Chapter 29

"Fuzz-wad! Get back here!"

Hitomi's playful laugh jounced as freely between the trees as the scurrying mustelid that fled from her advances. Though a creature of the forest by nature, Fuzz-wad found itself pitted against a similar being by nurture, and over the years Hitomi proved herself the faster of the two through their daily chases. Today would be no different.

"Caught you!" The girl shrieked after a four-legged bounce between three tree trunks sent her hurling on top of the animal. The pair rolled through leaves and twig for some distance; though Fuzz-wad's length from nose to tail may have equaled Hitomi's height, the girl still outweighed him by several kilograms. She hugged the animal to her chest—the bristly pelt of an adult fisher didn't bother her cheek in the least as she nuzzled into its head.

"You're so cute," she cooed lovingly, but the fisher knew better than to relax. Sure enough, Hitomi's next move maneuvered the pet to face her, now held out by two hands. Her voice fell from its former tone of fondness, "Now give me my clip."

Fuzz-wad held her gaze for a moment longer, the black, beady eyes unblinking in a show of complete bewilderment. Finally its mouth opened, thin fangs displayed, and a silver and blue hair-clip dropped to the forest floor. Hitomi beamed.

"Good boy!" she crushed it into another bruising hug before turning her attention to the clip—a birthday present fro Leela last year and one of her favorite hairpieces. If there were any teeth marks present there'd be hell to pay.

"Hm...looks alright," she assessed, turning the clip over in her hands. She smiled at Fuzz-wad. "You're off the hook today, Fuzzy-Wuzzy!"

Fuzz-wad accepted the rather hard pat on the head, its round ears perking as keen senses picked up an approaching arrival. Hitomi, too, found herself on alert before she realized she even sensed anything.

Her small nose twitched as she lifted it to the air, an odd behavior to see from a child but those who knew her had long since grown used to it.

Her face broke out into a wide grin and she shot off along the ground with ardent giddiness.

"C'mon, Fuzz-wad! Dad's back!" she hollered over her shoulder. The fisher released a mix between a yip and a bark and bounded after the girl.

"Dad! Daddy!" Hitomi called as she saw the outline of her father grow clearer amongst the high tree branches. Using the woods in between Bassai and Konoha proved a faster form of travel between their homes, as well as a more direct route when compared to the roads. She and her father always took the shortcut, being able to recognize every tree as a separate landmark from their almost daily excursions in the forest. It was almost impossible for her to get lost on such familiar grounds, so she knew she wouldn't be in trouble for straying so deep.

As Hitomi approached, she made note of the lacking aura. It didn't matter much to her; she still saw his clones as her father—after all, they were a part of the man. They were simply replacement bodies until she had the real thing.

"Hey, baby!" he greeted, his voice sounding drained and weary. He stopped his tree hopping first, settling into a slow gait on the ground and allowing Hitomi to finish covering the distance between them. As she neared she could see his complexion was quite pale and his face was set into a strange grimace—like he was trying to smile in spite of discomfort.

Regardless of his obviously weakened state, she still barreled into him at a ludicrous speed. Naruto only just managed to keep his footing as his child torpedoed into his stomach.

"Daddy!"

Naruto laughed—laboriously, had she paid attention—and wrapped his large arms around her in a consuming hug. She breathed in his sent, content to have a piece of her father with her once more.

"Hey," he said again, softer. He didn't want to do anything to upset the joy his little girl radiated. "You missed me that much?"

Hitomi nodded and pulled her face out of his midriff.

"What's happening to daddy?" she asked the clone frankly, staring him straight in the eye as she addressed her foremost concern. The clone knew he must have looked like hell; something was happening to his source...something unexplainable...

"Your dad isn't feeling well," the clone answered, "so I'm going to take you back to Konoha. You heard about the village that was attacked by a demon, right?"

Hitomi nodded again and a brief, fearful look overtook her features as she recalled those few, terrifying hours. Unconsciously, her small fingers gripped his vest and he could feel her claws puncture through the cloth (he could tell her a thousand times to stop shredding his clothes but it never seemed to strike home).

"I could feel it, dad! All that heat and anger and...and...evil! I knew it was close and it was so scary because I was sure it was coming for us next! I slept with Juju-baachan that night but she didn't understand—she couldn't even sense it...the humans could only see the glowing far away...they weren't as scared as they should have been! I wish you were there..."

Her father wore an openly pained expression on his face and she couldn't tell if it was due to regret or a physical ailment.

"I'm sorry, babe," said Naruto with genuine remorse. He swallowed and coughed a couple times and gently pried his daughter from his clothes. "Come on; let's get you back to your dad."

Hitomi nodded and held his hand, going at the clone's pace of a slow walk. It felt far too slow for Hitomi, who, upon seeing her father's clone in such condition, could only feel anxiety coursing through her small body. She wanted to see her real father more than ever, if only to make sure he was safe.

"Are you sure you're going to be all right?" she asked apprehensively. The larger hand that held hers felt loose and weak. Now that she had her own skin to compare, he realized her father's clone was almost paper white.

"What's wrong?" she asked again, this time her voice held undertones of hysteria. Something was very wrong with her father if his clones looked this bad. And it was happening at such a rapid pace. Hitomi watched in morbid fascination as the clone became increasingly gaunt.

Aging, dying and swaying on the spot.

"D-dad—!"

The clone moaned, falling into a crouch and gripping its stomach with its free hand. Hitomi refused to relinquish the one she held—her only viable connection to her father.

Unfortunately for her, that comfort was taken in the next second anyway with a distinct 'pop'.

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

"O-oi!"

"What the—sensei!"

"Where'd he go?"

Team five immediately ceased their travel as the leading figure of their sensei's clone poofed out of existence, and fell into a wide bed of ferns that grew around the thick tree-roots. The clone had been slowing for sometime, but the chuunin were too distracted in their own thoughts of the Yonbi's attack to think anything of it until just then.

"Do you think something happened?" Oki asked worriedly. She glanced around the otherwise empty forestlands for some sort of clue as to what was going on.

"Maybe he just trusted us to make the rest of the trip alone?" Ringo offered weakly. He knew, even as the words left his mouth, this was false.

"No," Toshi responded automatically. "Not after a mission like that...and you saw how he took off earlier...something bad's happened."

A niggle had taken to aggravating the depths of his subconscious, like there were puzzle pieces being presented before him and he wasn't making a connection. The Sanbi lured Konoha's greatest defense against the bijuu away from the village...only to have the Yonbi attack nearby Konoha. Nearby.

Someone had to be behind this, someone who could control the bijuu. They didn't want to piss off Naruto-sensei, they didn't want his wrath; they wanted to scare him.

He voiced his concerns to his teammates, who each, in turn, drew a grim face.

"I bet it's Akatsuki," Oki glowered. "They've been so quiet; half the villages think these bijuu attacks are just the demons getting antsy. Who's going to think each one is could be herding Naruto-sensei to exactly where they want him?"

The concept was terrifying—that everything their sensei had been working for had been a set-up.

"Then there's no point in us standing around here," Ringo stated with far more strength in his voice than he previously expressed. "Something's not right, we know that, and we've got to find sensei."

Oki and Toshi exchanged sharp nods with each other and the trio took to the trees once more, now hampered with fresh dread to augment their initial unease.

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

Shikamaru knocked on the door with sharp, dogged raps and waited. For once, his infamous patience escaped him, and every second spent staring at that chipping, red paint added to his pique.

He heard from Kurenai, who had been informed by the Hokage that, due to Keiji's sudden gift in elemental manipulation, Naruto would be taking over his training at some point.

This shocked him, for Shikamaru knew that his own vast knowledge and comprehension on the mechanics of elemental chakra manipulation left him more than proficient for the job. What shocked him further was Naruto's consent to it—Naruto, whom he confided in as teenagers about his dream to become the sensei to Asuma's kid as Asuma had been to him.

Anger would be unreasonable; Shikamaru wanted Keiji to have the best possible options that life could give him, and he knew he couldn't perform elemental jutsu as Naruto could. But to take over Keiji's training—most likely before the boy even became a chuunin—now that stung.

He wanted to confront Naruto first before he jumped to any conclusions. He wanted to hear Naruto's reasons for accepting something so important to him before he gave into indignation.

'Naruto is my friend,' Shikamaru tried to conciliate himself. 'Naruto knows I've been looking forward to this...Naruto wouldn't take this away from me without a good reason.'

The man smothered the urge to loll his head back and observe the cracks in the ceiling. He didn't pack his hands in his pockets and slouch into his comfortable position of waiting. He pounded against the door again.

"Ugh, Naruto open up!" Shikamaru raised his voice to a level he rarely used outside of combat.

"What are you doing?"

Shikamaru slowly dragged his eyes to the source of the woman's voice and met Sakura's mildly annoyed frown, complete with a raised eyebrow and a hand on her hip.

"I need to talk to your boyfriend," he answered. His irritation was palpable, but Sakura wasn't one to let another's bad mood intimidate her.

"Enough for you to shout at my door?" Sakura asked. Shikamaru had to pause before answering; he had been so busy with his own clan dealings as of late that he hadn't taken any notice of how far Naruto and Sakura's relationship had progressed. The public didn't discuss the blond's love life as flagrantly as his accomplishments, but he thought he'd at least hear something from Ino.

"I know he's in there," he shrugged and took a step back so Sakura could take the lead in. "He's probably asleep or something."

"He just got back from a mission, so of course he's tired," Sakura said with a roll of her eyes as she pushed passed the tall man and opened the unlocked door.

Walking into the window-lit sitting room with a familiarity that suggested she had been living there for sometime, Sakura threw the lab coat she had hung over her arm onto the couch and pulled out the clip holding back her hair. She ran her fingers through the length a couple times, easing out the tension a long day at the hospital wore into her nerves.

Shikamaru followed her in, closing the door behind him. From the foyer, the apartment certainly looked lived in; there were vaguely familiar academy assignments half-filled and forgotten on a coffee table, a small, girlish jacket crumpled beneath a rocking chair, and a few potted plants arranged into the layout—some of which bore chewed leaves.

"I'll go get him," Sakura announced and she left Shikamaru standing in the living room as she navigated her way to the bedroom.

The woman had a pretty good idea of Shikamaru's reason for being there, especially with such a scowl on his face. Kakashi needed to give Kurenai a general idea on what Keiji's future looked like now that the boy bore such a gift. As far as she knew, Keiji's training would only pass onto Naruto after he spent some time on a team; Shikamaru would still get his chance to leave his influence on Asuma's child. It's not like he hadn't been doing just that over last nine years. The timing would simply be cut short.

Sakura sighed at the vanity of men.

Naruto wasn't without his own arrogance, of course. He had a great power that he knew how to use, and he knew this about himself. He didn't need to use that false bravado and brazen arrogance that he displayed as a child to cover his insecurities, for those insecurities were proven unfit long ago; Naruto's battle prowess was nothing to be insecure about.

He didn't flaunt it; he even tried to downplay it by keeping up an unassuming image, but he couldn't ignore the reality that he was faster, stronger, and held a greater understanding of the unearthly world than the rest of the population. She knew he sustained this cautiously guarded acknowledgement that set him apart from humans; that, at times, he saw them as inferior.

It had to be a demonic instinct of sorts that planted such a feeling within him, for Sakura knew Naruto wasn't the type of person to condone superiority. He fought it, but he didn't disavow it, and sometimes she worried if it would tear them apart in the end. After all, she was human.

Getting used to a more animalistic Naruto was a complicated process. He acted calm, silly even, in public, but when together she'd heard him growl and purr with vocals no human could possess. She'd both seen and felt those sharp, smooth canines along her skin and against her tongue. He'd bitten her and sniffed her, she became intimately familiar with the claws that only came to notice when he was using them on her. It had been strange and thrilling. The sex was great—often rough, but she got used to the scratches and bruises and his sometimes-insatiable appetite for her body. She grew to revel in it.

After the first year or so enjoying the stimulation of exploring and expanding what they shared, their relationship had come to a standstill. Not a bad development by any means; they'd simply grown comfortable with each other's presence and their daily routines. She wasn't falling out of love; she still experienced those phenomenal sensations when he was near. Such as the little swoops in her stomach she would get (and hate at the time) when Naruto returned from his training with Jiraiya—those never stopped. Even today she still got that fluttery feeling in her chest, that fleeting shock of exhilaration, whenever Naruto came up behind her and gently touched her sides, or laid feather-light kisses from her eyelids to her jaw line. She knew they loved each other, and she knew the attraction was still there. It was the effort needed on both parties that was lacking.

Lately Naruto's attention became divided between demons and his daughter. He put so much of his time and effort into keeping Jinchuuriki from being created—something he burdened himself with not just because he had the power of a bijuu himself, but because of his direct responsibility in the freedom of those two bijuu—that she often felt like she was working overtime to keep them together.

Sakura reached the closed door to the master bedroom and knocked softly.

"Naruto...?" she called out his name with reluctance. He was so overtaxed these days, being pulled in every other direction, and she hated to wake him.

Civilians could now read his exhaustion, a weakness once only expressed to her and Hitomi. He only required a nap every now and then back at the beginning of their relationship, when just his clones doing recon missions and Hitomi's boundless energy were wearing him down. But with the Akatsuki's suspicious movement, the demands for his assistance from other villages, and his own stupid, noble compulsion to take on responsibilities equal to his power, his fatigue mounted with each passing day. If he wasn't chasing around demons or overzealous seals masters, he was either taking care of Hitomi or unconscious.

Sakura ruefully shook her head. Juhi said he acted a lot like this when he first came to her, all pale and wary and resigned, and she assumed that he was anemic. At present, both women laughed at such a notion.

After receiving no rejoinder to her call, Sakura grasped the door handle and pushed, trying to make as little noise as possible even with the intent of rousing Naruto.

To hell with Shikamaru's jealousy. Sakura planned on climbing into bed with Naruto and spending a few moments massaging some anti-stress chakra pulses into his temples before making him face someone's inquiry. He loved when she did that, alternating between stroking his whiskers and petting his hair with his head in her lap. Only she could relax him so readily, and it sent a rousing tremor down her spine every time to know he still clung to her as a source of comfort. He needed her; Naruto—the ninja so powerful hardly anyone wanted to look past the title of Sage and Jinchuuriki and Hero because they didn't want to see a floundering man that had weaknesses and insecurities like any other mortal—needed her. It was all she could ever ask for.

"Naru—"

Sakura ceased both her voice and her movements. Only a shoulder breeched the room as she realized the bed lay empty, made and untouched.

"Sakura! Oh gods—Sakura! Get in here!"

Desperation and confusion rung so soundly in Shikamaru's summon that Sakura wasted no time in questioning him. She vanished and flickered into the kitchen, making record time, yet finding herself unable to react once there. Her legs temporarily locked as her eyes tried to force her brain into understanding what she was viewing.

Shikamaru knelt next to the prone body of Naruto. At least a liter worth of blood pooled beneath him and even more smeared across cabinets and tiles, painting a panicked, hurried background. The Nara didn't seem to notice the blood soaking into the knees of his pants; he could only stare at the horrifying mess with shaky hands that hovering unsurely over the unmoving blond.

Sakura released a single, choked sob before throwing herself to her knees.

"Naruto!" she gasped. With practiced expertise, she immediately ran a green-flushed hand along his back, checking for any damage to his spine, and then flipped him over once finding no risk for paralysis.

Sakura whimpered at his front; his shirt stuck to his body, saturated with blood that bubbled out of the fabric when the woman pressed her hand to his stomach, trying to get a feel for the wound. She couldn't detect any lacerations in the epidermis that would make his clothes a hazard to remove.

"What...what..." Shikamaru was shaking his head, unable to find words worthy of describing the situation they were in. He knew he had to get a grip; they had to get Naruto to a hospital before it was too late, that they had to find out what happened and how, and in their own village, but...but this was Naruto. He hadn't seen Naruto bleed in, well, in forever. He hadn't seen him helpless like this since that Sage incident. He could have never imagined such a scene if he weren't currently kneeling in the middle of it, sputtering and useless.

He watched, despairing, as Sakura peeled up the shirt. A squelching noise emerged, like something adhesive being pulled away from its rest and it sounded far too loud in the small, tense kitchen. Shikamaru looked away, instead focusing on the limp hands crusted in blood—a lighter, brighter red that indicated the hands were not wounded, but used to staunch the blood flow. He shifted his line of vision to Naruto's face; even while unconscious he reflected discomfort. He was in pain, but he wasn't responsive to them.

"He's not bleeding anymore…" Sakura murmured, gently rubbing away the liquid that had begun to dry against his skin. The glow of her healing hand, coupled with the shadow it cast across the seal, blocked Shikamaru's view from the damage.

"He's healed already?" Shikamaru asked, already feeling the easing of relief. Whatever this was, it looked like Naruto's regenerating abilities pulled through for them.

Sakura shook her head in the negative, raising her gaze to reveal doleful eyes.

"It's not clotted," she said in barely more than a whisper. "His blood just isn't moving."

Shikamaru felt terror grip his heart, "You mean he's—"

"No," Sakura cut in sharply, probably harsher than she meant, but she didn't want to hear those words spoken aloud.

She moved her hand from the sickly, sallow stomach and Shikamaru had to bite his tongue from yelling at the grisly sight scarring Naruto's abdomen. Vertical patches of skin over and around the seal appeared dead and sunken, like it had melted into his body, leaving a sickly outline of his stomach muscles, the tissue covering them now black and purple and rotting.

Ugly.

Sakura never thought there'd ever be a time where that word could be used to describe any part of his body. Always inhumanly flawless no matter how misleading the stress lines around his mouth and forehead were, Naruto maintained an ethereal beauty only a supernatural being could possess and only unseen to himself. He made even her feel self-conscious at times with the number of alabaster blemishes decorating her body.

"He's..." Shikamaru trailed for a moment, looking for the entire world like he both wanted and abhorred touching the mess. "He's decaying."

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

"D-daddy?" Hitomi whimpered, looking around in bewilderment when she realized she was entirely alone. She knew there was no other life form bigger than birds in the vicinity aside from she and her fisher. She didn't need to look, but her mind wouldn't accept what her senses were telling her.

She began to run with no regard to Fuzz-wad or anything surrounding her. Panic filled her as she moved through the trees using all four limbs. Her daddy was hurt. She knew it. She felt like she was out of breath and it had nothing to do with exhaustion. She was afraid. She had to get to Konoha because that's where her daddy was and he needed her because there was something so, so wrong.

'I'm almost there,' she thought desperately as she passed a tract of saplings she knew to be about five minutes from Konoha's southern wall. 'In just a few minutes I'll see—'

"OW!" she yelped, releasing a yipping sound beneath her words. She had just run head first into something wide and big and completely invisible that currently fizzled back into an inaudible state. Whatever it was had crackled upon impact.

"O-ow…"

She whimpered piteously on the ground, unable to pick herself up after the shock of numb that flooded her body, and curled in on herself as her eyes watered.

She heard a whining that was not her own and a soft, cold muzzle nudged the hand covering her head. She uncurled with stiff movements, meeting the bleak gaze of Fuzz-wad.

"I'm okay," she told him, sniffling. She took her time picking herself up, making sure that she had not been injured after such a jolt. Satisfied with her state of being for the moment, she restarted her trek to Konoha at a slow walk, mindful and cautious.

Hitomi raised her hand and brought it hesitantly in front of her, taking one step, two steps, three—

Her hand flexed on compulsion, feeling a sharp, hissing energy that had her instincts screaming at her for standing so close to it. She gasped, taking a step back.

"What...what is this? This was never here before..."

Fuzz-wad whirred and shot past her—directly through whatever blocked her from Konoha—and turned to stare at her expectantly. Hitomi frowned at the fisher.

Determined to make it to her father, the girl began moving from side to side, trying to find a weakness in the oppressive force. She moved to the west, then to the east. She tried jumping up, she tried digging. Every now and then she would try to touch the perilous heat, only to find herself on the ground, yowling in pain.

Twenty minutes. She had spent twenty minutes trying to get past this...this...thing.

She glared out into space with all the energy she had left, looking a wretched mess with her burnt hands and disheveled attire.

"But...but my daddy's in there..." she bleated, as if that would make the thing go away. Frustrated tears fell hotly down her round cheeks. "This isn't fair!"

She punched the barrier in anger and desperation, screaming as she was predictably thrown back once more. This time, she didn't get up; she stayed on the ground, her hand smoking and stinging, and she cried into the leaves.

Fuzz-wad, agitated and distressed at the state of its two-legged friend, circled her twice with its fur on end. Then it paused, it lifted its nose to the air, and took off.

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

Oki was the first to spot and black and brown line of fur speeding to meet them on their expeditious flight back to Konoha. She directed her next jump to the ground, feeling her male teammates follow her lead and land on either side of her.

The creature drew closer, moving as fast as physically able.

"Hey, isn't that...?" Ringo started, only to have Oki 'eep' and dive behind him.

"Yep," Toshi grinned despite their situation. "That's gotta be Fuzz-wad."

The animal terrified the short girl, a well-known (and well exploited) fact amongst Team Five. Fuzz-wad reached them, jumping and mewling and hissing in alarming behavior. It impatiently bounced back and forth between the direction it just came from and their feet.

"I think it wants us to follow him," Ringo interpreted. Oki peeked out from behind his shoulder and narrowed her eyes at the mammal. It barked. She squeaked.

Toshi stepped up first, "Then let's go. This could have something to do with sensei."

Instantly somber, the other two nodded. Ever since Naruto-sensei's clone disappeared, they had been pushing themselves to reach Konoha beyond their normal limits. Their sensei focused on stamina and precision in between their individual studies, and they found it paid off that day. They couldn't have been far from their destination to be intercepted by Hitomi's pet.

They immediately set out, careening through the trees and keeping pace with the fisher.

"He's not taking us directly to Konoha..." Oki noted when their course began to veer more to the west than it should have.

"Maybe he's taking us to Bassai?" Toshi suggested. His legs were starting to burn from constantly running chakra through them and keeping his muscles active. He was sure his comrades were in a similar condition.

"No," Ringo refuted. "We're too north for that...What...what is that?"

There lay a mass at the base of a nearing tree, white and blue and blonde.

"Hitomi-chan!"

The small, nine-year old girl was curled on the forest floor, sobs and coughs wracking her slight frame but remaining otherwise motionless. The three teens were immediately by her side, Oki rubbing her hand over the child's back. Hitomi persisted in being unresponsive, keeping her hands tucked into her chest and her knees up by her chin.

"Is she okay?" Ringo asked, suspending over the girl apprehensively. Things were looking worse and worse as the succession of strange events played out.

"What happened, Hitomi?" Toshi tried.

Hitomi's lip trembled and she screwed her eyes shut, like she was trying to escape a bad dream.

"I don't know...I don't know..." she got out between shuddering breaths.

"C'mon," said Oki in a soft, calming tone. She drew the girl off the ground and into her arms, rubbing at the dirt that muddied her cheeks from tears and purposely stroking the whiskers to help lower her erratic heart rate.

"What happened to her hands!" Ringo cried, crouching down to join the two girls and gently pulling Hitomi's small hand into his own. It looked raw and red; blisters ran along the backs of her fingers. Hitomi whimpered as he touched it and Oki pulled her back into a hug.

"Right," Toshi said with a ring of finality. "We need to get her to Konoha—"

"NO!" Hitomi shrieked, practically jumping out of Oki's arms. Oki held her tight, but suffered several claws drawing blood along her neck. Naruto-sensei had trained Hitomi-chan well in handling humans; she must have been terrified to brandish her claws so carelessly.

"Okay, okay," Oki soothed, petting the girl's hair and trying to get her to calm down. "It's okay. We just want to help you. Why don't you want to go to Konoha?"

"I can't," Hitomi sobbed, "I c-can't get in. It won't let m-me! It did thi-this!"

She painfully tried to flex her injured hands

"What is 'it' Hitomi-chan?" Ringo pressed, trying to get her to give straight answer.

"The invisible thing—my daddy's in there and I c-can't see him because—because it hurts me!"

"Invisible thing...? There's a barrier?" Oki postulated. She knew Konoha had protective barriers or at least something that activated to motion or chakra, ways of detecting people coming and going. But there was nothing that could actively keep people out, not to her knowledge anyhow.

Toshi narrowed his eyes and walked forwards. He kept walking, passing several trees until he was forty feet away. He turned and said, "Where was the barrier Hitomi-chan?"

Hitomi sniffled, calmer now that she wasn't alone and with people who needed her dad just as much as she did. She looked at Toshi and frowned.

"It was closer," she said, a high-pitched whine resonated from her throat. "I don't think it hurts...humans."

Team five exchanged startled looks. Rarely did Hitomi vocally acknowledge that she was different to other people. It also raised several theories as to what was wrong with their sensei.

Ringo pounded the fist of one hand into the palm of his other.

"Alright. Oki, you stay with Hitomi, take her back to Juhi-obachan or something. Toshi and I'll go find sensei and figure out what the hell's going on."

"Got it," Oki nodded and maneuvered Hitomi so that she could ride piggyback. Fuzz-wad, who had been slinking in the background, scurried over to settle by Oki's legs. Oki nearly screamed at it before her living cargo sighed the fisher's name. If the beast's presence mattered so much to Hitomi, Oki would tolerate it.

"One or both of us will come back and let you know what's going on," Toshi called from his farther distance. "No more than three hours."

"Two," Oki bartered, after sending a concerned look at the subdued and dull-eyed girl loosely clinging to her back.

"Two," Toshi agreed on before he and Ringo departed.

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

"What do you mean you don't know what's wrong with him!"

Moegi didn't back down from Sakura's overemotional, verbal attack. Everyone in that room—Tsunade, Shikamaru, Hinata, and herself—were in high distress. She could forgive Sakura for her aggression this one time.

"The seal is intact," she insisted firmly. "It didn't cause this. But, seeing as it's where Naruto's demonic chakra is concentrated, it's where this started. Whatever 'this' is."

"It simply leaves one more thing to cross out," Tsunade inferred. Sakura refused to look at her; the young woman kept her focus on Naruto with her mouth set in a straight line and a deep crease between her eyebrows.

Naruto was lain out on a hospital table, shirtless, ashen and static. His breathing was so shallow that he may not have been breathing at all. Anyone who walked into that room would have sworn he was dead, were it not for the machines hooked up to him, monitoring his vitals and proving something was going on inside his body. His body wasn't pushing the needles out like usual and that in itself alarmed Tsunade.

She looked at the heart monitor and moaned, "His heart rate has now slowed to eight beats per minute—eight. This is beyond bradycardia."

Naruto already had a slow resting heart rate—as expected of any ninja in good condition—but to have a heart rate of eight beats per minute...hibernating bears were more active than this!

The elderly woman seemed at a loss. She and Sakura had been running chakra scans all over his body for the better part of an hour and so far only got mixed diagnoses. Everything within his body seemed to be moving at the pace of molasses, including whatever ailed him. They called in Hinata to see if there was anything to be seen, they called in Moegi to see if this was related to the seal. The answer was negative on both parts.

"Byakugan," Hinata said softly, activating her bloodline with the silent purpose of checking the rate of Naruto's chakra flow again.

She placed a hand on the cool skin of his stomach, the pads of her fingers just touching between two blackened distortions in a completely unnecessary action for someone who was only looking. Sakura nearly let loose a possessive snarl despite the situation and idly wondered if Naruto was starting to rub off on her.

The Hinata standing before her certainly bore no resemblance to the girl she graduated with at the academy. Sure, she still had the same blue-hued hair and pale eyes and unreasonable bust. But she'd grown colder—specifically to Naruto. Sakura didn't suspect hatred or any other ill-will, just resentment and disappointment and—buried yet enduring—longing.

Accepting her status and duty to her clan, Hinata had been placed in a political marriage, tearing apart her girlhood dreams of ever being with Naruto. On top of it all, Naruto hadn't turned out to be the charming boy-hero she'd always imagined. He was absorbed in more personal matters than those of the village—something he made known in the first couple of years after his return from Bassai and showed no remorse for it. He continually put off becoming Hokage. Even after all the promises he made, all the changes he assured would come to pass that people counted on, he continued to defer. He fell victim to his own rank as a Sage and had a difficult time detaching himself from it. He openly admitted he needed help, and he chose someone he was most familiar with to support him; he chose Sakura.

There was one thing Sakura and Hinata had in common; their childhood knights in shining armor didn't shine much at all in the end. Hinata must have seen too many flaws in the portrait she painted within her mind for so many years, because she began to build a front of disdain. It could have been a ploy to ease the pain of desertion—never having a chance for it to be called rejection—or to help with the loss of the perfect boy who had been replaced with an entirely different man. It may have even helped her accept the engagement to a distantly related branch member of the Hyuuga.

Whatever the reason, her cool attitude towards Naruto annoyed Sakura to no end, who personally saw Hinata's lack of relationship with Naruto as the woman's own doing. Maybe Naruto became the man he was today because Hinata never had the courage to address him, a man she could no longer recognize. Life was funny like that.

Hinata slowly pulled away, dragging her finger off his body with, what Sakura viewed as, undue leisure.

"No difference," she said. "If anything it's slower."

Moegi startled, "Slower? Gods..."

"He's not just in a coma," Shikamaru breathed, shaking his head at what he was about to utter, "He's in some sort of...suspended animation..."

"Is it like last time...?" Sakura asked in little more than a whisper. "Is it nature...?"

He was cold, but not that cold. Not yet.

"No," said Tsunade swiftly, "I don't know how this came about, but as for the damage, I have a solid theory. Whatever's happened to him has targeted his...youki, I believe he called it. And since that's interlaced with his chakra so finely...it's reacting negatively."

"Reacting negatively?" Moegi sounded skeptical. "I thought the youki's what gave him his fast healing?"

"I believe that's the problem," Tsunade said with increasing despair. The reality of the situation finally dawned on her as the pieces rapidly fell into place. "His youki is trying to heal the damage...but the more it's active, the more it damages him...which calls for it to regenerate that damage and you start all over again. It's a cycle. A powerful cycle because—the idiot—he has too much chakra," a derisive chuckle shook her as tears sprung to her eyes. "I knew it...I knew it. This isn't something he can physically blow through this time...his body is a weak shell that's trying to contain a volatile ocean of chakra. Son of a bitch."

The former Hokage almost never swore, but the dire conclusion was far more alarming for the crowd than her language.

"His body is overloaded with chakra that's trying to kill him," Sakura surmised, her voice sounded unnaturally high to her own ears, hollow and distant. The hand that gripped Naruto's cold, limp one quivered at the bleak future ahead of them.

"Then maybe it's a good thing his chakra's hardly moving," said Hinata softly but stony. "With the way it's interlaced with the demonic essence, he'd probably be dead at this point."

"Thank you, Hinata," Tsunade stressed the formality while placing a hand on Sakura's shoulder. She could practically hear the younger woman's teeth grinding. Even if Hinata didn't mean for it to sound so callous, her apprentice was overly sensitive at the moment.

"Perhaps that's why everything has slowed down..." Moegi tried for her own theory. "No really, what if, somehow, his body or youki or whatever recognized what was happening and put him in this coma-thing to slow down the damage. What if it's a defense and it's actually saving him for the time being?"

"It's a possibility," Shikamaru admitted slowly, now adding that theory into the ever-fluctuating equation. He found that if he treated the situation like another strategy problem and detach himself from emotional involvement he could think clearer. "Now that we've somewhat explained the decaying part, how do we explain how this happened in the first place?"

The room descended into a brief silence as each individual tried to work through the fog of unexplainable elements.

"It had to be something that triggered his youki into lashing out against him," Sakura said softly, absently stroking the back of Naruto's hand with her thumb. It unnerved her how she couldn't feel any life moving beneath his skin. "That's the root of this whole thing, isn't it? Something's aggravated it into attacking him..."

A dark shadow passed over Shikamaru's face that caused her to trail off.

"He didn't..." the man mumbled, "He wouldn't..."

"What?"

Shikamaru looked up from his brooding pose in the midst of his low musings, "You don't think...Kakashi wouldn't have...no, surely not without telling him..."

Tsunade immediately caught on, "But after that attack with the demon hitting so close to the village we only thought of the immediate danger. The fire daimyo was so insistent, as was the council and the general public. Even I—"

She broke off, bringing a hand to her mouth as she realized her own involvement in something that could be killing Naruto.

"We need to talk to Hokage-sama," Shikamaru issued over two girls' heads.

A clamor sounded from the outside hall; harsh voices, both male and female grew in volume as they approached. The double doors to the warded room banged open and two boys careened into the room, an exasperated nurse closely trailed them.

"Hey! What happened—Sensei!"

The pair of males stopped short as they stared, agape, at their teacher of two years in a death like state.

"Get back out here this instant!" the nurse snapped, storming up from behind. A few strands of dark brown hair fell from her cap. "You do not have authorization to be in here—!"

"What happened to Naruto-sensei?" Ringo demanded, pointedly ignoring the raging woman he and Toshi outmaneuvered.

"We're still figuring that out," Tsunade answered placidly while waving the nurse back outside, gesturing that the boys were allowed.

"His stomach," Toshi choked out once he approached. A light sheen of grey washed over his face and no one there could blame him; the atrophy gave for a nasty sight.

"Why is he like this?" Ringo asked, never losing the urgency in his voice.

"We don't have time for this," Shikamaru snapped. "We need to find out if the Hokage gave the go-ahead for the spiritual barrier or not. And if so, we need to get it down before it kills him—or at least get him out of Konoha."

"The spiritual barrier?" Sakura perked up. "The one that just about every country's investing in?"

She finally understood what Shikamaru and Tsunade-sama were speaking of earlier, and if Hinata and Moegi's faces of dawning comprehension were anything to go by, so did they.

"So there is a barrier!" Toshi gasped. "Tomi-chan...We found her in the forest and she was hurt. She said she couldn't get into Konoha."

"But we could," Ringo added.

"Hitomi?" Tsunade asked sharply, latching on to the mention of her granddaughter.

"Is she okay?" Sakura followed with just as much edge.

"She's fine. Oki has her in Bassai," said Toshi. He couldn't seem to draw his eyes away from horrifying and fascinating sight of the concave corrosion eating away at his sensei.

Shikamaru's present frown deepened at the new information the boys brought.

"Then how did Naruto cross it in the first place? Was it incomplete at the time he entered Konoha?"

"If that's the case then we can't get Naruto out, can we?" Hinata asked, her thin eyebrows drawn downward.

The pair of chuunin could only stare at the adults in the room, losing heart. Shikamaru couldn't take the mental block he was suffering.

"Ugh, we need more information—we need to know if and when this thing supposedly was set up, as well as how long Naruto has been back. We need to talk to Kakashi," the man said for the third time. "Now."

The time for deduction had ended; they had expended all the information they knew. They needed to act.

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

Kakashi felt at an age far beyond his years. As if the worry and stress weren't enough anymore, now he had guilt, regret, and unbridled self-loathing added to the mix.

He rubbed a hand down his face, mindful not to let it catch on his mask.

"Keh, some genius I turned out to be," he muttered contemptuously. Oh, how he wanted to give into his selfish need to mope.

"No one could have seen this outcome," Tsunade paused at her successor's wooden stare. "All right, in some ways, it was obvious, but it's hard to remember that Naruto has physical weaknesses with the way he carries on. No one else brought him up when we decided to follow suit and ask for a barrier, so you can't be expected to catch every angle—that's why you have a council."

"And it took him out so easily," Kakashi stated softly, referring to the swiftness in which his body reacted to being contained in a spiritual repository. Truthfully, Kakashi had thought of what would happen to Naruto had they given in to The Movement. He simply assumed Naruto wouldn't be able to pass through the barrier; that it wouldn't matter which side he was on. Hearing that the Raikage was thinking of doing the same only strengthened this presumption because surely the man wouldn't knowingly endanger his own brother.

It was his own fault for following assumptions without bothering to find solid facts. Honestly, how hard would it have been to just ask Naruto? Erecting barriers had been going on for weeks and never once had the thought occurred to him.

Tsunade inhaled heavily through her nose and released a sigh with which she tried to expel her worries and burdens.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall. This had to be a worst case scenario for him—to turn his own chakra on him like that, effectively making his greatest strength his weakness—," Tsunade forced herself to stop talking at Kakashi's haggard look. She knew this costly mistake ate him up inside.

The Fire Temple had been alerted as soon as Shikamaru presented the problem to Kakashi. The two intelligent men wrangled with their theories and they combined what they knew. They concluded that, yes, the spiritual barrier must have had an adverse affect on demons trapped within it and that Naruto suffered the effects of one. They hypothesized that the barrier strengthened over time, it being the only explanation for Naruto's ability to enter when Hitomi could not later on. Kakashi recalled that Naruto looked bad as soon as he returned from his mission, and Sakura and Shikamaru confirmed that it progressively got worse.

Fortunately, the seven monks that spent hours setting up the barrier were still in the immediate area, having only just erected it earlier that morning, and responded to the recall quickly. They immediately set to deconstruction, seeming impassive to the reason why as long as they would be compensated for it.

They assured the process would take nearly as long as it took to put it up, so Hinata and Moegi were dismissed and ordered to disclose nothing for the time being. Shikamaru claimed he wanted to find out more about spiritual barriers and the various reactions to them and headed off to the library. Sakura might have had the same inclination, but instead chose to head for Bassai to act as both a guard and a comfort for the poor little girl who could not comprehend why her father couldn't be with her.

Kakashi and Tsunade were the only two who stayed in the office, turning over explanations to the country's government. Tsunade would have been in the hospital, monitoring any change over her charge as the barrier lifted, but first wanted to make sure Kakashi didn't beat himself up too hard. He wasn't the only one who could take blame.

"I don't know how I'll make this up to him," Kakashi griped. "What if the damage is permanent? We don't know how his body will react to recovering from...spiritual overdose...or whatever it's called."

The final act of propriety left him as Kakashi allowed his head to fall on the desk with a dull thud. Everything was so suspicious—the attacks, the barrier, Naruto's "episode". Something wasn't right but he couldn't do anything about it because their best source to Akatsuki's movements was currently frozen in time.

Tsunade managed a half-smile.

"We'll call in the monks after they're done and get a better diagnosis. I'm sure they'll understand everything that happened better than anybody."

Kakashi picked up his head just as the door received two sharp knocks before opening without waiting for approval. Very few people had the gall to do that.

"Hokage-sama!" It was a doctor—Ryota—if Kakashi remembered correctly, a talented middle-aged man who often took over Sakura's duties when she was absent, such as this moment.

"What is it?" Kakashi asked, sitting up straighter. Tension and grief rolled off the man in thick waves that aggravated Kakashi's heightened senses into nearly gagging.

"It's Naruto-sama!" Ryota cried. "He's dead!"

The following silence rung so loudly one could hear a pin drop in the Hokage's office, even without ninja training.

Three adults stared at one another with bated breaths. Ryota stood nervously by the door, still unable to believe that he had checked up on the village's most powerful ninja only to find him stiff and the machines reading flat. The Hokage and the hospital administrator stared back him with bloodless, disbelieving faces.

"H-how—you're sure...?" Tsunade uttered, sounding strangled.

"Heart's completely stopped," Ryota recited professionally. He tried to make his voice sound even, despite his own overactive organ. "No chakra movement; he's already entered rigor mortis."

Kakashi stood from his chair so swiftly that Ryota took a step backward; a dark and severe shadow passed over the man's face (or what could be seen of it). Ryota was one of the many who were skeptical about allowing young Hatake Kakashi to take over the position of Hokage, but at this very moment he could see why Kakashi-sama was considered a most formidable and powerful ninja.

Ryota waited as the Hokage paused at his desk, thinking the man was going to say something. Then, without any warning, Kakashi-sama flickered away. In the next second, Tsunade-sama followed, leaving the bearer of bad news standing in the empty, circular office.

Two miles away, in a warded hospital room, two imposing figures materialized on either side of a flat, sheeted table, the body atop of it clearly devoid of life.

"Naruto—" Kakashi managed with a hard swallow. He stumbled forward, the grace of a village leader zapped away in his grief.

He needed to see it for himself, and now he wished he had stayed the compulsion.

Naruto's body was cold and stiff, his hair limp and grayed, his eyes deep-set and his cheeks hollow to give the appearance of a skull. No trace of chakra movements could be detected, no air escaped those partially parted lips. He was unmistakably and thoroughly dead.

Kakashi felt dizzy—surreal—like this was some bad dream, a prank, something completely impossible. Who was going to tell Sakura? Tell Hitomi? Tell the village? He'd have to take complete responsibility, of course. This was his doing. To think that Naruto, unrelenting and infallible Naruto, could go down so quickly. There was no way to stop it—prevent, yes—but once this got going, once his own chakra turned atrophic, it became game-set-match.

Contrary to Kakashi's near breakdown, Tsunade came across as completely reserved. The woman walked closer to the waxy form of her beloved Naruto with far more calm than her companion. She passed a hand from his temple to his navel, not quite touching the skin.

Fair eyebrows rose toward her hairline and she slid her hand back by her side.

"He's dead all right," she said, steely. Kakashi blanched, wondering how she could act so cold when stating such a fact. Before he could say anything, she continued, "There's just one problem."

"And what's that?" Kakashi couldn't keep the annoyance from his voice, not when she seemed so blasé about Naruto—their Naruto—being dead.

"This isn't Naruto."

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

Danzo hadn't felt this happy since Tsunade had that stroke.

Of course, that happiness was fleeting; Kakashi took the briefly available post and Danzo once again found himself thwarted from his self-appointed mission. But now, after years of planning, molding and connecting, the pieces had fallen together in a perfect fit. Everyone played their part correctly, the demons, Ren, the temples, the world. Even Konoha followed script, unknowing but flawless.

A beautiful performance…

He breathed a sigh of contentment, running a free eye over the helpless form of his most despised antagonist. Though they were no longer in Konoha, the Fire Temple had more than enough spiritual wards to keep the Jinchuuriki from being remotely threatening.

"I don't want him purified," said the Konoha nuke-nin to the monk beside him, "just in the process of it. Keep him down until we come for him. We still need the eight-tails."

Sentoki nodded once and directed a sneer at the body displayed on a stone alter. To think he once admired this...this beast.

When he first heard of the veteran Danzo being ousted from his village by the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki, Sentoki believed what everyone else believed—that Danzo deserved it; that he had been planning to usurp the position of Hokage. He believed that Uzumaki Naruto was a hero.

Sentoki nearly turned away the elder man when he staggered into the temple several days later, but his position as a priest called for him to be unbiased. So, he listened with a patient ear to Danzo-sama confessing his sins. He granted the senior sympathy as he heard of his struggles to ameliorate Konoha, of his desire to attain piece through an iron fist. Danzo-sama explained how there'd be fewer casualties the faster a war ended, rather than dragging out negotiations that would never amount to anything in the long run—that sort of wishful thinking only allowed the body count to pile high.

Danzo-sama supported life, he supported humanity, but no one would think to hear him out the minute he proposed anything remotely "barbaric". No one understood the sacrifices needed for the greater good.

In repentant, melancholy words, Danzo-sama described the instability of a Jinchuuriki. He recalled how he pushed for a closer restriction on the Kyuubi, a better program to mold him into a loyal, protective weapon. It was the best life possible, after all. He would have been cared for, watched, given a real reason to defend Konoha.

Once again, Danzo-sama was spurned. Apparently, the boy had been thrown into the village with no stable guardian and no aide; only increasing incentives to embrace the demon and turn on humanity.

Danzo-sama wanted to save the boy from such torment; he wanted to prevent the same fate of every other Jinchuuriki—humans who had gone mad with the power of a demon corroding their minds.

Sentoki was no stranger to the derangement of these human sacrifices. He had heard accounts from the priests of Suna of the Ichibi's blood lust—how it went about murdering on a whim, unrestrained for years before worming itself into a position of political power. Sentoki was no fool; one did not go from relishing in human blood to village protector overnight. The demon simply changed its strategy.

It was no secret the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki aimed to take reign over Konoha one day. At one point, the Mizukage was a Jinchuuriki before he was slain, rumored as by the leader of the Akatsuki. The Ichibi managed to hold the title of Kazekage for a brief stint before the Akatsuki had expelled it from its host. The Hachibi was brother to the current Raikage and could easily overpower the man into taking over; few would question the exchange of rule. When holding these facts together, Sentoki realized these weapons powered by demons were slowly migrating to positions of leadership.

He thought it strange that only after Master Chiriku was slain along with many of their number, only after the destruction of a Temple that he'd called home his whole life, did the Jinchuuriki and its associates take out the assailants from Akatsuki. He hadn't wanted to acknowledge such an unsavory angle at the time, but the greatest and closest threat to Konoha's Jinchuuriki had been conveniently dismantled that day.

He now knew he should have never discounted such inklings.

His fears were proven correct when Danzo-sama explained how it was the two remaining Jinchuuriki who released the bijuu from their confinement, not the Akatsuki. The Jinchuuriki were enabling the creation of even more sacrifices and according to Danzo-sama it was only through his and Akatsuki's discrete efforts that kept any such thing from happening so far.

The Jinchuuriki simultaneously becoming Kage for every major village was a most troubling prospect for the Temples to imagine. Then Kyuubi container—possibly the only Jinchuuriki known to have spawned—having a daughter came to light and they truly feared, for she was not human. The demons could take over the bodies of the humans they were trapped inside of and could procreate, passing down and spreading their demonic genes.

The Jinchuuriki were trying to start an uprising: to replace humanity with demons. Danzo-sama assured Sentoki that he only saddled up with the Akatsuki with the intent to stop this. Slowly, Temples all around the world began to grow in accordance with Danzo-sama's mission as the incriminating evidence burgeoned.

The Fire Temple was now rebuilt, better than before with the modifications Danzo-sama suggested. They had a fresh batch of monks-in-training, ripe for the molding, with the eldest being Zenza, Sentoki's apprentice and one of the only monks left who witnessed the destruction wrought by the undead duo years ago. The army of young, able-bodied monks supported him wholly, and he supported Danzo-sama, along with a network of similar practices across the world. If they worked together they could stop this. They could save mankind.

As long as Sentoki was head priest of the Fire Temple, he would do his duty to keep the world free from demonic influence.

"You are doing the right thing," Danzo assured the young priest, taking his bout of silence as uncertainty. His silver tongue and cunning had gotten him this far—they were at the apex of their plans—he wouldn't allow one man's misgivings foil this.

"I know," said Sentoki as he fixed his eyes on the stationary body which harbored the most feared beast to grace their world. "Believe me, I know."

0o0o0o

0o0o0o

Hm, bit of a late update, huh? Well, school's reached an all time evil. I've been trying to prepare like crazy for the five tests I have this week.

I have FOUR classes. How does that happen!

I gave a little insight on Naruto and Sakura's relationship. Is it perfect? Hell no. Anything less than strained during a time when Naruto is hardly home would be a fairytale. And I'm sick of reading fairytales. Sakura is selfish, Naruto (believe it or not) is selfish, Hinata is selfish...and no she's not heinous bitch/jealous/evil...just coping. It's simply human nature, these are not necessarily negative qualities.

A lot of speculating is done by characters trying to figure out what's going on, but that doesn't necessarily mean their right. Bear that in mind.

Let's all thank DarkHeroOrion for looking over this and doing some crazy comma remodeling. Just another thing I never paid attention too in elementary school (yes, I am working with what I remember from the second grade...oh Mrs. Cormack, how I misses you T_T)

And once again, thank you for your reviews! They make me so happy in these dark times of WTF-tests, as I like to call them.

Next chap: Immobile doesn't mean unconscious