A/N: Me, watching in horror as I proceed to have less and less of an idea of what I'm doing with my own goddamn fic.

You guys.

This chapter was like pulling teeth. It was awful. It was hard.

I am still not 100% happy with it.

But it's been over a month now, and dammit I have started and restarted this chapter THREE TIMES NOW. It ain't getting any better.

As always, the two failed attempts will be posted over in the Outtakes story on AO3.

Thanks for reading! Sorry I took an age!

Sakuni's hair pours over her shoulder, firelight turning the pale strands a rich crimson.

He thinks of Erza, and misses her.

The look of worry and protectiveness on Sakuni's face only enhances the resemblance, and Natsu pushes himself up to avoid looking at it any longer.

"You the reason I keep passing out?" he asks, looking behind her to the wall of fire cutting off the path to his mindscape from the rest of the Bridge.

He thinks he sees a shadow, pacing sinuously behind the flames, but it vanishes in an instant, as though it felt his gaze.

Sakuni doesn't answer, and Natsu turns his gaze down to see her panting, arms trembling as she tries to stay on her knees even though she looks ready to just fall over. He crouches down, worry crawling through his gut.

"Sakuni? Are you okay?"

"'m f-fine," she sighs, leaning into him, eyes fluttering as though she can barely keep them open, "'s probably them though…" she flops one of her hands out, a clear and failed attempt at a graceful gesture. Natsu glances back up, following her direction, and sees someone standing in the shadows cast by the flames. Golden eyes glint maliciously as they study Natsu and Sakuni from afar, before their gaze turns to the nothing between paths.

Natsu follows, and does a double-take.

What used to be an expanse of nothing now holds two large gates, emblazoned with the Uchiha crest, and cracked open just wide enough for a person to slip through. Natsu catches a brief glimpse of blood-spattered cobblestones just as Sakuni lurches from his arms, hissing.

"Oh no you don't," she snarls, stumbling forward to confront the golden-eyed stranger, putting herself between them and the gate.

The stranger meets their eyes, grinning, and Natsu suddenly realizes it's the same person who they'd attacked in the field.

He rubs his hand and fights off a grimace, widening his stance.

The… man… laughs, his face and form blurry at the edges, like a thousand different faces all lay over the real one and constantly shift and move around.

The only thing stable is the glinting golden eyes, a serpent's gaze evaluating them like prey it plans to digest.

Natsu bares his teeth in response.

"W-we have to… contain him, somehow…" Sakuni says, posture straight but limbs trembling from exhaustion.

The Bridge wavers, colors blurring together before snapping back in place, crystal-clear. The Oro-guy croons.

"You cling to the very last of your strength, you foolish girl. What can you possibly accomplish? Even your precious ancestor will be of no use to you, when you finally lose the strength to hold him here." The man sways, like a snake preparing to strike, but doesn't move forward.

It's unsettling.

"A-ancestor?" Natsu stutters, pushing aside the creepy behavior as he wonders whether the man's as crazy as he looks. "I'm not even old enough to be her dad, I've met her dad, whaddya' mean, ancestor? That's not even possible!"

Oro-guy scoffs, pacing forward and stopping just out of reach. "Foolish children. I am Orochimaru of the Sannin, and I know more of souls and the cycle of life and death than you could say of your own nation. I have possessed countless people, and studied so many more, but you doubt that I could recognize a soul's resonance to its kin?"

"Wha-? But I'm from another world!" Natsu blurts thoughtlessly, completely confused because that… Isn't possible?

He shakes his head, then glares at Orochimaru. "You're crazy. It isn't possible at all!"

"Such is what you believe," the snake-guy croons, and Sakuni snarls.

"Don't listen to him. He likes to try and get into your head, twist your thoughts around! If we don't find a way to contain him, he'll just spread his poison even further!" she snaps, and Natsu glances back at her, though he keeps Orochimaru in his peripheral.

"Why don't we just kick him out?" he asks, and the sannin laughs.

"Oh, do you think you could?"

Sakuni grimaces. "He's anchored. To both you and Sasuke-kun, and he's not even really… real. It's like a piece, or a shade, or something, it doesn't play by normal rules in here. Destroying it or kicking it out entirely… for both of those, we'd have to destroy the anchors outside the mindscape. But we can lock him up! So you have to-"

The Bridge wavers again, colors blurring and even fading away, and Natsu finally realizes, with a burning pulse from his hand, that it's the Oro-guy trying to push him out.

He fights back, clawing his way into the Bridge again, and the sannin grins at him, lips curled into a thousand smirks and eyes glinting maliciously.

That's about when it occurs to Natsu that if the sannin's really so skilled in possessing people, he might be trying to take Natsu's place.

Fire surges, the flames barricading the path to his own mind leaping across the Bridge to surround him and Sakuni and the shade of Orochimaru, as Natsu feels fury settle in his gut.

He wonders how many people have been like Sakura-chan, trapped in the Hearts of their own minds and left to wonder helplessly what was happening as the snake-guy used them like puppets-

Jiraiya arrives a week after Hiruzen gives his order, with all the exuberance the Toad Sanin is known for. He comes to the tower immediately when Hiruzen sends his summons, which should have perhaps been his first warning.

Walking ahead of his student, in a most creative henge, Naruto eagerly 'shows the stranger around'.

Hiruzen wipes off a bit of blood from his nose surreptitiously.

He's pretty sure that can't even be called clothing, and he wonders where Naruto managed to find such… fashion.

Long golden pigtails frame a much more mature figure than Naruto usually uses for his… prank technique, and Hiruzen honestly wonders if his student even realizes who he's looking at.

The way Jiraiya seems to be legitimately drooling, he thinks he might have his answer.

Jiraiya sweeps Naruto into his lap as he takes a seat. "So, Sensei! What's the rush?" he asks with a lecherous grin, "because I've got some research to get back to, if it's all the same to you."

"Dispel the henge," Hiruzen orders, trying not to let exhaustion creep through his voice.

Jiraiya sputters. "Henge? Whaddya' mean, henge? Those're illusions, and trust me, I've felt her all up, nothin' fake here! No need to insult the-"

A puff of smoke cuts him off, and he glances down to stare into Naruto's foxy grin. "Wow! I got ya' good, didn't I, 'ttebayo!"

Jiraiya freezes, before slowly tracking his eyes up to Hiruzen.

The old man sighs. "Allow me to explain, Jiraiya-san."

Jiraiya can't pull his eyes from the kid. No one's ever held the Kyuubi from birth before, and he knows some of the other jinchurikki who were made that young developed unusual powers, but somehow he didn't-

Uzumaki Naruto grins up at him, wide and fox-like, and it occurs to Jiraiya that he groped the kid.

Kushina-chan must be trying to murder him from the Pure World, the cold shivers down his spine can't be from anything else.

Slowly, he drags his gaze away from those wide blue eyes and whisker-struck cheeks and back to his sensei.

"Orochimaru infiltrated the village," the Hokage starts slowly, shoulders weighted down in sorrow. Jiraiya hears the pain in those words like his own, spearing him through without a care.

Orochi, why?

He should have been there, but then, his entire life is a mess of never being there when he needs to be.

"Should we be having this conversation in front of the kid?" he asks, leaning back and grinning. Sensei doesn't acknowledge his antics.

"Nothing we need to discuss immediately is new to him, as his team is at the heart of this mess. It seems that Orochimaru was targeting Uchiha Sasuke."

"Oh? Not just revenge against the village then?" he asks, though the information is hardly a surprise. There were rumors from his network, after all, about a confrontation between Itachi and Orochimaru. He wonders if targeting Sasuke is revenge for losing, or if the Uchiha have something he wants.

"Huh? No, he put some sorta weird mark thingy on Natsu and Sasuke! Jiji said you can fix it, so you can, right?" Naruto interrupts, bouncing up to try and climb onto Jiraiya. He gently pushes the kid back to the ground.

"Like Anko-chan?" Jiraiya asks, tilting a lecherous grin up to his sensei as he begins to recall everything he can about her cursed seal.

Hiruzen sighs. "It seems to have been upgraded from the original design, though it's difficult to tell what changes are due to that and which come from the seal being unnaturally split between two recipients. It is my hope that you can take advantage of that to remove it from them."

"Wait," Jiraiya feels his thoughts slam to a halt at his sensei's words. "You're saying… someone got in the way of the seal? You have two people running around with unstable seals and you didn't think to mention that?! Where are they?" He stands up, mind flickering between every worst-case scenario it can imagine, and it takes all his self-control not to just bolt out the door.

He studied Anko-chan's seal extensively, he knows how absolutely foul it is, the way it dug through her chakra network, anchored itself to her so thoroughly he was pretty sure removing it would kill her-

A seal like that, destabilized and torn between two recipients…

"Jiraiya-san-"

"No. You're lucky neither of them have died, sensei, I know you're knowledgeable in seals, but surely you realized how- how dangerous this is, I need to see them immediately, it might already be too late-"

"WHAT?!" Naruto yells, spinning toward sensei with fire in his eyes. "Jiji! You said-"

Sensei stands, firmly placing a hand on the table, eyes locking with Naruto's. "Your teammates are stable, Naruto-kun, and we have kept careful watch over them. Gazelle can take you to the safe houses, though if you might wait a few minutes, there are some things you need to know about Natsu if you are to understand the situation."

Jiraiya turns around, settling carefully in the chair.

"I'm listening."

Jiraiya steps into the safe house, entrance melding back into solid stone, and sighs.

Sensei should have called me back sooner, he muses as he moves toward the kitchen. From the doorway, he glimpses the messy black hair of Uchiha Sasuke as the genin shovels some very red curry into his mouth.

"Are those… tomatoes?" Jiraiya can't help but ask, and glowing red eyes snap up into a glare as the kid tightens his grip on his plate.

"You're the seal master?" the brat asks after a moment of staring, looking away and completely dismissing Jiraiya to return to his food.

Uchihas... He can't help but groan. He strikes a pose, grinning wide.

"Yes! It is I, Jiraiya, the great Toad Sage of Mount Myoboku, greatest seal master in the Elemental Nations!"

The Uchiha kid's eyes snap up to him, then back to his food, Sharingan still spinning slowly. "Natsu's asleep in the other room. Good luck waking him."

Jiraiya nearly face-faults, eyebrow twitching. "You've really got no respect, huh kid? Alright then." He claps his hands together, and Fugaku's brat drags his gaze back up to meet his eyes.

Jiraiya wonders if that's supposed to be a threat, or if the kid somehow failed to realize his Sharingan was active. He shakes off the thought. "Hurry up and finish, I need to look at both of you together. And while you're at it, tell me about your friend, 'cause from what I heard he should be awake as long as you're around."

As expected, the Uchiha's lip curls when Jiraiya calls Natsu a friend, and the kid clearly ignores his question to go back to eating.

These brats really have no respect, huh?

Somehow, Jiraiya gets the feeling that Kushina would love this team. Personally, he rather thinks he'd like to file a complaint.

The brat eats with deliberate slowness, and Jiraiya has half a mind to take the food and impress on him how serious the situation really is here but some instinct tells him to wait, and he hasn't survived this long in the dark world of spies and information gathering by ignoring those.

Even if he usually does his waiting with a beautiful lady on each arm.

"A little while ago," the Uchiha starts, setting his dishes in the sink, "I stopped getting headaches. I hadn't even realized I still had one until it faded. Then, about an hour ago, they moved me here, and Natsu still hasn't woke up, even when I tried. I figure the two are related, and he's doing something, you know...inside," Sasuke points a finger to his head, "I don't know if it's safe to wake him."

"Ooh?" Jiraiya asks, stepping out of the kitchen and turning towards the small bedroom down the hall. Sasuke follows in his wake, eyes still glinting with the red of the Sharingan. "You think he's trying to affect the curse seal from the inside?"

The Uchiha glances up at him, before his gaze turns back to the delicate pink-haired girl curled up on the bed.

"Isn't that your job to figure out?" the brat asks. "I just don't think it's smart to wake them up, since it seems like they're in the middle of something and it's helping."

"Hmm," Jiraiya muses, stepping forward to grab the girl's hand. The curse seal imprinted on it looks whole from the outside, but when he has Sasuke sit on the bed and take off his shirt, that mark looks whole as well.

It's not so surprising though, because the surface of a seal is only very rarely relevant to the process of the seal itself, beyond establishing how many points anchor the actual body of the work.

Distantly, as he channels chakra to unfurl the full expanse of the seal on both the kids, he wonders if that's why sensei made the mistake of thinking this could wait for Jiraiya to wrap up his previous job in Ta. With the anchors themselves fully in-tact despite the seal being split, and with Orochimaru being fond of traps for those unwary people who try to unfurl one of his custom works, perhaps sensei decided it wasn't worth the risk?

He tries not to think too uncharitably of his sensei, because his job was important, but this…

Jiraiya drags the unconscious girl up, pulling off her clothes with quick efficiency, and only briefly mourning the fact that she's not a buxom beauty before he settles her onto the Uchiha kid and tries to figure out what goes where in Orochimaru's seal.

It's a mess.

The Uchiha's seal is a mess of broken lines and scrambled channels, like someone took a hammer to a pane of thick glass - some pieces shattered beyond comprehension, and others just cracked or broken off to sit by themselves, large and isolated.

The girl's is melted. Entire sections of the seal are written out like normal, only to end in melted blobs of ink that should have faded from the rest of the seal, and he can't quite figure out why they didn't but it can't be good. Other parts glow an ominous burnt orange, like the glowing of coals waiting to kindle back into full flame.

Both halves of the seal are damaged in such massively different ways he isn't even sure he can piece together how it was supposed to look, but, well.

Sensei hardly raised a quitter, so he whips out his notebook (and not the fun one, alas…) to start mapping it out.

Sasuke's eyes trace the glowing, melted lines across Natsu's flesh, and Jiraiya tries to pretend the kid's just checking out a cute girl.

He doesn't tell the Uchiha to stop though, because as much as it's probably an awful idea to let him see too much of Orochimaru's work, it wasn't like the Hidden Leaf had a trained Sharingan user on hand these days… Kakashi knew the basics of course, but chakra exhaustion tends to make studying the threads of a seal rather difficult. And with the kid actually being willing to go along with a mindwalk, perhaps even willing to let Jiraiya study what he sees-

Ooh? Now that's interesting… Jiraiya guides the Uchiha into moving his teammate, lining up her elbow to a blank patch over Sasuke's navel. It fits perfectly, like that entire section of the seal was just lifted up and transposed whole-sale, and that's fascinating, because there are body markers there, clearly stating that section of the seal was supposed to be there for easier to access to the main chakra store so how did the other half of it end up on Natsu's elbow-

His pen flies across the notebook, half-jotting theories on one page while copying critical segments on the other.

He always has enjoyed a challenge.

Natsu groans, the texture of dirt unpleasant on his tongue.

The fact that it tastes faintly like sakura petals is just weird, but he's getting used to it.

"You okay?"

He's pretty sure it's Sakura-chan asking, her voice a little lighter, a little more unsure than Sakuni's confident tone.

He rolls over, ready to answer.

Sakuni beats him to it, and he realizes he can't see either of the girls.

"Yeah, I think… just tired. You weren't hurt, right?"

"No, nothing really changed here, well after the first big one anyway. Are we okay now?"

"For a little while," Sakuni breathes, and Natsu pushes himself up, slowly dragging himself to his feet. "I don't think that'll work for more than a couple hours, if that, but… as long as I can get some rest, that'll be enough…"

"Oh! Sorry! You can- I'll totally go into one of the other rooms- will you wake on your own? Do I need to-?"

"It's fine. I'll just-"

"Yeah, of course, sorry-"

Natsu makes it up the porch as Sakura-chan starts apologizing, and he can't help but laugh as he sits down across from the window.

"Natsu!" Her gaze immediately snaps to him. "Are you okay? You look hurt!"

"Wha-?" Natsu glances down, and for a second he thinks Sakura-chan might be right, before he quickly realizes those dark splotches aren't from bruising.

"Wait is this the seal? I thought it wasn't supposed to be visible in here! Sakuni-!"

The mindscape flickers around him, and Sakuni curses. "Wait! You can't wake up yet I need to-"

She lunges, hand closing like a vice around his wrist as she tries to get a better look.

Everything goes black.