W I N T E R

ACT TWO

1

Haku had a few theories about himself and the other shadow creatures.

t one point, he thought, maybe we were once human. Why else would we assume human form when we pass into the world? But the idea frightened him a little; after all, all that any of them could remember was their existence in the shadows. If they had been human, what had they been like? What had he been like? Had he had dreams, goals, lovers, desires? What had led to his current state as the damned?

Haku sometimes pictured the universe as a great wheel, in which each of the species clung to a spoke in order of their importance. Why else would the shadows want to hurt humans so badly if humans weren't so much higher up on the wheel? People like Naruto and Sasuke could wake up the next morning with sunlight in their future and sunlight in their past, but for Haku there was just the great yawning darkness. The shadows were non-entities, not even real things, the illusion of life where there was none. He'd read once about viruses, how they travelled on airborn protein strands and executed complex programs in order to hack into cells, how they acted like organisms but weren't. That's what we are, he thought; complex programs with no thought behind them. No creator and no ending, just a GOTO loop, over and over again, on into infinity.

Naruto and he had been hanging out up in Naruto's room the other day, studying for a test. Naruto's unrelenting optimism always cloaked the boy like a halo, and when he smiled at Haku he glowed as if he had a light bulb behind his teeth.

Kill him, the programming told him.

Mhm, Haku thought.

There in the snow, wriggling underneath him like a puppy, Naruto breathed heavily against his ears, tongue snaking out between pink lips to lick his neck. But, the next moment Naruto was backing away from him, through the snow, looking at him, breathing hard. As if on cue, the storm around them stopped almost instantly, leaving them surrounded by silence.

Naruto sat there, breath puffing around him in a little cloud. "Hold on," he said, breathing, looking extraordinarily aroused. "Hold on."

Haku didn't sweat, or get out of breath, or anything really. He fell back, crouching in the snow, and looked hard at Naruto, trying to look composed. "I'm sorry. I thought you wanted that."

"No, no, no." Naruto twisted about, trying to get to a crouching position. "My fault. I just--" He paused, looking out at the trees. "I just lost my head."

Haku was struck by the sudden and inexplicable desire to kiss Naruto again. Naruto, meanwhile, was standing up and walking out into the snow, looking around the woods in wonder. The forest had been transformed by the storm, rendered into a winterscape.

"Naruto--" Haku said.

But Naruto had noticed something, off beyond a patch of trees. For a moment, a series of emotions passed over his face, and then he was running out of sight, past the rocks and trees. Haku stood there, stunned, and then rushed forward out into the snow. He saw Naruto sliding down a snow slide towards a icy creek. This place, a marsh in the summer, was now made beauteous, reeds sticking up through the snow, and the marshy trees decorated with frost. Naruto was walking out onto a patch of snow splitting the creek in two.

"Naruto!" Haku cried. "What are you doing?"

Naruto didn't answer. He walked, like a man possessed, up the patch of snow, and then out into a long wooded area. Haku followed, picking his way carefully through the thick snow, and when he reached Naruto, he saw what Naruto had seen.

It was Gaara, standing alone, dressed in a ragged scarf and ragged cloak. As he stood there among the trees, a chill wind blew up, and spirals of snow gushed up around his feet. He glared at Naruto, hard, but only stood, silent and still.

Naruto bit his lower lip. "What is it with you?" he snapped, with sudden anger. "Huh? Everytime I turn around, it just has to be someone, right? Either it's you, or some psychotic ghost, or some jerkoff shadow creature! What is it you want?"

At that, Haku felt something approaching shame, but he shook it off. He tried to think hard about what to do: Gaara had shown up to do something bad, and Haku wasn't sure how to react.

Gaara's low voice came across the snow fields to their ears: "It's cold out here, isn't it? It's cold like this in the place where I was, man. Cold as hell."

Haku saw Naruto tensen, balling up, looking ready to move. Again, Haku wished he could think faster, could formulate a plan.

Gaara cocked his head, smirking. "When you're as cold as me, man, you pick up a couple new tricks. Sand was boring, anyhow."

His arms shot up, and the snow around Naruto exploded upwards.

2

It was dark in Kabuto's bedroom, and the pale daylight coming in through the windows did little to banish the gloom. Kabuto lay on his bed, his life in shambles. This isn't how it's supposed to be, he thought. How does a Renfield live when his Dracula is dead? Itachi was supposed to make him a vampire, but now Itachi was dead and Kabuto just another snivelling, normal little teenager. He just simply hadn't expected his career path to end so soon.

He had occasionally thought about wreaking vengeance upon Itachi's slayers, namely Naruto and Sasuke, but time spent in another dimension, especially a cold and dark one, did things to your priorities. Now he mainly lay in bed, unable to picture a scenario where he, Kabuto, could clamber back from this defeat.

Something went tik off his window. He ignored it; the storm had been rattling his window for the past hour, and he was long past paying attention to little noises. He remembered when Itachi would slip in through the window silently and easily, leaving frost along the windowsill. Sometimes he would dream about drifting through the night sky himself, a creature of the shadows, powerful, forceful, in control.

Crack. This time the rock hit his window hard enough to spiderweb it. The noise startled him so much he gave a sharp jerk, and twisted out of bed onto the floor. "What?" he shouted to no one. "What now?"

From below, his mother screamed at him to stop bumping around. Kabuto turned about, frustrated and headachy, then shook his head. "What?" he said again. "What?"

He remembered the rock hitting the window, so he went to it and opened it. The cold air hit him like a punch to the face, and he turned around, coughing hard. His chest burned, and it took a moment for him to regain his composure. Then he heard Temari's voice, calling up to him: "Kabuto, would you stick your head the fuck out your window?"

Kabuto staggered back to the window and stared down at the young woman looking up at him.

Temari was covered in snow, her black winter coat almost invisible. She had obviously been caught in the storm. "Kabuto!" she shouted. "I need your help!"

"Everyone always does."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself!" Her face twisted with rage, and she threw another rock at him, this time almost nicking his ear. "Stop feeling sorry for yourself, God!"

For a moment he thought she was going to break down into tears, she was so on the edge, but instead she straightened and glared at him. She said, "Have you seen Kankuro?"

"Why would I have seen Kankuro?"

"Because you keep in touch with everyone, Kabuto! You're like a-- you're like a goddamn spider, you stupid son of a bitch!" She collapsed backwards into the snow and screamed at him, "He's missing, you bastard! That's both my brothers now!"

Kabuto stared at her, feeling the cold creeping into his room. He said, "I'll go get my coat."

3

Sakura and Sai had been trapped in the snowstorm, but with it over, they drove Sakura's car through the bad roads and nearly ran it up over the curb on their way into Sasuke's driveway.

"Holy shit, holy shit," Sai said. "Sakura, you drive like a stoned blind man."

"Fuck you, honkey." Sakura waggled her tongue at him between two upraised fingers, then got out of the car.

Sai, bristling and feeling suddenly very much as Asian as the rest of them, snapped his car door open and got out. Sakura had been over to Sai's house and had discovered his new facial cleanser, the one with the skin whitening agent, and suddenly Sakura wouldn't let up making fun of him.

It's very popular in Japan right now, he'd tried to explain.

You just want to look more like Audrey, she'd said.

And, of course, this was true.

Inside the house, Sasuke was still trying to get straight answers out of Hinata. Hinata was still babbling about coming winters and horrible storms, which didn't mean much to Sasuke. The county typically got bad winters, enough to keep the little town from becoming the tourist haven it could have been, given the picturesque surroundings. The storm earlier had been unusually brutal and early, but that didn't seem enough to justify the doom and gloom coming out of Hinata's mouth.

He was so focused on Hinata that he hadn't heard Sakura and Sai tapping at his window until they were almost a minute into doing so. He went over, slid open the window, and looked out. "What are you two idiots doing here?"

"We're going to start a band!" Sakura shouted.

Sai nodded. "We're going to be called the Holly Gotightlies."

"You want to play bass?"

Sasuke leaned forwards on the window sill, tapping the edge, debating whether or not he should just go ahead, close the window and ignore them. Then he said, "I'll go unlock the back door. Go around."

Sitting in Sasuke's living room, caught up on the situation, Sakura and Sai were quick to offer ideas. "Maybe Hinata means Naruto's going to get buried by an avalanche," Sai suggested. "We should call him up and tell him what to do if that happens."

"What do you do?" Sakura asked.

"You swim, man. You swim like it's water. You swim in the direction of the falling snow, so you can keep your head above it."

"Sasuke, you got this big old musty house. Why don't you ever throw crazy parties here?"

Sasuke came in and gave them mugs of tea. "Because my friends are terrible, horrible people."

"Hinata, I have an idea," Sakura said. "We're all so worried about Naruto, we should just call up the fucker and have him over here. We'll keep him safe and warm."

Sasuke pursed his lips and sat down in a chair. He wouldn't have thought of calling Naruto because Naruto was so far from his thoughts these days. He wasn't even sure if he felt ready, mentally, to see Naruto face to face. That thought made him feel awful. "I'll call him," he said.

No answer on Naruto's cell phone. For a single bad moment Sasuke pictured Naruto looking at his phone, seeing Sasuke's number, and just not picking up. But another option, that danger-prone Naruto was in danger, and so could not physically answer his phone, was the worse one. Sasuke decided to call Naruto's home.

Iruka picked up, and subsequently told Sasuke that no, Naruto was not there, and that, "To be perfectly honest, Sasuke, I thought he was out with you."

Sasuke hung up, unsure of what to do. "Hinata," he said, coming back into the living room. "You can find Naruto with something of his, right?"

Yes," Hinata said. "With a locket, or a button, or a piece of hair. I did that before."

"I remember." He knelt down next to her. "Listen, can you do that again?"

Sakura looked up. "Am I driving?"

Sasuke nodded. "You're driving."

4

Kakashi had arrived at Iruka's house a few minutes before Sasuke's call. Iruka had almost felt grateful for the phone ringing, for a break from the tension that always arose whenever Kakashi came to visit. After Sasuke had hung up, Iruka set down the phone, then leaned back against the kitchen counter with his arms folded, looking at Kakashi, who sat at the kitchen table.

"Trouble at the ranch?" Kakashi asked.

Iruka sighed and looked out the window, noting with surprise that the storm had stopped as quickly as it had came. "Sometimes I wish I had chosen a more normal kid."

"But we both know you wouldn't have."

"I'm getting that feeling I get when Naruto's in trouble. That's kid's always in trouble. These days I feel like I should just keep him on a leash."

"We used to get into trouble, remember?"

"Yes, I do. We did."

Kakashi stood up, and went to get his tweed coat. He pulled it on, checked his pockets, and then looked back at Iruka. "You coming?"

"Where are we going?"

"I figure we could go driving around, see if we can spot the kid, make us feel better."

"Drive around solving mysteries? Like old times?"

"Like old times."

Kakashi grabbed Iruka's coat from off the hook and went around the kitchen table towards Iruka. Reaching him, he leaned forwards, resting his forehead against Iruka's. "Those were good old times."

"Yes," Iruka said softly. "They were, weren't they?"

The moment passed, and Kakashi handed Iruka his coat. Iruka threw it on, fishing his car keys out. "That kid better not be in trouble. There's school tomorrow."

"Amen to that."

5

Jugo's knife glinted brightly, but not from the coffee shop's lights. It crackled faintly with green energy, and Shikamaru knew it did this because it was made from the same energy as his own sword. He knew they had both receives rings that let them spawn forth their weapons, and he knew what Jugo's knife could do. Still, Shikamaru made no effort to draw his own blade.

When it came to murderin', Jugo was nothing if not efficient. He was already loping towards Shikamaru with long, purposeful strides, minimizing the time it took to reach him. "Here we come, boy," Jugo said. "It's gonna be sweet."

Shikamaru knew this was the moment Jugo had been waiting for during his entire career with Atkatsuki. It was the culmination of a long partnership with Shikamaru, the punchline to the whole long joke. Shikamaru almost felt badly ruining it for him.

He caught Jugo's wrist, twisted it, and hurled the man over the counter into the espresso machines, which came crashing down noisily.

"Call the police," Shikamaru told the baristas as he ran to help Ino up off the ground. "Don't touch him; he'll be leaving to come after me." He grabbed Ino's coat from between the stunned Sasori and Deidara.

As he and Ino ran from the coffee shop out into the snowy parking lot, Ino asked, "He's coming after you? I thought he was going after Naruto!"

"Jugo?" Shikamaru asked, grabbing Ino's car keys out from her coat. "Now that he's got the a-okay, nothing in the world's going to stop him from coming after me."

He tossed Ino her car keys and ran over to the passenger door of her '92 Camry. Getting in, he thought they'd have one of those Hollywood moments where the car would refuse to start, but it started like a beauty. The main problem was all the snow over the windshield and back. Ino rolled down her window, stuck her head out and backed up. As they blew out of the parking lot and onto the highway, she saw Jugo and the others rushing out of the coffee shop.

"Do they have a fast car?" Ino asked.

Shikamaru shrugged. "Atkatsuki's had budget issues lately."

Ino started leaned forwards, beginning the incredibly dangerous act of wiping the snow off the windshield while driving. Leaning back in, she said, "What kind of budget issues?"

"They're driving a '84 Cavalier, more than slightly used."

"On roads this bad, I think we even out."

Shikamaru glanced in the side mirror, saw Jugo's car coming up fast behind them, taking the turn so hard it almost rolled. "Actually, he might take himself out for us."

A problem, then: Shikamaru saw Deidara lean out the window, something in his hand.

"No, no," Shikamaru said. "Deidara, you asshole, you better not--"

Deidara's aim was off, but the explosion was enough to shake the car. Ino nearly lost control of the steering, but managed to get back on the road, taking them up the hill.

Shikamaru looked ahead and said, "Why are we going up onto a precarious road that curves near a cliffside?"

"Because there're no turn-offs beforehand?"

"I wasn't expecting to hurtle down to my horrible death today, Ino."

"The things life throws at you, eh?"

Another explosion against the rockside to their left; rocks and smoke sprayed out onto their hood. Something cracked their windshield. "Great!" Ino shouted. "As if my visibility wasn't bad enough!"

"They're getting close," Shikamaru said. "Deidara might actually hit us next time."

Ino shouted, "Why can't you have normal friends?" and slammed down on the gas.

As they smacked into sleet at a hundred and twenty klicks an hour and started to hydroplane towards the cliff's edge, Shikamaru shouted, "They're not my friends!"

The car went into a spin, and Shikamaru had a gut-wrenching view of the drop-off that twisted towards them.

6

Gaara, you idiot, Haku thought, standing over the gaping hole that yawned before him. The ground here must have been unstable, with an underground passage going beneath it, which Haku reasoned wasn't necessarily uncommon in bogs that had been dried out for whatever reason. When Gaara had unleashed his newfound control over snow, the ground had broken apart, and Haku had watched both Naruto and Gaara vanish into the deep.

It stood to reason that Gaara could do something like that. A kid gets sucked into the other dimension and comes out with the power to control sand, why couldn't he also come out with the power to control frozen water particles? There was even precedence: Zabuza, after all, had been the one to flood out the highschool with his power over water. Haku even had something similar. Mizuki used to talk about how each of them had power over the different four elements, how Zabuza was a child of the element of water, how Haku was born from air and water. Talk like that used to bore Haku.

Now, as he made his way down the hill towards the hole in the earth, he realized that he was going to have to bust out that power for the first time in a long time. Well, Naruto, he thought; in a gesture with some irony, I'm going to have to save your life.

He leapt into the hole. His back immediately struck hard earth and roots. He tumbled forwards for some time, aware that the tunnel was curving, and then it spit him out into semi-darkness. Getting to his knees, he was first immediately aware of vegetation, or vines hanging from wires in the ceiling. Above him were hanging pots of dead flowers, and a small lantern hung from the earth, illuminating the small cave dimly. This is a place of death, he thought.

He heard someone say, "J- Jesus--"

Haku looked down and saw that Naruto was a few feet away from him, backed up against the wall, a frightened look on his face. He wasn't looking at Haku, but at something beyond. Haku turned slowly and saw across the small room, leaning up against the far wall, was a thin corpse.

It was a grotesque thing, emaciated and pallid, its left arm mangled from something, missing its hand. It was clad in red rags, and it still had its hair, straw-like hair that must have once been bright red.

Other than Naruto and the corpse, there was no one else in the room. No sign of Gaara.

"Naruto," Haku said, "are you hurt?"

"Jesus," Naruto said again. As cognitive thought reestablished itself in his expression, he got to his feet and said, "Sorry, I just-- when I fell, I rolled next to it, and it was the first thing I saw. Jesus, where are we?"

There was another tunnel leading away from the room, and Haku could see dim light emanating from that. No, strike that, he thought; that's not a tunnel, it's a corridor. This place is man-made.

"What kind of place are we looking at?" Naruto asked. "Crazy hill-people place?"

"Well--" Haku said, licking his lips. "You heard that they're used to be a cult in this area, right?"

Yeah, Naruto thought, with irritation; if by heard about the cult you mean listened to Orochimaru explain at great length how I was going to be sacrificed to the cult, then yes.

A woman's voice, then, coming from down the corridor: "Hello? Who's there, please?"

It was a woman's shape that appeared in the corridor, tall and willowy. She stood there, watching them in silence, and then, as she came into the dim light of the room, they could see her clearer.

She was a woman of indeterminate age, with shoulder-length hair whose colour was somewhere between grey and what old women called blue hair. In another time, another life, perhaps, she would have had a noble bearing, with a sharp, almost aquiline nose. However, she had the sort of bright insanity in her eyes that Naruto had seen in the eyes of some of the homeless he'd met in the cities. At some point in her life she had encountered something that hadn't left her unscathed.

"What are you doing here?" she cried angrily. "You rude little shits!"

Haku opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say. Naruto beat him to it: "I'm so sorry; we-- we were in the fields above and we just fell through the snow into here. I'm sorry."

Her face immediately softened. "Okay," she said. "Okay. I'm glad to meet you, then. Everytime you get to meet a stranger, you get a chance to enlighten them." She paused, hands folded in front of her. Naruto noticed her clothes now: ratty unwashed jeans, and a long spotted shirt that looks like it was made for very fat men to wear. The shirt read XFL FOREVER.

She seemed to remember something and it shook her out of her silence. "Would you like a drink?"

"Yes, please," Haku said, hoping she would lead them to somewhere resembling an exit.

She beckoned them forwards and took them through more chambers that seemed devoted to the nurturing and growth to flowers and vines. Most of them, Haku noted, were dead, brittle little things.

The next large chamber was where Haku and Naruto stopped. It was a big chamber, carved out of the earth, with stairs at the far wall, leading up to a vast black door. There were four corpses here, each identical to the one in the farther chamber, each resting on a slab of stone. Each was in a different state of decomposition, but at the arrival of Naruto and Haku, one of the better-looking corpses shifted and began to rise upwards.

"Holy god," Naruto breathed.

The corpse got to its feet and straightened, stretching upwards, looking at the ceiling. There was a gash in its right cheek where Naruto could see through to the teeth on the other side.

Meanwhile the woman had paused at the door, and had turned, looking confused. "Nagato," she said. "Is it that time already?"

"Konan," the corpse breathed. "We have awoken because one of the masters has arrived."

The woman sucked in her breath sharply.

The corpse turned and gazed in the direction of Haku. "Master Shadow, we, the Hive Mind, have awaited your arrival."

Fear now, one of the first times Haku had ever felt it. Of course, he thought; that would explain the identical corpses. Pain, the Hive Mind, hiding beneath the county the whole time Haku had been there.

"And," Nagato said, looking at Naruto. "You have brought the fox with you."

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