Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Chapter 1

Deidara opened his eye as he regained consciousness.

He and Sasori had been flying on one of his clay birds when all of a sudden his clay bird had gone stiff and they had began falling to the ground.

It took Deidara a moment to gather his thoughts, and when he did he was thankful to find that some of his clay construct had remained soft enough to cushion his fall. Judging by the pin in his leg he had probably sprained it.

"Hey Sasori, any idea on what knocked us out of the sky like that? I didn't sense any attack or jutsu" he said and after a moment of silence he turned to the puppet master only to find him motionless and quiet. Not really sure what was going on he walked over to the creepy puppet and undid the latch. After pulling out the red haired puppet he realized that Sasori was no longer among the land of the living.

"What is going on here?" he said to himself. Instinct told him to run but he had no idea where they were, Sasori had known where they were going and had given him directions so he didn't even know for sure which direction was the nearest village or town.

Deidara looked around at the darkening forest. "Well this doesn't look good"

KONOHA

Tsunade had thought the day was going to be perfect.

She had spent the previous day working extra hard on her paper work just so that she could take most of today off. However just before lunch time she found that her transformation jutsu had vanished. Most villagers knew that she used a transformation to look like her younger self, what they didn't know was that it also made her feel younger. Now her body ached in ways she couldn't even begin to describe. If she wasn't Hokage then she probably would have grabbed a cane or walking stick, but since she was Hokage she needed to look as strong and confident as possible. Even without her chakra she was still the greatest medic in the elemental nations and one of the Sannin.

Or at least that is what she tried to tell herself. In all honesty this event had shaken her up. Without her chakra she was virtually powerless, she couldn't use her super strength or medical ninjutsu anymore and without her special transformation that helped her to feel younger her hands shook so she would most likely never operate on another person again. Thankfully she didn't look as old as she normally did after she used her seal and the transformation faded, it was a side affect of the jutsu that made her look older than she was. Now she had some wrinkles and her blonde hair had streaks of grey and white in it, she clearly looked to be in her 50's.

Tsunade knew that she would have to pass on the knowledge that was still useable soon, this village would need it.

As she stood outside the council doors she could hear them arguing. She took in a breath and then let it out.

"Show time" and with that she walked through the doors.

At training ground 7

All of the jounin sensei had been called into a meeting leaving the rookies all to themselves.

If you just looked at them you wouldn't have thought anything too strange. What probably stuck out the most was the two Hyugga in the group. Neji, usually stoic, had brown eyes now instead of the classic pale color of the Byakugan. Hinata had a light blue eye color.

Everyone more or less sat in silence for a while.

Until Naruto got tired of the silence.

"Uggghhh! I wanna know what happened! Why can't we attend the meeting with Kakashi sensei?" Naruto said waving his hands around dramatically.

Shikamaru muttered a "Troublesome"

"We'd probably just get in the way of them finding any answers" Neji said

"Yeah, maybe its best that we stay out of the way, the faster they figure this out the faster we get our chakra back, right?" Ino said

"What if it never comes back?" Sakura said quietly.

Everyone went dead silent at that thought.

It wasn't something any of them wanted to think about. They had been trained in the ninja arts their whole lives and almost all of that revolved around chakra, without it they didn't really have anything useful or special about them.

"Yes this is most unyouthful" Lee said solemnly.

Everyone face planted at their green clothed comrade.

"What?" he asked confused

"Um, Lee, out of all of us you're the one least affected by this" Ten Ten deadpanned.

Lee's eyes took on a look of understanding "I forgot about that!"

"Wait does that mean that Lee is now the strongest one here?" Kiba asked

"Yep" Shikamaru said.

Silence yet again.

"Lee teach me all of the Taijutsu you know!" Naruto exclaimed

"Naruto what are you doing?" Sakura asked not quite sure she wanted to know.

"If I can't become the strongest with jutsu then I'll use Taijutsu and weapons!" he smiled confidently at her. Everyone rubbed this off as just Naruto being Naruto but Sakura, Shikamaru, and Neji noticed.

He said strongest not Hokage.

Lee smiled broudly at the blond "Yosh I find your youthfulness overwhelming Naruto!" then Lee took on a thoughtful expression "However I do not believe I could teach you all you need to know in just a day"

"Just teach me what you can now" Naruto said

The Council Room

To say that it was a madhouse would be an understatement.

Along with the normal council members, all of the jounin were there as well and to say that there wasn't panic would be a lie.

After almost an hour of trying to reign in the chaos, it finally calmed down.

"What if this was a preemptive strike before an enemy force attacks the village?" a civilian member said

"It's not an attack" Shikaku Nara said from his seat.

"How do you know?" another person asked

"Because we would already be under attack if that was the case" Kakashi said from where he stood. To say he had drawn some stares when he walked in with both eyes visible would be an understatement.

"So how long do you think until we get our chakra back?" Anko asked the question on everyone's minds.

There was a moment of silence before Tsunade spoke. "We may never get it back"

And chaos erupted again before calming down after a few minutes.

"Do we have any idea on what caused this?" Chouza asked

"None" Ibiki said

"That is even more scary" Tsume Inuzuka said "Loosing our chakra was freaky enough by itself but not knowing who or what caused it is something on an entirely different level of scary"

There was a noise as people whispered amongst each other before Kurenei asked the next question

"So what do we do next? I mean without our chakra we can't go on missions and most of us don't have the skills to be farmers and we're not regular soldiers either" there was again muttering.

Kakashi knew that only a few in this room was thinking things out the right way. The ones he knew of would be him, Ibiki, Asuma, Shikaku, and Tsunade. Everyone else was concerned with the immediate future. But what of the upcoming year or two?

The ninja forces were still the primary military force in the Land of Fire. The normal military had seen little to no combat in the last 150 years since the Leaf village was founded. And even before that during the warring states era, they still didn't see too much combat as ninja fought most wars. So it was highly unlikely that the Leaf had to be worried about being put under the daimyo's foot. No, what worried him was the politics of the Land of Fire. The reason the Daimyo never had anyone try to over throw him was because he had the Leaf Village's support. Now that the village was now powerless this would be the golden opportunity for someone to try and take power for themselves and once they had taken the Daimyo's power they would come to destroy the Leaf Village to solidify their power.

Kakashi knew that eventually things would come to a head and they would be forced with the decision of defending the village against and army of 100 foot soldiers per ninja at least or leave the village, but if they left the village where would they go? And how many villages lost their chakra? If all the ninja villages had lost their chakra then those countries would likely have the same problems.

These were questions he couldn't answer. But he'd find out sooner or later and no matter what it was he knew the following months would be the darkest this village had seen in its history.

"We will figure out alternative ways of income but for now we have enough food and supplies to last us the upcoming year" Tsunade said as she glanced warily at the empty seat where Danzo normally sat.

No one had seen the war hawk since the event happened and she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

With Danzo

Danzo and his ROOT ninja were already on their way out of the Leaf village by a secret tunnel that only Danzo knew of. He had many subordinates and people loyal to him among the Daimyo's court and if he played his cards right he would soon be sitting on the throne.

At Naruto's Apartment.

Naruto and Sakura sat on Naruto's couch as they ate some ice cream. Naruto had become so tired after training with Lee that he needed Sakura's help to get home and Sakura had decided to just hang out at his place as her parents were visiting some relatives on the other side of the Land of Fire and even if they left immediately they would have to travel two months to get back to the village from the far northern corner of the nation without chakra to help speed them up.

Finally Sakura decided to ask Naruto a question that had been bothering her.

"Hey Naruto, earlier you said you wanted to be the strongest instead of being Hokage, why?" she said this carefully, noticing Naruto's personality drop a little and she couldn't help but feel sad for him.

"Well the Hokage is supposed to be the strongest ninja in the village, but if we don't have chakra then we can't really be a ninja village, at least not like before, so the Hokage title wouldn't really mean what it meant before" he said as he tried to voice how he was feeling "I guess what I mean is that I'm not sure I want to be Hokage anymore because it's no longer what I wanted to be" he scratched his head.

"I'm not that good at explaining stuff" he said embarrassed.

"Don't be silly" Sakura said "I understand what you meant"

Sakura reclined in the couch a little "I guess I feel the same way you do"

Naruto looked over at her in shock "You do?"

"Well yeah" she said "I use to want to be a great ninja like Tsunade, I wanted to have a great career and then marry and have a family" she said, looking up at the spinning ceiling fan.

"But now? Without my chakra my days of fighting anyone is likely over. I may just end up marrying a farmer and being a farmer's wife and living my life that way" Sakura suddenly shot up. "I know almost nothing about farming!" she said as that possible future faded like smoke and she saw herself married to some deadbeat drunk who wouldn't work.

"That's okay Sakura, I know how to garden!" Naruto said

"Really!" Sakura said as she saw a future that wasn't too bad appear again in her head, it was quite frankly the most appealing future out of the two she could imagine for herself.

"Please teach me Naruto!" she grabbed onto him and pulled him close and looked him in the eyes, pleading with him.

Naruto went red in the face at the distance between them "Okay Sakura"

"Great! Thank you Naruto, you're a life saver" hey it was the truth in her eyes, without the income a ninja career would have given her she needed another way to make a living and most jobs were involved in farming, others required training in apprenticeships that could take years and she doubted she would be able to get an apprenticeship in any promising careers as with the disappearance of chakra most ninja would go that route.

Naruto was having similar thoughts, he wanted to stay in the village or at least near his friends and while he could probably be a decent farmer that varied on the weather of the year on how good crops did.

Tazuna had once told Naruto that if he ever wanted to train in carpentry and construction and architecture, like bridge building, that he would take him on and teach him. So that appealed to him. However he did not want to leave his friends and head to Wave. The average apprenticeship lasted about 3-5 years, so that meant being away from the village for not just weeks or months like on a ninja mission, but years. He had never been away from the village that long.

But carpentry was a decent job and you could almost always find work in that field. Whether it was working on ships, furniture or bridges.

'Still' he thought as he looked at Sakura who was talking excitedly 'It's a big decision I'm going to have to make sooner or later.'

In the Middle of Nowhere

Sasuke walked through a lone country road alone.

After waiting an hour and realizing that there was no threat to his safety he had prepared to leave. However before he could his conscience, yes he had one and oddly enough it sounded like Naruto, had told him he couldn't just leave Orochimaru's mummified body standing in the middle of the clearing. Knowing his luck some family would go there for a picnic only to be scarred for life at who would be standing there in greeting.

So Sasuke dug a hole in the ground and hit Orochimaru with a tree branch causing him to fall in said hole.

Hey, there was no way he was touching Orochimaru.

So he had begun walking in the exact opposite direction of the Sound and Leaf Villages. He had heard from some travelers that it appeared that all the chakra users had lost their chakra, and without his Sharingan and jutsu he doubted the Leaf would let a traitor like him live, and in the Sound Kabuto would be put in charge and Sasuke would be nothing more than another goon.

So he had decided that he would most likely never find his brother unless they happened to cross paths by chance and Itachi could be anywhere in the elemental nations.

So Sasuke decided that he would go find somewhere's where he could gain a job he found bearable and live there.

As he heard some music on the other side of the forest he couldn't help but roll his eyes in annoyance of their disturbing the peace he had been enjoying.

Itachi was probably still strong enough to run over there and kill all those music playing weirdo's.

Sasuke sighed, he wished his brother was close enough that he could fight him and get his vengeance.

Alas, that would likely never be.

On a road on the other side of the forest.

A smiling Itachi stood in a Conga line going through the forest.

And why not? His vision was returned he was no longer dieing from his disease and when he had hurried to try to kill the two immortals of the Akatsuki, Kakuzu and Hidan, they were already dead! Apparently Kakuzu had gone to collect a bounty when he lost his chakra and he died from 5 heart attacks at once with his body being unable to handle all the hearts. Hidan had gotten into a fight in a bar and let 10 men impale him at once, without his immortality you can imagine what happened.

He wasn't sure what happened to Kisame but he assumed he drowned.

He had enough money stashed away in secret that he could live a wealthy life off of it for the rest of his days, and if he got married and had kids he could invest that and they could live good lives as well.

Then on this road he had met these cheerful nomads who had invited him to join the conga line and he thought to himself 'Why not, Life is good now' the only piece of business was the Akatsuki, whose plans were now pointless without the tailed beast who were chakra constructs by the way.

Then there was Sasuke, but what was the odds of them ever being within a few miles of each other?

And a chapter is done

If you're wondering about Sasuke and Itachi at the end there, yes they were near each other. The music Sasuke heard were from the conga line Itachi was in. I decided to add a little humor there and imagining Itachi in a conga line is funny in my humble opinion.

As you can probably see there wasn't to much craziness as you may expect in this chapter as this is more of the calm before the storm within the next chapter or two things will take a definite turn, I kinda hinted at it already.

So we had the council having some thoughts about this whole situation. We had the rookies talking about it. We also had some conversation about new lines of work, now some will remain in a role where fighting is normal but others will take up civilian occupations, who do you think will do what?

Now for Reviews.

Anime junkie2: hope you liked this chapter, this first arc of the story will deal with more of the fallout of the event.

Necrohronos: well as you can see in this chapter even the Daimyo isn't secure a position anymore and even Danzo appears to be making a move for it. And the Land of Iron will be a major part of the story later on. Actually the samurai do use chakra but only with Taijutsu and Kenjutsu, also the samurai are not part of the regular army but are more like the elite warriors kinda like the ninja in other villages. However the Samurai are not as dependent on chakra as the ninja are and only use it to boost their skills.

Guest: tried to make this chapter longer without being too long. Hope you liked it.

GioT: Thanks, it popped in my hand and I never saw anything like it on this sight so I decided that the idea was too good to at least not put a story on here. I plan on this story having action, romance, politics and various other elements in it. I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

Please Review.

Thank you and have a nice day!