't do it for you."
Sakura frowned. "Then who-"
The earth lurched beneath us as the monkey pounded not one, but five meteors into it all at once. The air between them rippled and blurred with the speed of our sensei's passage, and Iwa's jinchuriki leapt back, away from us, to avoid a pack of lightning hounds converging on him at a dead sprint. It seemed Kakashi was worth the hype after all.
"Suiton: Mizurappa!"
Unfortunately, there was a reason he'd died the first time around.
Kurotsuchi's water trumpet caught Kakashi mid-leap, and suspended as he was, there was nothing he could do but block the worst of it. The jet of hyper-condensed water hit him dead in the chest, and if his crossed arms prevented any damage, they certainly didn't prevent the technique from throwing him clear across the newly made clearing.
I cast around for the water source she'd drawn from and saw a miniature volcano rising up from the earth behind the Tsuchikage's granddaughter. Earth Rising Excavation. A technique that connected two surfaces - like, say, an underground river to an above ground forest - and forced the bottom surface to rise to the top. Clever.
Kakashi found his feet and his speed sheer moments before Roshi hammered his position with flaming meteors. He appeared on the other side of the forest from us, running through hand seals at a frantic pace. Forcing the Iwa nin to choose between him and us. Which was the priority. Which was the greater threat.
"Run! That's an order!"
It was a gamble, an attempt to attract enough of the heat to give us a chance at escape. A well-reasoned gamble, but a gamble nonetheless.
Kurotsuchi and Roshi exchanged a look. Kurotsuchi made a sharp motion, and the monkey scoffed. Then they broke off, the teenage jonin rushing forward to engage our sensei with two of her tokubetsu jonin in tow while the monkey set his sights on me. I didn't need to look to know that the remaining Iwa nin had come up on our behinds. Sakura's body language said more than enough.
This was it. This was the moment it all went downhill. For all the good my transmigration's knowledge did me, I was back in the same place I'd been before, with only a handful of dead Iwa nin to show for it.
Against Roshi I had been outmatched. Against Roshi and whatever members of his personal team were left, I didn't stand a chance. We'd be dispatched in short order. My chakra reserves had fallen even further than I'd ... infuriating.
"Not a bad fight, girlie," Roshi said, coughing charcoal and sulfur into a gloved fist. "Haven't thrown around that much lava that fast in years. Your sensei's a quick one."
I could see it all play out in the clarity of my sharingan's recorded memories. We'd try to fight back, to escape, to do just about anything, with some variations added with my advanced skills in mind. In the end, we'd fall, and Roshi would strike the killing blow. Naruto would take it, would save us, and lose his mind to the demon in his stomach.
They'd fight, jinchuriki against jinchuriki, and Naruto would make something of it. We'd feel some hope. And then the monkey would come out and burn it all to the ground. He'd strike the killing blow, the real killing blow, the one Naruto wouldn't be getting up from.
And Kakashi would save him. He'd take it, like Naruto had taken the one before, but he wouldn't have a demon to stand him back up.
Naruto would scream, would cry, would rage, and then Kakashi's last words would pierce his crimson haze. He'd turn away from Iwa's demon, away from revenge, doing in a single second what I could never do and giving up his vengeance for the ones precious to him. He'd throw both of his teammates over his shoulders and blow through the enemy nin, through the Tsuchikage's daughter, deeper into the Land of Rivers. Further from home.
We'd spend the next month wandering from enemy territory to enemy territory, terrified of anything and everything. Just three genin out on their first C-rank mission. Three children searching for home. We'd find it eventually, but it would hurt getting there.
"Alright there, girlie?" Rochi asked. "You're lookin' a bit traumatized."
But... that wasn't quite right, was it? Naruto wasn't here. Not standing with us, trapped.
My lips curled.
No, he was in the caverns. The caverns beneath the earth. The caverns that Kurotsuchi had drawn a volcanic connection from for her technique. A volcanic connection which was lighting up to my eyes with chakra that did not belong to any technique of hers. Chakra that was surging up from the caverns towards the surface.
Rochi noticed it a second too late, following my line of sight to the Earth Rising Excavation. He tensed. "What the-"
Too late. The chakra reached the lip and hurtled into open air, littering the skies with thousands upon thousands of-
Grains of sand?
"What?" I rasped, staring blankly at sands as they blotted out the sun. Where was Naruto? I could see his chakra tinting the world, I could feel him, where was he? "No."
"Sasuke?" Sakura gasped. "Is this-"
"No!" I screamed.
The sand fell.
Sakura tackled me to the ground midway through a shunshin, and in the next moment the littlest jinchuriki dropped a sandstorm on the battlefield.
I thrashed against her panicked grip, further damaging my wrist as I drove my fist into her shoulder over and over. She cried out in pain, her voice near inaudible in the sudden howl of the sands as she pleaded with me.
"Stay down, Sasuke! We need to stay-"
I backhanded her across the face as hard as I could.
She flew off me, landing in a stunned heap, and I rolled to my feet. I squinted against the storm, twin tomoe whirling in each eye. It was almost impossible to see through the chakra-saturated sands, but not quite. I could see flickers of foreign chakra, dying flames being snuffed out by the sands.
A panicked shout went up from the chakra signature closest to me, and the sands parted just in time for me to see a cocoon of sand implode with a Iwa nin trapped inside of it. Sand coffin.
I turned to the skies, to the upper limits, and I saw him. Crouched atop the lip of the volcano, one hand held aloft, the other gripping his head. His face was a mess of dried blood, I observed with a hint of vicious satisfaction. But he was alive. He was alive and Naruto wasn't here.
Our eyes met. Mine blood red and speckled with black tomoe. His a poisonous yellow, centered with four-pointed stars. Ichibi.
The sands surrounding me converged, wrapping around my legs and reaching up for my neck. My chokuto quivered in my white-knuckled grip, and the world dimmed as I stared into the littlest bijuu's murderous eyes. I called upon my chakra, electrified it, and prepared myself for a discharge of the last of my energy and a mad dash to the volcano. Naruto wasn't here and he was, and Amaterasu save me, if I had to die a second time to rip his throat out with my bare teeth-
Gaara closed his eyes and the sand went slack.
I blinked, chest heaving, and followed his line of sight as he turned away from me. I watched another Iwa nin get swept up in the sands just the same as me, and I watched the tendrils engulf him, crush him, and gorge on his blood.
What.
Roshi bellowed his fury to the skies somewhere further in, and in response the Yonbi lit up the sands. A ball of fire and chakra bloomed in front of me, devouring waves of sand and spitting them back out as streams of molten glass. It expanded outward and upward, to the clear skies, before dissipating all at once and revealing the monkey himself crouched in its epicenter, caustic red chakra hissing and bubbling along the surface of his skin.
"Boy!" He roared, stomping a foot on the blackened earth. "What the good god damn d'ya think you're doin' to my team!?"
The temperature spiked again, pressing uncomfortably against my skin even from my current distance. Demon locked eyes with demon, and Gaara stared down his senior with complete and utter impassivity. Then he clenched his outstretched fist, ending the life of Roshi's final tokubetsu jonin somewhere off to my left. Roshi growled.
"Boy! I've never killed one o' my own before, but it looks like you're gonna be the first!"
The ground beneath the Iwa jinchuriki cracked and roiled, transforming into something not quite liquid, not quite solid. The demonic chakra coating the monkey like a second skin rippled in time with the earth's contortions, and the air grew ever hotter. Throughout it all, Gaara remained crouched atop Kurotsuchi's volcano, unmoved.
And began to... smile?
Something flashed by me, a flicker of light, and I spun around to follow it. My tomoe spun frantically as they tracked the blur amidst the sands, the billowing flame of a chakra signature. There was too much sand to see, too much to know, but it was too large to be Kakashi's, too bright. Too orange.
The orange blur tore through the sands, wound its way around the circle of burnt earth Roshi had carved out, and in a split second parting of the sands I saw him.
My eyes flew open wide, and he leapt out of the sandstorm.
"Brother!" Naruto shouted, slamming a familiar wooden gauntlet into Roshi's jaw.
The haymaker threw the monkey clear off his feet, and in the moment he was midair another Naruto came sliding out of the sands, twisting at the waist and kicking up into his gut. He flew up, and another Naruto propelled itself off the first's raised leg and punched him in the nose, flipping him back. Three more clones followed, propelling him higher and higher, until the sands themselves lashed out and seized each of his limbs.
Roshi looked up with groggy eyes, and Naruto bore down with a spiraling sphere.
"Rasengan!"
Roshi hit his own molten earth like a comet, disappearing beneath its surface in a spray of lava. Naruto landed on firm ground just outside its range, and then, finally, finally, turned to me. He grinned, and my face burned hotter than any yoton technique at the sheer joy in it. He looked like my Naruto again.
Not because of the smile, though it helped. Not because of his looks, either, because he was still the same little boy he'd been before, just like I was the same little girl. No, it was something altogether more obvious.
It was the ink.
Deep red ink that shadowed his eyelids, branching out and framing the undersides of his eyes with two thick lashes of a brushstroke on either side. And on his forehead, beneath the leaf of his headband, I knew there would be a single red dot, enclosed with a circle. His mark of enlightenment. His sagehood.
He raised a hand and waved. I blinked. Opened my mouth. Close it.
I waved back.
And the monkey burst free of its molten prison with a furious howl.
"Gaara!" Naruto called, and the sandstorm redoubled. The littlest jinchuriki tore the earth to pieces and broke those pieces down into grains of sand, adding them to the waves.
"BOYS!" Roshi clawed himself fully from the lava, a single demonic tail writhing behind him. "Enough! Enough!"
Sand rolled over him, snuffing him out like an unneeded candle, and the cloak of his chakra swelled. Molten glass fell off the monkey in rivulets, but the sand didn't stop. Gaara was tearing the earth apart faster than Roshi could melt it, and the sand kept coming. It whirled around him, condensed, trapping him in a massive sphere of sand that was rapidly filling up with liquid glass.
If he let go of the Yonbi's power Gaara would crush him with the sands. If he didn't, Gaara would drown him.
Roshi chose neither, and another ball of fire consumed Gaara's makeshift prison. The monkey burst through it a moment later, before it had even finished expanding, a second demonic tail joining the first. He rushed toward's Gaara's volcano at a dead sprint, his eyes a violent, pupiless orange.
Naruto appeared in front of him, the real Naruto, and when Roshi lashed out with hands wreathed in lava Naruto was only too happy to meet him.
Jinchuriki met jinchuriki, wood met lava, and the two came together with a muffled boom of chakra and pressure. Their hands locked, each clenching the other tight enough to shatter stone. Roshi snarled, shoving at the much smaller shinobi, but Naruto's grin never left his face. Just turned dangerous.
"You killed a lot of trees, asshole," Naruto said. "Nature's not happy about it. She's not happy at all."
"I'll live with it," Roshi growled. "But you won't."
A flash of color, of searing chakra light in the corner of my eye, struck me like a physical blow. I spun and saw the Tsuchikage's daughter, battered and bleeding but somehow still whole, rising up on another volcano opposite the one Gaara had claimed. It rose, and from its peak mud and sodden earth flowed.
"Naruto!" I cried, and the fool, the idiot, tried to jerk back, but Roshi held him firm.
Sand surged across the ruined forest, coiling up the new volcano and reaching up to engulf the Iwa kunoichi. At the same time another sphere of sand rose up to engulf Naruto and Rochi, this time in protection, but the Yonbi's tails lashed out, tearing it open again and again, faster than Gaara could form it.
Kurotsuchi reared her head back and slapped her hands together. The river of mud jumped clear of the volcano, lurching and parting at the end, opening a maw of earthen teeth and roaring.
Then Kurotsuchi blew a razor thin stream of flame into the earth dragon and set it alight.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Naruto cursed, yanking against Roshi's grip with all his might. Roots tore their way up from the earth and wrapped around the Yonbi's jinchuriki, but they were already burnt and weeping by the time they broke the lava's surface. The monkey shed them easily.
I stared at the lava dragon as it hurtled through the air, mind curiously blank. Sand rose up like full moon tides to stop it, but it bulled through them without losing a second's momentum. Naruto shouted in frustration, redoubling his efforts, and the earth around their molten circle quaked ominously. It wasn't enough. It was too slow.
My eyes opened very, very wide.
A shunshin took me behind the monkey, putting me directly in the dragon's path. Sand broke around me, flowing up into the waves trying and failing to halt the dragon's progression. I stared up at the dragon unblinkingly, my eyes physically hurting from how wide they were, how fast the tomoe in them were spinning.
"You," I whispered, looking past the dragon to the girl behind it. "You dare."
My hands trembled, the left gripping my chokuto's hilt until the wood groaned and cracked, my right's fingers digging bloody furrows in my palm. She dared do this to me, now, now of all times? She dared attack my Naruto when he couldn't defend himself, when I had just gotten him back? She dared to take him from me again, to turn the elements that I commanded against him?My eyes screamed in agony, the tomoe spinning and multiplying and melting into one. I cried tears of blood as the lava serpent lunged forward to devour us. Furious, affronted blood.
She dared to kill the man I loved with fire?
Starlight spun in my eyes, and the world sharpened past clarity into something otherworldly. Strength not my own surged through my veins, kicking open tenketsu and filling me with burning, pitch black energy. I called upon all of it, every bit, and urged it away from me. Out, out it went. Every last drop of pitch black starlight.
Black flame exploded from my every tenketsu, every pore of my body, and twisted and whirled into something altogether greater than myself.
Susanoothrew her head back, midnight hair streaming behind her as she greeted the world for the first time, again, with her heavenly cry.
"Finally," a woman's voice purred. "You've kept me waiting-"
"Shut up," I hissed. I immersed myself in memories, agonizing memories of cold, slithering things, of corpses and screaming and blood red eyes that for once were not my own. I drowned myself in shame and self-loathing until there was nothing left but the memory of that day. Susanoo latched onto the memory,onto its clarity, and from it she drew strength.
From behind her back Susanoo drew the Heirophant's shield and buried it in the earth between us.
The serpent slammed into the titanic flaming shield with all of Kurotsuchi's combined elemental force, and it was not enough. It broke, shattered, and parted around Susanoo's shield. Rivers of flaming rock flowed, not a single molten drop coming anywhere close to Naruto or his opponent, and the Heirophant's shield stood firm.
I rode the jutsu out to the very end, and only then did Susanoo cast aside her shield. I immersed myself in a different memory, a memory I had never once dwelled on if I could help it. Susanoo seized the memory, and from it drew her strength.
The Fool's wings erupted from her back, vast and feathered by pitch black flames. I looked up, my eyes, my eyes, showing me everything I needed to know about the girl from Iwa, and Susanoo beat her wings and soared up into the sky.
Kurotsuchi leapt back, forming another jutsu with panicked seals. Her volcano's surface buckled, expelling half a dozen arrowheads larger than she was at breakneck speeds. Susanoo waved a contemptuous hand, swatting two from the sky and letting the rest pass harmlessly through the billowing panels of her armor.
I hit her with every ounce of strength in my frame, slamming her flat against the lip of her volcano with my knees in her stomach. She arched up, gasping futilely for breath, and I shoved her back down.
"You," I said again, eyes weeping from the strain of my fully matured sharingan and the fact that I hadn't blinked in over a minute. Kurotsuchi thrashed against me, her pink eyes terrified. She reached for a pouch at her thigh, so I grabbed both of her wrists and crushed them against the stone, ignoring the pain of my own broken wrist as I leaned in and hissed.
"You tried to kill the man I love. You tried to kill the man I love with fire." The stars in my eyes began to spin. "I'll show you fire, you uppity rock bitch. I'll show you real fire."
"Fire blacker than night," that same voice said again, dripping with satisfaction. "Fire for seven days and seven nights, we'll show you."
"P-please," Kurotsuchi gasped. "I-"
"Amaterasu."
The Tsuchikage's granddaughter screamed and screamed.
Susanoo took flight, leaving the burning volcano behind. I saw Kakashi as I flew, scorched and bruised and alive, moving away from a pile of Iwa corpses towards Sakura. I dismissed them both as out of harm's way and focused on the monkey, preparing myself for another round.
I needn't have bothered. In the time it had taken me to deal with Kurotsuchi, Naruto had finished calling up the Fool. Or, at least, its hands. They were cupped around the monkey, who in turn was enveloped head to toe in writhing tendrils of sand, locking him up tight. As I watched I could see the demonic chakra being steadily drained from Iwa's jinchuriki and filtered back into the earth, to be used in nourishing the new trees to come.
Susanoo touched down behind the wooden prison, humming her gentle goodbye as she faded away. I held my breath, looking to the top of the Fool's conjoined hands, where my blond sage sat.
Seconds ticked by in excruciating silence, Gaara watching us from the lip of his volcano, Sakura and Kakashi eying us from an even safer distance. Then the last of the Yonbi's chakra drained away and Naruto reached between the Fool's fingers, grabbing the older jinchuriki by his mesh shirt and leaping clear of the molten earth. He dumped the monkey on the ground, and when the sand attempted to consume him he shook his head, looking up at Gaara. He shook his head again, slowly, and the sand retreated.
Then, and only then, did he turn back to me. Then, and only then, did I breathe.
"Sasuke," he said, smiling warmly. I blinked.
"Asura."
"Naruto," I gasped, crossing the distance between us in a shunshin, unable to be away from him half a second longer.
He opened his arms and caught me in mid air, spinning and laughing without a care in the world. Then he fell onto his behind, the red ink fading from his face for the first time in three days.
"Missed you," he said, resting his forehead against mine, steel against steel. I giggled. Him, miss me?
"You idiot," I laughed, grabbing the back of his head and mashing our lips together, warm and wet and right. Someone gasped far, far away, but I couldn't care less who or why. We broke for air some pleasant eternity later, and only then did I say the words that had been burning my heart inside out since I'd seen him die. Words that I'd never had the strength to say the first time around.
"I love you, idiot."
His beautiful blue eyes shimmered, and he pulled me as close to him as I could go.
"I know. I love you too, bastard."