A/N: Not much reception on last chapter, which makes some sense. Far less dramatic than the previous chapter. Glad to see that most of you liked Akane's dynamic with Gaara. There won't be much of them until things get rolling (and even then, Gaara will be solo for the important parts of this arc).

This chapter will signify the true start of everything falling apart. You'll see why.

Time for Chapter 64

Enjoy!


Shikamaru pensively fiddled with his fork as the rest of the table chatted amongst themselves. As always, dinner was a mixed experience. His mother was an unfailingly excellent cook, and the meal at hand was no exception, but as always, there was too much chatter for his liking. While he had come to quite enjoy and look forward to Haku's visits, her presence at the table only intensified the issue. His mother adored the girl, and the feeling appeared to be mutual. The women talked constantly about any number of topics. It was no help that Haku was seated right next to him. He could not block it all out, try as he might.

A slow look across the table revealed that his father appeared to have largely similar feelings on the matter. He looked thoroughly exhausted by the constant conversation. Things were not made any easier by how uninteresting Haku and Yoshino's current topic of choice was. If Shikamaru had ever cared about gardening, he could not remember when or why. They had been jabbering about plants for the better part of ten minutes, and the Nara was on the verge of growing drowsy. It was certainly late enough to warrant sleep.

As he began to more strongly consider a mid-meal nap, he was tapped on the shoulder by Haku, drawing his gaze away from the barbequed meat on his plate and toward her instead.

"You were promoted, Shikamaru-kun?" the huntress asked curiously. Looking to his parents, Shikamaru contained his urge to sigh. When the topic had come up, he could not recall. His thoughts had been elsewhere.

"As of two days ago, yeah." he said. He was well aware that his rise to the rank of Chunin had been rapid by the usual standard, and that he had the right to pride for that fact, but he couldn't find the energy to regard the accomplishment with enthusiasm. Even putting aside its asterisks, rank and responsibility had never been among his limited ambitions. It was just another mundane step toward a more livable paycheck.

"I'm surprised you aren't more upbeat. Even for you, that's worth some celebration." Haku said. A short laugh came from across the table.

"He barely remembers his own birthday. Don't hold your breath." Yoshino said dryly. Shikamaru exhaled through his nose and absently chewed on a piece of chicken. He had long ago grown used to his mother's jabs, but acclimated or not, they wore him out.

"It's just more stress and less time off. Not much worth being happy about, if you ask me." he said between bites. Haku rolled her eyes and poked him in the ribs, causing him to flinch slightly.

"Lighten up a bit. All that sulking will give you wrinkles." she chided him. Though he considered giving a retort, Shikamaru held his tongue. He was far too tired to even lightly bicker. Especially with his parents present. The idle chatter soon resumed. He interjected when addressed, but otherwise kept his silence. His day had been long, and he wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep. As it turned out, promotion to Chunin was more complicated than simply accepting the position and adorning the flak jacket that came with it.

He had been required to attend three separate briefings from early morning till noon, sign several lengthy documents, and most tediously, had been forced to preemptively change his tax bracket to coincide with his greater future pay. He had never filed taxes before, and as such, he now dreaded the reality that he would be forced to do so annually. Finances had seemed like a pain from the outside looking in, but he would soon have to deal with them himself.

He also knew all too well that his parents, Yoshino in particular, would begin pushing him toward finding his own place to live within the next two years. The Nara clan were unusual amongst Konoha's prominent families in the sense that they did not all share a single compound. Much unlike, say, the Hyuga, they were spread out amid every sector of the village, with many individual families living independently. They all gathered for holidays, and they correspond regularly, but their traditions were far less tightly-knit than other clans of similar size.

For the most part, he was grateful for his clan's more casual approach to family relations, but no good thing was without its downsides. Shelving the thought for later, Shikamaru focused on finishing the food left on his plate. As he did so, he trained his ears to the ever-changing conversation. Uninteresting as it was topically, he began to notice a trend after several short minutes. Haku, who had been a lively participant from the start, was beginning to speak less and less. Beyond that, her eyes were occasionally drifting off in a seemingly trivial, yet consistent direction.

Settling into wordless observation, the pattern only grew more consistent as time dragged on. Eventually, her head was openly turned off to her left. When the clock struck ten, the late dinner wrapped itself up. At its conclusion, Yoshino dragged Shikaku away to the living room as she always did when Haku was present. As such, the two teens were left alone at the table.

"Something on your mind?" Shikamaru asked once their privacy was established. Haku, who was staring at the leftmost wall of the dining room, flinched and turned back toward him.

"No, not really. Just…feeling something." she said. She was wearing a look of puzzlement. As though a discovery was just beyond her reach.

"Somebody?" Shikamaru offered. The huntress furrowed her brow, leaning her cheek against her palm as she considered his guess.

"Maybe." she murmured under her breath. The chunin veiled a frown. Haku's senses were far sharper than most. Even within her own class of Ninja, from what he had gathered. Her inability to pinpoint what exactly had unsettled her was odd, to say the least. Shikamaru chose to change the topic.

"Definitely weird, but I doubt it's worth worrying about." he said. He then gestured upward with his thumb.

"Let's go up to the roof. No clouds tonight." he suggested. As he had learned recently, Haku had a habit of dwelling. If she couldn't solve a problem quickly, she was incredibly stubborn about finding the answer unless her attention was directed elsewhere. Taking another long look to the left, Haku nodded and rose from her chair with a stretch.

Their night continued on peacefully, but her instincts would prove prescient elsewhere.


Never before had days felt longer.

Time had slowed to such a snail's pace for Satsuki that she was beginning to lose her grasp on its passage altogether. Every hour felt like a decade. No matter how hard she tried to distract herself, she could not escape the brutally slow ticking of the clock. It certainly did not help that she had been entirely alone, save for one incident, for the entirety of the past five days. It was by her own design, and she still did not wish to mingle with others, but the weight of her solitude was mounting.

Her home was deafeningly silent. That was, when the Uchiha was fully conscious. Indeed, she had long since slipped back into the hallucinations that had plagued her during her multi-week separation from Naruto, and they were more vivid than ever. She had experienced visions of her parents, and even a few others, multiple times. Unlike before, she had not reacted with resignation. She had attempted to lash out at them. Nothing useful had come of these outbursts. All they had managed to accomplish was earn her a swollen left hand from punching the wall, and a broken flower vase in the kitchen.

Currently, she was sitting in the middle of her bed wrapped up in a blanket. Her room was a mess, much like the rest of her house. Her bedsheets had been pulled off the corners, her desk was strewn with crumpled up notebook paper, and the lamp on her nightstand was burnt out. She did not care one bit. Her mind was numb and muddled. Blurred by images of memories long-repressed forcing their way to the surface. Even with multiple days to pour out, her subconscious was not empty yet. New details of the massacre were still coming in steadily. Itachi had opened a truly monumental floodgate.

Her mind had seldom wandered elsewhere, and only fleetingly. The majority of the time, she was stuck in the past. She had only eaten three total times since her departure from the hospital, and despite her stomach begging her to eat more often, she had not made any effort to up her intake. Nutrition was the absolute last thing she cared about. Now, though, her hunger was beginning to break its way through her apathy. Her stomach was not so much aching as actively in pain, and she felt weak. Her last meal had been two days prior.

Try as she might to fight it, her body's cries for help finally won out. Shrugging the blanket from her shoulders, Satsuki lethargically slipped off her mattress and onto the floor. Approaching her tightly shut door slowly, she was interrupted halfway there by a thudding sound above her head. Tensing momentarily, Satsuki waited for several moments and strained her ears. When no more sound came, she took a deep breath and opened her door. She hadn't made it ten steps before another noise. caught her attention. This time, it came from down the hall. A slight shifting sound echoing from her kitchen.

Narrowing her eyes, Satsuki walked as quietly as she could manage. The closer she drew to her kitchen, the more clear the sounds became. They were slight, likely unintentional, but she was not alone. She quickly ran through a mental checklist. Her front door was locked. She had not left the house at all in the past five days, and she had been sure to latch it. Her windows were all tightly closed. She had made certain of it. Other means of entry were possible, she lived in a society of trained combatants, but they were unconventional.

Thoroughly stumped, she moved on to the possible candidates for intrusion. The only people who knew the exact location of the house she occupied within the Uchiha sector were her own teammates, and likely the Hokage. Yet, it seemed greatly unlikely that any of them, even Naruto, would dare to break into her home. Opting to find out for herself rather than ponder, Satsuki rounded the corner into the kitchen. To her surprise, she found it to be empty. Not a soul was present.

Taking a moment to process, Satsuki took a deep breath to compose herself. It took more than one try, but she was able to calm herself somewhat.

"I'm losing it." she muttered to herself, crossing the room and opening her fridge. As she sifted through her limited supply of food, the shifting sound returned. This time, it was much closer. Right behind her. Whirling around, Satsuki launched a stray fork straight ahead of her once she had turned one-hundred-eighty degrees. Her quick action paid dividends, as unlike before, she had caught her intruder in plain sight.

Sitting casually in one of her dining chairs, the fork the Uchiha had thrown stopped between her index and middle fingers, sat a young woman with light red hair. She was wearing a pale, cream-colored tunic with a thick purple sash around her waist, and a bandaged cap on her head. A bang of her bright crimson hair hung between her eyes.

"Nice place you've got." the redhead greeted her, a faux smile spread across her lips. Satsuki felt her blood run cold. She did not recognize the woman, and while her senses were dulled by her exhaustion and hunger, she could feel a certain degree of hostility radiating from her.

"Who the hell are you?" she demanded, slowly widening her feet into a more stable stance. The woman, who appeared to be around Satsuki's own age, rested one of her elbows on the table.

"A colleague, maybe. Depends how you want to play this." she said vaguely. The raven-haired girl's eyes darted around the room. She had no weapons in the vicinity other than a dull kitchen knife. She was completely unarmed, and logic dictated that her intruder was not.

"You're trespassing. Leave now, and I won't scalp you." she threatened. The redhead cracked a smile and stood up. She was a fair bit shorter than Satsuki, but her confidence appeared undented by the physical disparity.

"You don't fuck around, do you? I like that." she said. Satsuki bared her teeth and made a dash for the kitchen knife. She reached it before her intruder could move to stop her.

"You're about to find out." she hissed. She then charged forward and took a swipe at the redhead's chest. Before the unsharpened edge could make contact, the intruder vanished into a puff of smoke and left Satsuki stumbling over the chair she had left empty. Ignoring her painful fall to the floor, Satsuki scrambled to her feet and looked around frantically. She was alone again, or so it seemed. Before she could even begin to regroup, a set of impacts came from above her head. Now with greater context, she identified what exactly the noise was.

Footsteps on her rooftop.

Sprinting out of her kitchen, the Uchiha tore down the hall and burst out of her front door. Stumbling down the front steps of her porch, Satsuki turned around and faced the front of her house. Standing at the edge of her roof were four figures. A tall, broad, and balding man with orange hair, a lanky, shorter man with a ponytail similar to Shikamaru's, a younger-looking man with what appeared to be a second head sticking out of the back of his neck, and finally, the redheaded woman who had been sitting in her kitchen.

A cold wind blew across the Uchiha sector as both parties stared at one another for a time. Eventually, once the silence had stretched on for too long, Satsuki let her voice be heard.

"I'll ask again. Who are you, and why are you here?" she questioned. The woman chuckled from her perch.

"I already told you. It depends. We might be your friends, if this goes well." she called down. The Uchiha scowled and made a wide gesture with her arms.

"You still haven't told me what 'this' is." she said. The grotesque, dual-headed man stepped forward.

"We're here to make you an offer. One I think you'll find appealing. We've been sent by Lord Orochimaru, if that helps." he revealed. Satsuki's eyes widened. Upon further inspection, each of the four were wearing garb similar to that of the Snake Sanin. She had been too scrambled to notice it during her initial encounter with the woman.

"Tell him to take his offer and choke on it. I'm not interested." she shot back. The group remained unmoved by her repeated rejection of their presence.

"This doesn't need to be as difficult as you're making it. Hear us out. I think you'll appreciate the generous offer being made to you." the balding man said calmly. Satsuki brandished her kitchen knife.

"Learn to take a hint." she growled. She then leapt up toward the group aggressively. She was met mid-air by all four of her unwanted guests. The following skirmish went about as badly as the numbers would have suggested it should. Satsuki was overpowered, and sent spiraling down into the street of her neighborhood. Crashing into the asphalt with a painful impact, Satsuki coughed roughly and made her way up to one knee.

The quartet was now standing on her porch, each of them unscathed. Wiping a thin trail of blood from her now-bruised nose, the Uchiha assumed a taijutsu stance. Challenging them head-on was foolhardy, and she knew it, but she had no other option. As she prepared to engage them again, pain flared up on the side of her neck. Clenching her jaw, Satsuki fought tooth and nail to keep her reaction to the acute ache hidden. She could not afford to show weakness.

"Don't bother fighting it. You're only hurting your chances. Not that they were great to begin with." the redheaded woman said. Satsuki began to fire back, but stopped when she noticed something shocking. Black markings were spreading across the bodies and faces of the four intruders. Each design was distinctly different, but their nature was identical.

"That's right. You thought you were the only one, didn't you?" the woman said with a dark smirk. Satsuki felt her stomach drop. Her situation was far more dire than it had initially appeared to be. Though she despised the idea of taking an enemy's advice, suppressing her tattoo would drain her more than she could afford. She was already in less than ideal shape. Reluctantly allowing her body to relax, Satsuki endured the violating feeling of the black markings taking her body over.

She hated every second of it. The feeling of artificial strength coursing through her veins, the alien feeling of unfettered aggression taking hold of her psyche, and the ice-cold sweat dripping from every pour. Once the unnatural power had taken root, Satsuki blitzed forward. As with before, the group of four met her charge in kind.

The battle was a pointless one.

Though she managed to repel them several times, and even sent them into a brief retreat at one point, no amount of aggression and enthusiasm could ever have overcome the difference in numbers. Fighting alone, without a massive advantage over any of the four individually, Satsuki was battered pillar to post. She fought ferociously, but after less than five minutes of combat, she was sent right back to the asphalt street of her neighborhood. This time, she landed face-first. The impact knocked her nearly unconscious.

As she lay there, rattled and sore all over, the redheaded woman strolled over to her. Slotting her foot under Satsuki's chin, she lifted her face up off the rough road.

"Good effort, but that was some god-awful decision making." she jeered the Uchiha, who met her mocking eyes with a defiant glare.

"Screw you." she spat. The woman let go of her hair, letting Satsuki's face drop back down onto the asphalt again. Groaning in pain, Satsuki dragged herself up to her hands and knees.

"You're used to this kind of thing, aren't you? Losing, I mean." the redhead inquired, earning an angry look from Satsuki. They had beaten her physically, and it now appeared that they intended to break her down mentally as well.

"Shut the hell up." she hissed, her mood still poisoned by the accursed marking. The redhead held up her hands.

"It's nothing personal. Just a guess. If it makes you feel any better, I know the feeling. All of us do, actually." she clarified. Satsuki rubbed her bleeding nose.

"You don't know a damn thing about me." she said. The redhead smirked and knelt down in front of Satsuki, leaving them on an even level.

"I think I do. Life dealt you a bad hand. Things have always gone wrong for one reason or another. You've thought about giving up before, but you never have. Because you don't take what life gives you sitting down. You're a survivor. An avenger." she said, maintaining firm eye contact throughout. Satsuki felt a shudder work down her spine. How much the woman knew about her was unclear, but her assessment had been far more accurate than she would have liked. The redhead then stood up again.

"We've all been where you are now. Down in the dirt. Beaten down by life. Angry at the world and at ourselves. But Lord Orochimaru took us in, and he made us strong. Strong enough to take back what we lost. Strong enough to do what we couldn't do before." she said, her curse mark almost seeming to glow in the moonlight.

"It's obvious that you want power. You hate it, but you know you aren't strong enough to do what you need to do." she continued. Satsuki maintained her belligerent exterior, but deep down, at her core, the stranger's words were resonating with her on a painfully personal level. No matter what mental gymnastics she performed, she could not deny it.

"What are you saying?" she asked, her tone coming out more defeated than she had meant it to. The redhead folded her arms across her chest.

"Come with us. You'll find the power you're looking for. Lord Orochimaru has something special in mind for you, too. It's not a chance you should be passing up." she said. At any other time, under any prior set of circumstances, Satsuki would have immediately rebuffed the idea without a second thought. Such parameters did not apply to her current frame of mind or her emotional state. In a telling display, she hesitated ever so slightly.

"I'm not leaving." she snapped back at them after the short pause. Her refusal to be swayed did not appear to bother the group in the least.

"Up to you." the woman said with a shrug, turning her back and beginning to walk away. Her three companions soon followed suit. Soon enough, they were back up on her rooftop. Just as it appeared that they were going to leave, the redhead looked back over her shoulder.

"If you change your mind, we'll be back in the area two days from now." she informed the Uchiha. A beat later, they vanished into the night. Now alone, bloodied and bruised, Satsuki sat in silence for several long moments. The crumbled remains of her ego had been reduced to a fine powder, and her foundation had been shaken. She was far less sure of how to feel about the encounter than she was comfortable with.

Finally rising with a mild limp, the raven-haired girl hobbled back to her house. The tattoo had receded back into its epicenter, and its extra vitality had died out minutes ago. Laboring through the halls, Satsuki barely managed to make it to her room before collapsing on the floor at the foot of her bed.

Her mind a mess, she fell into a dreamless, uncertain sleep.


Naruto's eyelids drooped as he attempted to read through the final page of the chapter. He had never been a particular fan of reading for the sake of it, but he had decided that it would be a good habit to develop. As he had initially expected, it was a painfully dull experience. His reading comprehension was fully competent, but it took an immense amount of energy to focus on each individual word without his attention span giving out. He could hardly sit still while reading. Between practically every page, he would set the book down and pace around the room.

As a result of his inability to remain on task, an entire day's worth of reading had only netted him three chapters of progress. Less than sixty pages total. It was a frustrating endeavor. The book he had selected was interesting in its premise, and from what little he had managed to digest, its prose and grammar were lively. Despite it all, he could not bring himself to be immersed. Now, rather than an overabundance of energy, the blonde was suffering from dreariness. He had well and truly exhausted himself by trying and failing to read the book.

With painstaking slowness, he soldiered his way through the final page of the third chapter. The moment his line of sight passed the final word, he slammed the hardcover shut and tossed it aside. He would not torment himself any more than he already had. Lumbering away from his couch, Naruto rubbed his tired eyes and began a slow trek toward his bedroom. It was barely past eleven o'clock. Fairly close to his usual bedtime, but a far cry from how long it usually took for him to be as utterly spent as he was now.

'Yeah, I'm never gonna be a bookworm.' he thought to himself, lazily pushing his bedroom door open at the thought. The sight of his bed was a welcome one, and he flopped face down onto it with great enthusiasm. Once he had fully crawled under his covers, Naruto closed his eyes to sleep. Surprisingly, as tired as he was, the rest did not come to him with any sort of immediacy. As the minutes ticked themselves away, the Jinchuuriki found that he was ever so slightly cold. It was a strange discovery, given that his room was far from cold. If anything, his heating was kicked into a higher gear than usual.

Letting his eyes drag open, Naruto let out a long sigh. An empty bed, all to himself. Cliche as it felt, he had very much grown used to sharing a mattress with Satsuki. He had spent nights alone even since their sleeping schedules had become intertwined, but on such occasions, he had at least been secure in the knowledge that the option existed. Now, he couldn't hang his hat on such a thing. Their last conversation had been disappointing at best, and an utter disaster at worst. Taking Satsuki's words at face value was rarely wise, but she had sent a clear message regardless.

Until further notice, he was not welcome.

Analyzing why, when, or how had done nothing but bring the blonde more confusion in the day and a half since. For now, he had accepted the sentiment for what it appeared to be. He had angered her with his constant desire to aid her, and if she had been speaking honestly, he had been testing her patience on that front for some time. Apparently, their relationship dynamic had not been terribly different from the few he had experienced in the past on a fundamental level. Obviously, they had been far closer, but on the rare occasions Naruto had come close to forming anything resembling a long term friendship, it would arise that he had been tolerated rather than enjoyed.

His more measured side told him that Satsuki was far too picky a person to stretch tolerance as far as outright romance, but his damaged feelings were much closer to the forefront of his mind. Rolling over onto his back, Naruto gazed up at his ceiling. He was sad. No two ways about it.

'Just give it a few more days. She'll be ready to talk again. She might even come to you.' he coached himself mentally. He hardly believed it. He knew from experience that his teammate had the capacity to disappear for weeks on end without so much as a word, and the last time it had happened, the circumstances had been far less brutal than they were now. As things stood, it was unlikely that Satsuki would be open to conversation any time soon. Tipping back onto his side again, Naruto closed his eyes for a second time. Lying awake overthinking would do him no good.

Several minutes later, he was out cold, with his extra pillow hugged into his chest.


A/N: I AM SO SO SORRY.

This is the longest wait between chapters since I took over, and I promise you that it will be the last time a gap of more than a week happens. I just got super caught up in my schedule.

The next chapter will be out on Friday. I can guarantee that.

As for the chapter itself, I know that the Sound 4 encounter happened very quickly, but I felt that making it overly detailed wasn't necessary to get the point across.

I'm aware that the longer breaks have probably killed some of your interests in this fic, and I understand. This fic dropped from three updates a week to one very quickly.

So, I know I've done this before, but how are you all feeling about this story? Does it still have your attention?

Either way, next chapter will be the high and low point of the fic emotionally. I hope some of y'all still have the energy for it :)

I love you all

Read and Review!