Enjoy this chapter and look out for the next one tomorrow!

Neji thrust open the door to Sasuke's bedroom with so much force that it sprang back and hit the wall with a resounding crash, revealing a scene that made his throat tighten with fear and horror. Sasuke was on the ground, having obviously fallen out of bed, his sheet tangled around his legs and his hands pressed desperately against his ears, convulsing in what appeared to be a combination of a seizure and a panic attack, sightless eyes almost bulging out of his sockets with the force of a terrible, silent cry.

Hovering above Sasuke, Naruto was trying to catch his arms and stop him from convulsing, but all his presence seemed to be doing was exacerbating the fit.

"Naruto, get away from him!"

Naruto looked up at Neji's shout, but didn't move away from Sasuke. The look on his face could only be described as stricken, and it suddenly struck Neji that he had absolutely no idea before this as to the depth of the relationship between the two. Naruto came off, to Neji, as juvenile and irresponsible, and Sasuke was just an asshole. And yet, the pair must see something in the other of worth, or the bond between them wouldn't be as strong as it was.

"What's wrong with him?" He asked, his face melting into that of a much younger version of himself. "I… I was supposed to help him…"

"Well, you're not, so get away from him before you just make it worse!"

"Worse?" Naruto asked incredulously, his face morphing into rage. "He's gone fucking mental! How much worse can you get?"

"Never ask that question," Neji warned from between gritted teeth. "It will always be answered."

It was precisely at this moment when Sasuke clamped his hands over his ears and started to scream.

Sasuke didn't know where he was, only that it was dark and cold, but he was so frozen himself that the chill couldn't seep into his bones. Rather, it seemed to emanate out from inside him into the frozen darkness, creating a wasteland that echoed the landscape of the cold, barren heart residing in his breast.

Around him, the darkness began to swirl and take on forms of indiscernible shape and mass. Whispers, harsh and quiet, assaulted his ears, but Sasuke couldn't tell if they outside of his head, or in. The whispers ebbed and flowed in volume and intensity like waves crashing against the shore, first sweet, then as unforgiving as cold white marble, their sounds rustling around him like the ominous rush of a chill wind through a partially decimated treetop.

All of a sudden, a single word broke through the tense symphony around him, making Sasuke flinch with the harshness it contained, only emphasized by its brevity.

"Fool!"

The voice was his father's, and the tone was pure arched disappointment. Sasuke curled in on himself, his hands coming up to cover his ears, but it did little to quiet the words ricocheting around the inside of his skull like stray bullets.

"What are you doing? Targeting the Akatsuki alone? You fool! I thought I raised you better than this."

"Sasuke?" The voice of his mother interrupted, but Sasuke cringed even harder at her sickly sweet cloying tone. "You should listen to your father. He's always right, you know."

His father's voice cut back in, each word like the crack of a whip against Sasuke's mind. "Fool! Incapable, useless fool! You are a disappointment to me, son- no, not even my son! You've turned your back on two of the most important rules of the Uchiha: never trust a ghost, and never work alone! Until you can repent from these sins, you are no longer a son of the Uchiha family!"

Other voices, both known and unknown to him, joined those of his parents, forming a dissonant symphony increasing in tempo with the ever-increasing tempo of his heartbeat.

"Fool!"

"...hate my methods? You use them…"

"...insignificant…useless…"

"...banish you from the House of Uchiha…"

"...this was a waste of time… Why did I even come here in the first place?..."

"...useless…"

"...you're not one of us; how could you be? You're still alive…"

"...you'll never be seeing us again…"

"...useless…"

"...why couldn't you have left him… to tell me what this means?..."

"...useless…"

"...you've changed, Sasuke… you're colder now…"

"...useless…"

"...you were almost a human…"

"...useless… useless… useless… useless… useless… useless… useless… USELESS! USELESS! USELESS! USELESS! USELESS! USELESS! USELESS!"

Sasuke could pinpoint exactly when, but it was somewhere around this point that he started screaming to drown out the voices.

Shikamaru tackled Naruto to the ground away from Sasuke as he seized up and began to convulse in time to his screaming, his eyes rolling back into his head far enough to show off a dangerous amount of white. He suddenly threw himself to the side, and would have smashed his head against the legs of the chair if Neji hadn't dove down and caught him at the last second, holding him against the floor.

The carefully constructed composure Neji had built around himself the past week started to crack, deepening into a crevice capable of swallowing what little self pride he had left into darkness. A vicious tremor overtook him, and his hands holding the still writhing Sasuke - though his screams by now had subsided into interspersed bouts of disturbing tortured moans and even more disturbing silence - clenched unconsciously into terrified claws. What do I do? He thought wildly, shaking almost as badly as Sasuke. What can I do?

A gentle touch at the back of Neji's neck made him jump almost to the ceiling, but upon whipping his head around, he saw only Shikamaru's calmly calculating gaze, devoid of the usual gloating boredom and filled instead with strength.

"There's someone coming up the stairs. What do I do?"

Yes, Neji thought wildly, his mind chasing down scattered thoughts around the blank space of his mind like a cat chasing phantom mice. What do I do?

"Neji!" Shikamaru snapped, jerking him harshly back to reality. "What do you want me to do? He's your friend: it's your call."

It's your call. How he hated those words. They represented all the demands made of him before he was ready, all the responsibilities no one had ever asked him if he had wanted. But, Neji had learned, when it was time for a call to be made, it had to be made or it would make itself, and the consequences of that happening were often worse than making the wrong call. Well, now was the time, and this was the call, and taking the driver's seat was the only option Neji had, much as he disliked the thought.

His face growing hard, Neji stood up, dragging the now unresponsive Sasuke with him. "Close the door and lock it. I don't want anyone coming in."

A flash of darkness momentarily flashed through Shikamaru's gaze, but it was gone as soon as it had come, leaving Neji unsure whether or not he had just imagined it. "If that's what you think is right."

For a second, doubt flashed through Neji's mind, but he clamped down in it when he, too, heard rushing footsteps coming up the stairs. Now was not the time for hesitation.

"Yes, that's what I want! Do it, and do it now!"

A look of pleasant surprise flickered over Shikamaru's face before being replaced by a rigid, militaristic discipline, reminding Neji that the phantom had lived - and died - in the service of the military.

"Yes, sir," he barked, the response so natural it was probably ingrained into the very fibers of his being.

Immediately after, the door slammed shut and the lock clicked closed without any visible movement or direction from Shikamaru, and not a moment too soon: a second later, a heavy fist started pounding on the door.

"Sasuke? Are you in there? What's going on?"

The voice was Sakura's, and it floated through the door on a voice filled with panicked emotion. Gritting his teeth, Neji ignored the pounding as it increased in volume and focused instead on trying to get Sasuke to stand upright. His eyes were open now, but they were sightless, focusing on something that Neji couldn't see.

"Sasuke! Can you hear me?" Neji snapped, but there was no response.

Unable to hold himself upright on locked knees, Sasuke pitched forward and would have hit the ground face first if Neji hadn't reached out and caught him at the last second.

The pounding stopped abruptly, and Sakura's voice came through the door again.

"Neji? Is that you?"

"Shit," Neji muttered under his breath, then called out, "Yes, it's me!"

"Neji?" Ino's voice joined Sakura's, and Neji cursed even harder under his breath. "What on earth is going on in there?"

"Nothing!" He yelled, dumping Sasuke unceremoniously facedown on the bed. "Nothing is happening, nothing is wrong! Leave us alone, please!"

Kabuto's smug voice echoed through the closed door. "You're disturbing the peace. You have to let us in to investigate."

Doubt and suspicion swirled abruptly through Neji's mind. What was Kabuto doing at their door? Sure, Sasuke had just chased him out of the room a scant ten minutes before, but Neji had assumed that he would just complain to Kakashi and be done with it. Why was he here again, and with Sakura and Ino, not the manager? Perhaps, Neji realized with cold fear trickling down his back like an ice cube dropped down the neck of his shirt, perhaps it was possible that Sasuke was right, and Kabuto was the Akatsuki's spy.

He must have remained silent for too long, because Sakura called through the door again, concern in her voice.

"Neji? You sure you're alright in there?"

"Yes, we're fine-" he started, but a sudden need for oxygen cut him off as Sasuke launched himself from the bed and grabbed him from behind in a chokehold.

Almost imperceptibly slowly, the torturous chant of abuse plaguing Sasuke started fading, the multitude of sadistic voices prying into his skull starting to ebb and flow inconsistently. Taking in a great, shuddering breath, Sasuke tensed, then let all the tension drain out of his body on his breath. It was a trick he'd learned to do when blocking out things he didn't want to hear. As soon as he relaxed, they disappeared almost instantly, proving to him that they were phantoms of his own mind and not apparitions sent by an outside source.

The reprieve was short lived, however, when the mad symphony of voices was replaced with a single voice, more chilling to him than all the other voices combined.

"Hello, little brother. Have you missed me?"

All thoughts of reason and calming breaths left Sasuke on a wave of rage, and he launched himself at the source of voice without a second thought.

"Rat bastard!"

I can't breathe, Neji dimly realized. That's right; Sasuke is choking me. But why? Rat bastard… Does Sasuke think I'm the rat now? Probably not, he's still hallucinating… Why can't I breathe again?

"Neji? Neji!" Heavy pounding started at the door again, and Sakura's voice took on a desperate tone. "What's going on? If you don't open up this door, I'll go get Kakashi to bring the keys!"

Neji's vision started closing off with his windpipe, the edges of his sight fading into darkness. He was dimly aware of Naruto and Shikamaru jumping forward and trying to separate Sasuke from him, but it did little good. The strength with which Sasuke was gripping him was almost inhuman, and Neji could sense, almost separate from himself, the too-rapid speed at which he was approaching unconsciousness.

Suddenly, Shikamaru's face was right in front of Neji, occupying the space in the center of his vision while the edges started blurring away. His lips formed Neji's name several times, but Neji couldn't hear it. The only thing his ears could pick up was the rushing of his pulse and an unidentifiable low buzzing. A franticness overtook Shikamaru's face and he seized Neji's shoulders, but Neji couldn't even feel the pressure of his hands.

Shikamaru's face abruptly morphed into one Neji had never seen before, but he would have recognized it anywhere. It was the face of someone in their mid twenties, someone who had seen the ravages of war. This was the face Shikamaru had died with, and the face he would always revert to in a situation that caused extreme stress or fear. The knowledge that he could cause such a face in a phantom who usually only dealt in games was a strange comfort to Neji, despite the current situation he was in.

The room went black for a second, then slowly came back into dim focus, and Neji realized that he'd almost lost consciousness, but Shikamaru had shaken him back awake. Just let me sleep, he thought dimly, his head lolling on his shoulders. Don't you know how tired I am?... And why can't I breathe again?

The last thing Neji felt before he lost consciousness was a blast of power at his back, throwing him forward into Shikamaru's arms.

"You rat bastard!" Sasuke screamed as he launched himself at the apparition of his brother. He half expected him to be incorporeal, a figment of his imagination, and to fly right through him, so when his hands closed around an all-too-firm neck, he almost let go again in shock, but the impulse passed by within a moment, and he gripped even harder around his brother's neck.

Itachi's eyes bugged out and he grasped desperately at Sasuke's hands. "Wait!" He gasped. "Don't- don't do this!"

"Why!?" Sasuke screamed in reply, surprised to find tears running down his face. "What mercy did you give me when these roles were reversed? Why should I listen to anything you say?"

"Because-" he choked out, his face turning a light shade of purple, "because you're stronger than I am. Don't let them get to you…"

"Them?" Sasuke's grip lightened almost imperceptibly.

"The Akatsuki. They can poison the mind with a single carefully crafted sentence and make a man go mad." Itachi let his hands drop to his sides, but didn't break eye contact with Sasuke, who stared at him almost in horror. "By the time I beat their game, it was already too late. But you had something to keep you sane, and then you lost it. Find it. Bring it back, and you can beat them."

"How?" Sasuke whispered, his grip loosening even more. "How can I possibly beat them?"

"You can beat their mind game, and once you do that, you can win. I know you can."

But before Sasuke could say anything else, a blast of power separated him from Itachi, and he lost the form of his brother into the black depths of his consciousness.

When his vision came trickling back, Neji had the feeling that he wasn't out for long, perhaps only a few seconds, but what had happened while he was out had been momentous. He was lying on the floor in an uncomfortable position, one arm wedged underneath him, trapped between his back and the carpet, as if he'd fallen forward and been rolled into the position he was currently in. Every part of his body ached, from his arm to his shoulder to his left knee, which he must have hit in his fall, but especially his neck, which felt like it was on fire.

"God, that hurts," he tried to groan, but all that came out was a harsh croak.

Suddenly Shikamaru was there, laying a gently solid finger across Neji's lips. "Shh. Don't talk."

"Wh…" Neji managed to get out on a harsh whisper, but nothing else followed.

"Idiot! Didn't you just hear what I said?" Shikamaru furrowed his brow, equal parts anger and worry mixing in his face. "Don't talk. Sasuke got a real good grip there on your throat for a while. Probably woulda killed you if Naruto and I hadn't managed to pull you too apart. Your throat's really bruised now, but you can still breathe so you should be fine soon, but just try not to talk for a bit, okay? Nod if you understand me."

Neji nodded, and Shikamaru visibly relaxed. He held out a hand, and Neji grabbed it, hauling himself into a sitting position. His throat felt dry and he tried to swallow, but the effort hurt and he only succeeded in gasping out a ragged breath, unable to do anything more than listen to the harsh sound of his own breathing.

Damn, Sasuke really did a number on me, Neji thought, bringing a hand up to touch his tender throat. Wait, what happened to Sasuke? Is he okay?

Unthinkingly, he opened his mouth to ask the question of Shikamaru, but the phantom covered his mouth before he could speak.

"No talking, remember?"

Neji displayed his irritation with an angry grimace.

"I know, I know: you want to know about Sasuke." Shikamaru pointed behind Neji. "He's over there, with Naruto. He's fine, but whatever's going on… it's different now. He's quieter."

Neji made a motion with his hand that he wanted to see for himself, and Shikamaru nodded in response.

"Course you would. Give me your hand."

Neji was about to give Shikamaru his hand to let him help him up when a thought struck him, and he signed a rough approximation of you understand ASL?

With a frown, Shikamaru said, "If you're asking me if I understand sign language, the answer is no. But I can read your expressions fairly well, so I'll be able to understand you."

Neji raised a single eyebrow.

"Yes, really," Shikamaru sighed. "You don't think I've spent this entire time with my head shoved up my ass, do you? I'm the Shadowmaster, remember?"

Neji made a face, but Shikamaru just shrugged.

"Don't take everything Sasuke said to heart. I certainly didn't. He wasn't right in the head, even then."

Impatiently, Neji stuck his hand out, and the phantom laughed and took it.

"I know, I know. Getting on with it."

Neji was surprised at both the ease of communication and the lack of embarrassment he felt with Shikamaru, even when he helped with the simplest of tasks, like standing up, but maybe that was because of Shikamaru himself. The phantom was a war veteran, so he must have seen much worse injuries than the one Neji was currently sporting.

Speaking of war, Shikamaru still had his death-face on, the face he had worn when he was fighting in World War 2. When he realized that, Neji reached up almost instinctively and traced a finger down his cheek. It was a fascinating face to him, made even more so because of the fact that he had put it there.

At the touch, Shikamaru looked down at Neji with a frown of confusion, and Neji blushed and dropped his hand away.

"What is it?" Shikamaru murmured almost to himself, grasping Neji's chin and pulling it up so he could study his face. Neji reddened even further when he realized that their bodies were almost flush against each other from Shikamaru helping him up, his hand resting on the ghost's chest and Shikamaru's unoccupied hand settled at the small of his back for support.

"Ah, so that's it." Shikamaru's face morphed again to the normal visage he wore. "That better?"

Neji nodded, trying to hide the disappointment in his face, but Shikamaru saw it anyway and gave a low chuckle.

"If you two have finished with your flirting over there, maybe you could, I don't know, pay some attention to the thrashing maniac over here?"

Flirting!? Neji spun his head around in outrage, about to give Naruto a piece of his mind, when Shikamaru covered his mouth.

"No talking, remember?" He whispered in Neji's ear, making him flush and wriggle from the intimate heat against his neck.

Then Neji saw Sasuke. Thrashing maniac, Naruto had said, and that just about covered it. Sasuke was pressed flat out on the floor, his arms pinned down against the carpet on either side of his head by a trying-not-to-panic-and-only-partially-succeeding Naruto, who was sitting on his chest and holding him still. He had stopped the screaming and epileptic-type seizures of before, but his mouth was open, as if he was silently crying out, and his head was moving back and forth rapidly like he was searching for something.

Naruto looked up at Neji with barely controlled panic in his gaze. "What should I do? What can I do?"

Those are the exact questions I've been asking myself for the past half hour, Neji thought grimly.

Before anyone could say anything else, the door rattled as it was unlocked from the outside and swung open with enough force to crash violently into the wall, letting in four panicked bodies. Kakashi was first, holding a key and looking very official, but he was soon pushed out of the way by a concerned Ino, a worried Sakura, and a smug Kabuto.

"See!" Kabuto cried, pointing an accusing finger at Sasuke in the ground. "I told you he was acting strange! He's disturbing the peace-"

But Sakura elbowed right past him, not giving him any attention. "Oh my god, Sasuke! Are you okay!"

No! She can't get close to him! Neji thought desperately, and he tried to step forward to block her movements, but in doing so he stepped away from Shikamaru's supportive arm and stumbled back down to his knees.

Sakura's path immediately changed from Sasuke to Neji, and she gasped, a hand flying up to cover her mouth, when she saw his neck.

"Neji! What happened to you? Did Sasuke do this?"

Sakura fell to her knees in front of Neji and grabbed his head to hold it still as she examined his neck and he struggled to push her away.

"N-no!" He croaked, but Sakura ignored him.

"This looks serious; we need to get you to the hospital!" Sakura turned her head back to look at Kakashi. "Can you call 911?"

Kakashi nodded and pulled out his phone even as Neji was vehemently shaking his head.

"Hospital is a bad idea," Shikamaru agreed, plucking the phone from Kakashi's grip with a flick of his wrist and dangling it in the air.

The effect was immediate: every human in the room except the writhing Sasuke froze, and Kakashi's single visible eyebrow crept up his forehead.

"Ah," he said after pulling down his mask and surveying the room with both eyes. "So it's this kind of problem, is it?"

Sasuke was looking for something - what, he couldn't be sure of, but he knew that he had to find it, or else something bad was going to happen. Again, he couldn't be sure what that thing was, but he knew he had to overcome it, or it would destroy him.

It was dark, but not as cold as before, and Sasuke was running through the darkness seeking for the special thing that would help him and only him, the holy grail of his story. He knew he could find it if he tried hard enough, but the darkness was so endless that he began to flag and falter. Something was chasing him, though, something terrible, and he dared not let it catch up to him, so on he stumbled with terror an equal motivator to the desire for that special Something.

It felt to Sasuke like he was ten years old again, stumbling along after the shadow of his older brother. Look at me and love me, his rapid childish footsteps seemed to beg of the shadow, even though his heart was filled with fear of that same shadow.

Alone and terrified, the child Sasuke ran after the shadow in the darkness, the one spot darker than the blackness around him. It seemed to swell in size and shrink back down as if it was rapidly coming closer, then receding just as quickly, even though Sasuke never changed his pace.

"Itachi!" He cried out to the shadow, his voice a shrill child's call. "Big brother, where did you go?"

The shadow seemed to pause and turn its head slightly back upon hearing the cry, and Sasuke quickened his pace, the eagerness he felt more than outweighing the trepidation. The darkness around him was getting colder with every stride, but he paid it no mind as he strove towards the shadow of his big brother, all intentions of his original goal forgotten.

It was getting harder and harder to run through the frozen darkness, but child Sasuke kept struggling on, his little legs growing ever more sluggish with cold but ever more determined. Somewhere in the back of his mind, something was screaming at him not to continue, that this was not right, but his body had a mind of its own and wouldn't listen.

On and on the child Sasuke slogged, closer and closer to the shadow. With every step he took it grew more defined, until he could make out individual body parts on the shadow - a head, arms, hands - positioned in a way that suggested it seemed to be waiting for him.

"Big brother?" He called uncertainly, and the shadowy figure raised its head slightly in response. "Itachi? Is that you?"

The shadow said nothing in response, and Sasuke's steps faltered for the first time. It was right there in front of him, close enough for him to reach out and touch, but he was afraid. Slowly, he stretched out a trembling hand in front of him to brush up against the shadow.

"Big brother…?"

All of a sudden, the figure turned around, revealing not the face of his older brother, but the pierced face of Pein, the Akatsuki.

"Not quite," he said with a cruel smile.

Sasuke felt terror overtake him and he tried to back away, but the icy darkness clasped his legs and refused to let him go.

His cruel smile intensifying, Pein leaned closer to the frozen Sasuke. "Well, would you take a look at this. It's a little lost boy, looking for a little lost toy. How pathetic."

That's right, Sasuke remembered with sudden clarity. I was looking for something, something important. Where is it? I need to find it!

As if even just remembering the Something he was looking for gave him enough protection from the Akatsuki to break away, the hold on his legs started to loosen, and Sasuke tore away from Pein and started sprinting as fast as he could. A bloodcurdling shriek pierced his ears, and he found, with some degree of surprise, that it was coming from him.

A horrible shriek like someone was being tortured tore out of Sasuke and rebounded around the room like a thousand pool balls rebounding off the sides of a pool table, and he immediately started thrashing around so hard, Naruto was no longer able to hold him on the ground alone.

"Help!" He cried desperately over his shoulder as Sasuke did his unconscious best to throw him off. "Shikamaru! Please?"

Shikamaru turned sharply to Kakashi and fixed him with a piercing glare, but he didn't back down. "Can you hear me because of that eye of yours, or just see me?" He snapped sharply.

"I can hear you," Kakashi said with a nod.

"Then tell those kids over there to get their asses in gear and help Naruto hold Sasuke down!"

Kakashi nodded once and turned quickly to his employees. "Sakura, Ino, Kabuto: go hold Sasuke down so he doesn't hurt himself!"

Sakura and Ino immediately nodded and ran to Sasuke, where Naruto let them hold his upper body down while he moved to Sasuke's feet, but Kabuto stayed planted at the doorway, a look of stricken fear on his face.

"Phone… floating…" Was all he could manage with a trembling arm outstretched to point at Kakashi's phone, which was still suspended in the air.

"Right," Shikamaru muttered, waving his hand and sending the phone off to drop gently onto the desk. Turning to Neji, he asked with his eyebrows furrowed in worry, "You still feeling okay?"

Neji nodded, but there was still some worry in his face.

"Yes, I know, you're worried about Sasuke," Shikamaru answered with a sigh. "I know this is difficult, but do you think you could stay out of whatever's happening?"

Neji's jaw dropped in shock and anger, and Shikamaru immediately sighed again.

"I knew it was a long shot, but I still had to try. You're hurt, and I know you can feel the energy building outside."

Affronted, Neji crossed his arms over his chest in a show of stubbornness, and Shikamaru' eyebrows drew together with worry again.

"I know that face, you know," he warned Neji in a troubled voice. "I've seen it many times, and the person wearing it usually ends up dead."

Neji raised his chin a little higher in defiance.

"Fine!" Shikamaru snapped, harshness bleeding into his tone from worry. "But don't say I didn't warn you. I've done the whole dying thing, and it's not exactly a picnic on the beach at sunset. You're young and think you're immortal… but you're not. I learned that the hard way."

The harsh, knowing look in Shikamaru's gaze was impossible for Neji to meet head on, so he looked away, but still didn't back down. Eventually, Shikamaru gave in with a sigh and ran an aggravated hand through his hair.

"I'll admit, your tenacity is impressive," he said with a grudging awe.

From across the room, Sasuke gave a sudden surge upwards, and it took all Ino's and Sakura's strength to keep him pinned to the floor.

"I don't know how much longer we can keep him down. I think we should try to move him; it's too closed in and crowded here," Sakura said with worry in her voice. "Do you think we could carry him somewhere else?"

"I have a better idea."

Shikamaru took a step into the middle of the room and raised his right hand over his head. Shadows spilled out of his hand and covered the room faster than the span of a human blink, covering everything in a thick layer of warm dark silence before anyone had a chance to scream aloud.

Sasuke was still running, but now he knew why. He was looking for the thing that would keep him sane, and at the same time, running from what would drive him insane. Behind him was cold that he was running from, and in front of him was warmth that he was striving to reach. Cold was terror, and warmth was home; he knew this instinctively, and yet, his body yearned to stop and fall into the coldness, to let it overcome him until his whole body was frozen and unfeeling, even as his mind urged him onwards.

Suddenly, the dark landscape around Sasuke changed dramatically, and yet only infinitesimally noticeably. The dark, hushed shapes that darted around him were all replaced with silent shadows for the briefest of moments, and Sasuke stopped running in shock. Even though the moment itself had been the epitome of brevity, it had seemed warm and familiar to him, and he was lost in remembrance trying to figure out what it reminded him of.

A cold breeze curled around the backs of Sasuke's calves, shocking him out of his reverie and propelling him forward again. Now was not the time to be reminiscing over the shadows of lost things, not when he had something to find.

When the shadows cleared, Neji was no longer standing in the room at the Hokage belonging to Sasuke for the summer. He, along with everyone else in the room, had been relocated to the beach by the small pond where Neji, Sasuke, and the two phantoms had had their first confrontation with the Akatsuki. The beach was exactly like he remembered it, even in the light of day rather than moonlit illumination, and Neji felt a chill run up his spine at the memories associated with the beach. A little to his right, directly under where Sasuke lay, was the patch of glass where Deidara had used his flames and melted the sand, and Neji shuddered just looking at it.

His was not the only reaction of negative emotion, but it was the least impressive one. The two girls tending to Sasuke let out identical screams and jumped up in horror, leaving Sasuke stationary - luckily - on the ground. On the other side of the beach, Kabuto was frozen in terror, his heartbeat visibly escalating and his breathing patterns accelerating until they approached hyperventilatory status. Kakashi was the only one besides Neji who managed to hold himself together after the shocking change in surroundings, by then again, having his transplanted eye had probably forced him to witness much stranger things than this.

In the center of the circle of people, just as before, in the room, was Shikamaru. He looked as confident as always, but Neji noticed a tremble in his hand, and when he took a step forward, he stumbled and would have hit the floor of Neji hadn't jumped forward and caught him at the last second.

"Thanks," he murmured roughly, his hand clutching Neji's shirtsleeve for support, which told Neji exactly how exhausted he was. "Never done that stunt with so much mass before… it was probably a stupid move, but it worked."

"What the fucking hell just happened to us?" Sakura screamed, tears of terror starting to form in her eyes.

"I transported you through the shadows," Shikamaru answered calmly despite his obvious exhaustion.

"Transported us through the shadows?" Sakura and Ino shrieked in tandem, and both Neji and Shikamaru snapped their heads toward the two girls.

"You can hear me?"

"Of course we can bloody well hear you!" Ino cried in a voice so terrified it bordered on hysterical. "Why the hell wouldn't we be able to?"

Sakura got it first, her breathing slowing as she calmed down enough to comprehend what was going on, and she pointed at Shikamaru. "You're a ghost, aren't you? Oh, God, what's going on?"

"A ghost!?" All reason flew from Kabuto's face and was replaced with abject terror. "That's it! I'm done! Hire someone else; I quit!"

He turned tail and started running away from the beach, but Shikamaru raised a tired hand and Kabuto crashed into an invisible barrier.

"No one's going anywhere," he said, strongly despite his obvious fatigue.

"Why!? What the hell's going on here?" Kabuto sobbed, pummeling desperately against the impenetrable invisible barrier.

"A ghost?" In juxtaposition to Kabuto, Ino seemed to calm down upon learning it was the work of a spirit. "Which one are you?"

"Shikamaru," the phantom answered, pushing himself back onto slightly steadier feet, though Neji didn't let him drift too far away. "But I don't understand why you can see me."

"Um…" A voice interjected uncertainly, drawing everyone's focus over to a nervously sheepish Naruto, whose countenance was quite a bit different than expected. "I'm having a sinking suspicion that may be my fault. Also, does anyone think they can explain to me why I'm glowing? Because I have absolutely no clue."

Sasuke was running, but he wasn't running blindly. As he was racing through the darkness, he was thinking, trying to remember what it might have been that had protected him that he had lost. Every once in a while, he would get so wrapped up in thinking that he would slow and stop, but a cold breeze at his back would soon propel him forward again.

What could he be looking for? There was nothing obvious he could think of, and he still wasn't completely sure if he should trust the strange apparition of his brother. And yet, what other choice did he have? He certainly didn't have any ideas.

There must be something, anything, that would function as a clue. But what?

Cold air tickled at the backs of his legs, and Sasuke started running again, then almost stopped in shock as it suddenly hit him.

Cold was madness and the Akatsuki, so its opposite, what would defeat it, was warmth. Warmth was home, warmth was safety, warmth was what he was running towards and looking for. But what in his life, something that he had recently lost, had been warm?

And then, suddenly, he knew.

Naruto examined his hands with a look of panic on his face as a delicate golden light seemed to hover around him with his body as the source. "Shikamaru? Neji? Please? What's happening to me?"

"Interesting…" Shikamaru appeared fascinated with the new development. "Bringing you through the shadows with my power seems to have brought forth a latent power of yours. This has never happened to you before?"

"Of course this has never fucking happened to me before!" Naruto exploded. "I look like a set of fucking Christmas lights! Care to explain that to me?"

Neji tugged at Shikamaru's arm, but the phantom ignored him.

"I wonder if it's some kind of reaction to the shadows… I mean, light is darkness's opposite…"

Neji tugged harder at Shikamaru's arm, and this time, he looked down at Neji with a slight frown.

"What?"

Furrowing his brow in concentration, Neji focused all his energy on talking. "Ku… kyu…"

"Don't talk!" Shikamaru immediately tried to cover Neji's mouth, but he pushed the phantom off.

"Kyu… Kyuubi…" He finally managed, and Shikamaru frown in confusion.

"Kyuubi? What the hell does the Kyuubi have to do with any of… this..." He trailed off as Naruto's glowing form caught his eye, and an expression of almost-disbelieving surprise came over his face. "Oh. Oh. That's… Oh."

"Kyuubi? What are you guys talking about?" Naruto allowed an almost hysterical panic to seep into his tone and face. "Will somebody please just tell me what's happening to me?"

"Na...ru...to…"

The sound, so unexpected after every other sound that had terrorized them, came from Sasuke. All traces of panic for himself gone, Naruto jumped as if he'd been given an electric shock and raced over to Sasuke's side.

"Sasuke? Can you hear me?" He asked fervently, grasping onto Sasuke's hand with the desperation of one obsessed, but it was obvious that Sasuke couldn't hear him from the way he tossed his head from side to side.

"Na...ruto…" Sasuke repeated, louder and more insistent than before.

"I'm here!" Naruto called out, squeezing Sasuke's hand even harder, but still there was no response.

"Na… Naruto… Wh… where are you?"

"I'm right here!" Naruto almost wept. "Where are you?"

The inexplicable golden glow surrounding Naruto grew steadily stronger as he hovered over Sasuke until its harsh light became too bright for Neji's gaze and he was forced to look away, but he still heard Sasuke's next words, almost as if answering Naruto's unheard question.

"I'm trying to find you…"