Thank you, everyone, for getting Sealmaster to 700+ reviews! I hope you will keep them coming — they're addicting. (Amatsu Kurosaki - I was soooooo hoping someone would mention the vestigial/vegetable line. I laughed out loud when I wrote it. Thank you.)

Susanoo

When Sasuke first felt the Kyuubi's chakra radiate from the training field, he'd scoffed. He would not be tricked by Naruto's stupid scheme to make him return and talk to her about what was bothering him. She was dead to him, dead. He could never survive such humiliation, such defeat again, even if it were only known to himself.

Naruto had tried to pair him with Sakura—Sakura!—even as she let him know in no uncertain terms that a future with him was impossible. She talked of her kids, not theirs, which meant those kids would have a different father, some shinobi she trusted more than Sasuke. The worst thing of all was that Naruto had no idea how she'd destroyed him.

When he'd felt the earth's tremor and heard the crack of splitting rock, he'd paused and considered but still refused to be taken in by Naruto's infantile gesture to make him curious enough to investigate. No, he would remain strong in his determination to boil his head in a vat of ramen broth. He had fled—no, Uchihas did not flee—Sasuke had…had strolled away from the training ground with unusual haste, bordering on running; exercise was important, after all, for both physical and mental health—and had made it all the way to the central market where dozens of Konoha citizens chattered nervously and pointed in the direction from which Sasuke had come. A few shinobi leaped to the rooftops to see what might have caused the ruckus. Sasuke remained unmoved.

Finally, the tremendous roar that caused his very skin to vibrate convinced him that this was not a prank, that the creature who could produce such a sound might just be a monster, that Naruto might be in danger.

His sprint back to the training field was every bit as breakneck as his flight from it. But what he saw when he arrived—the massive body and spiked tail, the black claws that ripped into the ground, the fangs that glimmered with saliva, and most of all, the hundreds of golden figures that leaped over the dragon and shoved Rasengans into its eyes—made him grin. Lucky Naruto. Getting a real fight for once. He wanted to fight the dragon. How many shinobi could say they had done so? None, in living memory, until now.

Sasuke scowled at the chakra limiters around his wrists, stuck there for two more weeks. Was it worth risking harm to his chakra coils to get in one or two good strikes? Take a Chidori to those scales and test his own strength as he had not for two years—he itched to do it. At the same time, he couldn't deny another inclination: to watch Naruto battle it out with the dragon. Her blonde hair streamed behind her as her strong arms and legs connected strike after strike. The golden haze of the Kyuubi's cloak only magnified the natural elegance of her form. Kami-sama, she was glorious.

His pleasant musings were broken when ANBU starting appearing all over the place. They took one look at the dragon and the blonde hurricane, one look at Sasuke who barely bothered to glance at them, and jumped to arrange themselves as a barrier between the village and the dragon.

Then two ANBU landed too close to him to be coincidence. Three more followed suit. "Uchiha Sasuke," said a hawk-masked ANBU, "what is your part in this?"

So intent was Sasuke on Naruto's battle with the dragon he almost missed the stupid question. "You have got to be kidding me," he snarled.

The surrounding ANBU tensed, and Hawk said, "The mental interrogation, by Yamanaka-san's admission, proved irregular. You might have concealed the truth from his probing. Now you stand at the scene of an attack and offer no assistance to Uzumaki-san."

Sasuke waved a hand haphazardly towards the dragon. "Do you think she needs help? What could you or I, with these damn chakra limiters, do but get in her way? Idiot."

A Fox ANBU dropped from an ink-eagle and landed lightly beside Sasuke. "Hawk-san," said the new ANBU, "we are ordered to contain the threat and prevent harm to the village. Uchiha Sasuke is not under suspicion."

Sasuke assumed the two shinobi had the same rank because they faced off, neither giving an inch, until Hawk shouted, "Containment is priority!" Instantly, the ANBU jumped towards their comrades to join the defensive formation. Fox remained with Sasuke.

"Sai," Sasuke said shortly, the simple acknowledgement his own subtle—if not, downright imperceptible—form of gratitude. There was not one of Naruto's friends Sasuke liked less than Sai, who frequently called him "Duckie" for a reason Sasuke could not fathom. And Naruto always howled with laughter at the hideous excuse for a nickname. It was her private joke with Sai, made at Sasuke's expense.

"Hawk-san is overzealous," said Sai behind his mask. "Hokage-sama will not be pleased to learn the prejudice against you lives on among her ranks."

Sasuke shrugged and returned his attention to the battle.

"Do you have reason to believe this is an attack meant for Naruto-chan?" continued Sai.

In response, Sasuke spared no sarcasm. "Beyond the fact that a dragon happened to appear in the training field where she was standing?"

"If Orochimaru—"

"If it's Orochimaru," said Sasuke, "Naruto will only be glad that the snake's come out of hiding. Watch and wait. That's what she would want." After all, what could Orochimaru do to Naruto in the confines of the village, with a horde of ANBU and the last Uchiha looking on?

Sai considered and nodded. "It is true we would only get in her way, but we must remember that Orochimaru knows Naruto almost as well as we do. What purpose does this dragon serve? Merely to weaken her?"

Sasuke snorted, but Sai—Sasuke admitted only to himself—was right. They could not take Naruto's incredible strength for granted. Orochimaru would not. They could not assume Naruto could overcome any enemy, any challenge. With his twisted mind at work, Orochimaru would find a counter for her determination. In this, Sasuke and Konoha's incredible faith in Naruto might just become a weakness.

"What's that?" said Sai. A troupe of clones darted away from the dragon, carrying a limp body shrouded in black shinobi gear. The dragon's jaws snapped at Naruto's clones, which dispelled with a single hit from those powerful fangs. Then the dragon rose up on its hind legs, threw its head high, and gave a bone-chilling roar. Its huge body suspended for a moment above the earth before it lunged towards the ground, gathering momentum.

At that moment, every one of Naruto's clones disappeared, leaving the fallen shinobi prone and unprotected on the ground. Strange. Why would Naruto dispel the clones? Sasuke stepped forward but hesitated, looking between Naruto and the dragon's incoming talons as Naruto flew towards the unconscious shinobi. A streak of gold, she shot away from the dragon carrying the shinobi. But she hadn't stopped the dragon's attack. The ground fractured beneath the dragon's bulk.

Shockwaves radiated from the site of impact, and Sasuke leaped high into the air to escape the earth's cracking under his feet. The touch of earth element chakra washed over him. It was like nothing he'd felt before: murky and ancient, the dragon's chakra. The ANBU had formed a glimmering shield of all five elements: earth, wind, water, lightning, and fire. It was enough to halt the progression of the earthquake and protect the village from destruction, but several ANBU toppled over from the sudden drain of their chakra. The ANBU and much of the village might not survive another such attack.

Naruto should have stopped it. Saving the unconscious shinobi should not have hindered her, not if she had only kept her clones intact. So why? Sasuke's own reluctance to interfere might be playing into Orochimaru's hands. The thought made his mouth go dry.

In quick succession, a single, golden fox tail whipped away from the other eight and headed towards a copse of trees. The Kyuubi's tail took them out with an effortless blow, and Naruto shouted something unintelligible at the sky. What the hell? There were wild fluctuations in her chakra. As soon as he recognized it, the Kyuubi's cloak disappeared entirely.

That was it. Enough strange things had happened. Sasuke shot towards Naruto and was just close enough to hear her yell "Kage bunshin no jutsu!" before hundreds of new clones littered the wrecked training field. They swarmed the dragon and darted underneath it. In a few seconds, the dragon was heaved into the air by hundreds of powerful kicks, and once more, Sasuke found himself frozen by sheer admiration for Naruto's strength. The dragon soared through the air away from the village on the wings of Naruto's Odama Rasengan. When Naruto took off in a flash after it, Sasuke shook himself into action. He headed towards a clone to demand an explanation for the weirdness in Naruto's chakra, but it dispelled before he reached it. They all dispelled. He cursed.

Naruto's brief head start and her blinding speed meant that she'd vanished from sight by the time Sasuke started after her again, but it was all too easy to follow the dragon's arc through the sky to where he knew he'd find her. He leaped over the cracked outer wall of Konoha, glancing upwards to see an ink-eagle and its ANBU rider in pursuit, before he disappeared into the forest. As he ran, Sasuke kept waiting for the moment gravity would complete its work on the dragon and send it crashing to the earth.

Instead, he sensed the release of the Kyuubi's chakra. Sasuke catapulted off a thick tree limb and shot through the canopy. Ahead, the immense, ethereal form of a nine-tailed fox converged with the falling dragon. Golden tails wrapped around the black and green scales like tentacles around prey as Naruto's momentum upwards slowed the dragon's descent. The intertwined monsters careened through age-old trees, mauling them into oblivion, and hit the ground with a sickening thud. Sasuke paused at the edge of the destruction and watched Naruto and the dragon slide across the earth, scraping off the soil down to the bedrock below.

Again, the Kyuubi's chakra vanished. Sasuke couldn't see Naruto among the forest's carnage. The dragon shook its head and tried to stand. A foreleg collapsed underneath it, and the dragon fell again. Finally, Sasuke spotted the orange figure on her hands and knees beneath the dragon. She wasn't unconscious. Her arms and legs weren't limp. No, her body was taut, and her face bore a grimace. Yet there she was, unmoving even with a powerful, malevolent creature within arm's reach. What or who could weaken Naruto to such an extent? It would take cleverness, not brute force. It would take careful planning. It would take Orochimaru.

Enough. No more waiting in the wings—it was Sasuke's turn. Blood pounded in his veins. His eyes burned. He whispered a word, a name unsung for two years. Dark purple chakra rose up around him as the malevolent force it embodied spilled out into the world around him. He rose into the air, held aloft by the immensity of his own power. His body was on fire. Every bone, muscle, and sinew screaming. The chakra limiters shattered, overwhelmed by the flood of his chakra. The metal pieces fell to the ground, smoking.

The dragon finally roused and lumbered to its feet. A growl rumbled deep in its chest. The dragon was ignoring Sasuke, intent upon the blonde and orange speck on the ground. A snake-like tongue slithered out to wrap around Naruto's body and threw her high into the air as the dragon positioned itself below. Its jaws snapped open, ready to swallow the tiny—if unusually pesky—morsel in a single gulp.

Susanoo's armored hand caught the dragon by the throat and slammed its head into a well-positioned boulder, which crumbled under the force. Sasuke reveled in the rush of adrenaline, the sensation of overpowering the dragon, of forcing it into submission. Growing up, Sasuke had sought to deny his emotions. To be cool and dispassionate he saw as the safest way to live. He hated Itachi, true, but he used that hatred for his own purposes, to sharpen himself into the weapon that could avenge his family. His life was a fight for survival, the most simple and elegant existence. All the while, Naruto had yammered about protecting your important people and how that made a shinobi strongest.

Now Sasuke got to do both. The feeling was intoxicating.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Naruto flip in midair and land safely. He smirked. It would kill the dobe that she'd needed Sasuke to save her. He allowed Susanoo's chakra to enclose Naruto in its protective field and returned to the battle.

Susanoo's foot pinned the dragon by the throat. Sasuke hoped he was pressing hard enough to stifle its breathing. Probably not. Those scales didn't bend even under his full strength. A bow and arrow formed of highly concentrated chakra in Susanoo's hands. Sasuke aimed and shot with little fanfare. A creature that would have eaten Naruto did not deserve mercy.

The arrow struck with a visible blast of chakra, but the dragon did not roll over and die. Sasuke was impressed. Such an arrow shot at point-blank range would have skewered any lesser creature, yet the dragon only seemed dazed from the blow. Its defensive capabilities were perhaps the greatest he'd ever encountered, far beyond his own and the Kazekage's even. Nevertheless, the dragon could not recover fast enough to be any real threat to him. Its spiked tail, though deadly, was too slow an attack.

He glanced down to Naruto beneath him, sitting cross-legged on the ground. Sasuke was glad to see her unharmed, although the abnormalities in her chakra still alarmed him. He dropped to the ground by Naruto who stared up at him with round eyes. In her mind, many curious emotions were wreaking havoc. Less than a minute before, she'd felt the eruption of Sasuke's chakra and welcomed it like an old friend. Memories of fighting with him and against him—fighting for their lives and for the future of the entire world—brought back feelings her younger self had experienced with such intensity. The fear, the triumph, the desperation, the incredible relief of being on Sasuke's side once again.

But one memory stood above the rest. At the Great Naruto Bridge in Wave Country, Sasuke and Naruto had fought their first real battle against Zabusa and Haku. Naruto's life had been in danger, and Sasuke had jumped in front of her, had taken the hits for her at the risk of sacrificing his own life. It was one of the memories Naruto had always returned to when she would begin to despair of ever bringing Sasuke back to Konoha.

Now Sasuke protected her from the dragon. A part of Naruto wanted to soak in this proof that she'd been right, that her determination to reunite with Sasuke had never been baseless, this proof that her life meant something to him. However, more pressing thoughts intruded on the good feelings. That was then, and this was now.

As the Uchiha descended to stand near her, she shouted, "What are you doing, moron?"

Sasuke stiffened. A reproof was not what he'd anticipated. "Saving your life, you ingrate. Orochimaru—"

"I didn't need saving! It's not Orochimaru doing this to me. I was giving my body a choice: shape up or go to hell."

"What does that mean?" Sasuke demanded.

"I'm having female problems, apparently."

His eyes widened. "Oh."

"My body is chewing itself up from the inside. It's messing with my chakra."

Ack, what had he stumbled into? He coughed. "I…see. Maybe you, ah, better sit this one out?"

"Oh no," she said, grimacing, "not a chance. I may be stuck in this body, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna let it ruin my life. I'm a shinobi, and I never give up."

"Then why are you still on the ground?"

She glared at him and rocketed to her feet. Sasuke was relieved by her quick response; he didn't like seeing her weakened. Still glaring, Naruto said, "Kyuubi says my chakra and my hormones—whatever those are—are setting off a chain reaction in my body, like feeding off each other or something. I was giving that dragon a chance to eat me—"

"What?"

"Relax, teme, I'm not stupid. Like I said, I wanted to give my body a choice: go back to normal and work properly or get swallowed and be forced to work properly. To save my life, dattebayo. Get it?"

For a long moment, Sasuke was speechless. "You—were—damn it, Naruto!" he shouted. "You were blackmailing your own body! That doesn't—how can that begin to make sense to you?"

"It's all about survival," said Naruto matter-of-factly. "There have been times when it seemed like I might die, but my body always kicked it into high gear when death was a real possibility. I always came out stronger than I was before."

"That was you overcoming your own limits! Or the fox interfering."

"Or you interfering," she muttered. "I thought you couldn't use ninjutsu."

"I shouldn't be."

At that moment, the dragon struggled to regain its feet. "Think you can manage to control your chakra for a little while?" Sasuke asked scathingly. "Or should you go practice climbing a tree?"

"Teme…" Naruto warned.

"I think we're done playing with this dragon. It doesn't seem to be a rational being, so there's little we can learn from it. I say we frighten it off."

"But I still want it to eat—"

"Not a chance, dobe."

She scowled, but in moments, both shinobi were suspended in the belly of Susanoo. When Naruto called on Kurama for strength, the two chakras molded around the other, magnifying their individual powers tenfold. Susanoo shielded Naruto's Kyuubi form, and the terrifying specter of a fox arose to tower over the rattled dragon. Kyuubi's single, guttural growl resounded in the clearing. The dragon let its head rest on the ground and emitted a faint mewling. In some primal language of beasts, the dragon understood it had been dominated.

Sasuke and Naruto moved away from it, and the dragon staggered to its feet and slunk toward the center of the clearing, its tail dragging the ground. The earth shook as the dragon's breath imbued it with chakra. Then its thick talons dug into the bedrock, and the earth split before the dragon. A tunnel took shape in short order as the dragon breathed and burrowed deeper. Its head and forelegs disappeared; its back haunches soon followed. The two shinobi watched and waited until the final black spike was lost to the tunnel's depths. They stood still and silent for several long moments as each contemplated the fact they had fought and defeated a dragon. Awesome.

Sasuke and Naruto grinned at each other stupidly, both flushed from the heat of battle, and Sasuke, for one, became very aware of their proximity, less than an arm's length from one another. He wondered how she would respond if he kissed her. Naruto picked up on something peculiar sensation in the air, like a spark of electricity, but she didn't remember Sasuke using Chidori. The grin slipped from her face as she studied the raven-haired shinobi while their conjoined chakra continued to enclose them in its embrace. She became curiously incapable of questioning why his eyes, already featuring the Mangekyo Sharingan, seemed to grow more intense, why he had begun to lean towards her—why she herself was rooted to the spot.

Then at Kurama's complaints of itching, Naruto shook her head, suppressed her chakra, and leaped down from her perch inside Susanoo. Simultaneously cursing and praising himself for cowardice, Sasuke dismissed Susanoo moments later when no movement stirred in the dragon's tunnel. The beast had fled.

"We should get back to the village," said Naruto. "They'll wonder what happened."

At that moment, Sai's ink-eagle swooped down, and the shinobi himself jumped down to stand with them. "My sparrows have already sent word of the dragon's defeat."

Sasuke put a hand to his head. Weird. For a moment as he'd glanced up at Sai's approach, the sky had seemed to blur with the ground. Naruto didn't notice the gesture, even when Sasuke swayed on his feet and nearly lost his balance. Her attention was captured by an ANBU in a rabbit mask who half carried Mitarashi Anko as they leaped from the treetop to the destroyed land.

Naruto hurried to them, but Anko broke away from Rabbit and ran to the massive hole the dragon had created.

"She should be at the hospital," Naruto said to Rabbit. "She was barely conscious a while ago."

"When she awoke, she insisted on coming over here," said Rabbit. "She thought she could tame the dragon, she said."

Anko was staring into the deep hole and muttering darkly. When Naruto, Sasuke, and the ANBU approached, she scratched her chin and said, "Shit. That dragon was supposed to be my new summon. Didn't mean to bring him to Konoha though."

Silence fell over the group of shinobi.

"Have you lost your mind?" yelled Rabbit finally. "A dragon? They can't be tamed, you suicidal idiot."

"I needed something new to throw at Orochimaru," said Anko, sighing. "I'm good with reptiles usually, but that one wouldn't talk to me. Tsunade-sama, though—she's gonna give me an earful." She looked between Naruto and Sasuke hopefully. "I don't suppose either of you could get it back up here, eh? Naruto-kun—er, Naruto-chan? Why are you a girl?"

"First off, no, I won't drag it back. You're insane," said Naruto. "Second, I've always been a girl. Silly of you not to notice."

Sasuke barely took in the conversation. Black stars were forming in the sky, growing larger by the second. The trees seemed to stretch higher to touch the stars—oh, now the stars were dripping black ink and drenching the trees. Huh. Why weren't the others worrying about this peculiar phenomenon? The world—at least, his world seemed to be ending. A deep, terrible burning started in his gut and radiated outwards to the tips of his fingers and toes. White lights flashed across his vision, and he felt an uncharacteristic weakness in his limbs. Someone said a name he thought was his own, but he couldn't be sure.

From the corner of her eye, Naruto caught sight of Sasuke's rapid paling and the dazed expression of his slackened features. When his knees sank from under him, Naruto's heart nearly stopped. She caught him as he fell.

"Sasuke!"

I recently reread Fiachra Ochiern's Nom de Guerre—one of my favorite fics. You all should check it out!

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