A/N: Wheee new record for getting out a chapter! I completed this one in a little under 8 hours, which is a pretty good deal, at least for you readers. Just as a heads up, though, don't expect such a thing to happen often, because my little brother is coming home in two days (and he alone makes the house noisy. Noisy house = bad writing environment = less time spent writing / less frequent chapters). With that being said, here's some replies for my faithful reviewers:

Le Diosa: I'm glad you can find so many good things about my story (seriously, I probably couldn't think up half of those myself...). I think you'll enjoy this chapter immensely, given what other ones you've liked ;)

Ceralyn: I'm glad you like the direction this story is heading in, though I'll tell you up front that this chapter won't cover everything you mentioned in your review. What it does cover, you'll just have to read to find out. As for the comment about the Wave arc being done to death, I totally agree with your sentiments, which is why I try to make my stories diverge from canon as soon as possible. This is fanfiction, after all, so why bother making things the same?

someone179: I'm glad you like it; like I mentioned in my reply to Le Diosa, if you like small amounts of fluff between Itachi/Naru, you'll most definitely like this chapter. And yes, while her byakugan hasn't been mentioned much, that's because Naru hasn't really been in any true fights. You'll find a small mention of it at the beginning of this chappy, so I hope that answers your question/comment. :)

Just as a side note before we start, this chappy has a small amount of angst in it to help the story progress (though it DOES get resolved in this very chapter...), so if such things aren't your cup of tea don't both reading much further. :(

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any other anime/manga that I draw inspiration from.

Key:

"This be talking."

'This be thinking'

"Bijuu/Higher Being speech"

'Bijuu/Higher Being thought'

Jutsus will be Italicized and Underlined

Flashbacks are in Italics only

**This chapter is currently Un-Beta'd**

Wave Country; Gatou's Keep, Mess Hall

Dodge left, then right, before darting in with a Jyuuken strike to the heart. Then a duck and roll, using her Byakugan's peripheral vision to seamlessly avoid a drunken sword swing that would have otherwise taken her head off of her shoulders. Pull out a kunai, and leave it in someone's eye. Throw a few shuriken laced with wind chakra during a lull, and repeat.

Such was the dance of death that Naru found herself in.

They had scaled up the keep wall approximately two hours ago, ending up on the third floor before splitting up into pairs to do their designated missions. Everything had been going smoothly...until she and Anko reached the ground floor. She'd somehow gotten separated from her partner in crime amidst the chaos, though whether that was because of the never ending tide of bandits they'd run across—or just plain dumb luck—she didn't know. What she did know, however, was that a single mistake could lead to her death—something she wanted to avoid at all costs. The only problem was that she was starting to get tired. Her arms were starting to feel heavy, and her movements were becoming sluggish. It would only be a matter of time before either help arrived, or she made that one fatal mistake that caused all her hard work to go down the drain.

Now granted, she'd killed off an innumerable amount of bandits already, as evidenced by the piles upon piles of bodies littering the mess hall, but for every man she took down two more seemed to take his place. And that wasn't even the worst part; she couldn't use any of her ninjutsu, not because they wouldn't be effective, but because almost any of the offensive ones would bring the four floors of stone above her crashing down on her head.

Of course, doing such a thing would be the perfect suicide technique, as none of the bandits would be able to escape being crushed, but her friends—if they managed to escape the same fate—would be unhappy that she died in such a place. Yeah, she didn't want that. Still, she kept that idea in her head, toying with it, knowing that she only had about seven to ten more minutes before the strain of fighting for so long caught up with her.

When another five minutes had passed—and help had yet to arrive—she was starting to consider pulling off such a move. Her sides were heaving, her breath coming and going in labored gasps. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, and the corners of her vision were starting to become blurry. It was now or never. She had to make the choice.

While she weighed her options, the bandits—there were only a couple dozen left alive in her vicinity—were milling about. Whereas when they started fighting they'd been confident they could overwhelm those who dared invade Gatou's stronghold, now they weren't so certain. This girl, while showing the telltale signs of fatigue, had just taken down several hundred of their brethren all by herself. So those remaining were somewhat hesitant to approach her, for fear of joining those on the floor in never getting up again. Even if she was tired, they'd come to understand the saying that 'If a beast can be considered dangerous, a wounded beast is even more deadly.'

If Naru could have heard their thoughts, she would have found it ironic that the people who beat an unarmed human to death considered her to be a 'beast' of all things. Eventually, however, she reached her decision. She wouldn't pull off a suicide move, though she would make sure that none of the thugs in the room with her made it out of here alive.

Even if it took her dying breath to make it so.

Steadying herself against one of the many overturned tables, she slowly slid into a stance that would have made Hiashi proud.

"...You're within the field of my divination. Jūkenpō: Hakke Hyaku Nijūhachi Shō (Gentle Fist Arts: Eight Trigrams One Hundred Twenty-Eight Palms)!"

"Two Palms!" Two strikes to two bandits, each one directed at the heart for the kill shot.

"Four Palms!" Two more jabs, this time to another two thugs, placed in the same location as the first two.

"Eight Palms!" Another four strikes, another four bandits dead with well-placed shots to the heart.

"Sixteen Palms!" She willed herself to stay strong, darting in between her surprised opponents as she took them down.

"Thirty-two Palms!" Bandits were now falling like dominoes, so fast were the jabs directed at their hearts.

"SIXTY-FOUR PALMS!" Naru screamed out the finale of her attack, darkness claiming her even as she continued to strike down the last of her foes.

Had her vision not failed her in the end, she might have seen her friends, her comrades-in-arms come running into the mess hall at the sound of her voice...

"How's she doing?" Itachi asked, kneeling beside Yuugao as the kunoichi checked over Naru's prone form. They had moved the downed girl outside after watching her collapse, seeing as the fresh air might do her some good. That, and the bodies inside Gatou's keep would be starting to smell quite ripe about now. However, that was beside the point. Seeing as she was the only one of their group with anything resembling formal medical training—though even what she had was sketchy at best—Yuugao had been the one to run a diagnostic jutsu on the body of their fallen comrade. Needless to say, the results weren't good.

"...I'll be frank with you, Itachi. There's a high possibility that she won't live to see the morrow." Yuugao said with a sigh, avoiding looking at the Uchiha's crestfallen face. "She's suffering from a combination of both chakra and physical exhaustion, which is a deadly situation to be in. Normally the body picks up the slack when you're suffering from the former, producing excess chakra as a result. That's the reason why depleting your reserves increases them once you return to full strength. And if you become physically drained, you normally have your chakra to sustain you. However, in her case...the body is just as exhausted as her chakra network."

She wiped a few tears from the corners of her eyes before continuing.

"If I were a medic of Tsunade's caliber perhaps I would be able to do something like a chakra transfusion, but as it stands there's not much we can do for her other than stay by her side and pray with all our hearts that she makes it through the night."

Her diagnosis imparted to the leader of their group, Yuugao burst into tears, clutching at her knees like a small child would as she rocked back and forth. Itachi, while not as emotional on the outside, was no less heartbroken. The girl he'd come to admire, perhaps even love, would most likely not live to see the sunrise. All because they hadn't taken into account the sheer numbers of the thugs Gatou had hired. If he wasn't kicking himself before, he certainly was now.

Of course, with that being said, he knew he wasn't the worst off, either; if he was feeling heartbroken, then Anko must have been feeling even worse, given just how close she'd been to Naru. Speaking of the tokubetsu jonin, though, said kunoichi was just simply staring off into space. She'd heard Yuugao's words, though it was in a rather detached sense that they penetrated her muddled mind.

You see, in a way she felt it was her fault that Naru was in that comatose-like state, that she had betrayed her apprentice because they had inevitably separated when they were swarmed with the flood of bandits. As such, she saw herself as no better than Orochimaru, who had betrayed her as his apprentice, though that had been for an entirely different reason. But for the moment she didn't care about that latter part, even if it would have made all the difference to her thought process. All she saw, thought, whatever, was that both times she had let someone worm their way into her heart they had been wrenched brutally away from her. Her mind had essentially shut itself down to cope with the emotional pain; it had been the same when Orochimaru had betrayed her, though this time felt a thousand times worse than that, because, at least according to her shattered mind, she was the one who had betrayed Naru.

The group of four had completed their objective, but was the end result worth it? None of the three still in the land of consciousness seemed to think so.

Blinking sleepily, it was with some surprise that Naru awoke to the sound of gurgling water. Strangely enough, said water noises were coming from...directly underneath her? What was going on here? Shifting her head to the side in her confusion, she found the answer to her questions.

She was in a boat. Granted, it was nothing more than a tiny dinghy, scarcely large enough to hold her prone form, but it was a boat nonetheless.

But realizing she was in a boat only gave rise to more questions. Why was she in a boat? And perhaps more importantly, how did she get here? Wherever here was, of course...

With a start she sat up, causing the dinghy to rock slightly from the suddenness of her movement. Glancing warily around herself, she was surprised to find herself (and her mighty dinghy!) on a river. However, said river stretched off to the horizon on either side, only partially obscured by the mist that seemed to hang in the air, making her second guess her initial decision that this was indeed a river. It couldn't have been a lake, as the water was flowing, and an ocean seemed unlikely, given that the flow was all in one direction, so...

"It is indeed a river, child. It is the river of Death, known as Styx by humans in ages past." A booming voice said, seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. While normally such a thing would put her on guard, she sensed that she could trust whoever the voice belonged to. How she knew this, Naru didn't know. She just did.

"...So I'm dead then?" The girl asked, rather unhappily. After all, who wouldn't be unhappy to find out that they were dead?

"Yes and no, child, yes and no. While most never reach consciousness during their time in this place, due to how they died, those that do are free to leave if they so wish. My job is merely to guide those who don't to their eternal rest."

"I don't understand. Why would someone be allowed to return to life if they were already dead?"

Here the voice rumbled a bit, as if laughing softly.

"Aren't you an interesting one. Most would simply accept the word of a Kami and be done with it. But you...you would seek to understand the workings of the higher realms even though such an understanding would undoubtedly break your mortal mind. In answer to your question, though, you are not completely dead until you pass the waterfall."

Cocking her head slightly to the side, Naru listened for the telltale sounds of water, well, falling. It was faint, off someways in the distance, but she still heard it. Deciding to get on with her life, so to speak, she stepped out of the small dinghy, finding the river to be surprisingly shallow. Seriously, what was the need for a boat when the water only reached up to her ankles? Her small internal rant aside, though, it was at this point that she realized that, while she knew she could return to the world of the living, she didn't have the slightest inkling as to how to go about doing so.

"So, um, Kami-sama..."

"Just walk in the opposite direction of Styx's flow. You'll be out of here in no time."

"...Thanks."

"No problem. Just doing my job, that's all."

With that parting remark the presence accompanying the ethereal voice vanished, leaving her alone once more. Shrugging slightly to herself, Naru slowly made her way upstream, eventually vanishing into the mists as her soul returned to the mortal plane of existence. Once she was completely gone, however, the voice and presence returned.

"You had something to do with her waking up, didn't you?" It asked one of the higher gods, specifically the highest Kami herself. Of course, given that such beings' words are not meant for mortal ears, said Kami's response will not be written here.

"Yes, yes, I understand. I'll see to it that that happens." it said after a moment spent listening to Her reply.

The discussion seemingly over, the Watcher of Styx (or whatever you want to call him/her/it) lapsed into silence, waiting until yet another visitor came into its realm.

Her close brush with death and subsequent meeting with the rather down-to-earth Kami aside, the first thing Naru felt as she re-entered the mortal plane was pain. Lots and lots of pain. So much pain, in fact, that her mind had to shut itself down just to deal with all of the electrical signals it was receiving. Still, while she could have done without the pain, her last coherent thought before passing out was that it felt damn good to once again draw the sweet tang of fresh air into her lungs.

Yuugao, meanwhile, couldn't believe her eyes. In fact, she had to use her hands to rub said parts of her body three separate times just to make sure she wasn't seeing things. Of course, when it did, in fact, become clear that Naru's chest was once again steadily rising and falling, she couldn't help but let out a whoop of joy that was completely uncharacteristic of her normally stoic personality. But then again, her patient had just been clinically dead for the past minute and a half, so such a thing could be considered normal, even for her.

It was approximately five thirty in the morning, and the sun was just peeking over the horizon as Itachi and Anko came running into the clearing, wondering what the heck was going on. All three of them had been up the entire night with worry for their fallen comrade, though only Yuugao had remained by Naru's side the entire time. The others couldn't bear to see her in such a state, with both Itachi and Anko thinking that it was their own fault she had ended up that way. Still, since Yuugao was practically babbling with excitement when they came into the clearing, said kunoichi merely pointed at her patient's steady breathing, tears of joy leaking from the corners of her eyes.

Needless to say, Itachi and Anko got the message.

"...How?" The Uchiha finally asked, daring to hope that the girl he had feelings for would make a full recovery. After all, when he'd last seen her she had seemed so weak, so frail. Back then she had barely even been breathing, and her pulse had been erratic. But now...now everything about her seemed to be filled with an inner strength, one that just hadn't been present before.

"I...I don't know. One minute she was essentially gone, and the next she was, well...back, and stronger than ever. I don't know how to explain it, other than it's basically a miracle she's still alive." Yuugao finally replied, once she managed to reign in her excitement to an acceptable level.

At this point all three of them were crying with happiness, though Itachi's eyes were leaking tears of relief as well. Relief that Naru would survive such a brutal experience, and relief that he would be able to at least tell her his feelings, even if she chose not to accept them. It was his hope, however, that she would at least consider letting him into her life, if not all at once, then at least gradually.

When Naru finally woke up, however, it was to the sight of three smiling faces. Amidst their shouts of joy at seeing her return she glanced first at Anko, then at Yuugao, before finally, for the first time in four days, letting her cerulean orbs meet Itachi's onyx ones without looking away shortly afterwards. Giving him a shy grin, she spoke up in what seemed to be the first time in weeks, though it was really less than a day.

"I missed you all...especially you, Itachi..."

Inwardly smirking at how her words almost made him recoil in surprise, Naru slowly sat up, groaning slightly as she did so. In a way, you could say her brush with death had opened her eyes, changing her outlook on life almost completely. No longer would she run away from her budding feelings, as she'd come to realize just how short life really was, especially with a profession like theirs.

Granted, what she felt for the elder of the two Uchiha boys wasn't quite love—at least not yet—but it was certainly close enough. Only time would tell whether or not it grew into something more, but for the time being she was more than content. She had her comrades, her family, but most of all, she had...Itachi.

Yes, she was more than content.

A/N: D'awwwwww. Such a sappy scene there at the end, but it felt good to write it. Still, while both of them have realized their feelings for each other, it won't be all flowers and bunnies for the two from here on out. You can say I'll put their relationship to the test, starting with next chapter. I know I didn't cover the actual assassination of Gatou in this chapter, instead focusing on some other things, but that's what next chapter is also for! It'll come in some flashbacks, as well as dialogue between characters, but eventually all the pieces will fall into place.

With that being said, yes, this is now a Naru/Itachi ficlet (H8ers BEGONE!1!), so for those of you who were rooting for that pairing, you can party till the moon comes crashing down (IE forever, since the sun will swallow up the earth before that happens). Still, I would like it if I could receive some constructive criticism on how I pushed the two together. Stuff like: was it believable, given the circumstances? Did the scenes flow okay, or were they choppy and hard to read? etc.

Like I mentioned in the above paragraphs, next chappy will most likely have part 1 of the conclusion of the Wave Arc, with part 2 following shortly afterwards. Also, the fall of Gatou will be covered in greater detail, as well as Yuugao/Itachi/Anko's sides of the storming of his keep. Whether I'll have to stretch that over multiple chapters, though, I don't know yet.

Here's to using a vacuum cleaner to suck up the plot bunnies,

-ZGS