Hi.

"Six Paths: Planetary Devastation!"

Sasuke and I pulled away from Kaguya as her Rinne Sharingan was sealed away by our sun and moon marks. Within moments, the very dimension around us shook as the distant ground cracked and shattered, massive amounts of rock and sand racing up through the air to imprison Kaguya once more. As the shell of a new moon began to form around her swelling and mutating body, the rest of the Tailed-beasts forms– including Kurama's other half– escaped her body at last, shooting down to the planet's surface.

"Naruto!"

Before I could turn my head to celebrate our victory with Sasuke, I was already jerking to the side on instinct as Kurama warned me, our negative-emotions sense picking up on the downturn Sasuke's mood had taken.

I wasn't fast enough. With how close we were and how quickly he acted, it was honestly lucky I had even reacted fast enough to escape his sword with only the loss of my right arm, the limb tumbling through the air in its rapid descent.

With teeth clenching to hold back a reflexive scream and blood pouring from my severed bicep, I barely had time to notice the recently freed Bijuu being captured in miniature moons of their own, before Sasuke's chakra surged immediately after.

"THIS DAMNED UCHIHA SNAKE!" Kurama raged in hatred. "CAN'T HE GO ONE MOMENT WITHOUT BETRAYING HIS ALLIES!?"

"Sasuke!" I screamed through gritted teeth as I clutched at the stump where my arm used to be, fingers covered in the red liquid. Kurama had begun to stop the bleeding, but this was becoming a dangerous situation really quickly. "What the hell is your problem, bastard!?"

"You are my problem." Sasuke bit back with narrowed eyes, irritation mixing into his rage as he lowered his extended sword arm, throwing his free hand to the side as if telling me to look around us. "This world is broken and diseased, all the way down to its very roots! From the Kage to the village system, and the Daimyo who support it all!"

The purple glow that was a telltale sign of his Susanoo began to surround him, so Kurama and I responded in kind, the golden glow of my cloak intensifying.

I winced heavily and suddenly, something deep within me aching when our synchronization stuttered and our chakras ground against each other roughly for a moment.

"Naruto-!" "I know." The alarm was plain to hear in Kurama's voice. I came to the same realization he did; It seemed there were going to be some side effects from the split after all.

"You of all people should understand what I'm talking about, Naruto!" Sasuke yelled, glaring at me with his mismatched eyes. Eyes full of anger, desperation, and despair. "And yet you're too weak-hearted to actually do what needs to be done! Things can't be allowed to go back to the way they were! This world… it needs to be reset." Sasuke declared. "I'm going to fix this world, and ensure that nothing like the atrocities committed by its past leaders can happen again."

I bristled, rage filling me at what he was implying. "Do you even hear yourself right now, Sasuke!? There are other ways, ways that don't need any more bloodshed! We can stop this cycle of hatred, if we all work together!"

"Naruto… You have your methods, and I have mine." Sasuke stated coldly. "That's what this is. We will decide who's method will win, right here and now. And for my plan to work… I need to kill you." The low rumble of Kurama's growl echoed in the back of my head as I held eye contact with my first true friend and rival.

"You're the only one who… the only person that I can't…" He trailed off. His eyes, filled with bitter and grim determination, stared back, and I understood.

"So…" The Susanoo's head formed around him, its body stretching hundreds of meters downwards as its wings grew from its back. "If you truly still wish to 'save' me…" Kurama formed his own avatar around me in response, his vulpine muzzle snarling at the Susanoo's bird-like face.

"Then for the sake of the world, the peace you so desire… why don't you just give up on me and die already, NARUTO!" Sasuke howled, voice on the verge of cracking from his emotions.

"I already told you before, Sasuke!" I shouted right back, voice firm in my determination. "Give up-!"

The Susanoo swung its purple sword, wings spread wide.

"-on me giving up!"

Kurama swung his golden fist, tails splayed behind us.

"NARUTO!"

"SASUKE!"

They met in the middle, Kaguya's artificial world shaking again from our two titans clashing above it.

Konohagakure no Sato, Late December

(One year later)

Head tilted back, I stared up into the sterile white lights of the sterile white room, while sitting on the sterile white exam table, contemplating how much trouble I would be in with Baa-chan if I just jumped out the window right now and booked it.

'On the one hand, she might break my legs to keep me here the next time I have a checkup scheduled…' I thought to myself in boredom. 'On the other hand, that sounds like a problem for future me, and current me really doesn't want to be here right now… possible broken legs later, or stay mildly uncomfortable right now? Which do I choose?'

I seriously hate hospitals.

Not their existence as a whole of course, but the act of being in one.

I turned my head to look at the large bundle of burn-orange fur sitting patiently on its hind legs at my side. Unlike his true full-sized form, his current body was shaped like a mostly normal fox, if you were to ignore the massive size, the nine tails, and his unique ears.

"How about you, Kurama? Should we make a run for it?" I asked the wolf-sized chakra construct. "I heard Koyuki's shooting a new movie over in Iron; We could make a day trip of it, fly over and get a live behind-the-scenes viewing, maybe mess around with some samurai guys. Whaddya say?"

"I say you're an idiot," The fox grunted. "You can go ahead on your own and piss off the Senju woman, I'll stay right where I am, thank you very much."

I scoffed. "Coward."

He scoffed right back. "Just because I can easily make a new avatar to inhabit whenever I want, doesn't mean I won't feel the pain of that gorilla woman breaking this one's legs. I'm not an impatient dumbass like you are, I can handle a bit of waiting."

"It's decided then." I slid off the table to my feet and walked over to the window. "I'm going to escape while I can, while you sit around like a fat and lazy cat."

"Why you little-!"

I was halfway through lifting the window with one foot already on the sill, when the exam room door slid open with a slam that shook the room, visibly cracking the doors frame and part of the wall surrounding it.

Tsunade-baa-chan stood in the doorway with a clipboard in hand and wearing her usual green jacket, an angelic close-eyed smile on her face despite the visibly bulging vein on her forehead.

"Oh my, who went and opened the window on such a chilly winter day?" She asked with the most obviously faked concern I've ever heard from her as she walked in. "Someone could catch a cold."

"I have no idea, it was like that when the nurse brought us here." I lied out of my ass from my seat next to Kurama on the table, the hidden wisps of golden chakra already fading underneath my clothes.

Baa-chan walked over to the window and gently placed her free hand on top of the open frame.

"That's funny," she said, her back towards us. "Because, maybe it's just my ears being wrong, but I could have sworn I heard talk of one of my subordinates trying to waste my time, after I so graciously took said time off from my duties as Hokage, to personally give them their routine checkup." I began to sweat as I tried to ignore her glaring wrathfully at me from the corner of her eye.

"I must have been mistaken though, since you're still here." She turned her head to more fully face me, both eyes shut in a chilling smile once more.

CRAAASH

"Much better now, wouldn't you agree?" The demonic woman asked with the same smile, as she twisted the window lock into place.

You know, the window that was now little more than a cracked and bent metal frame, all of the glass and a decent chunk of the wall itself having shattered into rubble with the force she used to close it.

I gave a shaky thumbs up with my bandaged arm.

And people wonder why I'm scared of going to my doctor's appointments.

"Excellent. Let's get started."

A strong gust of frigid air blew through the hole, knocking loose one of the few remaining shards of glass with a clink.

After running some tests on blood and skin cells taken from the area where my body and replacement arm met, Baa-chan stepped away from the little blood vial-spinny device with the results printout pinned to the clipboard in her hand, eyes skimming over it as she turned my way.

"Everything seems to be in order, as expected." She casually tossed the clipboard behind her to land on the counter as she said this. "There have been no signs of your body rejecting the limb. I didn't think there would be, but it never hurts to double and triple check after some time has passed, especially with something like this. Now we just need to check on your other condition."

I groaned in exasperation. "The soul thing, right?" Baa-chan nodded "Like I keep telling you guys, I'm fine now, you can stop running your tests! Kurama can even confirm it for you, right buddy?"

"Forget it, brat." The fox snorted at my side. "No matter what we say, the rest of these stupid humans are going to want to confirm it for themselves. The faster you realize that and let them get on with their silly little tests, the sooner we can get out of here."

The vein in Baa-chan's forehead pulsed again as he said that, and she turned his way with a glare. The sight of the great Kyuubi no Kitsune scrambling backwards on the exam table had me trying to suppress a smirk, but it was the sound of his paws and claws scraping and sliding around clumsily for grip that had me barely holding back my laughter. It was only the threat of Tsunade-baachan turning her annoyance my way that let me succeed.

She chalked that up as her victory and walked over to me, her hands glowing blue with what I assumed was a yin-based medical ninjutsu from the feel of it. "I still haven't quite perfected this one yet, but I've developed it enough to be confident using it on you after my testing on Orochimaru." She said his name with distaste, and I couldn't agree more. On the bright side, now that she had her own way of diagnosing soul stuff, that meant I no longer needed to go to the snake freak for these 'soul-checkups' on the off-chance that an issue Kurama and I couldn't deal with on our own did crop up.

Monitored twenty four-seven or not, I wouldn't trust that guy to not do something fucked up even if all he had was just a single drop of my blood.

Baa-chan placed her hands on me, one on my stomach and the other on my forehead, and closed her eyes to concentrate. I did her a favor and met her half way, pulling my Yin to the forefront and connecting to her with Ninshu. She barely paused for less than a second when she realized what I'd done, smoothly rolling with it and continuing with her scan of my spirit.

"Sooo…" I began after a minute or so of awkward silence, eyes looking around the room after feeling weird for staring at Baa-chan's face. "How's that mental thing you're working on with the Yamanaka's working out for Sasuke?"

She grunted, her chakra radiating disapproval. I could practically already hear what she wanted to say, but chose not to. 'I don't understand how you can still care for him,' or something along those lines. We'd already had this argument multiple times before, so both of us were aware of how pointless it was trying to change the other's mind.

Instead of retreading now-old disagreements, she chose to answer the question.

"He's doing alright. Not the best results we've seen, not the worst," She replied. "Even though he never shows up for the optional sessions, he does fully cooperate during his mandatory ones."

"At least I was able to convince him to take the arm." I sighed. "Guess I'll go talk some sense into that jackass after this. If he doesn't put any effort into it, what's even the point?"

Tsunade-baachan shook her head. "Don't do that. Forcing him to go to more sessions won't noticeably help him, and is more likely to backfire. He's still doing much better than he was before, so just be happy with that," she said. "This isn't the sort of thing you can just brute force, Naruto."

"What do you mean?" I blinked in confusion. "I literally brute forced this exact thing on the big turtle island. Faced my inner darkness at the Waterfalls of Truth and found balance and acceptance with my past experiences and negative emotions."

I could see Baa-chan rolling her eyes underneath her eyelids.

"Yes, you did. With the permission of the Raikage," she said dryly. "Whose brother Sasuke attacked with his team and tried to capture for the Akatsuki." Oooh, yeah. I could see how that might be an issue. "Even ignoring that little detail, based on what we know about the Falls of Truth and Sasuke's mental state, it's more likely that attempting that method would just break him further." She shook her head. "No, as much as I hate to admit it, the best thing for him right now is to keep spending time with his teams. Both your old Team 7, and his current team, Taka. I'll give you his files to read for yourself next time you come to my office for your administration training. He recently picked up a coping mechanism that, while not exactly encouraging a healthy mindset, is better than just quietly brooding all day, everyday. But I'll let his file explain that one to you, if you don't notice it first the next time you see him."

I hummed in acceptance.

After Sasuke and I fought each other at the end of the war and I convinced him to come back to Konoha, things had been alright for a few days. Despite the metaphorical cracks in his behavior, and the strained relationships when our classmates learned he'd cut off my arm and tried to kill me seconds after we beat Kaguya, he'd functioned.

Until he didn't, and the full weight of what he'd tried to do to me became too much for him.

He didn't break down and cry, he didn't freak out and try to leave the village, he didn't actually do anything. That was the issue. He got quieter, not talking unless spoken to. He stopped interacting with people, only going into the village when his routine required it or someone dragged him from the old Uchiha compound. In a messed up but funny way, the most jarring of it all was that he stopped insulting me when I tried getting under his skin.

After a few days of that, the rest of Team 7 and I had collectively enlisted the help of Tsunade-baachan to figure out how to help him. A week later, and she had set up a new department of Konoha's medical services dedicated to "mental therapy," to be primarily run by the Yamanaka clan, with Sasuke and a few other especially dysfunctional people being the initial 'test subjects' for treatment. The plan was to get proven results, and then open it up as a resource to the general populace, being free for normal shinobi, and mandatory for those working the more stressful missions like the ANBU.

"I'm curious," Kurama joined in the conversation. "I don't remember many of your human customs since I never cared to pay attention, but one of the few modern ones I know is that medical records are supposed to be kept between the patient and the doctor. Is there a reason you plan on showing the Uchiha brat's to Naruto?" The fox asked with a tilt of his furry head.

"Just who do you think invented doctor-patient confidentiality in the first place?" Baa-chan snorted at that. "Those rules stop applying when the patient in question has proven that they can not be considered of sound mind, or are a threat to themselves or others. In those cases, we share what we need to share with the patient's family and the relevant authorities." She opened her eyes and smirked, pulling her hands away from me as she ended her jutsu. "In the Uchiha's case, both of those would be Naruto here, since he's training to become Hokage a few years down the line. The Leaf's official stance on Sasuke is that he's Naruto's personal responsibility now, and keeping him mentally stable is considered a matter of national-to-international security."

Kurama grunted, curiosity satisfied.

"Regardless, you're all set," Tsunade-baachan said as she turned and walked back over to the counter.

I blinked.

"I couldn't find anything too concerning," she said as she picked up a pen and began to write on her clipboard, "and what I did find, we already knew about and it's all stable, so we'll just have to give it some time and revisit the issue during your next checkup."

My eyes widened, before squinting with my grin.

"You're free to le–"

I didn't stick around long enough to hear her finish.

I yelled out in victory as I literally flew through the window empty of glass.

"FREEDOM!"

I raced towards the closest rooftop in order to roof jump the rest of the way to anywhere-but-the-hospital.

'You left me.' Kurama's deadpan voice echoed in my head as I landed.

Eheheh… Oops?

'Idiot.'

The next evening found us gathering at Yakiniku Q with the rest of my team and classmates, along with Lee, Tenten, and team Taka. Officially, we had all planned to meet up to have an early New Year's celebration, specifically because it would have been a hassle to find a place we could book a reservation for over a dozen people, if we waited until it was actually the evening of the new year. Unofficially, a few of my friends had decided behind our backs that it would double as a congratulations party for the one-year anniversary of me asking Hinata out, since I had taken her to last year's celebration as a date.

Considering the approaching holidays, the place's general popularity, and fact that we had fifteen people– sixteen if you included Kurama, and seventeen with Akamaru– Yakiniku Q was absolutely packed and our party had to split into three smaller groups to be seated, though the owners did make sure that our grill tables were all back to back.

Whether it was a coincidence or intentional, the seating arrangements for our tables ended up sorting us from rowdiest to calmest, with me, Kurama, and Sasuke sitting across from Karin, Sakura, and Hinata in the middle booths. I sat in the middle directly across from Karin, with Sasuke to my left and Kurama sitting on his haunches next to the window on my right, this time with his more usual human-like hands in order to use utensils. Hinata sat across from Kurama, and Sakura across from Sasuke, the two taking the aisle spots. Karin and Sakura having similar hair-trigger tempers, me intentionally teasing and getting on Sakura and Kurama's nerves, and Sasuke and Hinata's relative quietness, our table was a firm middle ground.

Looking a little further past the girls showed Ino talking animatedly to Tenten about something, but with an indoor voice, with Sai and Shino periodically getting involved with a comment or two on the topic, while Shikamaru just leaned back in his booth seat and pretended to be looking at clouds.

On the other hand, in the booths behind me were the other guys who, aside from the gentle giant Juugo, were going absolutely wild. Between Akamaru barking like crazy over Choji's cooking skills while transformed as Kiba, and the actual Kiba cheering on an impromptu arm-wrestling match between Lee and Suigetsu (who had his arm transformed into a mass of pure bulging muscle), they had half of the restaurant looking over at them like they were a bunch of morons.

Which made a lot of sense because, well, Kiba, y'know?

Collective IQ, straight down the drain.

Kurama snorted in my mindscape. 'Pot, meet Kettle.'

I physically turned to give the fox-bunny mutt next to me a glare.

"Oi." My voice came out in a low deadpan. "You want to run that by me again, funny-ears?"

"Hey, knock it off you two," Sakura interrupted Kurama's returned growl with a glare of her own directed across the table at both of us. "If you aren't gonna bother sharing the whole thing with the class, then shut the hell up!"

"..."

"..."

Kurama and I glanced at each other, before looking back at Sakura.

We pointed at each other. "He started it." x2

Hinata giggled while a tick mark appeared on Sakura's forehead, though she restrained herself from lunging across the table. This time, at least.

She's done it before.

"I still can't believe I was nervous around you idiots when I first met you," Karin snorted, red eyes glancing at Kurama from behind her glasses. "Your chakra is super scary, but you're just as much of a goofball as Naruto when it comes down to it."

"I will eat you."

"Oooh, scary." Karin waved her chopsticks dismissively with a poorly concealed smirk, before reaching out to snag a strip of beef from the grill.

"No making threats at the dinner table, Kurama-kun," Hinata chided gently, adding a couple of carrots and sliced peppers to her plate.

I glanced to the side and noticed Sasuke only using his right arm to eat, his bandaged left hand laying limply in his lap. I nudged him in the side lightly with my elbow, as he ate with his closed eyes and head tilted slightly down.

"How's your arm holding up?" I asked him. "You having issues with it?"

He grunted, finished chewing his bite, and swallowed. "Not particularly." He turned his head slightly to glance at me from the corner of his now-opened eyes. "I've decided that I don't want to become comfortable using an arm I did nothing to deserve for trivial tasks." He closed his eyes again, reaching out and plucking a slice of tomato from the grill as he did so. "If it's not for fighting and I don't need to use two hands for it, then I'll use my right from now on."

Ohhhh, so that's what Baa-chan meant. I told him what I thought of that.

"That's a stupid decision," I pointed out, "you're literally left-handed."

Sasuke scoffed with a scowl. "Good thing it's my decision to make then, idiot."

I could sense the mood of the table beginning to turn downwards at the topic, so I acted quick to salvage the situation.

"Why is everyone ganging up and bullying me?" I complained with a pout. I turned towards Hinata, clasping my hands together in a pleading gesture. "You won't hurt me too, will you, Hinata-chan?"

She brought her jacket's sleeve up to hide her smile, but the crinkle of her eyes gave it away anyway.

"Would you like a hug to make you feel better, Naruto-kun?" She asked with an uncharacteristically sly tone of voice. "It'll be like that one time you asked me to have breakfast with you, but forgot your wallet. You were so embarrassed, it took you a whole hour to calm down."

"-Hrk!" I clutched my chest where my heart was.

'Critical hit,' the stupid kitsune commented within my mind.

I saw the ghost of a smirk cross Sasuke's mouth as the other two girls giggled at my behavior

"And I'm mostly ambidextrous in the first place," he corrected, back to his default expression "The only real inconvenience so far has been relearning how to write. Other than that, I–"

The moods of the rest of us sobered up quickly when Sasuke cut himself off with a serious but questioning look, and began glancing around tensely with his Rinnegan active.

"What is it, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked seriously. "Should we prepare for a fight?"

After a moment of ignoring the question, his eyes slid over and landed on me, widening for a fraction of a second before they narrowed.

"What did you do?" He deadpanned.

"Huh? Me?" I asked dumbly, totally confused. "I have zero idea what you're talking about, Sasuke. What's going on?"

"You haven't been experimenting with time/space techniques recently, specifically involving your clones, have you?" He asked seriously. I shook my head in the negative. I'd figured out the Hiraishin with the help of Genma's advice months ago. "Then why the hell did I just sense another you, through the barrier between dimensions?" He demanded.

My eyes widened, and I traded glances with an equally wide eyed Kurama.

Sakura chimed in. "Now that I think about it, you never did explain to us exactly how you 'teleported' past Kaguya's portal, or why it ended up mangling your spirit the way it did, did you, mister uses-clones-for-everything?" She accused with a glare, sounding suspicious

With a pair of Byakugan, a Sharingan, a Rinnegan, and– worst of all– Sakura's demonic green eyes all intensely scrutinizing me, I looked to my fellow clan member for support.

Karin shrugged and went back to casually eating her food, the traitor.

"Well, uh, you see…" I began, with a drop of sweat dripping down my neck.

'Busted.' Kurama so kindly put it.

"... Shit."

A/N: So I may or may not have realized shortly after I finished writing the first chapter of the next arc, that a particular scene taking a look back at things in the Elemental Nations would be a bit out of place anywhere but before the next couple arcs started. That being the case, I wrote this relatively shorter chapter over the past couple days and am posting it a bit early since I'll be busy over the weekend.

I wish all my American readers a Happy Thanksgiving! May your turkey dinners be moist and flavorful, rather than dry and barely seasoned.