New chapter, yay! Hope everyone is doing okay, again this story is dark-just a warning if you're not up for reading it. But if you do, thanks for reading! And thank you to all your reviews!

Now, Naruto totally got it. What Haku had said. About fighting to protect someone precious. As he ran toward Sasuke, who was coincidentally fighting Haku, he felt a thrumming in his veins and a ringing in his ears that was much more powerful than when he was just fighting out of fear and survival instinct. It was like there was an angry venom pumping from his heart and making his blood boil, it was tinged with no small amount of terror too, but it wasn't for himself, or fear of a more powerful enemy—it was fear for his friend. Sasuke just looked…small next to the older boy. While his normally dark eyes were a bright red and he was moving almost faster than Naruto could see, there were several senbon piercing him and it was clearly painful.

Barely sparing a glance for Sakura, who was guarding Tazuna and the other workers, and Kakashi, who was battling with Haku's master, Naruto just leapt and jumped into the fray between Sasuke and Haku.

Sasuke hissed and swung his arm at the mirrors surrounding them. "Idiot, now we're both trapped."

Naruto gave him a glare. "I'm just trying to help, Teme, there's not much I could've done out there."

The other boy just turned and put his shoulders against Naruto's so they were back to back. Haku slipped out of one of the icy mirrors and studied them for a minute before quickly disappearing. Naruto shoved them both down, senbon shooting toward them and barely missing.

It wasn't like fighting with Shisui, where the skill and power was tipped so far in the older boy's direction that Naruto was just an aid, an extra weapon Shisui used. With Sasuke, Naruto had to work together with him, they had to watch each other and tag-team their enemy. He had to work harder.

He swept up a kunai to knock more senbon from their deadly path, but some still got stuck in his forearm. As Naruto quickly tried to yank them out, he felt Sasuke's shoulder push on his to twist them out of the way of more of the needles. He heard a clang from Sasuke's tanto as he engaged in a short fight with Haku before pushing him back with a katon jutsu. As more senbon and a few explosive tags came from Naruto's direction, he quickly leaned back and pushed him and Sasuke through the still sizzling air from the katon and away from the tags.

They separated as they ducked and rolled from the explosion, the closeness of it making Naruto's ears ring. The force of it propelled him further, and his back slammed into a wall of ice. Naruto forced his eyes open quickly but he was dizzy, and the collision had knocked the wind out of him.

You've got to get away from the mirror he told himself. It's dangerous, get away! Shakily, Naruto reached his arm out and started pushing himself up. He craned his head to look for Sasuke and saw the other boy rushing toward him, his red eyes wide and spinning, and suddenly he was knocked down again by his friend.

Confusion only gripped Naruto for a second before he was rolling Sasuke off of him, sputtering at the sight of dozens of senbon sticking out from the dark-haired boy's neck and shoulders and back.

"Sa-Sasuke what? Why?!" He reached his hands toward him but was too afraid to touch.

Sasuke's eyes were dark again as he gazed up at Naruto. "I…just moved."

"But you don't even know me."

A breathy laugh escaped Sasuke. "I thought…we've been friends for weeks. S-since we killed the Root nin together—you helped me…"

His voice grew weak at the end and his eyes drooped lower. Naruto's hands shook but he placed them on Sasuke's cheeks. "No, no don't—"

As the other boy's breaths grew slower, Naruto found his own quickening. Something warm was curling in his gut, and flashes of another pale, dark-haired and dark-eyed boy was superimposing with the one in front of him, dredged up from the deepest pits of his memory. Monsters do not have friends. He felt the rough wood of the shovel making his palms bleed as he kept digging up dirt. A hole six feet down but only three feet long. His nails felt sharp as he clenched his fists. Have you learned your lesson? Jinchuuriki have nothing.

Naruto faintly heard Haku ask him, "Is this the first precious person you've seen die?"

The warmth inside him burned hotter. I have anger. Kyuubi—help me.

When Naruto looked back at Haku, it was through a haze of red.

Waking up, Naruto felt a peculiar shakiness he hadn't felt in a long time. His hands were sticky, and his head was heavy, but he opened his eyes to a blue sky and Kakashi's stern muttering.

"Sakura, get to it and heal him. Naruto, sit up. You're going to use that heavy chakra of yours and help."

Naruto gazed dumbly at the man for a minute, but at the look in his eyes, one fiery red and the other steely grey, he scrambled toward the pink-haired girl. When his eyes landed on Sasuke, the other boy still and pale, he felt his stomach drop.

Kakashi grunted at him. "He's not dead. But he needs to be treated soon. Do not do this often, raw jinchuuriki chakra is poisonous and scalding, it will hurt. But Sakura needs more power than she has right now, and more power than I can give her."

Naruto couldn't move. The pit in his stomach opened further and he felt sick. Unclenching his jaw, he took a breath in, keeping his head down as he reached into his kunai pouch for a small slip of paper.

"It…won't hurt her. I can do it with a seal."

Kakashi paused beside him, but Naruto refused to look at him. He found a pre-prepared seal, one with ugly twists and turns of black ink. He noticed he had gotten bloody fingerprints on his pouch and the paper and tried to wipe his hands off on the grass, but the drying gore still stubbornly remained in the grooves of his palms and fingers and under his nails. Placing the seal against his palm, he held his hand out for Sakura to take. She stared at him with slightly fearful green eyes, and then at his dirty hand, but she steeled herself and clasped his fingers. Slowly, he let the Kyuubi chakra pool in his hand before pushing it through the seal and into Sakura's.

The girl let out a gasp, her eyes wide as she stared at Naruto. She started shaking, but not with pain, rather with raw energy filling her core. Naruto could feel Kakashi's stare too and hunched his shoulders. After deeming having given her enough, he dropped the hold, the little paper was burnt black and fluttered to the ground. His throat was dry when he spoke.

"When you touch him with that chakra, it will burn him."

Sakura just stared at him before turning to remove the senbon piercing Sasuke. When she channeled the borrowed chakra, her fingers lit up from within like a burning coal. Kakashi's heavy presence next to him grew denser, demanding an explanation. Naruto finally looked at him from the corner of his eye.

"Danzo-sama used to have me do that…feed him jinchuuriki chakra or store it in a scroll…h-he used it for…uh punishment."

Kakashi stiffened, but after several minutes finally relaxed. He tentatively put a hand on Naruto's shoulder. "Sakura won't do that. She doesn't mean to hurt Sasuke as she heals him. Friends don't hurt friends, Naruto."

Naruto gazed at the two genin and shuddered.

Shisui was somewere underground, and somewhere near Kusagakure. He was using a mixture of his sharingan and an echolocation jutsu to pick his way through the caves and between rocks. He was feeling slightly claustrophobic and had to keep reminding himself that he would see the sky again, he was not back in the awful cell he'd shared with Naruto.

The only sound he could hear was the trickling of water of an underground lake or river, and the dripping of more water from the stalactites. At the beginning of his subsurface journey, there had been old wooden bunks with no bedrolls and a few supplies like rusty kunai and empty ink wells. There had been drawings on the cave walls, and he'd risked a katon jutsu to study them. Years of smoke had already blackened the cave ceilings, but the mostly legible drawings depicted an ancient form of the Uchiha fan that Shisui knew dated back to the warring-clans era. There was poetry and pictures of animals and the Uchiha family and warriors that had inhabited the cave and the battles they fought…what were they doing all the way out here? It would have seemed strange that they were living underground too, but the pictures depicted one of the shinobi having a strong earth-natured chakra and Shisui shrugged it off.

Despite the eeriness, all this told Shisui he was finally on the right track. He'd passed through the lived-in section and continued on, and on. It was hard to stay calm in the quiet darkness, he might have gone insane if he hadn't had the sharingan and echolocation, and in the periods where he had to take a break because he'd been walking and climbing so long it was starting to put a strain on his chakra, Shisui could feel his nerves get the best of him. The path was winding, and any normal sense of cardinal directions was lost in the underground.

Occasionally, he'd use a katon to check that he was still following the smoke trail on the ceiling, but he didn't want to keep it for too long, afraid of attracting anyone that might also be in the cave…anyone other than the ghosts.

He paused suddenly when he realized there was no way to move forward. In front of him was just a wall. After listening for any other sounds and trying to sense any other chakra, Shisui formed the hand signs to light a fire in his palm. Studying the slimy cave walls, he looked up and let out a soft curse. Above his head was a horizontal slit between one rock and the next, and of course the smoke trail went through it. Sometimes, Shisui hated being a shinobi.

Letting the jutsu go, Shisui reached his hands up to grasp onto the damp rock and pull himself up. He had to swing his left foot up and sort of pull and shimmy himself along, and he grunted as the cold stone beneath him scraped at his cheek. When he was finally through, he breathed a few deep breaths, and again checked that there was hopefully no one in this new room.

Lighting another fire, Shisui moved his arm out to see what was in front of him. Unfortunately, the light from the fire wasn't far reaching like a shinobi flashlight would have been, but he could see enough to be taken aback by the beauty of the large cavern. Pale stalactites littered the ceiling like crooked teeth, but they glittered with damp. There was a steep drop from the ledge he was crouched on that led to what must have once been an extremely ancient drainage ditch from when the cave flooded.

He noted large footprints several inches deep slogging through the mud, and what looked like tracks of something being dragged. Shisui gulped. There was no way to tell how old the footprints were, the mud would forever remain unchanged as water here didn't evaporate, and the last flood to rush through the cavern to disturb it could have been a millennium ago. Shisui checked the smoke trail again before putting out his light. There's no one here right now. He took another calming breath and fished for a ration bar to eat quietly and quickly before moving on.

After more walking and climbing into different caverns and channels connecting the caves, Shisui noticed he was finally going up again, nearer to the surface. The rocks started to become dryer, the air warmer, and his heart was beating with relief at the thought of getting out of the caves. But his palms started to sweat at the thought of what might be his destination.

He remembered Fugaku's announcement of Obito's death. His older cousin, one who wasn't always treated well by the clan, had always had a soft spot for Shisui. Perhaps it was because Shisui was a troublemaker in school and reminded Obito of himself. Maybe it was as simple as both were orphans. Whatever the reason, Shisui had adored Obito. He knew he was goofy; he knew he was too scatter brained and easily excited to put his hidden intelligence to all of its use. But Obito never failed to have the right idea of how to be a good person. He always did the right thing.

After learning Obito had died, Shisui had felt alone. Itachi had been young, and just had his sharingan force-awakened in a battle he never should have been a part of. He was the youngest chuunin since Kakashi, and they just kept tossing him on mission after mission, and when it was clear the war was winding down and he was given time at home, he wandered the Uchiha grounds not knowing what to do. He often found himself at Obito's little house on the outskirts of the compound, and he'd just sit in the grass out front, gazing at the wooden door but unable to go in.

Imagine the shock he'd had when he saw an aged and scarred Obito-nii on the night of the Kyuubi attack. The glow of the chakra monster had been gone for not too long before Shisui was running through the forest toward where it'd last been seen. Kakashi and the Hokage and the Sandaime and Naruto-kun are still out there. None of them have returned yet. He knew Shikaku and Genma and Asuma and other jounin were behind him, but even as a chuunin his shunshin was fast.

He'd ran and jumped into another shunshin and when he landed Obito had just swirled into existence in front of him, pulling Shisui up short. He was too stunned to say anything. Obito was silent, a shimmer of tears on his scarred face as he stared at Shisui. He couldn't move as the older boy approached him. He would've thought he was a ghost if he hadn't felt his rough kiss on his forehead. He almost cried at Obito's whisper everything's about to change. He wanted to say everything already has but his cousin swirled away again and only Shikaku passing him made him shake out of his reverie.

So Obito hadn't died. It was the one mystery and one lead he had on his target. Someone had saved his cousin, and they hadn't gone through the cave the front way, where the rocks and fallen and crushed him and prevented anyone from escaping that way easily. Shisui had followed long forgotten paths of old Uchiha hideouts and bases that he'd once studied with Itachi years ago, and the one at the edge of Kusagakure was nearest the Kannabi Bridge. It was tedious but doable.

When Shisui reached the end of the cave, near the rock fall and so close to fresh air he grimly noted there was still blood on the ground and skeletons of Iwa shinobi in the back of the cave. He looked at the footprints in the dust, they weren't as messy and smudged as the ones in the deep mud previously. An odd sensation crawled up his spine as he realized the soles of the sandals were of an older style than those worn in the Third Shinobi War. He memorized the scene with his sharingan before attaching himself to a wall to climb away from the dust. Shisui lastly used a soft and controlled wind jutsu to blow his own footprints away, leaving no trace of his own presence. He dreaded the walk back through the cave system, but hopefully it would be easier, with less uncertainty of what he would find. He could distract himself with theories about his target.

When Mikoto-san had given him his mission, her mouth had an unusual twist to it. Wry and worried. Find the man the Hokage fears. We have reason to believe it is a traitorous Uchiha.