Full Summary:
Things Sasuke desperately wants to know:
1.) Why is he in an endless desert with two suns?
2.) Where, in this vast sandy hellscape, is Sarada? Is there a no-child-left-in-another-dimension policy he can invoke on this godforsaken planet?
3.) And to that bright blond in the eye searing red coat: does he know anyone named "Naruto" by any chance?
Things Sasuke undoubtedly knows for sure:
1.)
2.)
3.)
The short and not-so-sweet of it: Sasuke's not in Konoha anymore. The desert? Infinite. The machines? Straight out of one of Kakshi's weird art nouveau sci-fi post-apocalyptic romances that he swears by. The new blonde in his life? Suspiciously Naruto-esque. The short spunky woman with dark hair and even darker eyes? Sasuke laments the argument he's going to have to have with Orochimaru again about how they can't use Uchiha genes in unsanctioned cloning experiments. Now if only he could use Kamui with his Mangekyou Sharingan.
The Land of Wind is not how he remembers it. He wouldn't call himself an expert, no, but he's seen a thing or two in his nearly four decades on Earth, and he's traveled just about as far and as wide as any village ninja can without being labeled a missing-nin. Benefits of Naruto's reign as Hokage, he supposes.
Sasuke sets off towards the nearest village that he can see, which appears to be built in the shade of tall spires of rock. And when he follows that megalith up and up with his eye—
Two suns hang high and bright in the sky.
"What the fuck," Sasuke says to the desert wastes.
Some abomination of a dragonfly buzzes past his head, uncaring of his words. He flicks the patch over his Rinnegan off and stares at the twin suns with both eyes, and the Sharingan spins lazily in the other. It is a unique and throbbing pain to look into a single sun, let alone twin suns.
The image does not coalesce into a more coherent picture, but rather remains stubbornly the same. The sand in the distance shimmers with heat, and the town miles in front of him vibrates with the light, but his eyes pierce through whatever genjutsu could have produced the mirage.
There is no change.
Whatever jutsu that brought him here has not only robbed him of most of his chakra reserves but also most of his memories of the past few days. He remembers leaving Konoha, Sarada at his side, and then heading across the thick forests of the Land of Fire. He remembers following the setting sun out west, and then reaching the border with the Land of Rivers. He remembers—
Nothing.
He sets off towards the village as quickly as he can all while he laments his outfit. It is dark and covers nearly every centimeter of his skin save for a literal handful of spots. He doesn't have the chakra to spare to convert it to cool water and then to run that just under the surface of his skin, and he tries desperately not to think of the slow moving stream of the Naka River that outlines the old border of the Uchiha compound. Tries not to think of its soft burbles and its loamy banks.
Tries not to think about how he can't feel the heat of his daughter's chakra anywhere, not even when he spreads his senses as far and as thin as they can go, out kilometers and kilometers.
He fails in that regard, but Sasuke is no stranger to failure.
The trouble with deserts, or, really, any flat plain with decently clear air, is that you can always see much further than you think you can. And Uchiha eyes are as fine and as excellent as any human eye can possibly be, the pinnacle of biological optics just outside of the grasp of human engineering, which is a funny way of saying that Sasuke Uchiha can see very far indeed. Which is also a funny way of saying that it takes an incredible amount of running to cover some distance before the village even begins to look like anything more than a vague rendition of the idea of a town on canvas.
The machine somehow comes out of nowhere.
It doesn't look like any of the cars or trains that Konoha and the other Elemental Nations had started building about a decade ago, and out in front of the hulking monstrosity of metal is a… bird?
Some kind of bizarre blue bird with a human on top. A human wearing something bright red, which is only a step away from eye-searing bright orange.
Whatever's going on it can't exactly be good, if they're using what Sasuke thinks they're using to attack the bird and man. He's heard about guns, contraptions from the Land of Iron that shoot metal, but they're not exactly useful to a ninja. They're loud, and slow, and don't seem particularly portable, and he can think of a dozen worse injuries than a gunshot wound.
The guns these people are using… do not look like the ones he's seen civilians pull out in the Land of Iron. They're giant, which almost makes sense when you look at the giant car and the giant man inside, and the bullets it shoots cause absolutely massive explosions. He can't tell if the earth is trembling beneath them from the car or the bullets, and he's not particularly inclined to find out.
This odd procession of machine, man, and bird are going in another direction, away from the town. Which is probably a good thing for the town, all things considered. And Sasuke could just as easily. Just not go towards them. He could keep running towards the town, and ignore this entire affair.
Sage damn him.
Sasuke changes course to intercept.
He sees this group long before they see him, which would be insulting if it were the other way round anyways, and the man running from giant bullets and a giant car only starts yelling when they're all practically atop one another.
Sasuke doesn't understand what the other man says.
That's a problem for future Sasuke.
About the only thing good about deserts is how easy it is to generate static electric build-up from just about anything. And a great big metal contraption belching dust clouds in its wake is as good as anything Sasuke could ask for, outside of a sandstorm or a dry thunderstorm. Electricity arcs off of his body as he jumps over the man-bird duo, and he doesn't even bother pulling out his chokutou. It's been years since he's needed a conduit for his chakra, and this is almost child's play.
"Stay back!" he shouts over his shoulder. He can't tell who squawks, but squawk they do. It takes almost no effort to send his chakra through the air around himself, and it follows the path that it so desperately wants to follow. It strikes the oversized car with a deafening clap.
And then he spikes his chakra off of the wave of the last burst and causes it to strike again, just for good measure.
Whatever mechanism was propelling the monster-car dies an ignoble death, and it spews great bouts of smog in its final moments. Burnt rubber fills the air with its stink, and it leaves the sand sticky and black. The car's momentum carries it forward in some final mad dash of wild post-death spasms before it skids to a stop.
Sasuke's jump has taken him clear over to the other side, putting him back towards the direction of the town that he has been heading towards for the past who knows however long. The passage of time is a bit difficult to tell, what with the two suns high in the sky.
Sasuke desperately hopes this isn't one of those places that gets a full day's worth of sun.
The bird-man pair pop around the machine with more energy and enthusiasm than the situation warrants, displaying that all blondes everywhere must have no sense of self-preservation.
The man says something, and this time Sasuke doesn't even have the roar of an engine to use as an excuse for why he can't understand the words.
Fabulous. Just fabulous.
First, the two suns. Now, the language barrier. What's next? Aliens?
Sasuke tries to keep the resignation out of his shoulders, but he knows that's a losing battle for one of the Uchiha line.
"I don't understand you," he says when the duo get a little closer.
The bird, by virtue of being a bird, was never going to understand him anyways. It has none of the hallmarks of what he has come to associate with summons besides its magnificent size. He feels none of the wind that announces Garuda's presence, and its eyes hold neither anticipation nor recognition. The man, by virtue of being a man, does have chakra. More than a civilian, but not quite—Not quite used.
"What's your name?" Sasuke asks the bird. He won't be fooled by its dull gaze.
His answer is a bang.
A lid pops off the top of the car with a hiss, and pressurized air sends the slab of metal shooting off into the sky with a speed Sasuke would not have expected. Two men follow it, and one is the giant that he saw earlier, and the other is an older man that is probably a normal size but only looks comically small next to his companion. He doesn't pull off the mad scientist look nearly as well as Orochimaru does.
The men shout and Sasuke, predictably, does not understand them. But they wave their fists and they wave their guns, and he understands that well enough. The air still sparks with coiled intent, and it nips at his fingers as he welcomes it back into his stomach. There's no point in dipping into his own reserves if the nature around them is going to be such an accommodating partner.
The blonde man next to Sasuke hops off the bird as he speaks, and whatever his reply is it is good enough to keep the armed men talking. Blondie is probably a civilian, what with his untrained chakra coils, and probably not fast enough to dodge any bullets at this range. Which is not even taking into consideration the destruction they caused whenever they did land. Lightning isn't exactly Sasuke's first choice for defense, but it will have to do—
The giant man, who seems to be such an odd assortment of metal pieces and flesh, leaps out of the car and winds up a fist at blondie—
Lightning will have to do—
The older man hefts his oversized gun, and something clinks as he swings it over his shoulder—
Sasuke grabs blondie. He tries to direct whatever electricity sparks in his hands down to his legs, into his muscles and into his nerves, and he-
yeahp, that's it folks! sorry for the cliff hanger but I got nothing.
Here is what you get of some far off chapter that may happen eventually:
"That's a real interesting party trick you got there," Wolfwood says around a puff of his cigarette. He's stopped cleaning one of the handful of smaller guns that he somehow fished out from somewhere on his obscene cross gun, and he makes no move to put them away.
"We needed water," Sasuke says with a shrug. He turns away from Wolfwood, and the man's not-chakra gutters for a moment between his hands. "And I can get water."
This is, of course, ignoring quite literally every single chakra control exercise Sasuke has ever mastered in his life for the sole purpose of being able to command water with the same finesse that he breathes fire and touches lightning. And not just command, but such fine precision that he has reached heights only previously used to describe the late Nidaime, Sage damn his corpse wherever it turned to dust at the end of the Fourth War.
Eat your heart out, Senju Tobirama, Sasuke thinks to himself, this Uchiha just pulled water out of the desert air.
Closest to the fire, and thus subsequently closest to the pot now full of water, is Robert, with his mouth hanging agape and his whiskers ever so slightly singed. His cigarette smolders impotently in the sand at his feet, and it stinks of whatever herb Wolfwood had handed over to the older man back when they had first made this pit stop. Sasuke just barely keeps his nose from wrinkling at the smell.
