..."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…"

All of a sudden, the darkness around Sasuke became less absolute and cold, and he stopped in surprise and confusion. From some majestic, indiscernible source, a golden light seemed to be permeating the space around him. The light was hazy, like a warm golden smoke, and it didn't illuminate far into the darkness, instead coming between it and Sasuke like a wall.

Turning his head back and forth, Sasuke searched for the source of the golden light, but in vain. In no one place was it thicker than anywhere else, making it impossible to tell a direction from which it emanated, until Sasuke looked up.

Directly above his head was veritable fountain of golden light so bright it hurt his eyes to look at it. Like the sun breaking at dawn, it swept through his dark mindscape with a cleansing warmth, bringing with it a sense of home.

Here it was: the special Something that would defeat the Akatsuki's cold. Here was warmth, here was safety, here was home, and Sasuke reached out toward it without a second thought.

Much to Neji's surprise, in almost the complete opposite of earlier, the closer Naruto got to Sasuke, the calmer he got. Passing a gentle hand over Sasuke's brow, Naruto gazed down on him with the look of gently loving worry that one would wear when attending to a lover, and Neji was struck by how much they looked, especially with the golden glow around them, like a Renaissance painting of an angel hovering protectively over a mortal.

Oblivious to everything happening around him, Naruto leaned down closer to Sasuke and whispered something in his ear. Sasuke strained upwards in response to his voice, one hand reaching up, which Naruto caught and pressed against his face. The words on his lips were easy to read: Come back to me.

As if breaking through the surface of a deep pool of water, Sasuke suddenly gasped and opened his eyes wide, but this time, they were awake and capturing every detail. He swung his head back and forth several times, his gaze collecting data and the gears inside his head almost visibly turning as they processed the information.

Neji's heart jumped into his throat with relief; finally, Sasuke was back and he could be the one making the calls, not Neji. He could take back all the responsibility from Neji and let him do what he did best: watch and guard. Almost immediately after thinking that, Neji felt ashamed of his selfishness, but he couldn't help it; he's never felt comfortable in a leadership position, and having someone who could take that from him was a great load off his shoulders. Especially now, with his… 'complication'.

When Sasuke pulled himself out of his hallucination, the world was so bright outside that he had to blink rapidly and let his eyes adjust the the sheer amount of light. Then it hit him: bright… outside…

Why was he outside? His memory from before falling into whatever dark mental pit he'd just dragged himself out of was spotty at best - hell, the entire past week had been pretty spotty - but he had distinctly remembered being inside the Hokage. What had caused them to change locations, and so drastically? The beach, which Sasuke recognized from their little midnight rendezvous with the Akatsuki, was a ways away from the Hokage. What had possessed them to bring him so far?

And there was that, too: why the hell were there so many people staring at him? Neji and even Shikamaru he understood, though he hadn't been sure if Shikamaru would ever talk to him again after the stupid and completely uncalled for stunt he had pulled, but the presence of people like Ino, Sakura, Kabuto - who looked about ready to shit himself in terror - and Kakashi, in other words, unnecessary additions to an already too-crowded scene, unnerved him.

"Sasuke!"

The sound, so close to his ear, made Sasuke jump, jerking his head to the side so fast he heard a pop as the stiffness worked itself out until he found he found the source. Naruto was hovering over him with an angelically worried expression on his face, one hand resting gently on Sasuke's collar bone and the other holding one of Sasuke's own hands against his cheek. The skin beneath Sasuke's palm was exceptionally warm and solid-feeling, more than normal, even for a phantom like Naruto, like he was touching the cheek of someone still alive.

Even as he took all this in, there was one thing that caught Sasuke's attention and refused to let it go, and he frowned a little, clearing a throat that felt suspiciously hoarse, though from what, Sasuke couldn't quite remember, to speak.

"Naruto? Why are you glowing?"

A look of dawning realization crept over Naruto's face. "Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten that happened."

"Forgotten!? How can you just 'forget' that you look like you've taken a swim in a pool of nuclear waste?"

Naruto fixed him with a baleful look. "I had more pressing things to think about, alright? Besides, nuclear waste is green."

"That's not funny, Naruto."

"To you, maybe."

"If you two have finished with your flirting over there," a voice cut in with a witheringly scornful drawl, "then perhaps we can put some thought into the current situation, no?"

Sasuke was about to snap something back to the smug-looking Shikamaru when he realized he would only be putting fuel on an already out of control fire. With a sigh, he resigned himself to kicking his tired mind into action for whatever was coming next. He shifted his body slightly - God, the ground underneath him was hard, like granite or glass or something - and the movement sent Naruto scurrying back like some small glowing animal fleeing the sound of a human footprint. With a slight frown, Sasuke pushed himself up from his horizontal position - he was laying on a plate of glass; no wonder it was hard - into a vaguely vertical one. Naruto wasn't going back into that 'I'm a little scared of Sasuke even though I watch him sleep' phase, was he?

Flicking his gaze over to the group of confused and terrified humans huddled together at the edge of the beach, Sasuke asked, "What're they doing here?"

"Safety precautions," Shikamaru answered. "They burst in when we were trying to subdue you, and I thought it safer to bring them with us rather than leave them to panic on their own. Though," he tacked on a bit scornfully, "I don't think we avoided the panicking bit."

"You're fucking right, you didn't!" Ino's shrill voice cut in. "You'd have to be mental to go through all that shit and not panic!"

Shikamaru flicked a glance at the conspicuously not panicking Kakashi, who shrugged at the nonverbal accusation. "I've seen stranger; I run the Hokage."

Sasuke couldn't argue with that, so he just shook his head to clear it better. "'Subdue'? Was I really that bad?"

"Ask Neji," Shikamaru said with a little more contempt in his voice. "He seemed to have borne the brunt of your hallucinogenic anger."

"What!?" Sasuke refocused his attention onto Neji, who hadn't spoken yet so Sasuke had yet to devote much attention to. Upon closer inspection, Neji looked injured, his face ashen as if from pain and his frame bent slightly as if under the weight of some great stress.

And then Sasuke saw them: newly formed bruises, still darkening from the redness of a fresh injury, ringing Neji's neck like a necklace of pain. They were ugly bruises, in the clear shape of fingers and mottling with vibrant and dirty shades of purple, and Sasuke felt a little sick to his stomach just looking at them.

"Did I… Did I really do that?" He asked after a harsh swallow, a little fearful of what the answer might be.

With a wince, Neji nodded, and Sasuke felt something swoop in his stomach.

"God, Neji, I'm so sorry. I had no idea-"

"It's alright," Shikamaru interrupted. "He's already forgiven you, being the idiot he is." But the insult was said with such sudden affection that it held no bite.

"Um, I don't know if this is a good time," came the scared but mostly calm voice of Sakura from the sidelines, "but I'm really confused and don't know what's going on, so can someone please explain things to us? Especially the bit about being able to see the ghosts. It's very unnerving."

"Wait." Sasuke struggled to his feet with help from a steadying hand on his elbow courtesy of Naruto. "You can see the ghosts? As in, really see them?"

"As real as you and me," Sakura said, then frowned a little. "Well, not exactly as real as you or me. They're a little fuzzy and it's hard to make out a lot of specific details, but they're still there."

As if to prove her point, Naruto gave Sakura a little wave and she flinched instinctively.

"Sorry," she apologized immediately upon seeing Naruto's crestfallen face. "It's just… unsettling, is all."

Shikamaru raised one strident eyebrow. "Can you think of a reason why this is happening, Sasuke?"

Sasuke was about to answer when something in Shikamaru's face tipped him off to the fact that this wasn't some offhand question. But what was the significance? Certainly not just because they wanted him to fall into a specific conclusion. Though, as soon as Sasuke thought that, it seemed more likely than he had first anticipated.

But why would Shikamaru want him to arrive at a specific conclusion? To back up a conclusion he had already come to, or to make sure Sasuke accepted the conclusion by having him come to it himself? Immediately, he bristled at the signs of Shikamaru's patented puppeteering, but he squashed down the angry words quelling up in his throat. Now was not the time to rehash that particular argument.

Back to the matter at hand, then. What was going on? Sasuke felt like he'd missed a lot of things while he'd been out, but had also experienced many other things that might be even more helpful, if only he could remember them, but the details were slipping away like water through his grasping fingers. The vaguest recollection of darkness and cold and looking for something was all that remained, but he couldn't quite remember the context behind any of it. It was an altogether frustrating feeling.

"Sasuke?"

A warm hand settled on Sasuke's shoulder, and he turned his head to the side to look for the owner of the hand. Behind him, Naruto was looking at him with a concerned expression, the golden glow around him filtering through his blond hair like a halo.

Golden glow… warm hands… warmth… warmth to defeat the cold.

Everything suddenly clicked in Sasuke's brain as the memories of his hallucinations came pouring back all in a rush: Itachi and the instructions he had given him, Pein's threats, the search for something unknown and then realizing it was Naruto.

It was Naruto, and it had been Naruto all along. It had been Kushina who had died first in that car accident over a hundred years ago, leaving Naruto with a generational curse so strongly attached to the Uzumaki family, it refused to leave the body of one even after its death. It was Naruto who had been the first of the Hokage's phantoms, Naruto who had influenced every other ghost who had appeared there into being phantoms, Naruto who had kept the ghosts of Konoha alive all these years, Naruto who had kept Sasuke sane when he first felt the influence of the Akatsuki, and Naruto who had saved him when he'd finally been overcome. What a strong curse, if curse was even the right word for it, the Kyuubi was indeed, if it could do so much without even the knowledge of its host.

The look on Sasuke's face must have been enough for Shikamaru and Neji, because they both released a breath that seemed to both make them tense and relax them at the same time.

"So you came to the same conclusion Neji did," Shikamaru said in a low voice. "Damn."

Naruto looked up. "What?"

Sasuke's eyebrows raised at the curse. "Why 'damn'? What's wrong with things being this way?"

"What things? What's wrong?" Exasperation at being ignored started to filter into Naruto's voice.

"Nothing; it just… complicates things." Shikamaru shook his head once, a stern shake designed to clear the head of excess thought.

Naruto stamped a foot in frustration. "What does it complicate!? And so help me God, if you ignore me one more time, I won't be held responsible for what I do!"

"It doesn't have to complicate things; just tell him straight up." Sasuke turned to Naruto and looked straight into his eyes. "Naruto, you're the Kyuubi."

Naruto had his mouth open and some smart retort no doubt ready, but as soon as Sasuke's words registered in his brain, he froze in shock. His lips moving slowly, as if under some extreme cold, he asked, "Sorry, what was that? I must have heard you wrong. I could have sworn you said I'm-"

"The Kyuubi," Sasuke finished for him, and Naruto's face scrunched up in a grimacing mockery of laughter.

"That's a good joke," he chuckled hoarsely with panic dancing in his eyes. "You're kidding, right, Sasuke? Sasuke? Please tell me you're kidding."

"I'm not," Sasuke said in an even and quiet tone. "We found out when we were doing some research. The Kyuubi is a generational curse of the Uzumaki family. It belonged to your mother when she moved here to Konoha, and when she died it moved to you. When you died shortly after, there was no one to move to, so it just… stayed with you."

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Naruto asked with tears about to form in his eyes.

"We only figured it out a few minutes ago, and before that, we weren't really talking and then I had my whole 'episode' there," Sasuke explained, though he knew it all sounded like cheap excuses. "We knew about Kushina, but we had assumed that it had left your family once the line ended and found another to attach itself to. We didn't tell you because we-" Sasuke cast a glance at Neji, then corrected himself, "-I thought you would be safer not knowing, with everything that's been happening."

"So… I'm the Kyuubi…" Naruto said thoughtfully, but it still sounded like he was about to cry. "I guess this puts a damper on the 'destroy or hide away forever so the Akatsuki don't get the Kyuubi' plans."

So this was the 'complication' Shikamaru had predicted. Well, that could be easily deflected. "We would never do that to you, Naruto!" Sasuke protested. "We'll find some way to protect you, I promise."

"Save the declarations of devotion for another time, boys," Shikamaru said with rising panic in his voice, something so out of character for him that Sasuke looked up at him immediately with growing alarm. "We're about to have company."

A second before the harsh voice spoke, Sasuke felt the black auras as well and mentally cursed his own stupidity. Why had he trusted such a vulnerable area to be free of eavesdroppers?

"Well, well, well," the voice of Pein the Akatsuki drawled in a smug tone, and everyone on the beach turned towards the point where it came from, but the owner of the voice was nowhere to be seen. "So you managed to find the Kyuubi for us after all, didn't you, little Uchiha?"

"What!?" Naruto gasped aloud, but Sasuke just gritted his teeth and shoved Naruto behind him.

"Just get behind me and stay quiet," he hissed, and the pure terror in his voice must have been enough to get Naruto to follow his request. Sasuke's eyes roved all around the edges of the beach, unable to pinpoint any of the Akatsukis' location through the thick, dark aura they all were exuding, only knowing that more than one was present.

"Though," Pein's voice continued, "I never did expect that it would be something with a conscious. That does put a damper on things, doesn't it, boys?"

A chorus of affirmative voices sounded through the edge of the treeline, and Sasuke's hair stood on end. How many of them were there? Three? Four? All five of them?

"But that's quite fine; we can manage a live one."

Behind him, Sasuke felt Naruto shudder at the cruelty in the voice.

"But," Pein's voice continued from the shadows, "it doesn't seem to me that you're holding up your end of the bargain, does it, little Uchiha? After all, you were just swearing to protect our little precious Kyuubi, unless my hearing was mistaken and what you're really going to do is hand it right over to us."

Sasuke's pulse thundered loud in his ears as he realized what the Akatsuki was doing: they were offering him one last chance to follow their orders before they went all out. Well, let them go all out, Sasuke suddenly thought brashly. It's not the first crazy thing I've done today, and certainly won't be the last.

Out loud, he said, "Like hell I will."

All around him, gasps echoed as everyone heard and understood his statement for what it was: a declaration of war. The cold hand of terror gripped Sasuke's heart and lungs as soon as he'd realized exactly what he'd done, but it was driven away almost immediately by a warm palm pressed trustingly against the small of his back, and Sasuke stood up a little straighter.

"Of course." Pein's voice, tinged with distaste, echoed over the beach. "Your conscious won't let you hurt your precious 'friend'. Well, I suppose that leaves us with no choice. Since we did make a deal that you've now backed out on, I guess we'll just have to kill you."

As if that was some kind of prearranged signal, all five Akatsuki stepped out of the shadows at the edge of the treeline, spread out to form a barrier between the people on the beach and the relative safety offered by the woods and the trail back to the Hokage. The three teenagers huddling near the edge of the beach screamed and scrambled away from the robed figures, answering Sasuke's question as to whether they really could see and hear everything that was going on in the spectral plane of existence. Deidara, the pyrokinetic Akatsuki, gave them a cruel smile and lit a small flame on his index finger, and Kabuto promptly fainted dead away, leaving Sakura and Ino to catch his lifeless body.

All five of them. Sasuke swallowed against the suddenly large lump of terrified dryness in his throat. Unable to do anything else but joke to try and break the tension, he managed through his dry throat, "Well, at least we know Kabuto wasn't their inside man."

"No," a new voice said from behind Sasuke, accompanied by a click and something round and metallicly cold that he knew to be the business end of a gun pressing against the back of his skull. "That would be me."

And the plot thickens ;) Oh, no, another cliffhanger? That's right, I'm evil. But don't worry; you'll only have to wait until tomorrow for it to be resolved.

Addi out!