He made his way back to the village, body one big ache. Rōshi never really bothered going easy, though he normally pulled his punches just enough so that Naruto wasn't seeing stars with every hit. Stupid old man, he groused internally. Utakata had let him leave early, his smile a little too understanding even as the blond protested he could keep going. That had chafed, just a little, but with the way everything hurt, he understood (and even appreciated) the brunet's reasoning.

Blue eyes spied two boys and one girl his age being led back to the village proper by a dark-haired woman wearing an outfit of white wrappings that went down to mid-thigh. He raised an arm, resisted the urge to wince, and cheerily called out, "Hey, Kiba!"

The boy in front turned at the sound of his name, a small white dog perched on his head of brown hair. "Heh, if it ain't Naruto." He sauntered over, his two teammates following behind him. Naruto watched them approach, trying to remember their names; Kiba was one of the few people who had tolerated him at the Academy, and they had often gotten in trouble together, but the indigo-haired girl in the cream-colored jacket and the black-haired boy in his own concealing grey jacket had typically been quiet and unobtrusive. "What're you doin' out and about?"

He opened his mouth to respond but then remembered his activities were supposed to be a secret. There was no telling what Rōshi would do to him if he spilled the beans about their presence after only a week of meetings. "Uh, you know, just trainin'! The future Hokage's gotta remain in tip-top shape!" Kiba scoffed at the oft-repeated boast, and Naruto scowled at his dismissal. "You don't believe me? Let's go then, you and me!"

"The guy who couldn't even pass the Graduation Exam?" Kiba posed rhetorically, and his dog barked in agreement. "Tch, yeah right. C'mon Hinata, Shino, let's go. Us real shinobi have real training to do."

He turned his back to the blond and began to stalk away. The other boy, Shino, adjusted his dark glasses before following his teammate. Hinata, pointer fingers poking each other, stammered a quiet, "S-sorry, N-Naruto-kun," before taking her leave as well, rejoining their teacher where she'd remained behind.

A lead weight settled in the blond's stomach as he watched his former classmates walk away. Whatever Rōshi had done to him hurt far less than the pain of not being recognized by his peers, that he was somehow even more unworthy of their attention now that they'd graduated and left him behind. His fists clenched, fingernails digging into the soft skin of his palms. I will be a real shinobi, he swore to himself, believe it!

-l-l-l-

Naruto chased the pale, white-haired ninja carrying the cylindrical container big enough to hold Uchiha Sasuke, trying to stay focused on the task at hand and not let his thoughts wander to the fates of his teammates.

Shikamaru had told them from the beginning that even though their goal was to rescue Sasuke, there weren't supposed to be any unnecessary sacrifices, yet it felt like every enemy so far had resulted in one. Naruto didn't know anything about the Neji guy that had joined them – though he seemed to carry the same quiet, arrogant swagger that Sasuke had back at the Academy – but Chōji was not someone the blond would have picked to emerge victorious in a one-on-one fight, despite Shikamaru's endorsement. Neji's confidence at least made him seem skilled – more so than the rest of them anyway – but Naruto still didn't like that they'd essentially abandoned one of their comrades, including Kiba and Shikamaru now, at every fight. It felt a little too much like when Utakata and Rōshi had left him behind and he'd gotten caught in the Ichibi's grasp, a situation that had quickly spiraled out of control.

But he wasn't the leader and it wasn't his call to make; Shikamaru, the lazy bum, had somehow made Chūnin, and apparently knew something about these individuals that he didn't. So despite his protests to the contrary, they were all split up, and the mission – his first mission – seemed like it might fail on both objectives.

I won't let that happen!

He increased his pace to keep the Oto-nin's back within view, urging himself forward with a mantra of positivity. The forest thinned ahead, and with an opening in the trees, Naruto finally found the opportunity to go on the offensive, flipping through hand seals and allowing chakra to build in his chest. Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!

The Great Fireball burst from his lips and forced the Sound shinobi to adjust his midair trajectory, shielding himself with the barrel he was carrying. Naruto's jump from the trees gave him the vantage point to see his opponent aim an arm at him, and only experience with sparring against Gaara had him pulling out a kunai to block the tiny projectiles sent his way. He hit the ground and glared at the older male. "Give Sasuke back!"

"…No," replied the Oto-nin. His voice was placid, unmoved by the blond's grit. It reminded him a little of how Neji spoke. "He belongs to Orochimaru-sama."

"He belongs in Konoha," the Jinchūriki retorted, "and it's my mission to bring him back!" He took a brief survey of the area as Han had taught him – flat plain with short grass, no cover, no water for Suiton manipulation – and then concentrated chakra into the surrounding earth. "Tsuchi Bunshin no Jutsu!"

Four Earth Clones crawled out of the dirt to encage the white-haired male in a circle. His green eyes scanned the doppelgangers, expression inert. "Hmm…very well." Rods of white material grew from his palms until they protruded at least a foot.

For a long moment, the only movement was the rustle of grass as the wind whistled through it; now that he was in a real combat situation, the lessons Han had imparted about not attacking a (theoretically) superior opponent with unknown skills had never seemed wiser. This wasn't a combatant training him to be better, this was someone who would kill him without hesitation, and he needed to fight appropriately. Then the Oto-nin moved, blazing towards the clone at his two o'clock with arm drawn back to bisect it horizontally. It tried to defend, but the apparent blade sliced through it with no resistance, and Naruto directed the remaining duplicates to converge on the Sound shinobi's location with a thought, hoping to overwhelm him. Instead, the older boy spun on the spot and charged the one across from him, arms trailing behind him, just waiting to be brought to bear. The Oto-nin's target blocked the low-to-high slash by grabbing his left wrist, but he merely took the opportunity to stab the clone through the stomach with his other arm. A swift movement brought the weapon out the duplicate's side, and it lost cohesion, collapsing into dirt. "Yanagi no Mai," he muttered, and white spikes erupted across his body to skewer the encroaching clones.

They looked like… Bones? Naruto wondered. Was it possible this Sound shinobi could somehow grow and manipulate his bones to use as weapons? It sounded insane, but he'd seen Rōshi hold lava that could melt flesh, Utakata dissolve rocks and trees with bubbles, a reanimated corpse attack with all the skills of a live shinobi, so it didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility, though he had a hard time imagining it even with the evidence before him.

"You stand no chance against me," intoned the bone-user. "I have mastered the five dances of my kekkei genkai, and you have no discernible skills to counter them."

"Shut up!" Naruto snapped. Who was this asshole to judge him? It reminded him of past interactions with Sasuke, Kiba, even Rōshi; they saw only a fraction of what he could do and then dismissed him because he wasn't at their level. But he was better than that, and just like he'd shown Rōshi, he'd prove to this bastard that Uzumaki Naruto was not to be underestimated! Chakra flaring with his anger, the blond summoned a dozen Earth Clones to charge his opponent, joining a half-step behind to take advantage of the chaos.

His Dance of the Willow still active, the Oto-nin countered the attacking duplicates with impressive grace, bones as sharp as blades slashing through dirt bodies with little resistance. The bone-user's movements reminded Naruto of Utakata – effortless, sweeping gestures that gave the appearance of a sapling swaying in a breeze. The Sound shinobi's garb only cemented the image, a loose, flowing robe that appeared far too big for its wearer. Naruto fixed the image of the Mist Jinchūriki over that of the white-haired male, blue eyes tracking his moves while he thought about ways Utakata had been successfully incapacitated in the past. Nothing immediately came to mind – the teenaged Jinchūriki tended to remain relatively unflappable when Naruto was his opponent, though Rōshi had done it easily enough in the past with persistent pressure – and the remaining clones dogpiled the Sound shinobi in unison, hoping to overwhelm him with sheer numbers. The bones protruding through his skin grew even longer, ripping effortlessly through the duplicates, but instead of breaking into clumps of dirt, they slumped into mud, bogging the bone-user in earthen sludge. Naruto rushed forward while his enemy was mired in muck and slammed an elbow into the older male's jaw.

The Oto-nin didn't even flinch, and a spike burst through the muck to impale the blond through the stomach. Naruto gaped in shock, then collapsed into mud himself. The ground at the Sound shinobi's back broke as the Jinchūriki emerged from it; his knee hit the muddy mass from behind and sent the bone-user face-first into the grass. Flames engulfed the boy's hands as he brought them to either side of the downed shinobi's head. "Katon: Engeki!"

Fire roared between his open palms, igniting the Oto-nin's head. Naruto kept the Flame Attack active until two feet wrapped around his chest and threw him clear of the muddy mass. He landed in time to watch the bone-user rise, shaking mud from his form and straightening with a series of sickening cracks, bones snapping into place from however they'd been oriented. The white mask of a human skull, blackened and burnt, fell off his face. "You have greater talent than I expected," he noted. Naruto might have considered it a compliment if someone he trusted had said it; as it was, it just sounded ominous. "Though your efforts matter not. Orochimaru-sama's ambition is nigh."

Naruto's question was interrupted by an explosion behind him. He whirled on the spot, a human…ish shadow becoming apparent in the smoke. As the haze thinned, the blond could make out brownish-grey skin and a mane of spiky, purplish-indigo hair, both of which receded to reveal pale flesh and bluish-black locks. It had been months, but Naruto still recognized the boy's profile, the red and white fan of the Uchiha clan emblazoned on a blue shirt. The boy's name was on the tip of his tongue, but a maniacal laugh, almost a cackle, split the air and shook his former classmate's shoulders. He paused, startled by the display of emotion; even at the best of times, Sasuke had never been openly emotional, and up until this moment, Naruto wasn't sure he'd ever heard the dark-haired boy even chuckle.

Then Sasuke jumped towards the nearby tree line, and Naruto saw his mission's success flash before his eyes. "Oi, Sasuke, come back!"

"Unlikely."

Naruto spun around, cursing himself for losing track of his opponent, and prepared to minimize the incoming damage as much as possible—

"Konoha Senpū!"

A blur of emerald green flashed past the blond and planted a foot into the Oto-nin's midriff that sent him flying backwards. The bone-user regained his footing, staring at the newcomer with hard green eyes. "And you are?"

"I am Konoha's Beautiful Green Beast, Lee Rock!" Naruto stared at his savior with wide eyes, stunned by the last-minute rescue, and almost missed the other boy urge, "You must continue your mission and rescue Sasuke-kun. I will remain here in your stead. Do not worry!" He gave the blond a thumb's up, head turning just slightly to flash a bright smile. "Reinforcements are on the way."

"Uh, okay, right!" He rushed to follow Sasuke, yelling as he left, "He uses bones as weapons and he's super strong! Be careful!"

Then his focus was on the path – and the mission – ahead.

-l-l-l-

Fū managed to control her descent into the ravine with short bursts of wind chakra from her hands and feet, landing with a soft grunt on rocky terrain that lacked the impressive foliage that defined the Land of Fire. Upstream of the river that ran on her right side were several chakra signatures, one of them dwarfing the rest. There was another spike of chakra – foul, malicious, overwhelming – and then there were two powerful presences, nearly identical to each other, both exuding the same feeling that the previous two demonic entities had given off. She raced ahead despite the hesitancy that threatened to freeze her movements, finding a boy roughly her age wearing a grey, fur-lined jacket being assaulted by a two-headed, red-skinned…creature, his appearance a reminder of the stories of oni, an inhuman enemy.

She steeled her resolve and rushed into battle, wind swirling around her hand as she sped forward, fingers clenched tightly for the Wind Release: Whirlwind Fist.

A hand emerged from her target's back, grabbing just above her wrist and stopping her attack from connecting. "What?" she gasped, her surprise echoed by the Leaf Genin on the other side of the demonic shinobi.

The head on the left twisted to face her. "A third party, huh? It seems we're outnumbered now, brother."

"We'll just have to kill them quicker then, eh, Sakon?" posed the head on the right.

"Get down!" yelled the Konoha-nin, and Fū found herself tackled and skidding across the ground. There was a high-pitched 'arf!' and then a cry of disgust from the pair of demonic voices. "Nice job, Akamaru! Let's go, Jinjū Konbi Henge: Sōtōrō!"

The boy's weight disappeared, and Fū found herself in the shadow of a large canine-like creature with shaggy white fur and two heads. She gaped at the beast, its snarls drowning out the furious cursing of the Sound shinobi. What—

"Garōga!"

The beast spun into a twister that careened at the demonic ninja, wind streaming past it and flecks of drool flying from its maw. It caught the Oto-nin within its vortex, bisecting his body and sending the halves careening to opposite sides of its flight. Fū frowned at the momentary lull as the beast stared down its handiwork from several hundred feet away. By all appearances, the Fang Wolf Fang had literally torn the enemy apart, but death would mean that the overwhelming chakra blanketing the area should have disappeared. Instead, it appeared to be surging, and in short order the two Sound shinobi were on their feet, segmented black armor grown in place of each one's missing half. They looked… Hellish, Fū thought, with their sunburn-colored skin, single horn protruding from their foreheads, and spikes decorating their armored shoulders like pauldrons. Soldiers of the damned.

"I guess this is better odds, right, Ukon?"

"Much better. Let's take care of this stupid mutt, Sakon." The white…wolf, Fū supposed…was charging them again in its spiraling attack, and the pair of Sound shinobi had their palms on the ground, planning a counter. Fū felt their chakra join together, and she raced forward to take advantage of their distraction just as they shouted, "Kuchiyose: Rashōmon!"

The Taki-nin didn't let the sight of the demonic gate – a technique that only reinforced her opinion of her lookalike enemies – rising from the earth deter her, though she did wince as the massive beast impacted it from the other side, creating a loud crump that petered out to a dull clang. She summoned wind to both fists as her distance to the shinobi on the right narrowed to only 10 feet—

He twisted with a snarl that bared a jaw full of too many pointed teeth, a shark in the throes of a kill. "Not quite!" he shouted, voice high with sadistic glee. "Tarenken!"

Within the span of a second, she took hard punches to the chest, stomach, chin, the last one sending stars exploding through her vision as his longer reach allowed him to continue raining down blows with the Multiple Connected Fists technique. His maniacal laughter echoed in her ears with each hit, seeming to take great pleasure in her pain. One blow finally sent her flying out of his range; she crashed to the ground, gasping. There was a flurry of wind beside her, and then a rough hand was gently slapping her cheek. "Hey, hey, you okay?"

Fū groaned, orange eyes blinking open as her head lolled to the side. She met the fierce gaze of the Konoha-nin in the grey jacket, twin marks like enlarged fangs tattooed in blood red beneath vertically slit, animalistic, black eyes. Cradled against his chest was the prone form of a small white dog with brown-ears; the canine looked like a smaller version of the two-headed beast that had whirled its way through the battlefield a minute before, though that might have been her vision still swimming from the blows. "I don't know who you are," the boy continued, "but my senses tell me you're better than those guys. C'mon, we should take out the one while the other's distracted."

"Distracted-ssu?" Fū echoed, voice thick like syrup as she sat up.

"What an interesting plan," quipped a rough voice, "but it won't work! Tarenkyaku!"

Fū grunted as a foot slammed into her sternum, sending her skidding backwards in an uncontrolled roll; she barely registered the demonic shinobi thrashing her would-be ally, his body seemingly hunched to protect the small dog in his arms. The Oto-nin's familiar laughter rang out, and the kunoichi forced herself to her feet, shaking off the vertigo and approaching the one-sided beatdown while he was distracted with torturing the Leaf shinobi. She threw a forward punch at him, hesitant to use wind chakra for fear of harming Naruto's friend, and found her fist engulfed in one blackened claw. His fanged mouth widened in a smirk. "Pathetic! Taren—agghh!"

The jacket-clad boy's sharp nails were stained red, his unusual eyes and enlarged canines prominently displayed in a snarl. "That's for Akamaru!"

"Little shit!" sneered the Oto-nin, whirling on the spot with the green-haired girl's hand still clenched in his own. He flung her at the boy, and the pair fell to the ground in a mess of flailing limbs. "You're all trash!"

"Move!" Fū hissed, scrabbling to her feet. "We need to pincer him."

Her ally was holding a hand to his ribs, one eye closed in a wince. "Easier said than done."

"Boo," whispered the demonic shinobi, his presence suddenly mere inches away. Fū expelled a Fūton: Reppūshō from her palms on sheer impulse, and his blackened fist broke the ground where she and the dog-like boy had just been, the Violent Wind Palm sending them skidding – or tumbling in his case – over the rocky terrain in opposite directions. "Tarenken!" he shouted, but instead of fists, Fū found a barrage of rocks the size of oranges zooming at her. She held her hands out, one on top of the other with over a foot of distance between them, and summoned a horizontal whirlwind wide enough to intercept the incoming cavalcade, funneling the projectiles out its tail at her back. Vision obscured by rocks and wind, she felt more than saw the Konoha-nin's chakra approaching the Oto-nin, and only the shouted, "Tarensenpū!" alerted her to any counterattack.

Multiple twisters erupted across the battlefield, and Fū felt her ally's chakra soaring in the opposite direction, caught up in the Multiple Connected Whirlwinds. The roaring tornados overwhelmed her own winds, and Fū abandoned her defense in favor of propelling herself backwards with more wind manipulation. She could sense the Konoha-nin engaged in battle with the second source of foul chakra, whatever distraction he'd been preoccupied with having apparently run its course, while the enemy who'd been fighting them was rushing towards her, racing through the hurricane winds like they were some sort of demented obstacle course.

Wind was already encircling her fists when the Oto-nin – Sakon, Ukon, she didn't know which one they'd been fighting – appeared with a punch and a sneer. She blocked with her wrist, the cutting power of the Whirlwind Fist slicing into the segmented armor of his arm, then swung her other fist at his too-pointed head and stumbled when the limb transited empty space, his body gone but dark presence still undeniably right there—

"Looking for me?"

She turned in the direction of the voice and found the red skin and pointed chin of an oni inches from her own, his neck extending from her shoulder with lips spread wide in an ominous grin. Her shriek, echoing with shock and terror, was cut off when his hand sprouted from her ribs and clapped over her mouth. "That's enough of that," he noted, voice almost silky in its amusement. "In my Stage Two state, I can freely dissemble and reconstruct the cells and proteins that make up the body, and then invade your body and break it down on a molecular level. Basically…"

His voice faded to the background as Fū focused on his chakra. She could feel his tainted presence within herself, corrupting her from the inside, like all the darkness she'd imagined carrying the title of Jinchūriki brought had manifested and was poisoning her very being. It was invasive in a way she didn't think she could describe to someone who hadn't experienced it, a gross violation of her person. She needed him out, now.

She turned her sensory abilities internal, seeking out the foreign cells like antibodies hunting a virus. The feel of her own chakra had always been a mystery, unable to detect her own essence like she could others. She'd always imagined it to be a little wild, energetic, a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower in a bid to find a place to belong.

And now maybe she'd finally found it among a group of misanthropes, abandoned shinobi who felt like emptiness, anger, irritation, melancholy… Hope.

So she found the foreign chakra, the blight corrupting her person, and kept focus on it while building her chakra within. Explosions split the quiet, but Fū ignored the noise and wash of heat, keeping all her attention on her internal task. The Oto-nin was still talking, musing about which organ to target first, when she finally released the pulse of chakra she'd built up.

"Hgk!"

Blood splashed across her cheek and stained her white top a deep crimson as the slicing chakra of her wind affinity shredded the demonic shinobi's cells. He hacked up ruby-colored gouts of fluid, fanged teeth painted like a vampire fresh off a kill. "What—" he gurgled, the single word seeming to take all his energy.

Fū didn't bother responding as his head seemed to slough off her body and revert to that of a teenaged boy with grey hair that fell in messy strands around his ears; truthfully, she wasn't sure she could have summoned a response even if she wanted to. That burst of chakra had been an unrefined, unprecedented exercise of wind manipulation focused on cutting on a molecular level, and as sensitive as her abilities were, she'd known it was unlikely she'd manage it without some consequences. Even now, pins and needles were prickling her arms, her fingers, around her kidneys, down her thigh… Nerve damage, organ failure, paralysis…it was hard to tell what damage she'd inflicted on herself with that particular move.

But the Oto-nin's chakra was gone, his body seemingly vanished with the shredding of his cells, his decapitated head the only memento of her nightmare. She breathed slowly, first through her nose, then in shallow inhales through clenched teeth. Unhurried, heavy footsteps made their way to her ears, and the Waterfall shinobi tilted her head to find the jacketed Konoha-nin trudging towards her, blood trickling from his ears and fatigue cloaking him like a second skin. He ambled past her and knelt to pick up the small dog he'd hidden earlier, then turned and trudged back her way, collapsing into a tired sit mere feet from her position. A bark of laughter, almost a grunt, escaped his mouth. "Heh. We did it."

Fū nodded, not trusting her voice. She couldn't tell if it was because she functionally couldn't, or because trusting this strange boy she'd just risked her life for seemed a bridge too far, even after spending so much time building stock with Gaara and having that pay off. Apparently unperturbed by her silence, he flashed his teeth and continued, "Thanks for your help. Akamaru and I are a good team, but I'm not sure we could've done it without ya. Name's Inuzuka Kiba."

She stared at the hand he proffered, a foreign feeling dulling the aches of her fight. His grin was a little feral, but the wildness seemed more carefree than hostile, and his chakra felt, if not friendly, at least welcoming. Fū smiled back – small, hesitant, but no less honest – and stretched over to grab the offered appendage. "Fū-ssu," she said, shyness coloring the simple introduction.

Kiba withdrew his hand after several seconds and then stared up at the cliff face looming above them. "I've still got a mission, and my teammates are waiting for me. Are you gonna be okay on your own?"

Her promise to Gaara echoed in her ears. "Yeah," she whispered, "but take me with you."

-l-l-l-

Gaara followed the heading Fū had given him, and in short order, he could hear the sounds of battle, and then, high-pitched in the seconds of lull, a melody that had no place on the battlefield. He was used to screams and cries, pleas for death, for mercy, and that had always been symphonic to him, a dirge of the damned. This music, whatever it was, sent a shiver shrieking through his body, a simultaneous reminder of the person he was trying to leave behind dissonant with a melody that made him want to plug his ears and silence the source of the torment.

…It must die.

There were three giant…creatures, he decided…wreaking havoc on the forest, moving around the foliage with wild swings of their humanoid limbs. They seemed to be fixated on a single target, chasing a form in a green flak jacket who mostly blended into the surroundings. Gaara ignored them in favor of targeting the source of the melody that threatened to rend his soul. Teal eyes were drawn to a vibrant spot of red among the browns and greens of the trees. Sand slithered from his gourd and shot across the space between them. It was hard to tell from the distance, but she – with the length of the hair, he assumed the figure was female – seemed so distracted by her playing that she wasn't paying attention to anything else.

Even at the height of his dispassionate arrogance, with his Shield of Sand intercepting every attack, he never allowed himself to become blind to his surroundings.

"Suna Hoko," he muttered, and the sand formed itself into a short spear that impaled the kunoichi's heart. She jerked once, her body toppling off the tree branch amidst glorious silence. The cadence that had built between his ears disappeared with the music, and the redhead felt something deep inside – something ruffled, uncomfortable – settle back into a steady calm. Better.

A boy with dark hair held in a high ponytail shaped like the crown of some cacti landed on a nearby branch. His eyes were narrowed with wary scrutiny, fingers held close together in preparation for a jutsu. "Sabaku no Gaara," he identified, tone cool, clipped. It reminded him of what Baki had sometimes sounded like when talking to him, as if he could control his fear by pretending ice ran through his veins. Gaara hadn't given his then-sensei much thought when he spoke like that – or ever, really – since the Jōnin posed no real threat to his well-being; this boy was even less of one. "Why are you here?"

"To protect Naruto's friends." The boy started at that, his hands falling to his side, one eyebrow rising skeptically. "The enemies you fight are strong. And Naruto…he would desire your safety. It is his…goal," the redhead settled on.

"You know Naruto? That's unexpected," the Leaf shinobi observed, posture suddenly lax. "Well, so long as you're not gonna try to kill me again, that's fine by me."

Gaara cocked his head to the side. "Again?" There was nothing about this boy that even suggested he would have caught his attention previously. "You are…from the Chūnin Exams?" That other boy – the one Fū had helped save – had apparently known him as well, and the Exams were the only event that would have allowed for that opportunity.

The boy shrugged, noncommittal, and muttered, "Guess I should consider myself lucky you don't remember me. Nara Shikamaru," he introduced. He angled his head away, staring into the distance without giving Gaara a chance to respond, and then looked back at the redhead. "That would've been far more troublesome if you hadn't shown up, and I appreciate your help, but I have to leave. My teammates need me."

"There is no need. They are safe."

That finally seemed to elicit a reaction. "They're—what? All of them?"

"The heavy one, the white-eyed one, and whoever Fū is helping," Gaara listed. "All of Naruto's friends are accounted for." He glanced around slowly, as if just now realizing they were alone. "Where is Naruto?"

"They're all okay…" Now Shikamaru reminded Gaara a little of Kankurō when the redhead's attention had shifted to someone more interesting. Relief, he thought. "I had to send Naruto on ahead. I guess that's where I need to go."

"I will come with."

The Chūnin turned towards him, one eyebrow arched. "Not to sound ungrateful, but I think you've done more than enough."

"You do not seem capable on your own."

"I'll try not to take that personally," came the wry response, but then Shikamaru shrugged. "Whatever. Not like I have any jurisdiction over you. And I doubt I could stop you anyway. Given everything, your abilities will probably come in handy." He pointed to the northeast. "Naruto took off in that direction."

"Then we should go."

He followed Shikamaru through the maze of trees, trailing the taller boy as he had Fū. Just like the green-haired girl had, Shikamaru kept turning to shoot him glances, each one displaying an emotion he could only guess were varying degrees of confusion or skepticism. After several minutes of watching the Konoha-nin watch him, he averted his gaze, finding the surrounding foliage a convenient distraction from the continued looks he couldn't interpret. Everything was so green, a vibrant, lively atmosphere that was a stark contrast to the neutral-colored walls of the Senju complex or the bland browns of the Hidden Sand. Every few seconds, his periphery caught another color, a bright spot in the deluge of browns and greens, and he found his attention riveted to it until his momentum carried him past. Life – the world, really – had never before interested him; it was all irrelevant to how he functioned. But now…

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small garnet Rōshi had given him. Dappled sunlight filtered down through the canopy and cast the gem in a glistening scarlet light. The color was a stark reminder of freshly spilled blood, of how easy it was to drain life from his victims – because to be enemies would imply that he had a personal connection to them, a relationship he couldn't form, yet alone understand – to sustain the cries of Mother—

His head throbbed with the memory, hands coming up to clutch at his temples. Shikamaru's voice sounded distant despite being only one jump ahead, everything garbled by the relentless throbbing in his brain. He inhaled deeply in an attempt to steady himself, trying to force himself to hear Inoichi's calm words of acceptance from sessions past, and teal eyes flickered back and forth, finding only an endless cage of trees, the greenery unperturbed by his mental breakdown.

Trees… He forced himself to focus on the forest around him, gaze simultaneously intense and vacant. His brain cycled through words he'd absorbed in weeks of sleepless nights, the Senju's library a repository of information he'd never known existed. Plants, biology, ecology…the number of tomes on those subjects seemed disproportionately high compared to the rest, and he'd come to learn that life was…vast. Where life before had been crimson blood, now it was…everything. Grey squirrels, blue birds, orange cats…the green of the flora.

It became easier to breathe, realizing that life was more than he'd defined it previously. The garnet suddenly felt like less of an anchor meant to bind him, to keep him in stasis, and more of the talisman Inoichi had deemed it, a guide to a better, even healthy, perspective. Life could be about more than death, about the scarlet stain of another person whose futile struggle had ended. It was everywhere, in everything, and he could find it if he focused on something other than the past.

"Hey," Shikamaru called, his voice breaking through the redhead's epiphany, "are you okay? You seem a bit out of it, and I think we're gonna need all our wits about us."

Teal eyes focused on the Konoha-nin with an unrelenting gaze, eyebrows furrowing slightly. It was getting a little annoying that people kept asking him that. "Fine."

Judging by the way the dark-haired boy was looking at him, he was being heavily scrutinized. But then his companion returned his gaze to the path ahead with nothing further said, and Gaara allowed his attention to drift in the same direction. The light ahead seemed to be getting brighter, the trees thinning, and then suddenly they were in the middle of a field where two combatants were facing off. Gaara immediately recognized the emerald-colored jumpsuit of the black-haired boy, and the surprise he remembered feeling at the Leaf shinobi breaking through his Shield of Sand resurfaced as he watched the boy struggling in close combat against another male with grey-white hair and a too-large off-white kimono. "Lee!" shouted another voice, and the Suna-nin's gaze swiveled to where the long-haired, white-eyed boy Fū had rescued earlier was rushing forward, away from the seated form of the brown-haired, heavy-set boy Gaara himself had saved. He summoned sand from his gourd and directed it forward to intercept what looked to be a killing blow, but they were too close, he could already tell it wouldn't make it in time—

There was a grunt from the boy beside him, and darkness wrapped its way up the Oto-nin's legs, waist, torso, arms, freezing the extended limb in place. "Kage-Kubishibari no Jutsu…" mumbled Shikamaru. His voice sounded strained. "Though maybe not for long…this guy's strong."

"How unexpected." The deep voice of the white-haired male lacked affect, bored by the proceedings. "More of you keep showing up to interfere with Orochimaru-sama's plans." Dark markings, lines branching out into more lines like a genealogical map, spread across pale skin.

Shikamaru groaned, and Gaara turned to him to find sweat beading the boy's brow. "He's too strong… Neji, get Lee and get back!"

The boy with long hair and white eyes grabbed the dark-haired boy – Lee, Gaara remembered, Shikamaru's call triggering a memory – and dragged him back to where the heavy-set boy was watching them all. Gaara's sand finally reached the Oto-nin, who distanced himself from the gathered boys, the darkness that had restrained him returning to Shikamaru and settling into his shadow. The Chūnin fell to one knee with a heavy breath. "You are not particularly strong," Gaara noted.

"The jutsu is limited by the strength of the target," Shikamaru panted, "and our physical distance. Those markings gave him enough chakra to overpower me, easily. The girl I fought had something similar."

"I believe they have another form. The ones we fought did not appear human."

"…Great. We need a plan. Now."

Shikamaru got to his feet and staggered over to where Neji and Lee were arguing. Gaara made to follow him, but teal eyes caught movement heading for the group of Konoha-nin. They are not prepared, he realized. His entire purpose for embarking on this mission was at stake. His gourd dissolved into individual granules and reformed into a convex shield as he interposed himself in the path of the attacking Sound shinobi. Chakra pushed the silica together, strengthening the shield enough to withstand the blow of the pale shinobi—

Something white and sharpened to a needle's tip pierced the sand and buried itself in his ribcage. Gaara screamed, agony flaring white-hot as his defenses were again penetrated, a pain that was becoming familiar but no less shocking wracking his body.

For the second time in his life, blood trickled from his body rather than that of his enemies, and he found himself paralyzed, too focused on the pain leaking from his torso with every drop of scarlet. "Sabaku no…—ur moniker…justice," came the flat voice of the Oto-nin. His monotone was fading in and out of focus, a melody that kept skipping notes, the silences filled by a ringing in his ears that drowned out everything else. "No matt…" The sand he'd erected as a shield crumbled to reveal green eyes as ambivalent as his own. It was hard to tell through the haze of pain – he might have been imagining things – but the skin of the other male's shoulder appeared to open, and he reached over to pull another slender white weapon out of it. There was a shout – it sounded almost like his name – and the white object seemed to come closer—

A burst of wind against his skin, and green as vibrant as the forest they'd traversed overtook his vision. Lee's leg was extended vertically, his kick having thrown off the Oto-nin's strike. A different body barreled into Gaara from the side, and the redhead found himself tumbling with no awareness of his surroundings. After several seconds, he found himself splayed out on the grass and looking at the sky, a clear, bright blue. "Nice job, Chōji," came Shikamaru's voice, and then his dark hair and eyes entered the redhead's vision. "Gaara, are you okay?"

No, he wanted to say this time. He was on a mission that didn't fully make sense to him, he was in pain – again – and blood – his blood – was flowing freely from his body. But while all of those things ran through his mind, he couldn't manage to utter the words. It was yet another reminder of how weak he was: sealed by Jiraiya to prevent him from losing control, his automatic defense locked away, his ability to manipulate sand neutered to the bare minimum…why Naruto insisted he could be strong when he seemed to be anything but made no sense.

Although…he'd managed to beat that first Oto-nin, the one whose blows had rained down as strong as Han's, hadn't he? And the girl he'd saved Shikamaru from, killing her had been as easy as anything he'd accomplished back in his pre-Konoha days, hadn't it? They weren't weak, and he'd managed to best them in even his current state. Perhaps it wasn't him, but that this opponent was just that much stronger, and he'd only ever had one goal when it came to strong shinobi…

Kill them.

Seeming to take his silence as answer enough, Shikamaru hurriedly explained, "There isn't much time. I don't have anything for your wound, but…Chōji, give me your scarf and one of those soldier pills. This might hurt," he warned. Gaara felt a sharp pinch around his torso, and an involuntary gasp escaped his lips; careful hands adjusted his body to tightly cinch something around his ribs. "Gaara, focus. I have—shit! Kagemane no Jutsu! Damn, this guy's ridiculous. Lee, move!"

Gaara blinked repeatedly in an attempt to follow the Leaf shinobi's direction, and when his sight finally stopped blurring, he found himself staring once more at brilliant green. Between his realization and what he could only assume was a makeshift tourniquet around his wound, his faculties were starting to return. "Apologies, Gaara-san." Lee's voice sounded a little harried, and the redhead was hoisted off the ground and into the other boy's arms. "You seem different from our last meeting."

"I have…been through much…" he rasped, crawling out of Lee's arms in a moment of clarity and placing a hand to his head to forestall a wave of vertigo.

Lee nodded. "As have I. While I don't mean to cast aspersions, it has not been easy recovering from our fight."

Gaara didn't respond, though it was hard to say if it was due to not knowing what to say or the fog that clouded his mind and body. Teal eyes glanced down at the white cloth wrapped around his torso, a rust-colored stain slowly spreading across its length. I'm still bleeding, he observed, and his internal voice held a calm in stark contrast to how he'd reacted to the wound. But he was still alive – he could feel it in the way his body throbbed with a pain he'd only experienced since coming to Konoha – and that meant…something. Perhaps he did have a purpose, some value that had yet to be qualified, and that was why he was still here.

"Gaara, are you with us?"

Sand lashed out and caught a handful of small, white projectiles that had targeted their group. They burrowed their way through his defense, the silica absorbing the momentum, until they dropped out the other side. The redhead caught Shikamaru's surprised expression and offered him only a curt nod in response.

Lee blazed forward as Shikamaru dropped to his knee and the brown-haired boy Gaara had rescued earlier – Chōji, he guessed, since there was no one else around and he vaguely recalled Shikamaru saying it – took up vigil beside him. Darkness pooled at Shikamaru's feet as Lee engaged the Oto-nin with a flurry of kicks that were countered by his opponent's fluid movements and protrusions of hard, white material – bone, he guessed – that burst through his skin at random locations. Sand shot forward at his direction, small clumps that formed into shuriken and targeted any exposed areas he could see. The bone-user appeared unaffected by the small cuts that peppered him, instead sprouting enough bones to give him the rough appearance of a porcupine and spinning into an elaborate move that threatened to slash Lee from every angle.

With a thought, Gaara reshaped the shuriken into floating bracers that worked to intercept the attacks, reforming them whenever an attack managed to disperse the individual granules. The Oto-nin suddenly froze – the redhead heard Shikamaru groan beside him, then, "Lee, now!" – and then Lee vanished, reappearing inside the bone-user's guard with a shout of, "First Gate, Kaimon, release! Omote Renge!"

The Oto-nin flew skyward from the power of Lee's kick, the green-clad boy appearing behind him in midair and wrapping him in bandages, attempting to avoid the protruding bones as much as possible. Gaara watched with ominous nostalgia as the Konoha-nin implemented the Primary Lotus, the same technique he'd used – unsuccessfully – against the redhead himself in the Chūnin Exams. Just as Lee drove his opponent head-first into the ground, the Oto-nin's skin darkened to an ashy brown, and a thick tail sprouted from the base of his spine. The ground caved in at their impact, and Lee leaped away to land unsteadily a careful distance from their enemy.

What rose from the crater appeared more animal than human, yet less demonic than the other Sound shinobi they'd faced. Aside from the tail, large, curved bones longer and thicker than the boy's arm grew out from his back in all directions, thin petals of a hellish flower. He turned yellow eyes with pitch-black, almost soulless, sclera to the assembled Konoha-nin. "Dealing with you has become tedious," he announced.

Gaara knew that tone of voice; he'd used it often enough to know that the only thing left for the audience was an imminent death. A glance to the side told him that neither Shikamaru nor Chōji seemed to have any strategies at hand, and Lee appeared to have spent his energy using the Primary Lotus. Sand rushed to each of the Leaf shinobi as the bone-user knelt down and uttered, "Sawarabi no Mai!"

Bone spikes burst from the ground like bamboo shoots, and Gaara managed to create small platforms of sand to elevate himself and Naruto's friends above the field before they were skewered. His head swam with the exertion, the extensive sand manipulation a test of his reduced control and injured state. Movement caught his periphery, and the redhead barely managed to strip off the layer of sand that served as his second skin and turn the granules into palm-sized shields to stop a whip made of spiked bone and cartilage from binding him in place. It coiled around him, an inch from his skin and pressing against the resisting sand. "You are proving to be quite persistent," the Oto-nin stated. He was staring at the Sand Genin from amidst the field of bones, and Gaara only found the same determination Naruto often glared at him with reflected in the inhuman gaze. "That ends now." Bones grew from his forearm until his entire left arm was engulfed by a conical spear as long as his body. "Tessenka no Mai: Hana! Now die!"

The bone-user leaped for him, crashing through and destroying a swath of the bone field with the spear poised to run him through, and Gaara was sure that nothing Han had taught him would stop the Oto-nin, especially in his current state—

"Bubun Baika no Jutsu!"

A hand large enough to block out the sun swatted at the Sound shinobi. Gaara looked over to find the extended limb belonged to Chōji, who let out a short shriek as the bone spear pierced the soft flesh of his palm and sent blood spraying outward. His attack momentarily deterred, the Oto-nin landed on the ground, dark gaze flitting over to where Shikamaru and Chōji were floating, the latter's arm returning to its normal size. "Gnats," he growled, pointing the spear at the pair and manipulating the bones so that the weapon bloomed open like a flower. From his angle, Gaara could see a bone emerging from the white-haired male's palm, which was leveled in the direction of the two Konoha-nin in a parody of an arrow targeting a caged bird. "Tessenka no Mai—"

A vortex of grey barreled into the bone-user from his blind spot with a roar of, "TSUGA!" It rebounded off the Oto-nin and landed in the open area the bone-user had originally started, revealing a boy with brown hair, a grey jacket, and a grin baring sharp teeth. "Heh, gotcha."

The bone whip pressuring his sand went slack, and Gaara returned his attention to the Sound shinobi to find him staggering backwards, a bone buried in his chest. The whip fell from the Oto-nin's grasp, and he collapsed on his back, the inhuman features of his transformation fading to reveal a pale, emaciated form, still in death. "Kiba!" Chōji gasped.

The danger taken care of, Gaara allowed the control over his sand to lapse, and the four floating shinobi descended to alight carefully in open spots on the ground. The redhead nearly collapsed on his feet, but a sudden presence at his side, an arm curving around his back, kept him upright. He tilted his head just enough to see that Fū was the one holding him up, apparently unconcerned with being near or touching him.

Just like Naruto.

"You…are here," he said, tiredness masking his surprise.

Fū's green hair shifted with her nod, a small grin quirking her lips. "I said I would, right? And in better shape than you-ssu."

Gaara nodded slowly, teal eyes sliding closed. "Protecting Naruto's friends…is not easy."

"But we did it." She sounded cheerful, and again, Gaara found the similarities between her and Naruto uncanny. "You don't look so good."

"…Blood…pain…" His words were beginning to slur, an unfamiliar exhaustion consuming his body.

"We should go." Her voice changed – hushed, hurried, a reminder of when Naruto had hovered over him and asked if he was okay – and she shifted his body to a (presumably) more comfortable position. "C'mon, it's a long way back." Gaara only managed a grunt of acknowledgment before he felt them move. She faltered, shift his body again, hissed (in pain? he wondered), and then practically staggered onwards, burdened by his weight.

By the time Shikamaru turned away from his team to speak to the two Jinchūriki, they were gone. He frowned, then returned his attention to the other Leaf shinobi and said, "The mission isn't done yet. Let's go."

-l-l-l-

Naruto pushed himself to catch up to his former classmate, the last leg of a relay he'd been running a long time. Sasuke was quick, and like the Oto-nin before, had a small lead, but the blond was motivated to muscle through any discomfort he may have felt to complete the mission objective. The longer they ran, the more it became apparent that the Uchiha was either a willing participant in his own kidnapping or that he'd been mind-controlled to ignore all suggestions to return to the Hidden Leaf. He'd had plenty of opportunity at this point to stop his flight and come back of his own volition; that he hadn't meant he was unlikely to respond to anything that wasn't force.

In a way, working with the assumption Sasuke was incapable of returning by his own power made things easier; the blond could put all his attention on strategizing offense and defense, as Han had taught him, rather than trying to convince the boy of something he was unwilling – or incapable – of hearing.

He caught sight of his former classmate's blue shirt among the trees, urging himself forward to the distant sound of rushing water. It seemed to grow exponentially louder over the next several seconds, the noise increasing as his distance to the other boy narrowed.

Sasuke leaped out of the trees and into the sunlight, Naruto two bounds behind with his hands flipping through seals. When he followed the dark-haired boy out of the forest, the source of the water revealed itself to be an impressive waterfall situated between two stone statues standing hundreds of feet tall, the crest of the falls at their shoulders. The Uchiha was standing on the nearer of the statues, and as the blond watched him jump from its crown, he finished the last sign of a technique Utakata had helped him learn. "Suiton: Tajū Suiben!"

Half a dozen water whips erupted from the center of the river and surged up to ensnare the Uchiha. Sasuke caught sight of them midflight and twisted to avoid them, limbs splayed in positions Naruto wouldn't have assumed possible. When he landed on the water's surface, momentum lost, his head was craned upwards to fix the blond – steady on the statue's head far above – with a glare. At least, that's what the Jinchūriki assumed; the runaway Leaf shinobi was too far away to really tell, but Naruto knew what it was like to be stymied by someone, and in Sasuke's situation, he would probably be glaring, too. "You can't stop me!" Sasuke shouted, voice echoing between the stone sentinels, barely audible above the waterfall.

Naruto grit his teeth, a familiar irritation coursing through him; he was tired of being told what he could and couldn't do. "I can and I will," he yelled back, and whether the other boy could hear him didn't even matter, "believe it! Suiton: Shigure!"

Small orbs of water rose around the Uchiha and converged upon his position. Sasuke ducked and weaved around the Drizzle technique's projectiles with a fluidity greater than the bone-user's – better even than Utakata – appearing almost preternaturally gifted at evasion. He turned, unleashing a multitude of orange flames in the blond's direction, and Naruto took several steps away from the statue's edge to avoid them. He watched them shoot past and then angle towards him from their zenith, and skipped backwards to avoid each one as it tried to ignite him.

His foot found no further purchase, blue eyes widening as he stumbled backwards into freefall. He twisted in midair as he fell past the upper part of the waterfall, fingers twisting through hand signs as he passed by where Sasuke stood watching atop the river's surface, his mission objective falling out of reach. I won't fail! "Suiton: Kyūzō Surushio no Jutsu!"

Apparently the roar of the waterfall was enough to drown out the rush of the Surging Tide Technique – or he just wasn't paying attention – as Sasuke was caught unaware from behind and swept off his feet, carried over the waterfall's edge to succumb to gravity. Naruto then turned his attention to his own safety, adjusting his midair position so that his arms were tucked against his sides and his feet were angled to hit the water first. He entered with only a small splash for how far he'd fallen, spreading limbs wide and swimming to the surface to take in a gulp of air. A little chakra manipulation had him standing on the surface, water dripping from soaked orange clothing and blond spikes in time to watch Sasuke crash into the waterfall's break with none of the elegance he'd shown in dodging the Drizzle technique. The Uchiha crawled to his feet atop the water's surface and glared at the blond with eyes like rubies. Naruto had only a moment to reflect that he had always thought the other boy's eyes were a dark color before his musing was cut short by his former classmate's laughter. "Kukuku…you? I was expecting someone with actual talent to be chasing me, not some loser who couldn't even graduate the Academy."

The same anger from earlier reared its head; the Uchiha had dismissed him before without even knowing who he was? That was even more insulting than the fact that Sasuke thought he was the same person who'd failed his exams over eight months ago. "I've come a long way since then, Sasuke!" His anger reminded him of what he'd gone through to get to this point, chakra building in his chest. "Katon: Gōkakyū no Jutsu!"

His cry was echoed by Sasuke, who sent an even larger Great Fireball to counter his. Dazzled by the ensuing explosion, he was caught off-guard as the wayward Konoha-nin burst through the conflagration and punched him square in the jaw. Naruto skipped, artless and flailing, across the water, then backflipped to right himself. Sasuke shadowed his movements, then threw a roundhouse kick at the blond's head that Naruto put up an arm to block—

The Uchiha kicked the arm wide and then brought his other leg around in a wheel kick that connected with the Jinchūriki's temple. Naruto boggled at the maneuver even as his vision swam; that was a perfect block, taught by Rōshi, perfected by Han. There was no way his opponent should've been able to anticipate and then counter it with how he'd attacked. Still processing how he'd been bested, Sasuke appeared inside his guard with a vertical kick to his stomach that slipped past another block and knocked the air from his lungs. He wheezed, taking a knee to his jaw that snapped his head back.

It felt wrong to have gone through weeks of training with Han, months of beatings with Rōshi, painful lessons all around, and still feel like he was coming up short in this fight. Sasuke's taijutsu was fast and targeted, every strike circumventing his defenses and precisely hitting its target. His movements felt sluggish by comparison, which was strange because neither Hidden Rock Jinchūriki were prone to taking it easy in practice, and there was no way Sasuke was better than either of them. Han's baritone echoed in his mind: Turn the situation to your advantage.

He allowed the next hit to land without any attempt at a block – it wasn't helping anyway – hands focused on forming seals. "Kirigakure no Jutsu!"

Sasuke's kick sent him soaring through the mist that suddenly shrouded the area from the river beneath their feet, a swirl of vapors the only thing to mark his flight. He found purchase on the water and breathed in the cold air, the chill soothing his aching, winded lungs. "You think you can hide from me, Naruto?!" Sasuke shouted. He sounded irritated, his heightened pitch familiar in every setback to master Katon, Doton, Yōton, the Rasengan, taijutsu – every step of the blond's training with the other Jinchūriki – that Naruto himself had experienced. Naruto didn't respond, too many fights with Han and Utakata having taught him that, even though the Hiding in Mist Technique diminished sight, it didn't dampen sound. He focused on the direction the Uchiha's voice had emanated, again performing the signs for the Multiple Water Whip technique in an effort to restrain the other boy. He snuck closer to his (hopefully restrained) opponent, pausing when an annoyed, "Katon: Ryūka no Jutsu!" echoed through the mist, followed by the hiss of evaporating water. "Where did you learn all these jutsu, loser? You're not even a real shinobi!"

"I never stopped training!" Naruto shot back, almost spitting anger. "And if I'm not a real shinobi, then you should be really embarrassed that I'm kicking your ass!"

Sasuke's fist emerged from the mist and slammed into his cheek, the dark-haired boy snarling, "I'm not losing to you!"

The Jinchūriki collapsed into a puddle of water, and Naruto waited until Sasuke's head swiveled to sweep his surroundings before surfacing from the water with a knee aimed at his adversary's back. Sasuke grunted as he was struck and driven into the river with a splash. He turned and tried to punch the blond, but the move was sluggish, restricted by the water, and Naruto caught it easily before planting both feet into the dark-haired boy's stomach. Naruto saw him gasp, red eyes widening with surprise. The Uchiha's feet flailed, attempting to propel himself to the surface, but the blond dove past his opponent and put him in a full nelson. He was no Mist shinobi, but Utakata had put him through enough training to hold his breath, swim faster, and move more fluidly underwater than the average shinobi, especially an untrained Leaf Genin. If he could hold Sasuke underwater long enough to fall unconscious, that would be it—

The mission would succeed.

They fell deeper into the river, and as the light above diminished, a powerful chakra began to swirl around Sasuke. Naruto had a moment for his brow to furrow in confusion before a pair of strange protrusions burst out of the Konoha-nin's shoulder blades and forced him to release his hold. The appendages – wings, he thought, absurd as it sounded – flapped once, twice, then propelled the Uchiha towards the light in a vortex of water. Naruto followed him with a few strong strokes, trying to come up with new strategies now that his opponent had…leveled up? Transformed?

He broke the river's surface as quietly as possible, head poking up like the tip of an iceberg, the Hiding in Mist Technique keeping his presence concealed, and was greeted by Sasuke's maniacal laughter. "This power…you can't stop me!" Then came the sound of a hundred high-pitched chirps, one after another after another, an endless cacophony only temporarily drowned out by the Uchiha's shout of, "Chidori!"

"AAHHHH!"

Pain danced through his veins as whatever jutsu Sasuke was using electrocuted the river, his body still submerged beneath it. His muscles went lax, forcing him into a dead-man's float with wide blue eyes and agape mouth staring into the sky. The mist thinned, his control slipping with the shock, and he could spy the Uchiha flying above him, hovering on wings shaped like hands or talons with flesh-like webbing connecting each digit. He looked as he had when he'd burst from the container during the blond's fight with the bone-user: brownish-grey skin, spiky purplish-indigo hair, a black cross spread across nose and cheeks not unlike Rōshi's Jinchūriki mark, and it only reinforced the image of a demon in human skin. Naruto twitched his fingers, attempting to regain some measure of motor control, fixated on his former classmate. A Great Fireball bore down on him, and the Jinchūriki pushed chakra into the river in a desperate bid of sloppy elemental manipulation, willing it to bend to his influence and creating a shield of water that bore the impact of the flames.

The heat of the resulting vapor that blew over him was stifling, but when his teeth ground together, it was because Sasuke was turning his back and flying up and away. It was just like every fight they'd had at the Academy, every person in his life who'd snubbed him for one reason or another, finding him beneath them, unworthy of his attention. Anger burned in him, the repeated fury of being ignored – especially in this moment, where the fate of his first mission rested in the balance – reaching a boiling point. He roared as strength flooded his body, the noise bestial, rolling onto all fours with working limbs and staring down to find a reflection of red-orange chakra bubbling across his skin in the shape of a fox. The vapor of the thinned Hiding in Mist Technique and the crashing waterfall became humid, weighty with heat. Sasuke's chakra was like a beacon in his senses – dark, foul, terrible – and the nearby elements – water, steam, earth – seemed to feed his strength. Sitting on his haunches, he held his hands out, palms up, and balls of molten rock formed from his chakra with a thought, not a second spared on the frustrations of his Lava Release training to date.

He hurled the balls, one after another, and they exploded against the cliff, barely missing Sasuke. Drops of lava cascaded like rain from the point of impact, burning ragged holes in the demonic boy's fleshy wings and unbalancing his flight. The Uchiha's ascension stuttered, and when he found purchase on the wall to keep from succumbing to gravity, Naruto leaped towards him with one superhuman bound, hand with claws instead of nails slamming into the back of the boy's head and driving him face-first into the rock. Sasuke grunted at the impact, flexing his wings to throw the blond off, but Naruto tightened his grip on the Uchiha's scalp and kicked off the rock, dragging them both back to the crashing water below. They hit with an impressive splash that forced the pair apart, both rocketing to the surface as soon as they got their bearings. Standing on top of the river, two demons fighting for dominance, Sasuke snarled, "Where'd you get this power, loser?"

"Don't underestimate me, asshole," Naruto growled, the water boiling around him. The Kyūbi's chakra – he knew that was the source of the power flooding his veins, could tell by the easy access to Lava Release, by the way the chakra around him felt simultaneously part of him and dissociated from him – fell into the surrounding steam and fundamentally changed it, brown-grey skin sloughing off Sasuke's wings like chocolate melting in the sun.

Purplish-indigo hair swiveled to observe each appendage in turn, the boy apparently unaffected by any pain, if it hurt at all, red eyes turning to fix on the blond. "What kind of jutsu is this? How did you come up with a jutsu the Sharingan can't copy?!"

Naruto didn't have an answer – he didn't know what the Sharingan was, and Sasuke's attitude didn't make him inclined to respond anyway – allowing the Kyūbi's chakra to bubble off his skin into red-tinged, translucent spheres in a parody of a technique he'd seen Utakata use dozens of times. A single roar sent them soaring towards the Uchiha, who called lightning to his palm, white-black bolts shooting off to pop each one. They exploded when burst, and the runaway Leaf Genin couldn't avoid the concussive force of the closest handful. "NA-RU-TO!" he bellowed, his rage momentarily raising his voice above the high-pitched trilling of the Chidori. "Enough of your tricks! Whatever you're doing won't stop me!"

"He no longer needs to; you are within my field of divination. Hakke Rokujūyon Shō!"

Sasuke startled, whirling on the spot, but Hyūga Neji's fingers were already stabbing at him, faster and faster, the lightning in his palm dissipating into black-white sparks, his demonic appearance molting away to reveal the pale-skinned, dark-haired boy beneath. From his haunches, Naruto watched the older boy work, waiting to intervene at the first indication of necessity, until Sasuke slumped forward, inert, only held up by Neji's hand on the scruff of his shirt collar. The Hyūga's white eyes flickered to the blond, holding his gaze despite the fearsome red-orange aura that swathed him, and Naruto thought that the older boy appeared…unkempt, fatigue softening his hard features. Naruto wondered what he'd been through, though relief at seeing him alive and well jolted him. "Uzumaki," he intoned in his stoic baritone, then paused, blinked, and cleared his throat to start again, "…Naruto. Your chakra is…overwhelming. Can you contain it?"

Naruto tried to tamp down on the power flowing through him, but it felt like trying to dam a river with a pebble. After several seconds, it became apparent that the Kyūbi was not going to relinquish the influence it was exerting. He shook his head, growling in a voice low with a bestial undertone, "No."

Neji watched him, and Naruto felt like he was staring at Utakata, the older boy mentally working through something that wouldn't be shared until he'd fully fleshed out the idea. "I may be able to help, if you would allow me." The blond nodded, and the Hyūga approached slowly, dragging Sasuke's prone body with him. Standing next to the Jinchūriki produced a wince from the stoic Genin, and upon reaching a hand out towards the chakra-cloaked body, he withdrew it with a hiss. "The properties of this chakra are…corrosive," Neji observed. "If you could reduce the harmful effects, even fractionally, that would help."

That sounded…manageable. He focused on the chakra's nature, twisting the corrosivity of it – in the steam, the bubbles, the lava – and trying to tame it. It resisted, and he engaged in a mental tug-of-war for control, finding a modicum of success. "Try…now…" he grunted. Neji's hand glowed blue with chakra, likely meant to protect himself, and he reached into the shroud again, two fingers gently poking at specific locations on his shoulder, his stomach, chest, thighs, forearms, until the chakra cloak dissipated and exhaustion settled into his bones. He heaved a sigh, sitting down on the water's surface and looking up at the older boy to express his relief. "You're alive. I thought…"

"Mm. It seems Fate…" he paused, swallowed whatever words he was going to say, and then continued, "…things did not go as I expected. Still—" he glanced down at Sasuke, shirt still clutched in his other hand, "—despite everything, we retrieved Uchiha Sasuke and suffered no casualties. Our mission parameters were completed successfully."

Neji's last words rang in his ears. "We did it…" he whispered, overjoyed and tired and a million other emotions he couldn't put words to. They'd won…he'd won, despite all the naysayers. "Mission accomplished."

-l-l-l-

"I told Rōshi something was wrong."

Neither Fū nor Gaara responded, the pair unconscious against a tree trunk, heads leaning against one another for support. Utakata hurried over to them, checking for pulses and breathing in relief when their heartbeats – faint, fluttering, but there nonetheless – became apparent. Dark scarlet liberally painted their skin and clothes, though he couldn't tell how much was theirs. "I hope this isn't as bad as I think it is," he muttered, the trees his only audience. He pulled out his bubble blower and exhaled a sphere large enough to carry the two younger Jinchūriki. It floated over, settled on top of them, and then lifted, and Utakata began the long trek back to Konoha with the renegade Sand and Waterfall shinobi in tow.

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Author's Note: Lee's name is very confusing, but since his son is 'Metal Lee', it seems apparent that his surname/family name is Lee, so to keep the nomenclature the same: Lee Rock. Feels very weird. Hope you've enjoyed this departure from the canon Sasuke Retrieval Arc, and the enormity of this chapter. With Gaara and Fū interfering in the last chapter and here, and Naruto's and Sasuke's friendship being completely nonexistent, you get a very different outcome. The results/backlash of Fū's wind manipulation against Ukon are supposed to resemble/be inspired by Naruto's canon Rasenshuriken (against Kakuzu).