NOTE: This story will now be updated mostly on the weekends – that's when I have the time to write it.

Sorry for the short update, but I went through a lot of crap this past week. I'm actually amazed I wrote anything at all.

Sigh… Here's Chapitre Quatre.

[edited: 10/19/09, 4/5/10]

Addendum 4/5/10: This chapter has always irked me with its shortness so I took the last section of Chapitre Trois to add some meat to these bones…so to speak.

Yamamoto blearily opened his eyes. He sat up and winced. Whatever the hell happened to him, it hurt like a bitch. Taking a good look around, he noticed Makoto, Fumiko, and Naruto and the rest of the Union lying in various positions; all of them were unconscious.

They were in a forest of some sort. Perhaps they had been blown away into the forests of Konoha?

An image of a gate burned its way into his mind, and he dismissed that though. That gate or portal had taken them to somewhere else. He didn't think they were even on the Shinobi Continent anymore – there was no chakra around here.

Actually, now that he though about it, he couldn't feel his chakra anymore! Briefly, he panicked. He took deep breaths to calm himself down, and assessed the situation. Okay, one – they probably were not on the Shinobi Continent any longer. Two – they had appeared in an unknown environment. And three – there was absolutely no chakra, even within his own body anymore.

Instead, he felt another type of energy. It was familiar to him, but he couldn't recall ever using it before.

As he was pondering on the current dilemma, Anko awoke.

She yawned widely and scratched under her breasts. Yamamoto stared at her incredulously, wondering how a person could be so immodest, and she started back at him, uncomprehending why he was in her room at the moment. Then she looked around and her eyes shot open. "What the fuck happened!?" she screamed, causing Fumiko to twitch in her slumber.

Yamamoto shrugged helplessly. "That's what I'd like to know as well." He closed his eyes and sighed. "It seems that that gate took us away from Konoha. Actually, I highly doubt we're on the Shinobi Continent anymore. And there's no chakra here, even within our own bodies."

Anko immediately tried to find her chakra, and to her displeasure, she found that what he said was true. "How the hell did that happen?" she asked rudely, not that either of them cared. The situation did indeed call for surprise and disbelief.

Yamamoto shrugged again. "Fuck if I know. I think it's safe to assume we're in another dimension or world altogether, though."

The purple haired women frowned. "Well, what are we supposed to work with if we don't have chakra?"

"If you look again, you'll notice that there's a different kind of energy that most likely replaced our chakra in this world," he muttered to her, trying to harness said energy. "From what I can tell with my few minutes of concentration, it seems that it's energy of the spirit, rather than energy of the body and mind. I'm not too sure how that works, but if we're here for good, which I hope not, then we have to learn how to use it."

"Heh, I guess you're right," Anko allowed reluctantly. She, too, concentrated on controlling the new internal energy source while one by one, the others woke up.

Naruto was first. "Damn, what hit me?" he moaned, rubbing his head.

"I think I drank too much…" Kakashi and Tsunade whimpered at the same time, and then complained of a hangover.

Makoto and Fumiko had awoken in each others' arms, and the shriek that Fumiko had let out had awoken Makoto who in turn snuggled deeper into her arms. Yamamoto had to restrain from killing both of them for blowing out his eardrums.

Sakura merely woke up while the two masked ones just sat up calmly, slightly annoyed by the loud screeches of murder.

After calming them down, explaining the situation to them, and calming them down again, all of them were deeply engrossed in meditation. So far, the only ones to successfully harness the energy were Yamamoto and the Union, of course, thanks to Anko's initial efforts.

Unknown to them, two figures clad in black crept up to the clearing…

A tall man in a black uniform, which consisted of a black kimono and straw sandals, whistled a little tune to himself as he approached his house. Several large fish dangled off of a stick slung over his shoulder, their slimy skin glistening in the sunlight.

Sagara Sanosuke grinned happily to himself and pushed a stray lock of brown hair out of his eyes. Oh yeah, with his catch, there was no way Kaoru could bitch at him for taking so long! His grin widened and he patted imaginary dirt off his uniform.

"Not too shabby, Sano!" he muttered to himself, enjoying his self-ego inflation.

He trailed off as one, two…no, ten! Ten immensely powerful reiatsu signatures flared up, almost as if they were out of control. "Shit!" he growled, dashing the last few feet into the house.

This was definitely not good! The weakest of the signatures felt as if it was nearly a hundred times stronger than his own, which was saying something!

And it was turning out to be such a good day too, he silently bemoaned.

Sanosuke entered the kitchen and plopped his catch onto the table before searching for his friend. The most obvious place he could be was the dojo, which was the first place he searched.

Lo and behold, there he was, staring into the distance through a window. He glanced at Sanosuke and turned back to the view. "You felt it too?

The brown-haired man looked at the shorter man as if he was crazy. "Kenshin, are you kiddin' me? An untrained baby could have felt that!"

Himura Kenshin smiled wanly for a moment before he frowned in contemplation. He looked to the direction of the surges of reiatsu and murmured, "We should check it out to determine their intent."

Sanosuke looked at him warily, but knew that his redheaded friend was right. "Yeah…" What worried him was that the owners of those reiatsu had to be some seriously tough guys.

They quickly grabbed their zanpakuto, Sanosuke's being something like a much smaller version of the large zanbato he'd wielded in life, and Kenshin's being a non-descript average-looking katana, and headed out into the forest, abstaining from using their own reiatsu lest the newcomers would come at them with hostility.

Surprisingly, it took them half an hour to arrive in the general area where the signatures originated from. Sanosuke, for all his courage and machismo, tried not to shiver as they stealthily approached the clearing where they felt the residue reiatsu. He'd faced some strong guys during his lifetime, but they were nothing compared to the vibes he was feeling right now.

Jumping into a large tree, they cautiously crept closer. Kenshin pushed aside a branch so they could observe what was going on in the clearing below.

What they saw surprised them.

And made them sweatdrop.

A blue-haired woman who had a cat outfit, of all things, had a black haired man in a headlock while three blondes, two of them women, stood by. The male blonde had his face in his hands while the other two smirked at the scene.

Nearby, a dark-haired woman with piercing yellow eyes was on the ground laughing to the point of tears, while a silver-haired man with a mask that covered the bottom of his face laughed too, just not as much. Behind them, two more people with full head masks also sweatdropped at the scene.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do it, Makoto-san!" the black-haired man cried out as his captor attempted to noogie his brains out of his head.

The blue-haired one, Makoto apparently, just scowled further. "You ruined my tail, Yamamoto!" She abruptly released him and cradled said appendage, which was burned almost all the way to her back, much to the two hidden ones' surprise. They'd thought it was a fake.

"My tail! My beautiful tail! It's ruined!" she whined, collapsing to the ground in a melodramatic fashion.

That had set the blonde-haired man off. "Alright, alright!" he grunted angrily. "Knock it off! We're supposed to be training!"

"Ah, man, that was a good halftime show," the yellow-eyed woman chortled, wiping a tear away.

The silver-haired man rolled his only visible eye. "At the expense of poor Yama-kun," he mused, looking at the boy in question.

Sanosuke and Kenshin's sweatdrops only increased in density, nearly threatening to tip them off balance. "Are…are these guys for real?" Sanosuke whispered in disbelief.

His redheaded companion could only nod his head numbly. He then felt something tap at his back and blinked.

"Oro?" Turning his head, Kenshin saw the yellow-eyed woman smirk mischievously at him. "Er…"

"Yo."

Sanosuke turned his head rapidly at her voice. "Eh? What the hell!?" he screamed in panic at being caught. The panic made him loose his concentration and he found himself face first in dirt a second later.

Kenshin, sensing no hostile intent from the group, whose attention was now focused on the spying duo, dropped down a second later onto his feet. Only to find himself face to face with the taller blonde woman from before.

"So you enjoyed the show too, eh?" She peered at the two after they recovered from their shock.

Enter Rurouni Kenshin!

Constructive criticism would also be greatly appreciated. Although "Great Job!", "Can't wait for more!" and "lmao" are pretty cool too, yeah.