Interlude

Sasuke - After the Summit

When Tobi found Sasuke, the boy lounged on a rock outcrop in the wooded area beside the Samurai Bridge.

He wandered far enough into the dark woods that the shinobi after his head couldn't locate him until he came upon a clearing where he would rest for a moment. Though he didn't show it physically, the man in the orange swirling mask was somewhat taken aback at the wreck that was the last scion of their clan. His shoulders rose and slumped steadily, air escaping from his lips in ragged puffs. Not surprisingly, he was on the brink of collapse; he had just taken on the most accomplished ninja in the world completely on his own. Not many shinobi faced the Raikage's fury and lived to tell the tale, especially young men of Uchiha Sasuke's age.

The blood stain on his side dried from his white T-shirt, fading to a dense, tar-like shade. A few bruises covering his pale body were beginning to swell and blacken. One of the wristbands was missing, exposing his weapon summoning seal carefully concealed underneath the black cloth.

He looked like an unsuspecting shinobi who had gone through hell and back.

Tobi was on edge at how thoroughly battered Sasuke was, though it wasn't out of any concern for the boy's well-being, even if both had the same blood in their veins. Combining his Mangekyō with Itachi's was the only way to spark Sasuke's true ocular prowess. A kaleidoscope that would never lose its light: the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, as he dubbed it.

That was only the first step in his plan. To carry out the Infinite Tsukuyomi, a good pair of eyes was needed: a Deity's eyes. Even though that was taken care of to some extent, all he had to do was to pick them up, a spare wouldn't be a bad thing to have around as a failsafe either.

Few Uchiha are capable of awakening the Mangekyo Sharingan. But an Uchiha with such a masterful grasp of the Mangekyō Sharingan to the sheer degree of fine-tuning Susanō within the scope of a few hours at such a young age?

The talent of that sort only ever emerges once in every era.

Not to mention that the boy was an effective magnet for one particular Jinchuriki.

Having him by his side, the Nine-Tails brat would naturally find his way to him, regardless of how zealous the other shinobi were in protecting him. Much, in the same way, Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara were drawn to each other by the whims of fate, much in the same way the offspring of the Sage of the Six Paths clashed multiple times, Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke were destined to meet again and again.

He approached the boy at a measured pace, footsteps rustling in the grassy clearing. Tobi gave a dry, almost mocking snort.

"Still alive?"

Sasuke didn't bother to look back at him. He was breathing in and out awkwardly, his chest rising and falling at a steady rate.

"Fuck off…" he hissed, as he tried to turn around when his body was struck by a sudden tremor, making him clutch his left arm. "Gah!" He ground his teeth as he grunted, pain radiating all over his body. His shoulder was dislocated in a rather nasty way, a lump developing where the humerus joined the clavicle.

When the pain finally subsided, in between ragged gasps of air, Sasuke glared at the masked man, albeit more carefully this time around. "What … took you so long… Madara?"

"I had a few unfinished matters with our … dear guest." The so-called Madara chuckled grimly, obviously referring to Danzō, whom Sasuke had just killed a few hours ago. "You don't need to worry about the other Sharingan. I have already extracted them from his arm and kept them in a safe place. Still, Danzō destroyed Shisui's eye just before his death. Not that it would pose any inconvenience to our plans."

There was a long pause during which Sasuke took to catch his breath, before staggering to his feet. Madara was slightly alarmed as he got a clearer view of the boy's eyes: they were glazed over and dull, in addition to the marked black rings building up underneath.

"Your sight…" Instinctively, Sasuke covered the eye that had dried blood seeping down to his cheek. "Let me see…"

The Uchiha, proud in his solitude, scrunched up his face. "Get the fuck-"

"Sasuke," Madara's voice took on a much more ominous quality.

The Uchiha regarded the older man with contempt, his healthy arm clenching into a fist as if pondering the odds stacked against him. His eyes snapped for a moment, however dull they were so, Madara still noticed a glint of bravado in them. However, he ultimately relented with a resigned sigh, allowing his shoulders and hands to loosen up.

Madara held him by the chin. "Hmmm…" He moved closer and gave a swift look into his eyes. Then he held out a hand with two fingers raised. "How many fingers do you see?"

The young Uchiha squinted his eyes, his brow creasing slightly. His answer didn't come until a few seconds later.

"Three… no, two…"

"You're almost blind, at least you can see a bit," The masked man snorted, lowering his arm and letting the baggy sleeve of his cloak cover it. The lad grunted in frustration, as he looked away, "Hasn't Itachi cautioned you about the dangers of using the Mangekyō Sharingan so thoughtlessly?"

Snorting, Sasuke shielded his eyes with his hand. He grimaced in discomfort, most likely caused by the Sharingan's blindness.

"Facing off against the world's five most powerful shinobi at the same time wasn't exactly at the top of my priorities, Madara," Sasuke said hoarsely. "Maybe you should tell that Aloe Vera bastard not to rat on me next time. I probably could have taken out Danzō a whole lot easier just like that, and I wouldn't have gotten forced to abandon Jūgo, Suigetsu, and Karin. And my Sharingan would still be healthy."

Madara chuckled darkly.

"Don't blame Zetsu; it's just that he gets bored easily. He wanted to see some action."

"Some action?" Sasuke snorted disdainfully, "Don't give me that shit. All he did was almost get me and my team killed!"

There was another pause that was punctuated by the rustling of leaves.

Of course, it was yet another lie. The man in the mask, Tobi, had mastered the art of deception. Needing to test Sasuke's resolve to plunge further down the path of isolation and revenge, making him leave his comrades behind, and press him further to make him overuse his Mangekyō Sharingan to the point of blindness, he instructed Zetsu to blow the whistle on him.

He figured it would cause a distraction and keep the leaders split up as well, casting distrust between each one of them, but that part of his plan backfired completely.

Nevertheless, he was quite gratified that his original plan appeared to have paid off.

"Forget about them," Madara said, his voice winter itself, "Comrades do nothing but slow you down. Must I remind you of the failure in your attempt to capture the Eight-Tails because you went out of your way to help that woman? Think about it, what purpose did they serve during this battle?"

Sasuke fell silent, as if brooding on that realization. Shinobi, whatever the era, have but one purpose: become tools for someone else to wield. That's the mindset all of them aimed to achieve in order to be full-fledged shinobi. Just as Sasuke was a tool of hatred, his team were tools for achieving that ambition. A tool that was broken, as they all came out at the end of that acrimonious battle, was ultimately unusable.

Now that he could think clearer, he was actually beginning to regret that he had to sacrifice Karin. But, so long as Konoha fell, the corpses that would bedrock his perfect massacre were worth it.

"Your sword's missing as well," Tobi pointed out. "That can be a trouble in the future."

"Bah. Doesn't matter. I'll get it back," Sasuke said flatly. "I always get it back."

Tobi watched as branches swayed, sunlight leaking in brief intervals and gathering eerie shadows across the clearing.

"You fought the Nine-Tails," Madara said. "Zetsu told me," he added, noticing the boy's sudden flinch. "Where is he?"

Sasuke took a tired breath, stopping dead in his tracks. "He's … gone."

For the first time, he witnessed Madara flinch. "What?" He sounded almost alarmed, despite his attempt to sound calm.

"We clashed," Sasuke recalled. "There was light. He was light. So bright it pisses me off just thinking about it. He just went on and on about how he was going to save me, the stupid fuck. Then, there was a massive explosion and Naruto wasn't there anymore - he just wasn't - and I took the chance to run away. Never looked back. It's also why my shoulder's like this."

Madara suddenly seized him by the collar of his shirt. The lone Sharingan exposed in his mask practically flared with fury.

"Are you saying you killed him?" his voice wasn't any lower than a whisper, but it still carried such a horrifying weight to it. "Have you forgotten how important he is to our plans, regardless of the little feud between you two?"

Despite the downright abominable aura the man of legends radiated, Sasuke himself wasn't the least bit deterred by the pressure of his chakra. He merely snarled back at him in response.

"He's not dead!" Sasuke gritted his teeth. Madara narrowed his eyes, relaxing the tightness of his grip. "He's not dead…"

"How do you know?"

"It may seem strange, but I feel it in my veins," Sasuke looked up at the sky. "The fool's too damn stubborn to just die over something as simple as that." He grimaced with a new burst of pain, covering his eye again.

The masked man sneered at that.

"Are you suggesting that I must blindly trust your gut feeling?" He cocked his head to one side: a bird-like gesture.

Sasuke squeezed his eyes tightly shut, almost as if shielding his throbbing visual organs from the light. "I fought him with my Chidori…" he hissed, "There was nothing left after the blast. Not even ashes flying in the air. It can't inflict that much damage. It just can't. The Chidori pierces objects, it doesn't incinerate them to the ground." He looked at the masked man with sightless eyes. "Besides, I think it's pretty fuckin' obvious that I'm not in shape to cast an Amaterasu, let alone Inferno Style."

With another twinge of pain, Sasuke grunted in a wheezing voice. "Naruto is alive and well. The question you should be asking yourself is where the hell he's gone to."

One could infer Madara remained skeptical of the young Uchiha's hunch purely based on his poise. His Sharingan glowed angrily. "So, what you're saying is that the clash of your attacks somehow sent him to another location, huh?"

Sasuke hung his head down.

"Any time we collide," he recalled the Final Valley, "it's as if we are stepping somewhere peaceful. It is a place completely detached from this world, where time is relative, I know that much. Wouldn't shock me if something went wrong and Naruto ended up someplace else."

Everything went dead silent. "It's like a slip in reality," Sasuke finished.

A rather cold wind from the river rustled the leaves, while Madara's shoulders relaxed. He recalled the fable of the offspring of the Sage of the Six Paths again. He couldn't help the sinister chuckle that slipped through his lips as he realized the way fate kept proving his theory right.

'Just as they were chosen before, you two are the next in line of destiny,' he thought. That's what he'd told the Nine-Tails brat back at the inn.

With no more misunderstandings, sensing that the masked man had agreed with him, Sasuke began to walk away. He grabbed his eye again, though this time without wincing about it.

Madara soon followed suit.

"I want Itachi's eyes," Sasuke said suddenly.

Madara let out a satisfied chuckle. His grand plan was much more successful than he had anticipated it would be.

"So you're finally ready, huh?" He managed to sound sufficiently surprised, though he already figured that Sasuke would make that decision sooner or later.

"Implant them as soon as we return to base," Sasuke commanded.

There was another pause of a few seconds. Madara hummed in thoughtful whispering, "Wonder what could've brought such a sudden change?" his voice came off as somewhat amused.

"As soon as we find him, and you get the Nine-Tailed Fox for whatever you're planning, I will crush Naruto with everything I've got," Sasuke elaborated, his voice a cold whisper, "I'll eradicate him completely. That's final."

'And then, I'll crush you too…' Sasuke thought bitterly, 'Don't you think I haven't forgotten you also slaughtered my family, you bastard.'

A few moments later, both vanished with the masked man's ocular jutsu. It was as if they had never been there in the first place.