Note for Chapter: So I think of Tobi as a very bipolar character, very prone to mood swings.

"N-no no no, no! NOO!" Karin had screamed the entire time Suigestu restrained her as Jugo cast a transportation jutsu around them, before Gaara could come towards them like he'd done with Sasuke.

Against her will, Karin was taken away from the glass encased Uchiha.

And even now, she stood arguing before them once again, crucifying them for their cold decision.

"H-how could you abandon him? He was our LEADER!" Karin screamed while punching the shark man's chest. "TRAITOR! You're worse than SCUM!"

"You think I wanted to?" Suigetsu intoned. "You think either of us-" he gesticulated between him and Jugo, "-wanted to abandon Sasuke? I already told you a million times, we didn't have any choice-"

"No, you don't understand! I read Gaara's chakra. I'm a sensory-nin, remember? I could feel it. His chakra levels were already low even before he cast the seal jutsu...we could have taken him!" Karin argued vehemently to a now bewildered Suigetsu. She threw her fists into his chest again.

Before Karin could scream again, Jugo stated his question quickly: "But how does that make any sense? If he was so low he how could he even manage to cast the seal over Sasuke? It would have been negated halfway, he shouldn't have been able to complete the jutsu."

Jugo added a second later, in a non-condemning tone: "Perhaps you misread, Karin?"

The pink haired, belligerent kunoichi refused to be pacified. "You dolts! Are you sensory shinobi? Huh? Any of you?"

Karin gritted her teeth. "I DIDN'T THINK SO."

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "That foolish sand demon was using reserves he needed to live on, the chakra that kept his basic vascular systems running."

Suigetsu blinked. "What does that mean?"

"It means we could have taken him!" Karin snarled. "He played both you and Jugo for fools! He wouldn't have been able to put up the least bit of fighting if we had actually confronted him in that moment."

Karin stifled a rising sob, intoning quietly. "We could have taken him…we could have rescued Sasuke…"

There was a long moment of silence after that. Everyone in the room falling quiet with regret and others with guilt or self blame. Finally, Jugo was the one to speak again.

"Does this mean, it's only a matter of time until the sand demon dies?" he asked.

"If he doesn't undo Sasuke's seal before it breaks on it's own, then yes."

Suigetsu furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

Karin sighed derisively, like she was surrounded by all idiots. "The seal Gaara used, it's a Kinjutsu. Forbidden for it's detrimental harm to the user for however long it's sustained. I read about it in one of Orochimaru's books about sand users. It's called the Ultimate Sand Sealing Jutsu because that's exactly what it is: it binds the chosen victim in an endless sleep that they cannot waken from, all the while their chakra is locked inside."

"However, it's a kinjutsu because the seal requires payment for every second it remains alive, specifically from the user. Sasuke's power may be sealed but his soul is still very much awake, imprisoned by Gaara's chakra, constantly trying to break free. Imagine an endless ram continually trying to shatter a barricade, eventually the wall will break and the victim set free. By which time, the caster of the original seal will die."

Suigetsu finally found the courage to speak again, swallowing his guilt for curiosity. "So, you're saying, that if Sasuke stays asleep long enough, it's only a matter of time until he kills Gaara?"

Karin nodded. "Sooner than you'd think too, since the Kazekage had been injured when he invoked the seal. If his body had been smart, it would have pulled itself into a deep sleep immediately after the seal was invoked, to preserve the amount of chakra being used to sustain his body."

Jugo frowned. "But if this was such a desperate move, why would he do it?"

Karin shrugged. "Beats me, he either really hates Sasuke or…"

The magenta haired kunoichi gasped, coming to what should have been an obvious observation from the start.

"What? What are you thinking?" Suigetsu intoned while stepping closer.

Karin was quick to recover, covering her blunder with: "Oh, nothing. I was just thinking we have to find Sasuke more than anything else right now."

Not giving them the chance to further question her, Karin turned away and started exiting the room inside their Sound hideout.

She had to find that pink haired hussy, asap.

Tobi laughed as Gaara stepped up to battle him, limping while doing so.

Gaara disregarded his jeering altogether and concentrated his energy...a second later, all the dust and dirt inside the room lifted and got sucked into a concentrated, floating mass right in between his two palms.

Tobi tsked. "You don't seriously expect to defeat me with that meager amount of chakra you have left, do you? I can sense it from here, you barely have enough to keep yourself alive."

Sakura gasped. Was that true? She couldn't tell because her points were still crippled but if Tobi sensed it…

"Gaara! Please be careful!" Sakura shouted in worry, wanting to stop him but not knowing how to do so. Or really what she could do to protect him if Tobi did start attacking again.

As soon as she said this, Tobi came charging at Gaara with his chakra infused glove hand aimed straight for the man's chest.

Sakura realized that she'd just unwittingly provoked Tobi into attacking the Kazekage. The man obviously considered her Sasuke's wife, and it seemed any "affection" she showed towards another man was considered adultery on her part.

God, was every Uchiha insane?!

Tobi had propped his palm into a needle sharp apex with his purple fire chakra. As he propelled through the air, he shouted: "I made an exception earlier, letting you, an outsider, into this sacred domain but I see now that I was wrong in doing so."

In a second, Gaara blocked the attack with expert precision using his arm, concentrating only the bare amount of chakra needed into his forearm as it stopped Tobi straight in his attack. The sand user knew he wouldn't be able to stop the force along with protecting himself so he allowed the masked Uchiha to push him straight across the smooth dojo, until his back collided against the stone wall of the circular room.

Displacing the weight of Tobi's attack onto both of his feet, Gaara was able to protect his vital organs as the masked man sent a series of strikes to calculative points on his abdomen. If a single one of the critical spots Tobi aimed for actually landed Gaara knew he would be instantly incapacitated. That's why he blocked everyone of them.

As Tobi moved to break away and gain distance for another javelin attack, Gaara took to the offensive: the ball of dust that he'd been using to shape into whatever shape he needed for a shield now amassed into the form of a cocoon, starting from the base of Tobi's stomach to wrap around the man on all angles, curving back around behind him so that the sides connected, all occurring in less than a second.

In an instant, Gaara had trapped Tobi into a hardened mass of thick gray dust, unbreakable for the time being. The Kazekage finished his attack by inhaling hard and then blowing a strong air current straight from his diaphragm towards the masked man, sending him propelling backwards and then up into the air as the current swept vertically.

In a second, Gaara started folding a series of hand signs. Sakura watched him and identified every symbol until the end: boar, boar, ram, boar, horse, tiger.

She gasped. It was an explosion jutsu.

Right as she concluded this, a large boom cracked through the air followed by burning dark debris and falling detriment. It fell across her and all over the dojo as a stench of foul charred mass assaulted her senses.

Gaara stood in the center of it as it rained ashes all around him. The man's face had drained of all color from his chakra overuse and he was sweating through his clothes. His eyes were half lidded as he made to take one step forward...but collapsed while doing so.

Sakura gasped, immediately running up to the Kazekage's form. Her hands flew to the pulse line at his neck and breathed a sigh of relief as she still felt it beating, if not frighteningly fast. "It's okay Gaara," she tried to calm the man as she moved to place his exhausted head into her lap. "It's alright now, you got him."

"No," the Kazekage breathed out through dry cracked lips, almost rasping. "It shouldn't have been that easy...he's still here...that was...a shadow clone."

Sakura gasped as he said this. Simultaneously, a series of loud roaring claps sounded into the air.

"Well done, Fifth Kazekage," Tobi's voice struck through the air like a crack of lightning. "Indeed worthy enough, to once be the jinchuriki of Shukaku."

Tobi stepped out from the cloud of dust that now obscured the battle arena, standing six feet away from Sakura and Gaara's depleted form.

The pinkette hugged the red haired man's form protectively tight. "Don't take another step towards us."

Tobi growled, ignoring her words as he drew closer. "You little hussy, I'm going to kill you for Sasuke. Consider yourself lucky, we Uchiha do not take kindly to being betrayed."

He stepped within two feet of them and Gaara tried to break out of Sakura's arms but she wouldn't let him.

"Sakura let go," Gaara intoned weakly even as he made to get up again but the pinkette only tightened her hold once more.

"NO!" she cried out, tears falling from her eyes from seeing Gaara on the verge of death like this. "Please! You're going to kill yourself!"

Surprisingly, Tobi laughed here. Whatever was amusing him seemed to be enough to put off his anger, temporarily.

"You don't know the half of it sweetheart," the masked man intoned with a blithe sounding grin.

"Remember that Ultimate Sand Sealing Jutsu, Gaara used on Sasuke? Oh yes, I was watching," Tobi added that last bit after seeing the jaw dropped expression on Sakura's face.

He'd been stalking them?

"Gaara is using his life to protect you, literally," Tobi explained and then going on to speak about the nature of the kinjutsu seal, forbidden by sand users for the detrimental harm it did to the user. When he was done Sakura once again had her jaw dropped, unable to believe everything she'd just heard.

Why...why would Gaara do that for her? Do all this?

"I suppose being a girl you can't really help being moved in the face of such neverending selflessness, but still..." Tobi's voice once again gained that tense agitation. "You are legally wedded and bound to an Uchiha."

The man, standing two feet from them, seemed about to attack them again so Sakura knew she had to distract him once more. Perhaps by keeping him talking. He seemed easily amused...and slightly bipolar...

"What do you know about me? About any of us? What makes you think you have the right to pass judgement like this? To condemn me to death?" Sakura shouted each question into Tobi's face as her hand stayed clutched tightly around Gaara's now limp appendage. Without looking down, she knew the Kazekage must have lost consciousness.

Tobi chortled. "I know more than you think."

"Like what?" Sakura retorted back bitterly.

The masked man shifted his weight onto one feet, while he folded his arms across his chest. A typical posture of amusement and contemplation, Sakura knew because she recognized it from her textbooks. Good. This was a good sign.

She kept her eyes trained onto Tobi as the man pulled from within his purple tunic a crystal ball…

Sakura gasped. Sasuke's crystal ball! She immediately recognized it as the object she'd found on the sleeping Uchiha's form when she'd searched both Gaara's and Sasuke's bodies. How in the world did Tobi get it? When had the man pickpocketed it?

"Shall I give you a few of the answers you so desperately seek?" Tobi asked with a blatantly pretentious tone, as if he took joy in knowing more about her life than she did.

Before Sakura could even answer him, the orb started glowing, having gotten activated by Tobi's chakra. Instantly, the world around her melted away and was replaced with...a clear night sky. She knew instantly this was another forgotten memory from her past:

Sakura stood behind Gaara, her entire body obscured by a gender ambiguous black shinobi unitard. Her facial mask had been removed so her entire head was revealed, making her pink hair splay out across her shoulders. The sand demon stood with his back turned to her. It was the middle of the night.

Strewn beside the two of them were over fifty masked shinobis, all incapacitated and unconscious on the ground of the flat grassland, a pool of sand beneath everyone's feet. The moon hung high above them, half crescent.

Sakura trembled as Gaara stared straight at the ground, deep in thought. She clutched her hand to her chest, shaking. A moment later, she bit her lip in nervousness.

"Gaara, I know this would be hard on you, if you don't want to-"

"Right now, Sakura…" Gaara suddenly interrupted.

Sakura bit her lip, growing more unsettled with an added hint of fright as he turned to meet her eyes straight on. Her body fought back tremors as he started stepping towards her, closing the already small distance they had between each other.

Gaara extended his hand out so that it grazed gently the side of her face while he finished his statement: "You can ask me to do anything."

Sakura gasped, eyes widening to their max with shock.

The pinkette gasped in real life, breaking out of her vision. Her green eyes trembled as her hand softened around Gaara's unconscious appendage...only to tighten across his palm a second later, this time stronger than ever.

Gaara loved her.

It was so obvious now, Sakura couldn't believe she'd only now realized it. The rescue from Konoha, him taking care of her and giving her whatever she needed on the beach, the rescue again from ANBU, using his own life energy for collateral -just to protect her from Sasuke...and now this: on the verge of death once more just to keep her from harm.

Her gaze fell down towards Gaara as tears once more streamed down her face, falling onto Gaara's pallid cheek as she stared at him. Her voice trembled as she spoke once more to Tobi:

"Why...did you show me that? Don't...you want me to be with Sasuke? Isn't that the whole point of this?"

It was a long time before Tobi answered her and when he did his voice was stoically calm: "Because gratitude won't change the way anyone feels towards another human being. If you don't know that now, you'll eventually come to realize this."

Then Tobi shrugged as his voice once again gained that upright tone: "And also because I'm a capricious old man that just does whatever he wants whenever he wants to."

Sakura didn't know how to answer him. Truth be told, she didn't want to deal with him. There was so much she had to think about right now. So much...she had to take in and contemplate upon.

That is, if she had the time to do so.

Sakura's head raised to once more look into Tobi's eyes. "Are you going to kill me now?"

The man stood stock still looking at her for a long time. Then, very simply he said: "Yes."

Sakura wondered if she could deter him again by getting him to tell her more about her past...but she knew Tobi wouldn't fall for it, given the circumstances. The first time had worked because she'd played on his eagerness and pride to prove that he knew more about her past. But now...Sakura knew she only had one chance to make it out of here.

In an instant, she smashed the crystal Gaara had given her onto the ground. It shattered upon impact.

A rupture broke out straight through the air, as if it was made of tangible substance and reverberated across everyone's body. Sakura felt like she was under siege of an Earthquake, only it wasn't the ground that was moving but rather...like a force through the air. It shook like ripples across the room and even brought Tobi to his knees as he quickly formed handsigns to try and protect himself. Sakura found herself shaken too as she fell onto her side; the only thing she could maintain was her hold upon Gaara's sleeping palm.

Her mind felt like it was on the verge of splitting even though there wasn't any sound pervading through them. Just unbearable pressure and mind numbingly tight chakra that constricted even her diaphragm inside her body, making it hard to breathe. What in the world had she done? Was this going to be the end of her and Gaara? Should she not have smashed the crystal and just resigned herself to Tobi's attack?

However, after just a few seconds, the ripples stopped. Tobi recovered before her and came to stand once more on his feet, furious. In a second he sent his own chakra wave across the room to blow away any residual debris from Gaara's earlier combustion attack, clearing the room in it's entirety.

That was when Sakura realized just exactly what purpose smashing the crystal had.

Sasuke Uchiha stood once more before her in all his glory.

Oh dear god.

And unlike when Gaara had woken up, Sasuke was at his full health, completely rested even as he carried a look of absolute fury across his beautiful features.

It seemed his expression had instantly trained on her upon awakening because Sakura somehow just knew his anger was directed at her. His gaze seemed to be burning a hole through her soul, even though he stood more than twenty feet away, across the other side of the room.

Sakura didn't realize that she was still holding Gaara's hand.

Then Sasuke's gaze fell onto Tobi and his eyes really tightened in fury.

"You," he screeched indignantly while pointing his kusunagi towards the masked man. "Meddling bastard, what are you doing here now?"

Tobi feigned disappointment by placing his palm across his chest. "Is that any way to talk to an Uncle?"

Sasuke tsked. "You are not my Uncle. Now tell me, what did you do with Naruto?"

Sakura gasped at hearing that name; Sasuke turned to glare at her but chose not to address it now. Actually, there were quite a few things he was choosing not to address now, in regards to his anger for the pinkette.

Tobi Uchiha was currently a more pressing matter.

The Uchiha thought back to the last time he'd seen the man like this and instantly Sasuke's fist tightened in fury: it was when he'd taken Sakura on that segue of a vacation, and specifically when Naruto had gotten close to finding her.

"You're not taking her from me!"

"She's not yours to keep!" his once bestfriend had shouted back furious before dodging a direct attack from his Susanoo. More and more a series of Naruto's clones came to attack Sasuke, each being decimated by the Uchiha until there was just one left over.

And Sasuke subdued that one too.

"I'm going to tell you this once, Uzumaki," Sasuke had said through gritted teeth. "Sakura is mine, no one is taking her from me."

"You're...just plagued…with guilt..."

Sasuke felt even in real life now, the full impact of those words once again: fury. How dare that moron condemn him? How dare he think he knew anything about his feelings for Sakura?

Back then, they'd invoked a murderous fury in him too:

"Keep talking; lets see how long you can keep that up with a hole in your throat," Sasuke said while raising his kunai knife once more to deliver the finishing blow-

-only he struck air.

In the blink of an eye, Naruto's defeated, bloodied form was no longer on the ground but in fact had vanished altogether. Sasuke turned around as he sensed the chakra of a third person.

And there he came face to face with Tobi in his masked form. Cradled in the man's arms was Naruto's still body; the boy had fallen unconscious.

"What in the world are you doing here?" Sasuke intoned bitterly through an irritated breath. "Our business was done more than two years ago."

Tobi laughed. "Oh dear nephew, our business will never be done." His tone turned nefariously merry as he added: "Not until I get to meet my niece-in-law face to face."

Sasuke growled furiously. "That's never going to happen."

Tobi laughed blithely. "And what makes you think you can stop me from meeting her?"

The masked man folded his arms as he finished his statement: "If it wasn't for me you wouldn't even have her right now."

Sasuke screamed as he suddenly threw a kunai knife straight towards Tobi, the metal went straight through the man as if he was a hologram and not truly present.

"I'll die before I let you near her!" Sasuke shouted right as the man dissipated into a chakra created whirlpool behind him. Before his body had completely got sucked into the pool, with Naruto included, Sasuke heard one final statement from the man in a confident voice:

"I'll see you soon, dear nephew."

Back in the present, Sasuke seethed out bitterly: "If you don't tell me where you've hidden Naruto I'm going to kill you right now, like I should have done back then."

"You mean like you tried to do?" Tobi countered through an obvious sounding grin behind his mask. "If memory serves me right I believe you tried and failed, my dear last nephew."

Now both of Sasuke's hands were balled into fists at his sides. "I'll make you show me where Naruto is."

Suddenly, Sakura saw him vanish right through her vision. It took her a second to realize that Tobi was gone to, and in fact the two of them were now bound in an aerial battle, high above her on the training dojo, moving at breakneck speeds that made them look invisible to Sakura's non-chakra eyes. The only reason she knew they were fighting was because she could hear the clash of kunai and sword.

Along with their voices.

"Shall I tell her what she really is?" Tobi gloated pretentiously in his typical fashion, clearly to goad Sasuke. Sakura knew normally a tactic like this wouldn't work on the boy. He always seemed to keep his emotions in check whenever he was fighting.

But not this time, as it turned out.

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Sasuke's voice burst forth from the seemingly empty air of the dojo a second before a clash of fiery sparks emitted from one spot, most likely from the impact of his kusunagi clashing with a kunai knife.

And indeed she was right, because a second later something fell straight down from the air, plummeting to just inches away from her feet. It was the split ends of a kunai knife. Sasuke's chakra must have sliced it straight in half.

"Why did you even bring her here? Bring all of them here?" Sakura heard Sasuke ask somewhere in the back of the room, followed quickly by the sound of another clash of steel.

"Because I wanted to show her what it means to be a true wife of an Uchiha," Tobi answered quickly enough.

Even Sakura could feel Sasuke's anger inside his power, without her chakra, after hearing this statement.

"What else did you tell her?" Sasuke shouted furiously right before a loud boom occurred through the invisible air.

Sakura screamed as a second later she saw Tobi's body fall straight onto the ground of the polished floor, collapsing in a cloud of dust from Gaara's earlier attack. Before the masked man could recover, a rain of falling spikes rained down from the ceiling, causing Sakura to scream in fright as she ducked her head.

Not a single one touched her.

When she lifted her head again, she saw that Tobi was pinned to the floor by his cloak on all sides of his peripheral outline, forcing him to stay flat on his back with all his limbs splayed out like he was tied on some quartering wheel.

Sasuke materialized right next to Sakura, unwittingly scaring the girl and causing her to shriek. Sasuke didn't react in anger given the outlying circumstances but the pinkette knew this was only a temporary reprieve for her. Most likely, the next time they were alone together, he would...

Sakura shuddered at the thought even as Sasuke moved to kneel down before Tobi's defeated form. He raised his katana to right before the man's neck. "Now, tell me where Naruto is."

Despite the circumstances, Tobi still managed a laugh here. "Why certainly, dear-"

"DON'T call me NEPHEW!" the younger Uchiha interrupted furiously while pressing his kusunagi deeper against the man's neck, causing a small slit in his cloak and some blood to drip down his throat, but it was obviously just a superficial wound.

"Very well, Sasuke," Tobi intoned once more. "But first you must untie me."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed in suspicion and then widened a second later as his genius mind quickly told him what Tobi was implying.

"Naruto's here?"