Ok, I know lots of people just want to get on with the story, so the only thing here will be this introduction and disclaimer. If you are some kind of weirdo and want to read the author's note, just skip to the bottom. I doubt it will answer any of your questions about the story, but tough. It is a diatribe, not an apology. But I appreciate you at least giving my story a try, I hope you enjoy!

I just want to thank all of the other writers out there who inspired me, from those that I took directly from, I will try to give credit where credit is due, but really, I have read just about all of the decent stories on this subject, so it can sometimes be hard for me to ID exactly where an idea came from. I will however, single out Myevltwin and their awesome story Brave New World , also in the Naruto x RWBY crossover genre, from which I draw extensively. Whoever you are, I hope you keep going and if at some point you find yourself reading my story and find something to fault, please let me know.

Also, I don't really know why this is necessary, but I don't own Naruto or RWBY. I own many thing in the real world, and my cats own me, so if I owned either of them, that would mean that cats would be in charge of an animated series, and that would be just silly. Unless it were big cats. You know, like a puma.

Ice blue eyes stared piercingly with equal parts resentment and conviction across the sterile hallway, past the unyielding metal bars to the recumbent silhouette, unflinching on the plastic-coated parody of a mattress. The mattress, along with an unapologetic stainless accommodation perched in the opposite corner and a Spartan basin with neither mirror nor hot water being the only in-organic inhabitants of the closet-sized enclosure housing the aloof target of the vindictive gaze.

Sitting cross-legged on an identically-uncomfortable sleeping pad fixed in a mirrored alcove, also sequestered behind an unbiased portcullis perched the owner of that fixated stare. The paella of conflicting thoughts having been recently re-heated and tossed upon waking, the complex bouquet of emotions manifesting themselves on his visage. This was perhaps an all too familiar meal shared between the two incarcerated persons, though this particular batch added herbs as of yet unidentified and inarguably more bitter than any yet served.

The question now, however, was if that surface veneer yet contained the bitterness of a poison that would kill their tenuous friendship forever.

The consternated owner of the twin abysses digested the thickness of the tension, a viscous, salty, broth that permeated the silence in that dimly illuminated wing where they were they only two heartbeats.

A single eyelid twitched over one of the cerulean orbs. His stomach minutely betrayed the solemnity of the one-sided contest as it loosed an apologetic growl. The stomach's owner could feed his desires now with answers. Alas, his mortality protested the conviction to stay angry without sustenance.

Continuing to ignore, however, his bodily discomforts, the active observer allowed the seemingly one-sided discord to continue for a short eternity more before the unbearable famine for contestations of his darker emotions exceeded the feeble vindictiveness he had been brewing since he woke.

"Why?" The question was always there and now had only been flipped to reveal color and suit on the table. The blood-red heart being torn to pieces by the continuing silence of the other party.

The reclined figure made no indication that he heard the near-silent vocalization, nor that he was even conscious in the dim florescent light with his un-washed raven head propped slightly on top of his interlaced hands as his lidded eyes faced the granite colored concrete ceiling. Despite feigning unconsciousness, the mind of the recalcitrant youth was moving as fast as it did in adrenaline fueled combat. Hundreds of data points materializing from the depths of drug-induced haze flashed in disconnected coordination, pertaining not only to the current predicament at hand, but the as of yet unanswered plea for reason. Even had he been inclined to answer his interrogator, he realized mutely that he himself did not have a satisfactory answer.

While quiet storms raged on either side of the aisle, seconds chained to minutes dragged through the muck of the day without measurable time. No window was available for judging the time of day, nor number of days elapsed since they had found themselves incarcerated in an anonymous prison centered in the middle of city without a name, in a land without a map.

The black-haired youth wondered minutely if either of them would even know the scope of the globe if they ever emerged from their incarceration.

Undeterred by the lack of response from his counterpart, the original speaker vocalized his question again.

"Why... Sasuke?"

The implied accusation hung in the air for a few heartbeats longer before another voice materialized from the adjacent end of the stark hallway.

"Indeed, I too would like to know, why?" The unexpected voice, a few octaves lower than either of the two youths present injected itself into the monotonal discourse, a slight twinge of humor inflecting the termination.

Eyelids fractured minutely to a core of molten onyx. Accusatory icy spheres shaded by a bramble of dirty blond gained a previously dormant alertness and cut leftward to the unnaturally illuminated hallway as the echoes of the novel voice fell dead in the corners of the enclose space. The two previous occupants did not provoke the interrupted stillness with either response nor breath, as if afraid to interrupt the illusion now being introduced.

The spectral voice was trailed now by the rhythmic pattering of leather-soled shoes interspersed by the syncopated tapping of a metal-tipped cane on the barren concrete floor as the presumed owner of said voice continued to approach the two in their stations.

The black limb of the cane peaked out from the corner of their shared vision like a cabaret dancer's leg from the velvet curtain as the body of the obviously masculine figure soon followed. Dressed in an acutely casual green suit, the previously spectral speaker materialized in the no-man's land between their two cells and casually set down a three-legged stool in the more-or-less middle of the shared hallway. He placed himself naturally in the wooden seat of the stool and rested his interlaced fingers on the spherical head of the cane now situated front and center.

"The who… well, that's fairly obvious, wouldn't you say?" Amber eyes twinkled amusedly over dark lenses perched at the end of his nose at the presentation of this rhetorical. "And how, furthermore what…." the speaker continued amidst the growing apprehension directed form the listeners. "….hardly matters at this point." Seemingly unaffected by this statement, the two young prisoners listened on, perhaps slightly relieved that they did not have to expound this information.

"So then…" The man lifted a hand to cup his chin in a pensive, yet continuing levity. "…why?"

Both sets of eyes were steeled as no answer from either seemed forthcoming. The only pair actively observing the speaker narrowed slightly in no amount of concealed distrust. Silence continued to be the only response.

Seemingly unfazed by the duo's lack of explanation, the man prodded further into the numbing pool. "The only reason you two are here, apart from the property damage you caused, is because we don't know if we can trust you not to do it again. As I said, the who, what and how, don't matter, we see any number of people do extraordinary things on a daily basis. And from observers of the fight, we know that neither of you were targeting anyone other than each other. Personal matters aside, I simply need to be able to assure the ones responsible for public safety that an incident such as this won't happen again." An amused twitch of a smile. "Or, that the damage is at least confined to an un-inhabited area."

Though seemingly innocent and void of ulterior motive, distrust and apprehension still held their tongues. In their vicarious experience, information presented willingly could conceivably cost the lives of comrades.

However, the temptation to reach out and grasp at the offered hand proved too great after a lifetime and now an eternity devoid of human interaction. The shabbily Aryan teen who had presented the majority of humanoid response up to this point wetted his parched lips with his tongue before he replied in stumbling and reticent honesty.

"He…. left."

The suited man shifted slightly in his procured seat towards the promise of productive conversation and the teen's opposite number flinched in restrained displeasure at the not un-true statement.

"He… abandoned the village…. where we came from. We…. my team and I were sent to retrieve him, to bring him back." Those same icy blue spheres gazed out past the seated man to the occupant in the other dimly lit cell. This time, pain, hurt betrayal, dominated the surface of that cold stare.

The man waited for further explanation, when none seemed forthcoming he spoke again. "I see. However," He shifted more towards the blond seated cross-legged and appraised him with his own penetrating stare from behind the dark glasses. ", that does not entirely explain things. Why is it that you were trying to bring him back?"

"I agree." Both the blond-haired teen and the man seated on his stool swiveled to the recently silent observer. "Why were you trying to bring me back, eh, Naruto?" The now named Naruto narrowed his eyes at this. The boy who had until now been silent and still on the travesty of the bed sat up on his elbows, his smoldering gaze reaching out across the divide between them. Bored malice engaged the depths of emotion in his opposites returned gaze.

"…You should have been trying to kill me."

Both the man and boy flinched at this callous declaration.

The man now playing mediator coughed into his hand to alleviate the growing tension and draw attention to himself. "That's not quite what I meant. I do not know where you come from, nor do I particularly need to know." A pascal or two was alleviated form the pressure that was continuing to build at this statement. No potentially damaging information in regards to their home and its habitants needed to be revealed. "However, we cannot have two admittedly skilled youths such as yourselves causing an unneeded incident in the middle of a populated city center. I do not know how it works where you two come from, however in this city, in the Kingdom of Vale, and indeed in the majority of the Kingdoms populated by humans, we are united in the cause of humanity. We cannot afford to try this hard-won peace that now unites us against the creatures of Grimm."

Both boys listened silently to this rather startling new information. This seemingly off-handed statement, devoid of any markers of deception, would indicate a vastly different world than the one from which they originated. Regardless of the nature of these aforementioned creatures, as well as the history of how this situation came to be, the concept of a united humanity was novel, heartening, and admittedly a little frightening to two wayward spirits who had been raised in a country constantly besieged by the threat of competing nations. This land of peace among mankind could very well mean that their jobs, their kind, their ambitions and way of life, could be superfluous.

Who needed warriors when humanity worked in concert?

Unalerted to the internal turmoil now sewing its seeds in his two listeners, the man in the green suit continued. "However, unlike several of my contemporaries now wishing for further measures to be taken against you two, I do not believe that any ill-intent was intended by your own little conflict." A subtle smile wormed its way onto his features as he gazed ahead at some distant object. "It was simply a disagreement between two rambunctious youths that got a little out of hand, isn't that right?"

Both sets of eyes, onyx and azure beset the man quizzically. Where was he going with this? They were obviously prisoners, wouldn't he then try to extract some information from them?

"I believe that such skill as you two exhibited simply needs direction, purpose. It just so happens that I am frequent shepherd of such wayward youths such as yourselves. You see, my name is Professor Ozpin, and I am headmaster at Beacon, a school where we mold the talents of gifted fighters like the two of you. Admittedly usually these students are a few years older than the two of you seem to be, however with that little… demonstration you presented in the city center, I can see that the two of you are talented beyond your years. So, that is why, I would like to offer the two of you a place, as students at my academy."

The two boys stared incredulously at the man now looking between them with a self-assured smile. Both sets of gears slipping in their heads, trying to get up to speed and avoid any pitfalls this conversation which had taken a hairpin turn might conceal.

A reflexive protestation was about to burst from the more verbal of the two, rejecting the offer in regards to a sense of fealty towards his home town, when the now named Ozpin preempted the outburst with a placating response. "I am not asking you to give up any previous loyalties. I will not force you to do anything that goes against your previous training our sense of integrity. I am simply requesting that for the interim while you are here in our Kingdom, that you direct your energies into honing your skills and protecting this land while we host you. I think that that is the least you two could do, considering the mess you made downtown."

Any objection forthcoming was silenced as both parties, one more so than the other, looked down in sheepish embarrassment.

"Anyhow," Ozpin began as he lifted himself from his seat and began to retreat from the sequestered party. "I just hate to see such talent go to waste. That, and I think it would be good for the other students to have a little bit of competition, motivating to have someone younger than themselves who are at such a level of capability."

His visage disappeared from their sight as the retreating taps of cane and shoes echoes once more in the chamber. The turmoil of emotion that he left behind began to manifest in the silent discord between Brown and Blue. Both were reluctant to take any such largesse from a stranger as… strange as the one they just encountered.

Any further bending towards refusal was held at bay by the disembodied voice coming from the end of the hallway.

"Just consider it. If you don't, I find it highly unlikely that you two will be getting out of here any time soon. I'll come by tomorrow. Until then, Naruto, Sasuke."

Once more alone to their own devices, the two once again dared not interrupt the silence that blanketed them. Though there were no fewer emotions contained in the penetrating stares reflected across the darkness, and confusion just as ambient, the two maelstroms of discord were at last not rotating in opposition, and were instead at a non-linear congruence. A convergence of two forces of nature orbiting around a single objective, not yet in concert, but no longer at loggerhead.

God help this world if the two would come together.

Wow, so you are actually made it and are reading this huh? Weird. Don't you have something better to do, like, go outside or read an actual book? Kidding. Thanks for sticking with me so far, I hope to see you at the end of this.

And I mean that, I really hope that I will continue to update this story until it has an end. Luckily, I do not have much of a deadline right now, because RWBY is ongoing, but I still wanted to get a good chunk done before I decided to post this story, as a means to both motivate and pace myself. So for those of you who actually read all 19 chapters that will be posted en mass here and wonder why there are no other author's notes, review responses, etc, well, hopefully this explains it. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't just going to wimp out halfway through and just drop this experiment like so many other things I have done in my life. I wanted to actually commit to something, because frankly, this writing is mainly for my own benefit.

Regardless, I am posting this here, because well, I want other people to enjoy it. Creations are made to be shared. I know it isn't perfect. This is FF. If you have comments, criticisms, or if you genuinely like the story, I would like to know. I am socially-awkward in many ways, but I am still human and we like to be appreciated. I am not naive enough to request something like 'no flames please'. This is the internet, and thus inevitable that there will be at least a half-dozen idiots whose only skill seems to be devaluing other people's work in the most infantile expressions and degradation of the English language (just making a generalization here, I know many idiots in many other languages).

So please emote. Critique. Laugh. Cry. Eat a tub of ice cream while sitting curled up in front of a fire. Pleasure yourself with a spatula while listening to punk rock. I won't judge. Do whatever it is you do to make yourself comfortable while enjoying a good read. Or click that back button right now. I don't really care.

For those of you who stuck with me so far, thanks, and I will see you later.