Behold! The Sequel~

The apparent offset of a foreground object against the background when your perspective changes. At a given instant, the Moon appears among different stars for observers at widely separated locations. These subtle changes in position are called its parallax.

Differences in constellations are due to a different perspective in a different location.

These changes, the parallax, can be measured.

The Land of Grass was a misleading name.

The title presumed that the nation would span far with the lush fertile soil supporting tall prairies of wheat or barley. It implied the presence of cattle or horses, feeding on the tough stalks of flowering meadows. The Land of Grass had not been named for its purpling strands of towering reeds, it had been named for the prehistoric sedge that bloomed tall like lotus flowers with blades as broad as Sasuke's hand. The flora ignored soil, instead it grew where the water fell and arched its leaves to collect within its core. The air burned wet and humid, cascading sweat down Sasuke's neck. Mosquitos and other insects droned loudly as Bakashi stomped over the tropical strands of "grass'.

The nation had named itself intentionally this way, although the nation hadn't provided shinobi of significance in many generations, it's difficult terrain and disorienting forests operated well within the realm of standard Shinobi.

The birds were louder here, hoarse shrieking things with long tails and feathers made from cobalt silk. Sasuke watched them for hours, sitting astride Bakashi's thick saddle as a wild bird cried like an infant but resembled creatures Sasuke had seen in cages.

The ground was permanently wet and boggy, the slick stink of detritus permeated everything just as the nightly rain did. Bakashi had made a horrible cry in the night, shrieking to an unseen predator that left Sasuke on guard. The shinobi trails through nations were always clearly established- the burn of chakra warded off natural wildlife. Civilian pathways were treacherous with broken palm and sleeping vipers, sickness hung heavy in the ambient air. There was no wonder that the Land of Grass remained neutral for so long, it was agonizing to traverse on foot.

Its eastern side nearest the Land of Fire had been spotted with deep ravines and tropical waterfalls. Occasional outcroppings collected water spray and bloomed large colourful flowers. It's deep churning rivers bred large slippery fish, unlike the whitefish Sasuke knew from the rivers of Konoha. They were slippery with oily flesh, no flash of scales, and dripping mucus.

Sasuke caught one freakish animal, as long as his leg and dribbling slime-like earthworms. Amaterasu told him, don't let it drop, and the foreign thing electrocuted him with a barking cough.

Sasuke had seen eel before, the type dredged from the southern coasts. The river monsters were disgusting like the silt they called home and Sasuke near gagged on the texture of its meat. Electric eels?

Sasuke had passed through several towns. The Eastern territory had been deeply paranoid, demanding to know why he passed through the routes. Sasuke had stopped nearly daily, providing crudely drawn papers he pretended he couldn't read. Patrols of Grass shinobi hadn't recognized him, the mule a better disguise than any clothing. They searched his bags, pausing on the preserved meats and grains, and lack of any true suspicious belongings.

Somewhere past the warded paths, where Sasuke had felt the seals buried in the bamboo trees, the shinobi had relaxed and offered him their suggestions. One nin looked at him and asked his age, then gave him mission rations and a pitying look and a scroll of paper that would 'let him through' unscathed.

Sasuke blissfully pretended to be illiterate. He rode slowly on Bakashi's back down the mountainside. Through the scattered civilian villages where he traded money for food and clothing. A bar of homemade soap that he used in the many rivers to try and keep any form of sanitation.

Now, near the western border, Sasuke felt tired and relieved to finally leave the humid swamp of tropical parasites. Traversing the distance would be immeasurably less if he funnelled chakra and travelled like a shinobi- the Land of Grass held multinational prisons of the highest calibre. Sasuke was for all purposes now, wanted by the law. Riding Bakashi through a hellhole on the back of a smelling ridiculous animal, was the easiest way to travel.

The eastern border of the Land of Earth spanned high and far as the rocky spires of its mountain ranges pierced the clouds. The subtropical humidity of Grass' land fell directly from the mountain's peaks. Bakashi peered up, flickering his ears back and forth and baring his teeth angrily.

It had been nearly nine months. The phantom pains of unknown knowledge had been replaced with the deep throb of growing bones. Somewhere along the cascading waterfalls deep in Grass country, Sasuke succumbed to hunting Muntjac and small game that tasted like venison and wild boar. The fatty grease made him sick, but growing pains didn't care about fragile genetics.

Bakashi walked on worn hooves, snorting angrily at the low hanging branches that dare suspend near his face. Nipping at a branch, the mule bleated an offending sound.

"Stop it," Sasuke scolded the animal blandly. The mule trudged along, smacking its long ears angrily. The animal's haunches were round, bouncing with each shift of its pelvis.

Aoda watched from the darkness of the forest. The impenetrable wall of bamboo and creeping vines made a curtain of thorns and stinging ants. Aoda, with his sleek scales and indescribable vision, thrived.

"I like it here," Aoda told him contently. "It is warm and wet, it feels soft and full of life."

Sasuke would argue against that. The insects were horrible, Bakashi smelled like sweat and grime, and Sasuke hadn't known clean clothes in weeks. "Not for humans."

Aoda sighed teasingly. A large palm from shuddered and collapsed from the corner of Sasuke's eye. Aoda tended to move near silently, his actions were that of childish delight and enthusiastic destruction. "You humans have such frail skin."

Sasuke said blandly, "you lost in a fight against a rat the other day."

"It wasn't a rat!" Aoda hissed furiously, finally appearing ahead of the path with venomous glowing eyes. "It was a foul thing! Large with teeth!"

Aoda had fought a wild boar, the type native to Grass with spiralling tusks that would pierce their skull and ultimately kill them. The animals were smaller than what Sasuke once hunted- the ones large enough that Shinobi were deployed to cull the animal.

Aoda opened his mouth, revealing the fleshy innards of his mouth and the hundreds of miniature fishing hooks lining his jaw. His fangs were flush to the roof of his mouth, rarely drawn unless attacking. Aoda said grumpily, "you saw it, Lord Sasuke!"

"It wasn't that big," Sasuke said, urging Bakashi to brush right past the giant serpent. Aoda wailed a noise of dismay, knocking his large head against a nearby palm tree.

"You're a liar!" Aoda wailed angrily, thumping his body along the dirt trail. "How cruel!"

Sasuke clicked his tongue, ignoring the summons. For all that Aoda was powerful and large, he was still childish. Time had matured only the snake's size, not yet his personality.

Aoda sulked, climbing small tropical plants that crumpled under his weight. His body now stretched as broad as a man's torso.

On Sasuke's pilgrimage to the land of Earth, he failed to forget despite how avidly he tried. Bakashi protested loud and angry, every bit as impatient at Naruto. Amaterasu whispered him words of advice and knowledge, explaining concepts calmly with a wistful candour. Aoda, adept at coming to ridiculous conclusions reminded Sasuke every day of the team he left behind. The snake had grown so large, the only way to track his size was compared to that of Kakashi-Sensei's torso.

It is not a gentle life, Amaterasu told him quietly. Nostalgia, an understanding shared through nightly dreams and prophecies. Yet, one much better to what it could have been.

Sasuke knew how true the dragon said those words. The alternative was a garish malady of torture and experimentation- of grotesque wings breaking through his ribcage again and again as chakra scalpels cut them free. At night he dreamt of rage so raw and sour, it consumed him until existence meant killing Itachi Uchiha; Sasuke would do anything for power.

"It's still not good," Sasuke said flatly, "I'm wanted across the continent."

That wouldn't have changed, Amaterasu told him with dark amusement. This time, nobody knows where you are.

"True," Sasuke said. Aoda had found something of interest, lifting his massive bulk until he towered tall like a young tree. His face peered at the sky, keenly aware of a small green shape along the brush.

"Hello!" Aoda greeted enthusiastically. He flicked his tongue and urged Sasuke to look as well. "Ah, yes. Lord Sasuke says we travel towards the sunset."

The green vine shifted, revealing a small camouflage snake. The little animal was no longer than Bakashi and as thin as Kusanagi. It flicked its tongue and Aoda confirmed its silence cheerfully.

"Lord Sasuke, will you not speak?" Aoda asked him, looking down at his summoner curiously. "He has asked you a question."

Amaterasu thrummed in amusement, and Sasuke felt annoyed he had to explain he didn't understand snake language usually.

"Ah," Aoda said, apparently comprehending far sooner than Sasuke anticipated. "My fault- we forged a covenant but not to my kin. Allow me to fix this error on my part!"

Sasuke knew enough about his loyal summons to recognize a bad idea before it happened. Sasuke lifted one arm, barely managing to redirect Aoda's excited strike. Bakashi screamed, leaping from a standstill in a rare ability all mule's possessed. An incredibly annoying ability, considering it threw Sasuke onto the jungle floor.

"Aoda!" Sasuke growled, trying to shove the man-eater size serpent off his body. "Stop this!"

"Of course, Lord Sasuke," Aoda agreed, sinking one of his kunai fangs into Sasuke's arm. Wrenching his arm free, the wound bled a strange yellow fluid similar to flower nectar.

Aoda looked far too pleased and not at all ashamed of his action. The green tree viper above looked down at the sight with a curious tilt to its triangular head. "Will it not die?"

"Lord Sasuke has formed a covenant with me," Aoda explained to the snake, "he will not die with my blood and bite!"

The tree viper appeared confused but politely greeted Sasuke with dumb animal intelligence. Sasuke, a tad dumbstruck, reciprocated it's greeting. The viper settled back on its branch, and Sasuke whistled shrilly for Bakashi to return. The mule wouldn't, because it was stubborn and ridiculous, but it would run no further.

The edge of Grass loomed closer and the chill of mountain air swirled ominously. In Konoha, it would be snowing. The village would be constructing monuments made of ice, carefully sculpted overnight from civilian crafters, and displayed with lanterns around the village. The cats in the Uchiha District would become plump with their winter coat, eyes luminous and dens furnished under broken porches. The vendors near the marketplace poured tapped sap and syrup from the famous redwoods over blocks of ice. They'd roll them into candy, wrap it around Dango and sell it by a half dozen.

It is alright to miss it, Amaterasu told him. Once Sasuke would have argued with the creature.

Now, Sasuke looked at the looming presence of the first mountain he had to pass and the threatening haze of snow above the clouds. He tugged his mesh shirt tighter to his skin, obscured under a simple traveller's cloak, and said, "we need to move on."

Aoda groaned, pouting grumpily. His anger was understandable, the mountain cold was dangerous and no place for the great serpent. He would leave, sleeping in Ryuchi cave until Sasuke passed the slopes to his intended destination.

The Howling Wolf Village- a strange middle stance between a shinobi hidden village and an established city. The village was small, a powerful scattered settlement along the base of the Three Wolf Mountains, on the southern ridge of the Land of Earth. Sasuke had never seen or heard of the land before- but Amaterasu told him everything he needed to know.

"I don't want to leave you, Lord Sasuke," Aoda confessed quietly. "Orochimaru has become...upset."

Bakashi began to walk again, irritated but obliging. Sasuke said apathetically, "of course he would be upset."

Aoda agreed. "He has lost precious pieces. His arms, his sword. His servant is more...mean. He looks like Manda before she ate my kin."

Sasuke thought with a quiet noise of contemplation. "Kabuto."

"Yes," Aoda confirmed, "he is growing greedy. Angry with his progress."

He seeks to gain knowledge of the sage, Amaterasu said quietly. Sasuke found the thought concerning- but not one particularly threatening. "Will Orochimaru have Kabuto sign the scroll?"

Aoda made a noise. "It's odd, how much you know. I do not believe so, Orochimaru is...angry."

The snake paused and tilted its head, flickering its tongue in deep thought. "Orochimaru should maybe eat the servant."

"That would solve some problems," Sasuke agreed flatly.

The last village before the border spanned wide, hiding under the shadow of Earth's summit. It's tourist population divided itself evenly with rock climbers and mountaineers, and Earth-travelers curious to see the jungle. Sasuke was not a rare sight. He had finally reached his growth spurt, coaxed along with horrible herb concoctions he bought from sporadic apothecaries. Hopefully, they had helped a bit with his subtle malnutrition. Whitefish and gentle foods suitable for Uchiha were not plentiful in Grass' jungles.

Sasuke could see over Bakashi's back when dismounted. He would have towered over his previous horse, Fish-Cake, and run the animal into the mud. Bakashi showed no signs of exhaustion or damage, the animal could kick a tree and suffer no injuries.

"Don't get in trouble," he warned the animal, giving it one firm pat along its neck. A small handprint of dirty sweat clung to Sasuke's hand, Bakashi snapped his yellowing teeth at him affectionately before becoming engrossed with the water trough. The nearby horse, a large bay animal, looked at Bakashi in alarm and skittered as far sideways as its rope would allow.

The side bags on Bakashi could store a surprising amount. The animal hauled weight well, never balking under the unexpected addition of firewood or an occasional carcass. Bakashi only protested Aoda's girth, now a potential threat to the animal.

Sasuke withdrew his collection of letters, fastened with fraying hemp rope. The village center drew crowds, lingering on its stone steps and long shadows. Sasuke strode up the steps and pulled his travelling cloak tighter around him, wishing for a warm bath and food he didn't need to cook himself.

The village city center had a small desk where a secretary worked to exchange letters and information. The spot was a bounty point, suggesting occasional bounty hunters and mercenaries interspersed with the crowds of travellers and merchants. Sasuke drew the eye;'s attention, but only from his pale skin despite having trekked across all of Grass.

"Here," Sasuke said subdued, depositing the letters on the small wooden desk. The secretary looked up, a large man that may have been a deterrent to most, but Sasuke knew the man had no skill with Chakra. "Letters from down the road."

The secretary took the small bundle of letters with a suspicious eye. "Someone hire you to run letters?"

"Just on the trail," Sasuke said blandly, "travelling along the path."

The secretary grunted, slicing the twine with a very sharp letter opener. He sorted the small stack, taking a short glance at the crudely written names on the front before dispersing them into piles. "Nothing here is official."

Sasuke translated that as 'you're not from a village.'

"Just along the road," Sasuke repeated flatly. "I'm travelling to Earth."

The secretary squinted at him, then at the clearly dirty travelling cloak that Sasuke had wrapped around him tightly. The chill in the air from the looming mountains existed as a present threat.

"Right," the man said slowly, "and you've been on the road long?"

Nin do not know the speed of oxen and horses, Amaterasu explained. Sasuke nodded towards the window behind, in the rough direction of where Bakashi had been tied. "A few months. Since before the first harvest in Western Fire."

The secretary nodded, all suspicion slipping away. It felt an impossibly long time to be on the road, but a reasonable one given the locations each of the letters had originated from. Sasuke had lowered himself to playing courier, and now it was finally paying off.

"Understood," the secretary agreed, sliding a plain scroll out from under the desk with a collection of stamps and different ink sticks. He asked calmly, "do you have any documentation with you?"

Sasuke withdrew a scroll that he had received from a passing escort of Grass nin, offhand permission from an apologetic chuunin. Sasuke had played the part of a tired straggler well. "I was given this."

It was accepted, returned politely to him as well as a new sheaf of paper embossed with three different stamps, one red and two black. Simply low-level documentation of the village and permission to travel across the border. One stamp from fire, signifying where he originated from. A paper trail that set him apart from the new edition bingo books where Sasuke Uchiha was listed with a significant bounty. Return alive, to Konoha.

"Enjoy your stay in LuYuan," the secretary said, drawing out another scroll of paper with various dotted symbols along the lines, "this is the city. Here- can you read?"

"No," Sasuke lied. The man frowned a bit and began to speak slower as if illiteracy equalled incompetence.

"Take your animal down the third road, here- and there is a hostel here with a barn. This city is safe, there are shinobi travelling back and forth- you know shinobi, right?"

Sasuke bit his tongue and made sure to speak with a slightly wavering voice, "the...ninja?"

"Yes, don't bother them," the secretary said slowly. "Take your animal here, and you can stay here. Here are some coins for your courier. This will let you stay the night. Which route will you take into Earth?"

Sasuke accepted the coin, a painfully scarce amount that would last him only a day in the cheapest of beds. He was fortunate to have a wide selection of goods and currency already, sealed inside small scrolls taped to his inner thigh with his brother's clothing. The traveller's pants were shapeless and masked the bandages and weapons. "I plan to take the flourishing slope."

"Not the Ray pass?" the secretary asked, looking clearly skeptic at the thought. "Few travel that way- are you not heading to the hidden city in Earth?"

"No," Sasuke said quietly, "I'm travelling south."

The secretary looked at him baffled for a few moments. Very few people would struggle all the way into the Land of Earth only to travel south. It was a long, treacherous way interspersed with wild animals and very few settlements.

"Alright," the man said after a few seconds, pointing out a few more locations on the crude city map he displayed, "you are best to equip yourself well and visit the shrine to beg for safe passage."

'I don't need your gods,' Sasuke wanted to tell him. Amaterasu laughed a high whispering chuckle that left a fire burning along Sasuke's arms.

Bakashi had stirred up trouble with the horse next to him. The mule apparently both claimed the entire water trough for itself and managed to scare the poor horse into standing as far away as possible. Sasuke returned and patted the stubborn animal, mounting its saddle and untying it. "Stop being a pest."

Bakashi flipped its ears around, trotting off with no more than the slightest nudge. The horse shuddered at their pass, giving them a wide side-eye.

The streets of LuYuan were not paved. They had been built out of doton and steadily trampled under thousands of cloven hooves. Large carts and wagons tottered around, lead by farmers or ranchers each with new objects and cargo to import or export. Once the city had been within the Land of Earth, but maintaining LuYuan had been difficult since the Village-Below-The-Rising-Mountain took clear time and effort to visit. The Land of Grass claimed it, maintaining a steady truce and open borders for nin and merchants.

Sasuke was not an unusual sight. There were hundreds of people looking just like him; dirty and tired, worn from the road with patched clothes and tied hair. Civilians weren't trained to utilize or feel chakra, they carried sheathed knives and hunting bows- the boldest wore iron swords across their hips and eyed Sasuke warily.

Sasuke was young despite having finally grown. To survive on the road at his age insinuated he had some form of power or wildness about him. A bastard outcast from a clan, maybe with a bloodline ability that forced him to walk without company.

'Civilians are stupid,' Sasuke thought bitterly, guiding Bakashi into the attached stable alongside a hostel. The horses inside the stable looked tired, marked with strips of ribbon that must have signified ownership of some kind.

The hostel owner assigned him a bed marked by colour. A matching blue ribbon tied itself around Bakashi's stall, his saddlebags untied for once to rest near the bales of straw.

There was nothing to prevent thieves from stealing his goods- worn blankets and cooking pans. His valuables were kept sealed at all times, hidden under his clothing where they would never leave him.

Bakashi hissed over the edge of his stall, spooking one curious-looking workhorse twice his size into pressing against the far wall.

'That monster would scare any thieves away,' Sasuke thought with dark amusement.

Amaterasu burned in agreement, chuckling a hissing noise like burning logs. It is aptly named.

Sasuke hadn't thought of Kakashi Hatake in a while. Not since he last crossed a powerful waterfall that breathed mist and fog like one of the man's mastered jutsu. He never heard the crackle of lightning in the loud darkness of Grass' jungle, he could only see the intermittent flashes.

It is alright to miss him, Amaterasu said quietly.

Sasuke once would have protested, defended that he cared little. The road of isolation was a lonesome one.

"He is a good man," Sasuke said simply, shuffling down the road towards the market district. Amaterasu rumbled wordlessly, a hot weight around his shoulders and down his right arm. He is.

Sasuke smiled slightly, a lost expression in a sea of a hundred travellers fighting to purchase what they needed. There are shinobi on the rooftops.

Sasuke didn't look and he dared not flare his chakra to feel. The shinobi would feel any change in their environment, even those untrained.

Sasuke clicked his tongue and held his head low. The storekeeper charged an elaborate price for a travelling cloak made of fur. The boots and legwarmers left Sasuke's coin-purse a significant amount lighter. He contemplated a subtle genjutsu, only Amaterasu could lull him into ignoring it.

The shinobi wore forehead protectors with the symbol of Earth. They were laughing, drinking alcohol near the balcony of an inn. Sasuke watched them as subtly as he could, keeping his hair veiling his gaze.

They aren't a threat, Amaterasu said. It knew because there were no barriers between them. Yes, they may have information on Itachi.

If he had passed through this village, there was a chance he had been spotted. If so, there would be posters at the bounty outpost.

After, Amaterasu whispered, after.

The morning was brisk and fresh with a chilling cold of overcast snow. Sasuke could see it along the shadow of sunrise, directly West near the mountains. The public baths were chilling, absent of any visitors. Sasuke washed the grease out the best he could, picking the dirt from below his fingernails. Once he ascended the mountains, he wouldn't have the comfort of a bath.

'At least nobody will sense me using chakra,' he thought viciously. His skin felt sour, the water spilled away grey.

The time the sun had truly risen, Sasuke was clothed in his heavier cloak over the mesh undershirt and ANBU gear. There would be no visitors to scrutinize which corpse he had robbed to get such quality gear.

The bounties with the highest risk are at the back, Amaterasu guided his hand. Pinned to the wooden board with broken Senbon Sasuke pulled the various missing posters. He looked at them, folding the worn paper to stuff into his pocket for safe-keeping.

"Aren't you a bit young for bounties?" someone asked him, the low thrum of chakra a secondary alarm. Sasuke looked over, eyes dark and blank.

The stranger came to a stop at the board, perusing the new names and drawn faces. "Then again, I've seen how scary some shinobi are. I once met a girl I swore was twelve- it turns out she was over twenty! Knocked me down with a hard doton, that's for sure."

He knows, Amaterasu said warily, fire burning hot below Sasuke's skin. He must be a sensor.

'Rare,' Sasuke dreaded. Amaterasu corrected him, unfortunate.

"I'm just passing through," he said quietly. The man chuckled gruffly, pulling down an A rank bounty with a quick glance.

"I can tell," the man said bemused, "you're desperate to be unnoticed. You're wearing something with seals on it, that's what gave you away."

'The ANBU armour,' Sasuke realized quickly. The man looked at him fully, rolling up the bounty with practiced movements.

"What are you doing here, kid?" the man demanded flatly. "Who are you, an undercover nin? A hunter nin? You look a bit young for jounin. Tell me, if I look through these bounties some more, am I going to find your face?"

Sasuke thought frantically. For once Amaterasu seemed just as hesitant to suggest anything.

The man looked at Sasuke from foot to bottom, unable to see any of his gear from below the traveller's cloak. "I'll admit, you're good. I can't tell anything at first look. Give me a reason not to take you out right now."

Sasuke closed his eyes and avoided eye contact. "I'm just travelling through."

"Where?" the man asked sharply.

Sasuke found no reason to lie. "The Howling Wolf Mountains."

The man jolted slightly, so infinitesimally small Sasuke would have missed it without the hyper-awareness of Amaterasu's eye on his throat. The man said, seemingly calm, "those mountains have quite a beast around them. And some potent herbs."

The man stepped forward and towered over Sasuke, despite the small difference in height, "and not the medicinal kind either."

It wasn't any new information. The Howling Wolf Mountains grew a variety of rare herbs and flowers, equally deadly and equally beneficial. Those that harvested the flowers turned them into an array of products, and the notorious narcotic.

Saigenzai , Amaterasu called it. The shinobi said with a carefully measured voice, "ah, the pill of ascent."

Sasuke let his body twitch, staging a sideways step in the false reaction. The shinobi breathed a measured breath before sighing loudly. "I should have figured, with pale skin like that…"

Sasuke said nothing. Let the man presume he was a shinobi seduced by simple pleasures, travelling to get a fix. Better an addicted burnout than a missing-nin to be hunted.

"...be careful, kid," the man warned in a low voice, "there is a beast around the mountains."

"I already know about it," Sasuke said.

The shinobi shook his head, "a different beast. A monster disguised in a man. Be careful."

The rocky climb of the Land of Earth felt different. The air became thin, light and clear like the freshest forests of Konoha. The swamp humidity melted. The broken bedrock grew grey lichens and scraggly pines burst through the mountain.

Sasuke let his mind slip, meditating steadily and focusing on the warmth of the sun although he no longer felt its heat. Sunlight warmth was rare, forgotten above the treeline. Bakashi's breaths turned to steam, puffing in rhythmic clouds.

A few days at this rate, Amaterasu told him. The snow drifted above in gentle swirls. The sky would be bright, and the moon near holy to look at.

'When we get there,' Sasuke asked quietly, keeping his face low in his collar, 'what do I look for?'

Amaterasu said with brief flashes of objects and vials and an apothecary that smelled of flowers. Medicine. Kotaro, a medicine made in different forms to treat the most violent of illnesses.

'How much?' Sasuke asked.

As much as you can carry, and then more. It is our bargaining chip, and more.

Amaterasu had never said explicitly in words, but somehow, Sasuke knew his brother was sick. Wracked with an illness impossible to know, with symptoms muffled and disguised so severely even Amaterasu had no answers.

Sasuke dreamt of a battlefield made from villagers, harmless women and children in the Land of Sound that were murdered, slowly, by his hand. He felt the hot splash of blood, the comforting weight of Kusanagi in his hand as he split throats and pinned men to the ground via spilling entrails. His sword met the metal of trained mercenaries hired to stop him, and he cut them down one by one.

When he woke with his arm throbbing of dreamt butchery, Amaterasu provided flashes of colour from far off places. This is the sight of Kami Waterfalls, in the Land of Rivers. This is the Bone Forest, on the border of Fire and Sound where the trees have turned white from minerals. This is the glass oasis, forgotten in the Land of Sand.

Sasuke looked at the dreamscape, where the horizon melted into the sky and stars glittered above and below across the black crystal ground from a hundred lightning strikes. He asked, 'is Itachi dying?'

Amaterasu told him, we will ensure he doesn't.

Aoda knew since his hatching that he was destined for great things. He was the first of his clutch, born under the hot sun and stronger than all his kin. He was told as a hatchling by the White Snake Sage, 'this one will be our messenger.'

Aoda presumed he would be contracted and sworn into binding like that of Manda- the monstrous creature who had lost grips with sanity in wake of poison. Her venom became stronger, her speed fast and her mind lost as her strength grew. The White Snake Sage refused to speak of her, lounging on her throne and gifting prophecies of meaningless words and finding each new clutch unimpressive.

She looked to Aoda and said, 'you, you will be the messenger of the gods.'

Aoda never thought that he would be tasked with subterfuge against Manda and the summoner. Although, it was exciting, and he had a keen idea the White Snake Sage would agree with him. She was fond of eccentric ideas and chaotic activities.

If Lord Sasuke asked Aoda to deliver a message, then Aoda would ensure he would do so with his dying breath.

The den of Ryuchi Cave felt smaller than it once was. His oasis and home below the surface burned with the warmth he had not felt in days. He greeted his kin, inquired to their health, and basked in the praise of his new size and glory.

"Aoda, you are so large now!" his sister gasped, a fraction of his size. "You will one day rival that of the sage!"

"Never," Aoda disagreed with good cheer. Manda, he could live outgrowing.

The forests of redwoods, called Konohagakure he had been told, smelled like home and warmth. Nothing like the humid heat and dampness of the jungle where his simpler kin spoke from the treetops. Aoda moved as stealthily as he could, ascending the trees that had once felt too large to exist. Now, he could wrap his body around its trunk and greet his tail fondly.

He moved in the direction of Konoha, the city of light that his kin always warned against. Now, his lord asked him to visit its walls with a parcel entrusted near his heart.

'I will not fail you, my lord,' Aoda thought determined. He knew the direction to go and knew there would be challenges before him.

He did not rest for two nights and chose to bask under the noon periodically to recover his strength. He made sure to feast on the tropical not-rat before his departure from his lord. He would not need to eat for many more days.

The third sun of travelling he felt the walls and life buzz above his jaws on the forgotten third eye. He felt the chakra burn and the power of shinobi travelling a perimeter he avoided with no thought.

The deer of this forest looked so strange now, and the ground felt soft below his scales. He had not thought of the deer before, but now they would be a suitable meal.

'Human human…' Aoda mused, trying to determine which one would be the proper target, 'which of you creatures are worthy of my message?'

Lord Sasuke burned with a chakra bright like magma below the Ryuchi Cave. He basked in the sun and let its power sink through his blood. Aoda saw him in the darkest night, so Aoda planned to find the brightest light in all of Konoha's forest.

He slithered, enduring. The walls of Konoha were large and impenetrable by human hands, but the dens of wild animals smelling of fox and badger established burrows below its stone. Aoda's third eye saw the thrum of chakra slide along his body, accept his presence as all animals could.

Inside the walls, the city glittered like Lord Sasuke's campfires. The air smelt of hot sweaty animals and roasted grease. Aoda found it unsettling, but his lord had been specific with his message.

'I will go to where the humans with power stay,' Aoda decided, seeking the closest waterway to carry him. The canals, Lord Sasuke told him, connected all throughout Konoha and fed to all quarters of the city. Aoda was not one born from water, or made to climb; his scales were made to slide along the rock and race across grasses faster than any creature.

Aoda ignored his distaste at being submerged, especially with as much silt and human-filth polluting the route. 'Anything for Lord Sasuke,' he reasoned and kept moving.

The training grounds were as his Lord described them, the location comprehensible and the simmering burn of remnant chakra a siren call like that of pheromones. He focused, the third eye all reptiles had on the roof of their skull saw the chakra and sun and Aoda knew he had reached the lake.

Aoda surfaced and slithered through the mud and grime towards the lush grass and tall redwoods. Lord Sasuke told him carefully where the rock was- an important rock although Aoda failed to understand why. 'Humans are so strange.'

Aoda found a tree with a branch to support his weight. He climbed it, surrounding its trunk and inching upwards at a shrew-pace, and coiled tightly to rest. Now he could let the sun warm his blood, and his scales settle.

The sun began to lower which Aoda knew meant his prey was less likely to arrive. He could be patient, all reptiles were.

Aoda sat through the night when dew deposited across his scales and he startled one sparrow into stumbling from his tail. Aoda watched it amused, flickering his tongue in greeting. The bird looked ready to faint, such a little thing.

Aoda settled into rest, watching the rock for his guest. The sun was warm, but the stilted weight of winter had muted it somewhat.

Aoda bemused himself with smelling for chakra, tracing the remnant smells with creatures he had seen before. There were dogs, lots and lots of dogs.

'Ah, there you are,' Aoda thought as he smelled a human walk from the city. He smelled like the wild, the scarce flashes of mountain wind that tasted of Lord Sasuke's strikes and feral creatures. The fore bringers of dogs and hunting hounds. A unique smell, one that Aoda would not forget easily.

The human settled to look at the rock, unable to sense a wild animal with no apparent chakra about it. 'Silly humans. Your eyelids make you blind.'

Aoda began to uncoil, his body stiff from his length vigil. The man turned quickly, shifting attentively. Only seconds before he found Aoda on his perch.

A forked tongue tasted the surprise, the shock and carefully controlled panic. Aoda lowered his body, a noose with slit pupils that greeted the human with a distorted practiced voice, "Are you the human I have been sent to find?"

The human jolted, looking alarmed. He took no step backward but crossed his arms in false relaxation. Aoda knew the secret of hiding tension in his body, this man mastered it better than any human Aoda knew.

"Depends," the man said calmly, "there's a lot of people Orochimaru would want to talk to."

Aoda hissed loudly, what a mistake he had made! "I am Aoda, and I am here not for that creature."

One eyebrow lifted and the human asked, "oh?"

'Lord Sasuke said he would be a strange human,' Aoda speculated, 'and I would know when I met him.'

Aoda's body touched the grass and he lowered the rest of his length until his tail could drop. He slithered forward, lifting his head upright in a polite posture to greet the man. The human tasted uncomfortable, unnerved by his size. Aoda had promised Lord Sasuke not to eat a human, but this man did not know that.

"I will not eat you," Aoda tried to soothe the human.

The man said slowly, "...thank you...for that."

Aoda nodded his head in a jerky movement Lord Sasuke showed him. The man did not seem pleased still.

"So uh…" the man said slowly, "...why is there a giant snake talking to me?"

"I was told to find you," Aoda said contently, "and I have!"

"You have," the man agreed. Aoda peered at the human curiously, his eyes were not made for colours or shapes but the male had the strangest face. "So, how can I help you, Aoda?"

'So polite,' Aoda nearly swooned. Aoda pressed further, making sure to not entirely surround the human, he had been told it made prey animals uncomfortable.

"What is your name, human?" Aoda asked curiously, "I believe you are the one I came to find."

"Where are you from?" the human deflected stealthily. "Are you a summon from a shinobi?"

"Yes!" Aoda crooned delightedly, "my Lord said a name but I know not the word in my tongue. Are you the crackle of wood and the hiss of fire?"

The human clearly had no idea what he meant, but it didn't bother Aoda. The man said, "maybe I am. Is Anko injured?"

Aoda flickered his tongue- remembering to keep his face away from the man lest he scares him. "I do not know Anko."

"Ah," the man said calmly, his body tensing poised to strike, "she's a wonderful person. Has snakes for summons as well."

Aoda bobbed his head pondering the human, "I have come from Ryuchi Cave with biddings from my Lord."

The man hummed contemplatively, tapping his chin for a reason Aoda didn't know. "Ryuchi Cave? What an honour a mystical snake came to visit me. It must be my special day."

Aoda tilted his head and flicked his tongue curiously, "you are a strange human. Are you-..."

Aoda opened his mouth, struggling to pronounce the name that Lord Sasuke spoke with lips and tongue. Two crackles of wood and the hiss of fire. "Ccck- Ccck-Hssss?"

The man's eyebrow lifted. "Ah, I see the problem here."

Aoda nodded, feeling glum at his failure. "I am to find Ccc-Ccc-Hsss and deliver my message."

"Well, I may be able to help," the man said, jamming his hands into his clothing. "I'll go get the Lord Hokage if that is alright with you?"

"Oh, yes," Aoda agreed pleasantly. The leader of the village was one Lord Sasuke explained would suffice. "They know Ccck-Ccck-Hss."

"Wonderful," the man said, giving a tiny wave before vanishing with leaves and a pulse of chakra. Aoda settled on the grass to patiently wait, humans were so strange.

The village leader appeared and Aoda recognized her from the stories of his kin and Manda's fits of rage and screaming. The woman was a sage, blessed by the slugs and touched with the chakra of the rain in the sky. Aoda bowed his head in respect, offering a polite (if excited), "Lady of Shikkotsu Forest, It is an honour to meet such as you."

The woman lifted her eyebrows, the man from before near her side. She said loudly, "what matters does a snake of Ryuchi Cave have in Konohagakure?"

"I am searching for a human," Aoda said, knowing now his quest could reach completion, "the crackle of wood twice, and the hiss of fire."

"Ah, they said that before," the man explained sheepishly. The Hokage looked unimpressed, then over at a tree in thought.

"Two crackles…" she mused, snapping her hand twice before whistling quietly. She tilted her head, looking unimpressed and asked, "were you perchance looking for a nin called Kakashi?"

Aoda smacked the end of his tail against the dirt in delight. "Yes! K-K-Sh!"

"Oh," the man wilted visibly, "well, uh, hi?"

Aoda slid his head to face the man from before. He tasted the air, content that the Lady of Shikkotsu Forest would not let him draw a weapon. "You are K-...Ka-ka-shhh? Kakashi?"

"Uh, yes," the man said, clearing his throat slightly, "I wasn't anticipating a snake from...anyone."

"I have come for you," Aoda said. He bowed his head and forced the muscles of his throat to contract. He retched a horrible noise, jaw crackling like little fish bones as the scroll surfaced from near his heart and slid to the ground. It smelled a tad of digesting not-rat, but it was unharmed.

"Well," the man said blandly, "why does that smell like a boar?"

The Hokage pinched the bridge of her nose and looked very unimpressed. "This is your message for Kakashi Hatake? Do you know what it is?"

"No, I do not know your human language," Aoda apologized, "I am Aoda, first of the ground clutch, deemed the oracle by the White Snake Sage."

"Oracle?" the Hokage asked.

Aoda confirmed, "I was destined a messenger by the White Snake Sage. I have formed a covenant bound by blood."

"That explains why you're not associated with Orochimaru," the Hokage mused, "a select blood blond with a summons is rare and difficult. You'd have to specifically be summoned then contract bound, normally this is only in families and clans."

Aoda knew this, he didn't understand why she was saying this. The man, Kakashi, stepped forward to pick up the scroll, riding it off its outer cover. He cracked the seal (made from sap Aoda found in the jungle trees) and pulled open the paper.

He said something Aoda didn't understand, then nearly dropped it. "This- this is Sasuke's handwriting."

"Yes, my Lord," Aoda agreed happily, "Lord Sasuke tasked me to bring you his message."

The Hokage looked upset. "That brat is five months late in his report."

Aoda brightened. "A report, Lady of the Slugs? I have been present with Lord Sasuke for many of your moons, what is it you must know?"

Kakashi looked a tad surprised by that, reading through the paper quickly, "you were with him the entire time?"

"How is he?" the Hokage asked curtly.

Aoda tilted his head, he was large enough to eat her if he wanted. "He travels slowly."

"Slow?" Kakashi asked, looking more and more alarmed by the second.

"Yes," Aoda confirmed determined, "he bleeds from sleep. He Breaks bones and sees visions during the moon. He rides a foul creature, with four legs that I am not allowed to eat."

The Hokage stilled, looking a bit worried. "He's wounded? Even now?"

"Every night?" the man asked, looking professional and serious. Aoda understood why his Lord trusted the man so highly. "He has visions every night?"

"Has he been attacked at any point?" the Hokage asked, "Has he been discovered?"

"No, Lord Sasuke is very sly," Aoda tried to soothe. "We travel slow but steady. He learns much, and sees far beyond my sight."

"Every night…" the man repeated, sounding sad. "He only wrote about the information we can use. Border skirmishes to look out for. Future problems in Sound, well, more problems in Sound."

Aoda did not know humans well, but he could tell through the whispers of the air and the taste of the wind that this man was sad. Not the sadness of loss or hardship brought, but the distinct aroma of expectation and failure yet again. The acceptance that lingered after every shed skin, sunken deep in his bones until ever heartbeat gave it lift.

'If he is the man that Lord Sasuke sent me to find, then he is important,' Aoda rationalized. The human was a sad creature, a lonely beat that resembled the lost grazer that lingered after its herd moved on. Manda would have preyed on any of Aoda's kin that smelled so strongly of misfortune. Humans, Aoda knew, were not as aware of each other.

"If you are K-Kakashi," Aoda said slowly, determined to name the man correctly, "then you are he that Lord Sasuke calls Kin."

Kin of Lord Sasuke demanded respect. Not adherence or obedience- Aoda would never extent his loyalties to outsiders. The human smelled lonely and sad, yet endured strong enough that Lord Sasuke spoke praise of the human's existence and guidance. That alone proved something to Aoda.

He bowed his head, averting his eyes to gaze at the strange legs of the human male. He waited, motionless until the human would react. If Lord Sasuke deemed him Kin, then Aoda would treat him properly.

"Aah," the man said a tad airily, shifting his feet where he stood on the ground. Aoda watched and knew that the chakra of the ground had not relinquished its indulgence, the man held strongly despite his poor posture and elastic bones. The human said, "no no, none of that. I'm nothing special."

"You are Kin to Lord Sasuke," Aoda repeated. He may not have firm bonds to his actual kin and clutch, but the word of his Lord had quickly become his life. The casual dismissal of a human meant nothing to him. "You are Kakashi."

The man paused subtly before he sighed. Reluctantly, he waved one hand in a feeble expression of submission. "Fine, but there's no need for bowing. Maa, who knew my cute little student would speak so highly of me."

The Hokage rumbled a wordless noise. Aoda nearly snapped his jaws at such blatant self-depreciation. It was carefully worded, crafted like a sword to instill such careless effort it nearly lacerated Aoda's barriers. The man, Kakashi, had truly developed a vicious dangerous disguise.

There was little to say to such a dangerous creature. Aoda realized with a small festering dread, that Kakashi bore the same scales and marks of the False-Sage and his chakra. Not identical, but the similar markings and cowl of a sheathed cobra; Kakashi was a dangerous human who could destroy mountains with no more than his skin and bone.

"Manda would be wary to eat you," Aoda said, "you smell of the sky during storms. Of the spark that ignites the forest fires and burns them to ash."

Kakashi looked at him with spiritual knowledge. He had seen third-degree burns take and return to baby skin, seen cataracts leached and bled from milky eyes. Mending broken legs is considered old easy work that leant permission for Kakashi to snap them.

The snake summons, a creature not entirely of the natural world, saw this and knew it well. The serpent said: "You have exhausted your body so what ails you can be drawn free and broken by the world."

Kakashi tilted his chin slightly in a nameless symbol that translated across all intelligent life. A whisper made from the creak of his jaw and skull, 'what about it?'

The spirits and sage had made demons in every shade, every shame and form to better hide across the living. Aoda tasted the air and scrutinized the blinking impression of scents and smells and the acrid taste of calm vengeance. Snakes had always been known for their subtle words and hidden bite, Aoda recognized a pale face and dark eye.

"I have no concern for Lord Sasuke," Aoda divulged, "you reared him."

The human said nothing for a long time, and then bowed his head in return and said in equal honour: "Thank you, Aoda."

It had been so very long since he had seen himself, and he was sure he had changed very much. The Land of Earth crackled ominously with a collection of sounds. Sasuke did not rest often from the following of a sound, but when he did he fastened Bakashi to a tree or rock and searched his skull with his fingers. The skin on his face and scalp were soft and told him his hands were now rough where they once had been nimble. When his clothes constricted and broke from stress Sasuke felt he did not grow bigger, but older and by growing older he felt smaller.

He crossed all of River without chakra. Now his coils burned and singed under the inexorable surges that melted his atrophied pathways and forged them new. Each step landed with a shattering quake that thrummed along the bones of his feet and nestled shy of his ankle.

The sun draped itself behind an intangible curtain, Amaterasu's glowing eye failed to pierce the veil and provide its warmth on the mountain ridges. Shivering became a routine movement. Bakashi's fur thickened like Konoha's moss.

Amaterasu existed more than a distant guest in Sasuke's home, it was not a visitor to entertain in the parlour and offer tea for its troubles. The dragon's fire shed a flicker every step from home. Once, the beast twirled itself a conflagration and told secrets sold by a devouring hunger. Each campfire Sasuke made took a bit from Amaterasu's armour, each wisp of morning breakfast fuelled by the dragon's mystic presence.

So far from home, Sasuke walked a groove worn into the bedrock and wondered when the scales became visible. When Amaterasu's face had first emerged from the blaze and when could Sasuke count the spines of its mane and recognize it's bladed claws by touch.

Sasuke held Kusanagi every day and felt the knowledge of Amaterasu's piercing talons. He looked at Sierra and pondered when they too became familiar.

"We're different now," Sasuke said. Bakashi ignored him following obediently with clicking hooves and heavy cargo made from preserved fish and rice.

Amaterasu rustled, its presence had changed both in mind and feel. The eye on Sasuke's throat watched, always.

We are, Amaterasu agreed.

"What are we?" Sasuke asked, voice flat and monotonous. Not entirely him but admittedly something he grew into. "You've been burning out."

Amaterasu weighed warmly along Sasuke's throat, ruminating. Have I?

Sasuke outgrew Itachi's ANBU uniform, maturing and lengthening. The metal mesh struggled around his broadening shoulders, his ankle bones peered out from the hem of his trousers. Sasuke adapted, slitting the fabric and stitching it with sutures to tide the period until Shisui's uniform would fit. He felt older and felt much smaller with every night he slept.

"You're fading," Sasuke said, "did you think I wouldn't notice?"

I knew you would, Amaterasu said patiently and bemused. It was not a secret.

Sasuke frowned slightly, his eyebrows scrunching. His hair brushed against his neck, longer than it had ever been. "You didn't tell me, which is as good as lying."

If you denote lying to withholding information, then your view on the world is a horrid stance.

"You're a God," Sasuke said without heat, "I thought to lie would be dishonourable to something like you."

That's not your true fear, Amaterasu said knowingly. You are afraid I will abandon you.

Sasuke considered the groove in the mountain trail. It tilted downward at a worrying descent, raw gravel and broken shale crumbled below his furred boots. He grasped Bakashi's harness and clicked his tongue twice, the animal walked obediently with heavy steps and downturned ears. Shale crumbled and cracked along the precarious fall, showering dirt across the ravine. Bakashi knickered, lifting its muscular neck in protest but strength became irrelevant with chakra's unfair privilege.

Amaterasu quieted politely, its eye watching from Sasuke's neck and the other from the horizon. It said, once both Bakashi and Sasuke settled in the gorge: We are coalescing.

"I see your visions in my dreams," Sasuke said flatly. "To know those things suggest Sasuke Uchiha in a different life had importance to the Gods. The Gods allowed that life to happen, they allowed my clan to die."

Amaterasu whispered, say it.

"What is your name?" Sasuke asked with cold-numbed lips. "Fallacious-God?"

A fallacious god? Amaterasu asked, entertained. How you have grown.

Bakashi huffed, jerking his face free to graze on the flora of the valley. Dragon's head bloomed in shades of purple with cornflower spotting the lichen coated rockslides. The spruce trees were small compared to Konoha, and still, they protruded high towards daylight.

"The floods must be horrible in the spring," Sasuke mentioned quietly. They had stayed below the snow-line so far, but eventually, they would breach it. Then, Bakashi would test his fluffy coat and Sasuke would nurture the hearth of Uchiha Katon.

A hawk cried from the top of a tree, it's wings broad and dark as it flapped itself out of the gorge. The animal looked large enough to hunt the mountain sheep or the spy goats that balanced on sheer cliff faces.

Bakashi lifted his head, gnawing on blue flowers in his massive jaw. Prey animal instincts demanded he gazes around, frozen in shoddy camouflage.

Amaterasu too drew heavily, his eye scanned a precursory sweep before settling in discontent caution. There are eyes in the valley.

But they couldn't determine the source. Bakashi's ears swerved, flaring and drooping as his nostrils gulped crisp air and exchanged it for steam.

Sasuke reached for Bakashi's bridle, holding it carefully in a loose grip. He felt the eyes on him, ambiguous and vague.

I can't determine where, Amaterasu told him, sounding a tad annoyed at the inconvenience. A new skill, something I haven't seen before.

There was a chance, a ridiculously small chance, that it was his brother. The mountains and gorges of Earth gave rise to countless caves and tunnels. Dwindling across the peaks could last forever or no time at all. The Ninja War between Fire and Earth lasted an eternity within the land of Grass for that very reason. Fire was too powerful to invade, and Earth too impenetrable to pass.

Sasuke could try to outrun his visitor, but that required him to abandon Bakashi. He could survive easily without the animal, but it would be a tedious cold life that fared worse than mission rations.

Ah, Amaterasu said, then we'll welcome them.

Sasuke made a fire from broken spruce limbs assembled in a small circle. The shale rocks splintered under pressure but heated well enough to become a cooking surface. Bakashi tried to bite him, early snagging his tied hair before deciding to feast on mountain sage.

When Sasuke's guest appeared with caressing alpine air, the teen constructed a small camp. Sasuke offered one slow hand in greeting, not bothering to rise from his seated place or open his eyes in cautious greeting.

The man, presumedly a nin, clinked loudly with rattling plates. He smelled of fire and burning herbs, a corrosive wash of chakra.

It felt like fire, unlike Amaterasu's heat. A humid ache and blistering poison that left Sasuke compelled to retch. A horrific overwhelming sensation that left him longing for the blissful cold of the mountains.

"You are far from home," the man said, "little boy."

Sasuke trembled, the chakra felt sickening, a boiling pain surpassing nausea. His eyelids stayed closed- red imprints of his capillaries swam in disorienting patterns. He felt his hands shake and sweat pour from the nape of his neck.

What is this? Amaterasu asked. The beast sounded alarmed, frustrated and confused. What is this chakra?

Sasuke inhaled a gulp of hot air and forced his eyes open. Sickening.

The shinobi in front of him towered taller than any nin Sasuke had seen before. Entirely covered in red armour, the man looked down with a forehead protector of Iwa. His mere presence burned the air, boiling it into discernable mirages.

The nin, taller than a work-horse, reached forward with a black-gloved hand. Sasuke gasped for air, shuddering under the sweltering heat.

'Uchiha are descendants of dragons,' Sasuke remembered hazily. He sweated into his eyes, vision distorting, 'we burn.'

Amaterasu said, let me.

Sasuke gaped for air and couldn't breathe, his lungs refusing to inflate with furnaced air. Boiling his blood, his tears melted his face and left blisters along his nose.

Let me, Amaterasu said. Sasuke did.

Sasuke Uchiha jerked through a backwards movement, raising with a heavy shudder. He opened his eyes, unblinking through the oppressive heat and met the cause of his condition.

"Shinobi-san," Sasuke said hoarsely, "stop."

The Iwa-nin did, if only due to surprise. Sasuke couldn't see the face of the attacker under the broad hat and scaled armour.

"So you are a missing-nin," the man said through his mask. "I felt your chakra mountains ago. You moved slowly, and I was curious."

Sasuke nodded, his body still and controlled despite the red flush of burns on his skin. "You attacked me."

"A risk," the shinobi agreed, looking at Bakashi with a blank look. He towered over the teen- barely out of boyhood and tilted his head in blatant curiosity. The campfire crackled slightly with the pungent fumes of pinewood ash. "You travel like a civilian."

"I am as such," the other said hoarsely, "and you attacked me without reason or cause."

"If I search my bounties, will I find you there?"

"No," the boy claimed with a hoarse wheeze. The mule nearby snorted and whined anxiously, skirting as wide as its rope would allow.

The shinobi moved and so did his armour. Each scale clapped like the shale plates and layers of the mountainside, rattling in scales and decorative clatter of dragon bones. He settled into a kneeling stance, still well within the ability to draw a sword or knife and slit the boy's throat with no more than a thought.

"Who are you?" the shinobi declared bluntly.

"A traveller," the boy claimed just as everything about him suggested. His story had evidence and proof and yet- it felt so horribly wrong and indecent.

"You're travelling the wrong way," the nin said with a near laugh. He said, scathing with cynicism, "Iwa does not take kindly to missing-nin. Harmless, or not."

The boy looked at him with half lidded eyes, a pallid face no form of sickness but simply that of strange bloodlines. The boy said, calmly and without urgency, "do you know, shinobi-san, that you are being hunted?"

He scoffed, scaled armour rattling like Kuso's rattlesnakes. "I can sense everything in the valley, child. There is nothing that can hunt me."

The boy blinked slowly, eyes never truly opening. The burns on his face flushed a warm pink below his eyes where boiling tears had killed the flesh. The child reached out with slow obvious movements to add a stick to his fire and coax the embers to flicker into being. The boy said with a halfhearted disinterested, "I have heard about you from a distant...ally. You are Han, the Roaming Nin of Iwa."

Han was not surprised that the boy knew him, he was known everywhere either by his armour or by his power. Han grunted low, the mask disguised his expression but it didn't seem to bother the child in any way. "Who is your distant ally who knows of me?"

Han was sure that any foe he met never survived. Either his fists broke their ribs and organs, or his steam boiled their blood from their mouths.

The boy looked at Han with a strange expression, flat and vacant. A waxy sheen like crop-blight touched his grey eyes and changed them to something new. The boy said, with a certainty that unnerved the nin, "Kin of yours, or a connected bond I've never understood."

Han shivered an impossible cold that never touched his skin with boil-release and his furnace on his back. "The Tsu-."

"Not you," the boy said with coal-tar eyes, "Jinchuuriki of the Steam."

Han boiled the air, snapping the fire and sweltering it with darkened smoke. It struggled, flaring weakly before extinguishing under the oppressive humidity. There were no survivors who knew who he was- not the creature caged and it's distant melodic cries. He was Han of the boil-release, not a cage or vessel for-.

"I know your name," the boy said strangely, "Kokuō."

Kokuō, he said. Han staggered under the heavy sound of it, the quiet lonesome whispers of a name forgotten and remembered for all the wrong reasons. There were seals and scrolls inked across Han's memories, and with certain words, they rolled open and told him things he had known once and forgotten with age. The feeling of long meadow grass and summer air below his feet. The open welcoming depths of the ocean he had yet to see. The cooling touch of rain on his back under the blistering balm of the hot sun.

Kokuō, the boy said, and the beast shifted minimally and subjected fear and whispered to him it's quiet broken question.

"How?" Han asked, feeling cold under the mountain air with his blood and steam filling his lungs and throat. "How do you know that name?"

The boy blinked again, unharmed and unremarkable. His face remained flat. His eyelids twitched and faltered along the burned tear ducts, twitching subtly before only the right opened with a venomous swirl of blood.

Han jerked, nearly falling from the change of scenery. The pebbles and river-rock shifted below his armoured sandals, grinding quietly and splashing along the shallow water. He stepped to better ground, splashing warm water and parting tall flowering reeds.

"Who is he?" the boy demanded- suddenly childish and demanding.

Han twisted, focusing chakra which refused to move and boil the teen where he stood on a rock.

"What did you do?" Han demanded sharply, "What is this genjutsu-."

The other snorted and rolled his eyes, both bright and dark like the mountain clouds. He looked nothing like his state before. "This isn't a genjutsu."

Han began to understand that, as the water sloshed about with rippling waves from a hundred droplets of rain. It came on suddenly, with no sound or warning, wetting the air with warm moisture that felt not oppressive.

"Amaterasu, who is he?" the boy asked. Han presumed it a name, but not one he had ever heard before.

Han, the Jinchuuriki of the Five-Tails, something whispered through the cracks of thunder. It spoke like the chirping of lightning chakra, the high pitched whistle of electric strikes on mountain summits.

"The Five-Tails?" the boy asked, eyebrows lifting in an unimpressed look. "Tch, I'm disappointed."

Han took one step forward, fists curling so tight the treated leather of his gloves creaked ominously. The unknown voice chuckled in nondescript amusement, speaking in a distorted stolen voice of the boy in front of him, his blow can crack the mountains. Do not be so quick to judge.

Han scowled and found a beast of unknown origin crawling through the heavy fog. The steam rolled about, hissing quietly as rain burned under a black fire that boiled the riverbed and the shallow pools. A dragon, a mighty animal Han based his steam armour on and fought tooth and claw to channel it's legacy. Han faced the animal- missing one eye and the majority of its left leg and clasped one arm quickly across his breastplate.

"Honored-Beast," Han said in a rumble, not bowing his head but showing respect.

The dragon rumbled wordlessly then looked beyond to a new focus. Kokuō, the Gobi.

Han turned to look at what piqued the dragon's interest.

A beast with a white-crown and wide eyes looked up from its shackles and said, "What are you?"

Han knew that voice from his mind and memory, the quiet respectful commentary on the valleys of mountain fjords. The Gobi, the legendary 5-Tailed Beast had never shown itself, too timid to speak openly.

The dragon said I am Amaterasu. I have a message for you.

The Gobi shifted its head the best it could, its chains and shackled pinned it to the river-rock where the small water doused along its lower jaw. Its cloven hooves sprawled uncomfortably around it, each tail bound with metal coils and ropes that dug deep into the rubbery texture of its skin. "I don't trust a message from a creature that names itself a god."

Amaterasu, the dragon, looked taken aback. The boy smirked, trying to hide his laugh behind one hand and a fake cough. Han felt very off guard.

You won't listen to me, because I call myself that name?

"I don't trust humans," the creature corrected quietly, nostrils flaring wetly in a quick breath, "I don't trust you, who claims to know me yet shows no proof."

The dragon paused, its long claws dragging across the river-stone and breaking pebbles on silver blades. Its lost leg, a mere stump along its upper limb, dragged across the rocks absentminded. The creature settled itself across from the Gobi, it's body a careful crescent with the child standing in its apex.

That is fair, Amaterasu admitted slowly. I have a warning for you, Kokuō. There are forces hunting for you.

"There are always humans hunting me," the Gobi said, "I am always hunted."

"Will you stop whining and actually listen?" the boy said dryly, scowling outright.

Han took one step forward, towering over the child, "and who are you to speak so rudely-."

"Sasuke Uchiha," the boy deadpanned with red glowing eyes, the fabled Sharingan Han believed extinct. "Amaterasu thought you were important enough to warn. I don't care if you don't listen."

"I do not like Uchiha," the Five-Tails complained worriedly, eyes rolling back to Amaterasu nervously. "What are you? You exist within the Cursed-Blood but are not bound like I."

I am something else, Amaterasu deflected. It's eye, a unique spiral of multiple layers affixed itself on the Gobi. Will you listen to me?

"Who sent you?" the Gobi asked. "I don't trust you yet."

Your kin, said the Dragon.

"Who?" the Five-Tails asked nervously, "my brothers and sisters do not talk so openly, and do not trust. You know my name but that can be learned through other means-."

Amaterasu said with a calm measured voice stolen from Sasuke Uchiha, y our father, Kokuō.

The Gobi jerked the best it could, mouth opening the smallest bit to show rows of tiny triangular teeth and it's pale pink tongue. It breathed quickly, eyes round and stunned. It said, with a fluttering tremble to its words, "Oh, I see that you are not a thief for that eye. Did...did he send you to us all? Is he…"

Amaterasu opened its mouth, serrated teeth and empty void that could eat the bedrock and clouds like Iwa stories told. The black skin and scales, it's void of an eye, Han marvelled at the legendary myth that breathed its voice with chirping crackles. Kaguya approaches.

Kokuō thrashed about, it's wide eyes turned round in panic as it screamed a noise like the whistling wind. Han clamped his hands over his ears, the boy Uchiha stumbled to one knee. The dragon recoiled as the Gobi screamed a sonic wail that brought stars to Han's eyes.

"No! No!" the Five-Tails cried in terror, "I am not- that foul chakra, that horrible monster-."

I am here to prevent it.

"Please, please!" the Five-Tails cried, near trembling at the thought. The polite respectful chakra-beast looked horrified at the unknown name. "Prevent that- that sick…"

There is a group hunting the Tailed Beasts, known as the Akatsuki. Amaterasu explained quickly. They plan to gather them and revive the Juubi.

The Gobi shuddered terrified, Han felt his throat thick with the infectious leach of fear and steam clogging his throat. "Yes, yes I will warn my sisters and brothers. I have not spoken to them in so long-. What do you need, prophet of my father?"

Sasuke Uchiha looked just as baffled as Han felt. The dragon closed its mouth, the flickering fire of its head flared and succeeded as it considered itself. I aim to delay the events of now.

"Until a proper time," Kokuō understood implicitly. "Then I will aid you, and spread my word to those who can hear me."

Amaterasu stared silently before it arched its serpentine neck and bowed respectfully to the chained Chakra Beast. Thank you, Kokuō

"Han," the Gobi said, finally addressing its vessel for the first time with urgency. "You must aid this prophet."

The Chakra Beast had never asked Han of anything. It refused to speak to him for the first decade of his life, then only sparingly when needed. Han had only seen the beast a handful of times, never as fully as this.

There was panic in Gobi's eyes, fear and terror that extended beyond that of self-preservation. Whatever the dragon said, the name Kaguya, spanned further than a simple threat. Han found himself helpless to ignore such desperation; he nodded and clasped his hand to his chest, bowing wordlessly to the creature.

"Thank you, Han," the Gobi said in unfiltered relief.

"I'm a sensor," Han explained in blunt words. He led the route out of the valley, walking slowly to accommodate Bakashi's timid footsteps. Sasuke knew that animals tended to avoid Jinchuuriki, something which made finding and capturing a certain feral cat on D-rank missions ridiculously difficult.

Sasuke grunted a small Hn, watching the behemoth of a human avoid a patch of broken shale. Han explained in the light of the morning dawn, "I can hear and sense all across the valleys, every movement and sound of wild animals."

"That's how you found me," Sasuke summarized. "And why you're difficult to attack."

Han scoffed, spewing a roll of steam from his nostrils. " Nobody can surprise me, even clones provide a shape that I can hear."

Echolocation, Amaterasu told him. The creature had been quiet since both men left the mindscape the Mangekyo triggered. Amaterasu, exhausted from the strain of using Sasuke as a conduit, receded to rest until necessity demanded otherwise. The great dragon lingered in the hazy outerbanks of consciousness, once soothed with Han's presence, it would sleep until such a time where Sasuke awoke it. Or when adrenaline and the siren song of bloodlust jolted it to awareness.

"Can you find people?" Sasuke asked. Bakashi tripped over a crumbling bit of shale, Chakra hauled the animal further up the slope until it walked on stable footing. Han looked at the animal, gold eyes crinkling in disgust.

"Of course I can," Han said, offended. "I presume you're trying to find this group then?"

"The Akatsuki," Sasuke clarified, his throat tightening slightly on his next words. "My brother."

Han's shoulders lifted in a vague movement with an unknown meaning or interpretation. "An unlucky family then. I thought the Uchiha were dead."

"They are," Sasuke agreed quietly, "my brother and I are all that are left."

"And your brother is a terrorist," Han said dryly, eyes crinkling into a smile. Sasuke found it ironic that Kakashi's apparel gave Sasuke the skills to read Jinchuuriki's face. Wearing masks was not common for shinobi, it was irony that led Sasuke to know a masked man's face. "Unfortunate for your bloodline."

Sasuke twitched and felt compelled to correct the behemoth shinobi with a slight barb to his words. "My brother is...complex. He isn't a target of mine."

"Clandestine," the Iwa nin said with a careless shrug. "I don't care for your affairs. I am only helping you because you carry a beast inside you, and my beast demands I help."

"I'm not a Jinchuuriki," Sasuke said quietly, muttering the words. Bakashi snorted, struggling over a rocky lip. Sasuke helped the animal, considerate of its abilities.

"You may not be a Jinchuuriki, but you have something within you," Han said, watching the shorter man from the corner of his eye. "Do you know the tales of Iwa?"

Sasuke's hand tightened on the rope of Bakashi's bridle. The boy looked at him with a careful glance, eyes flashing red. "I know you have waged war against the other nations. Your second Tsuchikage killed Kiri's Mizukage."

"They killed each other," Han corrected without any sign of emotion.

"...Iwa fought Konoha and Suna in the Second Great War," Sasuke said quietly, "then against Konoha in the Third Great War."

Han grunted in agreement, using one leg and a chakra-powered kick to shatter a boulder that fell along the path. Bakashi shrieked, settling under Sasuke's firm hand and a minor genjutsu on the herbivore's mind. Han swept the debris aside, resuming the path. He spoke in a steady voice, "you know our history, but not our tales."

Sasuke frowned slightly, guiding Bakashi to a flattened alcove along the mountain path where the ass pressed itself against the rocky wall and scratched itself happily. Sasuke clicked his tongue in annoyance at the sight, surveying Han with half lidded eyes.

Han instead looked over the valley they spent the night in. The cloud cover fell low, spruce trees protruding through like needles on thorny sand lizards. The mountains gleamed a flat grey, speckled with black and coal that fueled Iwa's furnaces and forge.

"Our history is bloody," Han said with little inflection, "our people travelled as nomadic clans, ushering goats and herds through the valleys between flood seasons. The winters are cruel, and farming is impractical."

Sasuke nodded slowly. There was no reason to speak, it was rude to disregard the history and ancestry of any clan, no matter the current societal relationships.

"Our many clans travelled according to the seasons," Han explained bluntly. "Our ancestors walked these paths with their livestock and living, struggling to survive the brutal winter. We found shelter in the caves, burning sage and worshiping the Imugi- the lesser dragons of the mountains. Children of the dragons, yet to ascend the frozen peaks and wishing to climb higher."

Han tapped his fingers along his red steam armour, large scales rattling at his touch. "Each nomadic group had a name for their clan Imugi. The Ishimi, Miri, Youngno, Bari, each ornate and scaled like giant serpents competing to survive a thousand years, only then could they climb the mountains towards the heavens."

Han tapped his armour and explained, "they were good luck to see. They meant the cave would keep my ancestors warm for the night, and provide safe passage for the sheep and goats. If there were no Imugi in the cave, a goat would be slaughtered and left in the dark to keep the spirits away for the night."

Bakashi scuffed at the ground, nibbling on lichen and lapping his long tongue on the frozen ice that gathered from the frozen springs. Sasuke patted the animal, watching Han with a respectful nod. Han said with a low rumbling voice, "then, the clans found a creature stronger than the Imugi. A monster in the mountains with a temple it protected. So one of the nomads offered all their herd and home and decided to take the monster's power for itself. They made the city of stone and captured the beast to fuel its furnace. They tore apart the ground for coal to stay warm in winter, and left behind the caves."

Han sighed quietly, scuffling one foot on the gravel. "The Imugi were upset, but never cruel. With no visitors to their caves in the mountain, they left for warmer grounds and food. They left the valleys, but without their protection, the winter became colder, and Iwa burned hotter and raged. If the Imugi left because we did not offer blood, then we would provide blood from others."

Han looked like he finished with his story, something that left Sasuke uncomfortable with the ramifications. "So Iwa decided to wage war against others."

"They did," Han agreed with a nod, "and the mountains now are named too dangerous to walk, because the dragons have left and no longer warm the caves."

"The Uchiha are descendants of dragons," Sasuke said quietly, lowering his chin with as much respect he could offer. He tucked his face into the fur scarf along his coat, nose burning from the cold air. "Our ancestors were dragons, they blessed my clan and gave us our eyes and breath."

Han nodded, clearly accepting such a preposterous statement. "The true dragons lived at the top of our mountains, above the clouds where the snow lay thicker than cattle. When the Imugi left, the dragons found no reason to stay."

Sasuke tilted his head at the notion of that. "Do you worship the dragons?"

"Not anymore," Han scoffed. "If Iwa worshiped the dragons, they would stop the war and fighting. Instead, now, Iwa remembers the dead and fights for revenge. The dragons left our mountains. Not all clans stayed when the village formed, some left for further places where the crops would grow or the goats wouldn't freeze."

What Han suggested felt like sacrilege, like an unknown history that the clan elders would dismiss immediately. The Uchiha were an ancient noble clan- to propose that they came from the land of Earth would deny the origins passed down from history. It would reject the teachings the Uchiha had always known- but the stories sounded true.

"They say the closer to the peaks you climb," Han said, pointing North and skywards, "the further you drift from the ground, the more the earth steals from your skin. They were pale, ghostly to match the snow."

Sasuke thought that history fascinating. Uchiha were not common characteristics- the pale skin and grey eyes. All of Konoha were tanned with brown hair, more unique now that genetics changed but in ancient warring states- the Uchiha were different.

The Hatake, Amaterasu contributed quietly, the nomads.

Sasuke ran his fingers along the fur of Bakashi's neck. The Hatake, the wolf clan.

Yet...two synonymous clans never existed within a single village or civilization. The Abarumbe Clan settled to combat the Kamizuru Clan in Iwa. Suna's poisons were countered by Konoha's healers. Kumo's stealth combated Kiri's shroud tactics.

There was a balanced set, a scale made in warring times for the various nin clans yet- the Hatake was a clan that directly contrasted the Inuzuka clan. The colouration suggested they too came from a mountainous region- the further North, the paler the skin became. The further north, the more lightning struck and the more fire became necessary to survive.

Suddenly, the weight behind Han's words became significant.

"It is likely all of the world comes from origins we don't know," Han said, "history is written by those who survived the trials of life. It is not explained by those who had suffered."

Sasuke asked, "why are you telling me this?"

The man tried to kill Sasuke immediately upon meeting him. Even now, the nin was not kind or gentle with his words. He was harsh, aggressive and angry with the world. Han looked at him with a sort of resolute frustration that only came from decades of mistreatment. The world was not kind. The mountains were cold and lonely.

"...The Five-Tails had never spoken to me so clearly, not like she has with you," Han said flatly. "She does not care for violence."

'The Gobi rejects the belief of Iwa,' Sasuke realized, understanding the significance of both history and worship. Something thought to be a god of chakra, one of nine, yet somehow, not.

"You intend to reach the Three Wolf Mountains?" Han asked, confirming what Sasuke said the earlier night. "The next valley there is a trail to the left. It winds between the slopes and is longer than the mountain passages. Use your animal, there is greenery there and wild deer. Three days in that direction, you will reach the village at the speed of your ass."

Sasuke knew he could make it in one day if fuelled by chakra, he was unwilling to abandon Bakashi now. "Thank you, for your help."

Han nodded shortly, hesitating slightly before he added, "there is another Jinchuuriki in these mountains. Rōshi, the Jinchuuriki of the Four-Tails. He is quick to anger but old. I will pass along your message if I sense him."

Sasuke heard the unspoken warning, and the permission to mention their meeting. "Thank you, Han, Kokuō."

Han paused before bowing his head slowly. "...She thanks you, Uchiha, Amaterasu."

Sasuke tightened his grip on Bakashi's rope, tugging him gently to begin the descent to the next valley. Han watched him from the plateau of the mountain crest, a silent red-figure adorned in scales that glinted subtly like Amaterasu's neck. Bakashi snorted, lifting his ears and followed obediently as Sasuke guided him along the old nomad decline. Before Sasuke reached the bottom, clouds swallowed the peak of the mountain and left him entirely alone on his walk.

The Three Wolf Mountains rose from the ground in moss-covered ridges like the arching Pires of three claws. Hooked back, they ascended in a manageable climb before piercing straight towards the sky with small serrations. Aptly named, they resembled the talons of a canine, with a small ancient village settled in its open palm.

The Howling Wolf Village did not resemble any form of hidden village Sasuke had seen. Instead of industrialized concrete or wooden boards, the homes were built from the ground itself with refined chunks of rock. Chiselled into place, each home existed half engraved to the ground with ancient thatch and moss-covered roofs barely above Sasuke's head. The doors were sunken, buried into the ground with chiselled steps worn soft by decades.

Bakashi snorted, walking along with the stone cut roads that supported the movement of carts or feet. The mist and fog of the nearby mountains swirled on the adjacent slopes, hiding the village from sight and dispersing pleasant cool moisture that beaded on Kusanagi's sheath. The villagers that Sasuke spotted looked at him with minor interest, evaluating his clothes and fur cloak then dismissed him just as easily.

Sasuke hadn't seen buildings made from individual stones and rock. Doton created reinforced barriers from solid slabs; the Howling Wolf Village built itself from callused hands and foraged boulders, chiselled with iron tools into careful shape. The cracks filled with mortar of crushed slate and clay, the thatch woven from harvested grasses and symbiotic moss that absorbed the rain.

Bakashi turned his head, baring his teeth at another ass that peered out from a stone fence made from stacked plates of slate. The ass flapped its ears, curving its body to protect the thick woollen sheep that lay across the rocky ground. Bakashi snorted, ignoring the animal with a gentle nudge from Sasuke's shoe.

There was a sort of quiet sedation in the air, in the cool mist of the village. Sasuke glanced around at countless locals, mothers with children running back and forth with thick woollen cloaks and carved sticks. There were no nearby rivers or oceans for fishermen to use, instead, the rocky landscape gave rise to extensive pastures marked by ancestral stone corrals and warped wood gates. This side of the mountain, the spruce trees didn't grow- instead, bracken and heather dotted the rocks. The Howling Wolf Village was made entirely of rocks.

Sasuke whistled a shrill short noise, drawing the attention of a group of children. The youngest squinted up at him, wearing a woollen felt cap that covered their hair and eyebrows.

"Yes, traveller-san?" she asked, voice immature but bright and inquisitive.

Sasuke lifted one arm to gesture ahead of him, "where are your room and board?"

"Oh! The lodge!" the girl said excitedly, the boy near her shoulder shifted his weight and jammed his hands into his pockets. Sasuke ignored him, focusing on the girl, no older than seven years. "Down this road, Traveller-san! Mishki-san has the lodge and burns it all-round! Do you have things to sell, Traveller-san? Did you come from Taniku?"

Taniku was the nearest northern city in Iwa, countless weeks of travel by mule. Supplies from Iwa likely came seasonally when the floods had yet to fill the valleys and cut off the trails. The village technically was a hidden village from their association with shinobi- but not in terms of chakra abilities.

"No," Sasuke said flatly, "from Grass."

The girl looked interested, curiously squinting at the side bags and harness on Bakashi. "That's a nice mule, traveller-san. You must have come a long-."

"Kio-chan, let's go," the boy said quickly, tugging on the girl's arm and dragging her out of reach. Cautious, a good trait for surviving in such a...isolated region.

The lodge was little more than a rectangular building with a central open hearth. Logs preserved and petrified by bog arranged themselves into a loose oval around the fire, a heady warmth that smelled of greenwood and herbs that left Sasuke's eyes watering.

The doors were warped and splintered on the corners, clearly wood a commodity not easily obtainable. Where stone could be used, it was. Tables and counters made from stacked shale carved indents in the ground for storage and shelves. Ingeniously made, each building melded into the earth and smelled of mud and incense.

The lodge-owner was a stout woman with broad shoulders. Her hair woven and braided yet the humidity caused each strand to frizz until her braid looked like ancient sea-rope. She frowned, a heavy strong expression that gave no beauty- but her skin glowed milkily and her eyes grey. If not for her hair, a coppery sheen in her lamp, she could pass as a very exotic bastard Uchiha.

"Traveller-san," she said, voice thick and accented. She spoke deep in her broad barrel chest, drumming thick hands on the stone counter, "you look well versed."

'Not a Uchiha,' Sasuke corrected immediately. She resembled a shinobi Sasuke remembered hazily from Chunin exams, the proctor that basked in violence and bloodshed.

"Perhaps," Sasuke said, shrugging slightly. The woman's eyes narrowed on his fur, her lip creasing thinly.

"Are you here to exchange in the trader's corner?" she asked boldly. "We haven't seen your face before, and new traders don't risk the mountain pass."

"I'm insignificant, Rojji-san."

The woman scoffed slightly at her title, aware now that she had not given her name. Lodge-owner, was not necessarily rude, but not something subtle.

"I doubt it, traveller," she said pointedly, ignoring the reciprocation of an honorific. "Are you a purveyor? Coming to sell a certain exotic? What now- spice? Wine?"

Sasuke shook his head very slowly and repeated, "I am an insignificant traveller, Rojji-san."

She pursed her lips and said, "then you are here in search of something. Not a trader, or in search to sell to other countries. Not a user either, your eyes are strange and I know the users that stumble to my fire in the night."

She tapped her hands on the stone counter, squinting and smiling a thin-lipped expression, "is that it then? You're a humble man on a long voyage, a desperate fool hoping to buy something from this village that no other great nation can provide? I wonder what that may be."

Sasuke didn't twitch, phantom lessons in expression and tells had cultured his skills without active training. A blessing and a curse. "I mean no harm, I am a simple traveller."

"Maybe you are," she said gruffly, "and I will not turn you away. This village doesn't barter in coins and luxuries, you'd best remember that."

Sasuke bowed his head respectfully, following her broad frame and firm steps across the stone towards one of the thin alcoves carved into the stone. The door, little more than a splintering plank, separated him into a closet of a space. A raised bed- unlike other lodgings, built itself off the ground with thick braided ropes and a meshwork of wool. Suspended little more than a hands width from the floor, it would prevent moisture from seeping through the ground and chilling him.

"This is where you stay," the owner said, patting the carved dark walls with a pointed look. "There is oil in the lantern, this is all you have. There are not many travellers so you will have this room until you leave. You will exchange something for your stay."

There was no upkeep on her and for her hospitality. No meals would be provided or fire would warm his room. She would do nothing for his comfort, which meant she lost nothing for his occupancy.

"A gift of equal value," Sasuke reflected, knowing the ancient Uchiha values better than any idea of coin or finance. The owner's face shifted slightly, thawing from frigid formalities into blatant weariness.

"You know that then," she said with approval, "I do not have feed for your ass outside. You may use the back pasture, there are no others here for it to squabble with."

Sasuke bowed his head politely, waiting as she stormed out with quiet grumbles. The people in Iwa were sturdy like the rock, but the Howling Wolf Village persisted despite fog and flood. They were hardy, built to endure and carried it in their broad bones and square jaws.

Bakashi shook himself like a dog once unbound by a leather harness. Sweat marks dampened the ass' fur into black tattoos across his face and neck. His fur, thick and shag came out in shedding tufts along his back where his cargo for months wore down from friction.

Sasuke pat it's flank openly, avoiding the animal's irritated nip. Bakashi had yet to catch Sasuke's hair- tied back with a strip of cord now that it touched the back of his shoulders, but the animal certainly tried.

Bakashi chuffed, wandering off over roughened growth and heather spotted corral. The black stone fencing reached the mule's chest but would suffice to keep him confined. Bakashi investigated a yellow flower with large leaves growing from a fissure in the ground.

Sasuke took the bags off, hauling them across his shoulders with the smallest use of chakra. The bags, filled with month's worth of travelling goods and camping equipment, swayed gently near his ribs and hips. The lodge-owner didn't look at him or complain when he deposited the bags outside his door to unpack. Both bags wouldn't fit inside the small cranny of a room.

His bedroll unfurled across the lattice mesh of a bed, blankets and fur covering it fully. Food remained packed but placed inside his room. Shinobi supplies, hidden and some sealed, slid under his bed for safekeeping. The more pressing possessions stayed on his body, disguised under the ever-worn ANBU mesh and jacket. Fur cloak over that, boots instead of sandals. He looked like a highland local, travelling the mountains and valleys in search of something he didn't know.

The people here exchanged goods instead of money, a culture based on mutual struggles instead of a caste system. In some ways, it felt more familiar and nostalgic than that of Konohagakure. A gift for a gift, an object exchanged for something of equal value.

Sasuke understood it, the logic of interaction made sense in a rational way that other cities sometimes failed to do. The homes here were made by hands and labour, made with time and care and in return, the people ensured their upkeep.

Bakashi would rest, he had travelled long and had begun to thin along his back and sides. The winter chill required the animal to consume its ample fat created from the lush vegetation from the Land of Grass. The long walk and strenuous mountain climb had worn his spine down, bruising the vertebrae and leaving the animal slightly gaunt. It had done well to get here, halfway across the world.

Sasuke withdrew a bow, something carved and purchased in the weapons shop that felt like a millennia ago in Grass. The last use left Muntjac strung by their legs hanging from Bakashi's sides. The wood warped slightly over time, the arrows were nearly all accounted for.

'Something of equal value,' Sasuke knew, which meant food or fur which gave the village their strength to survive the winter. He strung the bow across his back, it's bamboo placer kept the drawstring in prime condition. It's a harness, little more than an old stiff vine and rope snagged strangely on the fur cloak. The arrows he strapped to his thigh, unsure how to manage both bow and quiver on his back.

"Are there animals I should watch?" Sasuke asked the lodge-owner, bowing his head once more in respect. The woman paused, looking at him with the slightest lift of her eyebrows.

"...yes," she confessed with more casualness than before. Sasuke had earned her honesty through his careful actions and respect for their customs. "There are wild cats, let them be. The sheep with paint belong to shepherds in this village, do not kill or cull any property of another."

A fair request, one that would only increase tensions if Sasuke accidentally preemptively murdered their food supply. "And your culture?"

Her eyebrows lifted further, looking well and truly impressed. "The Rōen sleeps, but its marks remain. Do not kill on sacred ground or any creature on the mountains."

Reasonable request, just as Sasuke would be disgusted if anyone killed a creature in sight of Tsukuyomi's shrine.

The outdoor wind felt wet and cold. Already, Sasuke felt his hair grow damp and wet with the grey clouds. He hadn't seen Amaterasu's glowing eye ever since ascending the mountains of Earth.

"Traveller-san!" a woman called, a woollen shawl flapping about her knobbly elbows. Sasuke had rarely seen a woman grow so old, with exception to the clan elders. He looked at her with a blank face, standing still near the road curb as she hobbled to him.

"You are going out to the moor?" She asked, wrinkling her nose and thin lips. "Will you bring me the bones along the rocks?"

Sasuke didn't twitch, but he took a moment to process her absurd request. "The...bones?"

"Yes the bones!" she said, snapping a tad irritably. "The bones of the feet! The sheep that trip and break their legs die on the moor, I want the bones of their feet!"

Much less macabre and morbid than Sasuke's original impression. At first, he presumed the land a bloody battlefield filled with corpses. Idiotic sheep were much less daunting. "The...feet?"

"Yes!" she said, brightening at his reluctant agreement. "The square bones, in their foot near the ankle. They are square and light, but hard to find."

Bewildered, but recognizing that an old woman in the village held power, and favour would warrant a favour- Sasuke sighed silently and bowed his head subtly. "I will...look for feet for you, Korō-san."

She laughed a breathy wheeze, smacking a weathered hand against her woollen shawl. "Korō-san! Bah, I am old, but not known as an elder! Call me Ekisha-san, hunter."

Ekisha-san, an augur, a soothsayer. An elder believed to interpret the birds and predict natural disasters before they came. Sasuke knew the Uchiha once had them, those that interpreted the word of Amaterasu or Susanoo. They faded when knowledge of agriculture and blight became known, the words of diviners not as needed when the shifting of the seasons became common.

Sasuke nodded once more, murmuring her title respectfully. She looked delighted, old and leathery like worn gloves. Sasuke wondered what other strange cultural concepts existed in this village.

Sasuke departed and walked on lichen and rock beyond the outskirts of the village. A world of uneven ground, of treeless hills and dew-damp violets. Mist-filled hollows and waterlogged cracks where pale yellowed femurs protruded like spears thrust into the earth. The grey endless sky gave hazy light that drew the silhouetted dark shape of horizon hills. Rolling on for miles, emerald green and blue tone flora scratched the ground as far as the Sharingan could see. The honey-heather and raspy blackcurrants embroidered themselves into the slate and rock. Peat bubbled a fetid stench from bog burrows.

Somehow, the air here could be sold to villages for all the heirlooms in their vaults. Sasuke felt a strange yearning, the whimsical sight of lace-petal flowers and the freedom of an endless land carpeted by greenery. He looked at it, and found understanding why a diviner was still used, the land itself retained a romance of melancholy and ancient timeless energy, the demand for poetry and song and the worship of the gods.

It felt light, not that of fire or sun but an open relief of breath and air. Sasuke shivered, cold and damp but felt unburdened and lonely on the rocks.

The greatest strength of the Howling Wolf Village was not it's medicine, but the otherworldly lure of its land. The sky and green and the yellow bones protruding from their broken ankles and bog-trapped death. Sasuke understood why someone wanted the feet of perished sheep. He gathered one, pulling apart rotten sinew to harvest the square knob in the core of its heel.

'This place is beautiful,' Sasuke thought to himself, simultaneously knowing, 'I should not be here.'

How long would he stay before the urge to leave abandoned him? How long until the endless moor drug him from the stone buildings of the village until the bog and peat sucked his feet under and drowned him below the ground?

Sasuke shook his thoughts free, unfastening his bow and laying it across his arm. It had been a while since he last used it; Itachi taught him as a child how to shoot and brought him once on a mission to cull a feral boar. The Sharingan made sure Sasuke had not forgotten how to hunt, but the memories felt hurried and awkward through his body.

Sasuke walked for hours, using his natural agility to leap from rock to rock and avoid the pits. The bugs of the moor found his chakra revolting, avoiding his skin or falling off seizing in death. Twice Sasuke spotted large birds circling overhead, further investigation left him hauling rotten sheep carcasses from water and hacking open their feet to pluck out their bones. The buzzards watched, swooping down to eat on the rancid meat once Sasuke left the carcass untouched.

He walked closer to the hillsides, marked with shifted boulders larger than a wooden cart. Flowers and shrubbery dotted the incline, scraggly with wooden brambles.

The Sharingan spotted movement along the outcropping. Sasuke held his bow and drew an arrow before his brain processed what his eyes saw.

An orange animal looked at him with reddish-golden eyes. It stood a fair distance, frozen in place. Eyes affixed to Sasuke's own, the animal made no noise.

Sasuke had never seen a fox outside that of the infamous Kyuubi. He thought they would be larger, more threatening. The animal was no more than a well-fed cat, with black paws and a tufted golden tail. It looked at him intelligently, a vole pinched between its small fangs.

A fox held value, a luxury to the Howling Wolf Village. Sasuke held his arrow motionlessly, knowing its potential, and thought, 'I wonder how Naruto is doing.'

It was intelligent, a glimmer of knowledge in its golden eyes. Its nose wrinkled slightly, tail twitching in a quiet question. Sasuke swallowed thickly and lowered the bow.

The animal watched him carefully, skirting around carefully with silent black feet. It ran about with a smug pride to it, a silent impression is withheld snickers and loud laughter.

'See! See! Look what I got! I bet that no-good stupid rat thing never knew I was coming! See! Look at me, Teme!'

The fox glanced at Sasuke once more, something transferring across its knowing eyes before it ran off with its vole.

Something of equal value, a life for a life. Sasuke felt the melancholy of the bog pull on him, beckoning with its cruel bubbling pits of tar. His hand shook around his bow, arrow falling and rattling on the lichen-covered rock.

On the crest of the hill emerged several silhouettes, foxlike. One stood near statue still while the other tumbled about, pulling each other over and over in a choreographed dance of tails and tongue. When the foremost fox, with the vole in its teeth, deposited its prize on the ground, the playful kits ceased their banter and sniffed the carcass curiously. The leader yipped loudly, the kits drawn to respond with shrill barking that filled the stale air with their singing. Their hymn, a single song with no true words, just a noise of pure joy.

Sasuke closed his eyes and felt incredibly small.

The butcher accepted Sasuke's offering, three pine marten with arrows through their small skulls, shattering the bone on impact. The rest of the pelt was perfectly preserved, no holes or tears from rocks or brambles.

The butcher stroked his impressive beard, considering the three animals with a frown. "They're tricky bastards, I'm impressed you found them."

Sasuke shrugged under the fur cloak, much less impressive or soft than the small weasels. "I'm good at hunting."

"I'll bet," the man said dryly, "that must be why you're wearing cattle hide instead of a bear or moose."

Sasuke's expression didn't shift. The butcher scoffed, grabbing a small knife with the smallest of warps, sharpened so many times its original blade edge had eroded into a wobbling line.

He skinned and gutted the animals, careful to remove the fatty tissue from the underside of the pelt. The wrists and ankles were snapped, impossible to tear free from the skin entirely. The carcass, little more than a small rabbit, lay weirdly red and exposed on the table.

"I've never had Marten meat," the butcher confessed off hand, looking a bit perplexed with what to do with it. "What do you do with it?"

"I'm going to speak with the Apothocary," Sasuke said quietly, "would they have use for it?"

The butcher looked a little surprised before a knowing frown warped his face. "Ah, sick one, eh? Shinobi come through a tad often, I doubt he'll have what you need. Feel free to take your...weasel meat. What do you want for the skins? Dried foods? Traps?"

Sasuke shook his head, bundling the strange skinless bodies together and looping cord around their exposed ribcages to combine them into macabre firewood. "I'm planning to leave once I get the supplies I need."

"The Kodon run the medical supplies," the butcher warned. He drew out a box from below the stone shelf, opening the lid and pulling out sealed leather and wool pouches presumably filled with roots and tubers. "They're...they were once a shinobi clan. If they don't have anything, they may make you run in the moor to find it."

"Then I'll do that," Sasuke agreed. The butcher barked a quiet laugh, looking well and truly surprised by the devotion.

"Fine by me," the butcher agreed, sorting to the side a small collection of various foodstuffs. Salted meat obviously, but parcels of dried fruits that looked like chips. Dark tubers and stunted misshapen turnips.

"Near the medical home," the butcher instructed with one thumb over his shoulder. "They've got our stores of grain. Take a loaf before you go, one of the rock-hard ones. Won't mould easy, but will soften in a fire."

"Thank you," Sasuke nodded, accepting his reward for a luxury animal pelt. He'd eat the Marten, gnaw on its spindly little ribs and flank before dare touching the preserved foods. He'd likely get sick.

He found the medical home at the far end of the village, marked by an impressive garden filled with pungent weedy looking roots. The door inside was a heavy drape, woven out of itchy fibres that somehow blocked the light.

The man standing there looked shinobi, or with a unique bloodline that warranted his odd appearance. Not stocky like the other inhabitants of the village, the man was tall and lanky with dark eyes and yellowing skin. Jaundiced, yet impossibly so if this man was the maker of the famous medicine cure.

"Traveller-san," the man greeted, voice breezy and disarming. Clearly clan bloodline, too impossibly different to be anything else. "I heard about your presence. We only receive merchants in the spring when the floods have passed, not this season."

"I'm a desperate man, I have no need to abide safe passage."

"That you must be," the man agreed with a wide eerie smile. "To come so far- that bow is from the Land of Grass. What can the simple clan of Kodon provide for such a journeyman?"

'Patronizing,' Sasuke thought annoyed. He refused to twitch.

"I seek the medicine the village is known for.":

"That the Kodon is known for," the man corrected sharply. "Not the village."

Sasuke sensed the unsteady ground. He bit his tongue and swept himself into an ornate dramatic bow, one which apparently soothed the arrogant shinobi who thought himself better.

"My apologies, Kodon-san," Sasuke muttered, "I am but a traveller. I do not know what I speak."

"Clearly," the man muttered. He observed Sasuke with sharp eyes before he sighed and wilted. "Well, get up then. What do you want, what sickness does your friend or sibling or whatever have?"

Sasuke slowly rightened himself, following with loud footsteps as the man shuffled to the wall where many ceramic and glass jars and bottles decorated the alcove. Some held strange objects, the eyes of birds and tails of rodents.

"You've come far enough that it would be rude to turn you away outright," the man explained bitterly, plucking a paper package secured with twine from a pile. "Here, headache? Fever? Let me guess, horrible flu has come to your village and you seek the only miracle cure."

Sasuke counted seconds calmly in his head if only to prevent reacting to the rudeness. "No, Kodon-san. The sickness is not one known."

"Then it's likely pneumonia," the man said bored. "It's always pneumonia to you civilians."

'Don't attack the healer,' Sasuke thought to himself quickly, 'Do not attack the healer.'

"I come asking for Kotarō."

"Doesn't everyone?" the man said rhetorically, rubbing his face exhausted. "I don't have the herb you so desperately need. It's out in the moor and I'm far too busy-."

"Then I will get it," Sasuke said immediately.

The man paused, then faced Sasuke directly. He surveyed his body, eyes lingering on the cloak and bag of butcher's meat. The man's mouth curled into slight disgust before he sighed dramatically. "Fine, go trip into a bog. I need new herbs anyways, tormentil and bog myrtle. You do know the difference between one plant and the next, right?"

'Do not attack the healer,' Sasuke repeated twice before he said, "yes, Kodon-san."

"Wonderful," the man deadpanned flatly. "I need a flower that grows on the hills around the Eastern embankment. Purple flowers, purple. Not indigo or blue. Get me those flowers, the entire flower, and bring it back."

Sasuke breathed twice and bowed respectfully. The man tilted his head slightly, looking at Sasuke with a different expression.

"And don't fail," the man warned with a tad of caution. "The cliffs are dangerous. The flower is called Vetch, it grows above the water in dry areas. They are small, do not break them."

Sasuke had never heard of a flower called Vetch.

"Yes, Kodon-san," Sasuke said obediently, wishing more than anything he could draw Kusanagi and ram it right into the asshole's pancreas.

"I'll be damned," the shinobi said, looking at the leather bag overfilled with various herbs and plants. Those he hadn't asked for, but Sasuke recalled from his shelf of stored medicines.

Finding a supposedly rare herb may be difficult for a civilian. Sasuke had a fully formed Sharingan, and enough chakra to spare a few clones to scour the landscape. He didn't bother with fully used shadow clones, instead, a simple basic form would work to climb the rocks and harvest the annoying little flowers.

He filled a bag with heather and sage, dropping in the potent tubers that could cure intestinal worms or dye fabric red. He was tired of obeying arrogant idiots for the simple courtesy of being polite.

He made it, he had reached the mountain and found the man who could provide the medicine he needed. At this point, after weeks and months of pain and suffering, he was not going to obey the demands of lesser nin.

"I found it," Sasuke deadpanned flatly. "Now, I want the Kotarō."

"Don't rush me," the man said with an ugly look. He stroked the flowers, seeming in awe with the plenty provided. "Damn, I haven't had a store like this in years… "

"The Kotarō," Sasuke repeated a tad sharper, " now."

The man looked at him with a scowl, grabbing a nearby bowl and mortar to slam both onto the counter with a loud noise. The man grabbed a handful of flowers half heartedly, chucked them into the bowl and ground them sloppily. A crackle of chakra, foreign and bitter, and the flowers wilted into a disturbing pale pink.

"Here," the man grunted, sliding the bowl over with a scowl, "now because you've been rude, get out."

'Do not kill the shinobi,' Sasuke thought to himself. He inhaled and held his breath, releasing it slowly.

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha," he said flatly with an apathetic distaste he could muster, "heir of the Uchiha Clan. I have come here politely in honour of your noble clan. This treatment invokes my right as Clan to challenge this village for your dishonour."

The man jolted, looking well and truly baffled. He blinked quickly, struggling to think. Sasuke looked at him and activated the Sharingan, turning the world a spiral hue that revealed the weak pathetic chakra of the 'medicine' the man made.

"Oh Kami," the man said. He paled so sharply his jaundiced skin turned to cream. "You- I...I beg forgiveness, in the name of my Clan for this ah- transgression on your request-."

"I have been polite in respect to your land and people," Sasuke said sharply. "I find my patience has broken under your disregard for my aid."

"I- yes," the man said quickly. He stole glances as Sasuke's eyes, bewildered and beguiled by the unique shimmer of the Sharingan. Sasuke watched him, blinking sporadically as the man's chakra blurred and gathered into a billowing smoke, drifting to the herbs and embedding them with true properties.

"What- what level of strength do you request, Heir of the Uchiha?" the man stumbled, a slight tremor to his hand. "Kotarō manifests in ah, three varieties for purpose-."

"All of them," Sasuke said. "I want everything you have."

The man swallowed thickly, nodding quickly and setting to work. He placed different herbs and flowers into the mixture, combining them and pressing them through strange chakra forms before the room flowered with the smell of juniper berries. Sasuke doubted the man had ever made such a high quantity in one go.

Sasuke watched with half lid crimson eyes as the man scrambled to pack and store vast amounts of medicine and herbs. The flowers Sasuke harvested were mashed and shoved into waxed leather bags and porcelain containers with stiff lids. Vials filled with a purple paste of mashed heather and marigold leaves somehow intended to fight off infections.

Perhaps there were medicinal or antibacterial properties in the herbs and tinctures, yet it all felt painfully primitive. Sasuke watched the man, scrambling to seal jars of strange powdery Kotarō marked with black ink detailing the potency of its strain.

"The- the three strains are marked-," the man said, tapping the jars with the slightest of trembles.

"I know how to read," Sasuke said, basking in the glee that came with finally being able to say that.

The man looked horrified, nodding quickly with eyes affixed to the Sharingan. Clearly this clansmen was no shinobi, just an arrogant man who thought too highly of himself. Cowered in the presence of actual power, it would be an invaluable lesson.

Sasuke pulled the assortment towards him, more exotic and extensive than a medical kit. He sorted it into piles, securing the less breakable sacks together with bits of twine.

"Is- will that be all, Uchiha-san?" the man asked nervously. Clearly anxious, he kept flickering his eyes to the door in hopes of someone else arriving.

"No," Sasuke said bluntly with a blank face. "When you go out, what do you take with?"

The man spluttered, looking well and truly baffled. "Me? I- I have no horse or-."

Sasuke clicked his tongue with a scowl. The man swallowed visibly.

"Forget it," Sasuke said. He paused, thinking better of it with a small tilt of his head. He gathered his chakra, letting it swirl with soothing sparks, and pressed it behind his Sharingan.

The man's expression slackened, glazing under the unique genjutsu that Uchiha bloodline wielded.

"I wasn't here," Sasuke said and pressed the words through a whispering command, 'I was never here.'

The man stared blankly as Sasuke gathered his things, securing the pouches to his leg and the ANBU clothing below the fur. He outgrew Itachi's uniform, the back cut away and hemmed carefully over boring nights and campfire smoke. It reminded Sasuke distantly of the low cut kimono dresses that his mother scoffed at. The deep neckline with a plunging lack of cloth behind the billowing sleeves with only an Obi to secure it to a woman's body.

Itachi would throw a fit to see him wearing such a suggestive thing, especially since it was his. Then again, Sasuke couldn't care less what his brother thought.

Back at the lodge, he used the hearth and its light for assembling his pack into final shape. Adjusting items from his saddlebags and taking the time to oil the straps. The lodge-owner, a woman he still did not know the name of, barely watched him as he pulled free his bow and took a survey of his remaining arrows. He was low on small-point arrows, something to replenish in the next civilian village. He could always use Kunai through the Land of Earth, there were no scouts to detect his throws or the killing blow to birds and fowl.

"You leaving?" the lodge-owner asked him, crossing her arms while holding a broom. "You stayed a bit then, heard you brought in pine-marten though spirits know how you shot one."

Sasuke didn't look at her. He rolled his spare clothing- Shisui's clothing, and placed it over his shinobi sandals. The jars of Kotarō were placed inside and wrapped securely with his spare trousers. Bound with twine, he made sure that even if all saddlebags were lost, he'd still carry his travel bag. The bulkier objects were sealed in the privacy of his room, shuriken and senbon he rarely used but still could. Sealing only lessened the physical size, not the weight of all objects combined.

The lodge-owner scoffed, walking out from behind her store with a heavy felted pile of grey wool. She dropped it on the ground with a scowl, looking at Sasuke expectantly.

"Saw your Ass waddlin' in," she said in lieu of an explanation. "Haven't you ever heard of a saddle pad?"

Sasuke hadn't, but the blanket slumped onto the ground looked like something disgusting enough for that frustrating animal. "...Thanks."

She scoffed with a slight glint in her eye, tapping her fingers against the bulge of her bicep. "I saw your arrows. You have big-point, which means you've shot something decent instead of a boney little shit."

Sasuke had shot animals before, he had taken down deer and boar with tusks as long as swords. He tilted his head slightly, a gesture that conveyed his agreement. Her eyes shifted a little, scanning across his saddlebags and the worn leather.

"You're in fine health," she said openly. "People here only for medicine or to die. You came for medicine then, but you look lean like a bloody stallion."

Sasuke hadn't ever heard the term 'bloody' be used as vulgarity, but it clearly fit with her enunciation. She clicked her tongue, tapping her fingers again. "You bring me somethin' big enough to last me 'till next season, then I'll trade those ratty bags for a pannier."

She paused then explained with a tired level of exhaustion, "no saddle, all bags. That mule of yours hauls and you're too fine to be riding it."

'It was to carry me when Orochimaru filled my blood with venom," Sasuke thought a tad bitterly. 'When Kabuto drilled my legs with scalpels and filled it with something else.'

He hadn't had those dreams in a long time. His nightmares were tinted with a wave of cold dark anger, a level of rage that felt beyond him and inevitable. The Curse of the Uchiha, Shisui told him scathingly with a morbid twist of humour. Shisui braided his hair in small deft strands, tangling short bits together in stunted five-strand braids more elaborate than knit tapestries. He always talked more honestly when his hands fiddled with something- bits of straw or grass or fur dropped from the Uchiha exotic cats they were famed for having.

Shisui liked to fiddle with things when he was anxious, twirling and rolling the long strands of cat fur or bird feathers before braiding them intricately better than leather straps. Sasuke used to think that Shisui could have been a wonderful spinner or shepherd.

Sasuke sighed quietly, trying to dispel the aching nostalgia that sometimes pressed heavily when he least expected it. "...I want to see the bags."

"Fair thought," she agreed easily, leaving him here to fetch the bags. When she returned, hauling heavy stacks of broad stitched cattle leather and willow frame, Sasuke set aside his now empty saddlebags to compare.

The saddle would be a loss, but not a dangerous one. He would always be capable of walking and had done so for quite a while. The pannier was large, enough to carry near double his supplies if filled tactfully.

"It'll last ya'," she said pointedly. The unstable footing of the bog led to greater use of a saddle, a broken ankle could kill a man even in a village with healing skills. "Just some meat for it."

Sasuke could manage felling a large animal, especially one closer to the mountains. The bog had nothing large except the spare deer and nimble sheep that managed to avoid the peat and sinkholes. The mountain held goats and other horned animals, peering down from the slate and shale faces.

"Fine," Sasuke agreed.

The deer on the mountains were larger than in the Land of Fire. They had a thick blanket of fur, framing their throat in heavy tufts with stocky joints and shoulders.

Bakashi grunted under the weight of the deer, looking ready to bite Sasuke for the injustice. The dear flopped about, it's head pierced clean with one arrow. Bakashi shrieked something angrily, jolting about so that the dear nearly slid from his back.

Sasuke smacked the animal gently, guiding him down the slight incline. The deer had been simple to fell, easy to gut and leave its organs on the ground. It bled annoyingly all over the soil, painting Bakashi black.

The lodge-owner took one look at the deer before she gave him the different bags. No question of how or where he caught the animal, instead she accepted it and gave in return. A simple society that Sasuke found easy and familiar.

Bakashi's bags were loaded, extra space filled with thin canvas and simple pleasures. Three loaves of bread slipped inside the left bag, the baker and grain owner giving him a shy bashful smile and a flush on her cheeks.

The elder of the village, the soothsayer with arthritic hands accepted his collection of pedal bones. She traced the white and yellow knobs adoringly, pinching away the remnants of tendon and sinew from where they connected.

"These are nice," she said, patting Bakashi with a wobbling hand. "Very nice, the spirits will speak much clearer now."

Sasuke bit his tongue and held silent. She beamed, reaching into her pocket to pull out a gnarled sigil, carved into broken wood.

"That will keep the spirits away on your long walk, child," she said knowingly. Reaching out to pat his cheek with one of her hands. Sasuke's hand fisted Bakashi's rope tighter, face remaining flat.

"You best pray on the road," she warned with grave caution. "The mountains are howling in anger. I fear we must sacrifice a goat to appease the winds."

Sasuke thought that the village was ridiculously backwards.

The mountains didn't snow, but the weather felt similar to such temperature. Sasuke's face burned in the exposed air, Bakashi's breath clogged with steam and slowly, the village vanished behind.

The trek through the valley had been faster than Sasuke remembered, driven by renewed energy and determination. He had medicine, the best medicine in the world as well as samples of medical cures. Amaterasu woke with gentle pressure, peering about inquisitive as slumber left its voice silent.

"I've been on the road for a while," Sasuke explained out loud. Bakashi ignored him, trudging along loudly. "I have everything we need."

Amaterasu drifted about, slowly merging its chakra with Sasuke's. The molten warmth immediately burned away any sensation of cold, rising gently and leaving Sasuke lazy with comfort.

You've done well, Amaterasu agreed. I have gathered all my chakra.

"Enough for what?" Sasuke asked quietly.

Survival, Amaterasu explained. We will travel to Amegakure?

"Yes," Sasuke agreed openly. It would be a long walk, but not worse than his original climb into the mountains. Sasuke no longer bled, Amaterasu gathered its chakra. Sasuke would face the mountains with chakra guided steps and heightened awareness of the Sharingan.

He walked for four days, chakra fuelling his muscles and bracing his bones from blisters. Bakashi endured as his species was made to do, walking from dawn to dusk and eating the bundled grain and grass stored in the side bag.

The high mountains of Earth began to subside, sloping gently downwards along the floodplains now filled with flowers and fertile prairies. Only temporary, because the roiling storm clouds that haunted the land of Rain were visible on the distant horizon. Sasuke would walk until the rain fell over him.

The Land of Birds, directly between him and the Land of Rain, was not a tropical oasis like that of Grass. Instead, it bloomed an open flatland of bison and songbirds, swift sparrows and hawks circled far above in the sky. Bakashi walked easier, trotting constantly through high waisted grass now that they left the cold of the mountains. The fur cloak and travelling boots were exchanged for sandals and the thin travelling cloak that still smelled of Grass. Bakashi cried out a hellish noise, startling a grazing collection of antelope that bounded away in large jumping strides. The pans and skillet strapped to his flank banged ominously, rattling a loud song that triggered an obnoxious crow to scream. Bakashi shed fur like an Izunuka ninken, dropping hefty clumps that swift cowbirds stole to line their nests. The air tasted sweet with honeysuckle and billowing thistle, blooming purple on the rippling sea of flowering grass.

The heat too increased, a pleasant balm against the frigid chill of the Northern mountains. The land of Birds would be perfect for cultivation, prime with fertile soil below the thick roots of meadow grass. The horizon, brimming with constant rain and dangerous clouds marked the border of Ame where the skies barely parted and the dirt ran thick with mud.

One night when Sasuke watched the stars, he asked aloud to no person, "what do you think will happen?"

Amaterasu rumbled low, its voice had shifted from draconic snarling to something almost human. I don't know.

"Did you never think of the future?" Sasuke asked flatly, Sharingan recording the movement of the celestial shift of the skies above. They were familiar to the nights in the Howling Wolf Village, where different constellations Sasuke had never seen twirled across the poles. The journeymen there named them after animals- the sable, the osprey, the puffin, the red deer.

The land of Birds, just below the cliffs of Earth fringed the cusp of perceiving the dance of ozone and light. Sasuke searched for it with his Sharingan, recalling the phantom trails of fluorescent purple and green slithering through the ozone.

Amaterasu breathed quietly and pondered the thought. I never had the opportunity to see beyond the present.

"Is this your opportunity then?" Sasuke asked, "is this your punishment or mine?"

There were bats in the Land of Grass, small nimble animals that moved in blind choreographed performances to snatch the moths and meadow insects. There were no cicadas crying out their 7-year serenade, only crickets chirping and crooning to the night.

Amaterasu said, sounding humbled and tired, I don't know.

Sasuke had never bothered with extensive training or research into sealing scrolls. Fuuinjutsu never spoke of raw power or use- he knew a handful of shinobi who specialized in the usage of sealing scrolls and those that did never impressed him.

Sealing scrolls were tools for transporting cargo, little more than sophisticated pouches. At the academy sealing scrolls or tags were avoided in favour of kunai practice and simple henge. Drawing a seal could lead to dangerous or lethal accidents.

Amaterasu told him the art of sealing, shared across distant memories and engraved through the Sharingan. Sasuke practiced the movements with a stick in the snow, checking his accuracy only after he left his mark. Constructing exploding tags was second nature, something Kakashi-sensei beat brutally into them while travelling to the Land of Waves. The most elaborate seal Sasuke ever tried had been a simple smoke seal, made to obscure his shape.

Then Amaterasu placed thoughts in his mind and taught Sasuke to place senbon to his skin, dotting with sealing chakra ink along the soft skin of his left forearm. Repeatedly until the limb when numb then hot with pain. He made a summoning seal, still present along his left wrist.

Beyond that, Sasuke truthfully hadn't considered the uses. Now he knew better, able to draw elaborate tags to store precious cargo that may spoil. Hide away the fresh meat and plants that may shrivel and rot, keep it out of the sun's touch for a different day.

Seals were dangerous, capable of extraordinary feats that even Amaterasu eyed with hesitation.

There are ways around them, the dragon told him. The sun chewed at the dew of the meadow, evaporating the little droplets that grasshoppers drank from each morning. Seals may...damage me.

"I wasn't aware anything could," Sasuke commented dryly. Bakashi frolicked, determined to slaughter one cheerful butterfly near a tangle of blackberries.

In both mindscapes of the bijuu, I have been seen clearly. Amaterasu explained reluctantly yet obliging. You have seen the work of seals in both cases.

"The restraints on the bijuu," Sasuke confirmed. He busied his hands with the buttercups nearest him, plucking each petal from the flower before removing the nub with a flick of his thumb. "You think you can be restrained as well?"

It is possible, Amaterasu said. It would be catastrophic.

To shackle Amaterasu...would limit the voice of the creature. Would it silence the loud screaming he heard in his dreams? The phantom pains and ache of growing bones, now settling in his mature body? Would it close the eye on his neck and leave Sasuke quiet in mind for the first time in more than a year?

"Yeah," Sasuke confirmed genuinely with the smallest twists of withheld terror, "that would...be horrible."

In time we will merge. You will gain my abilities and I will fade.

"You're already fading," Sasuke pointed out. He decapitated a buttercup, watching its mutilated head drift to the ground. "It's because I'm experiencing what you have to offer, isn't it?"

A finite amount. One that will ultimately run dry.

Amaterasu wouldn't die- it would fade. There was no such way to ever assign the concept of death to the dragon. Every morning Sasuke felt himself understand and know more than the night before. Every step was driven by a shared experience of something else. Amaterasu would not die, it would fade because its essence and gift would one day be what Sasuke awoke to.

"When will I get your eye?" Sasuke asked openly. "The one on my neck. I know I'll get it."

You will, Amaterasu didn't deny. The dragon never lied to him. It will...be a while yet.

How much longer? Sasuke left Konohagakure a lifetime ago, and each day he lived twice. Had it been only a few weeks since he left Earth? Months since he entered it? Half a year since he breached the Land of Grass?

Cumulatively, it spanned over a year now. Seasons were difficult to track, time slipping distorted through waking moments. One year had been two, and Sasuke had become Sasuke and Amaterasu.

Meditate, the dragon suggested. Sasuke had no destination for the day, the sun drifted finally free of the greedy touch of the horizon. Ame blurred dark far in the distance. Sasuke folded his legs and settled on the flattest point in a sea of wildflowers. Meditate with the sun.

Years ago Amaterasu first taught him how to breathe with the sky, how each inhale nurtured a gentle flame that pulsed and pulled blood and chakra.

Kakashi watched in lethargic amusement as Sasuke ignored everything suggested to him and learned meditation he should not know- could not know. Now, the thought and action of meditation always came with the welcome memory of Kakashi-Sensei's lifted eyebrow and flat maa, that's not meditating.

Amaterasu pulsed like a fire, waning and waxing like a magma field in gravitational flux with the sun. Not Tsukuyomi and her oceans, but the pull of hot chakra through Sasuke's flesh and bones with each breath.

He breathed. Inhaling slowly and feeling the press of Chakra through his neck. Bu-dum, bu-dum, bu-dum. He exhaled, feeling the cycle of body heat and Katon along his throat.

Meditate with me, Amaterasu smouldered. Its weight settled along Sasuke's back and shoulders, intimately pressing along his chakra coils with a tense pressure of warmth. Along the pathways of his throat, they overlapped a restricted tension that felt akin to choking. The weight through his shoulders and chest left him keeling to wheeze into his lap. His right arm- his left abandoned and chill under the sweltering pressure- ached a fierce tremor like the rattling of lightning on a tree.

Meditate with me, Amaterasu repeated. Sasuke's eyes burned and the sockets behind pulsed an uncomfortable hotness that left him crying tears along healed burn marks.

It didn't hurt necessarily, not the way a physical wound or chakra depletion could. It reminded Sasuke of Naruto's face when he ate a hidden pepper thinking it to be meat. Bright red, drooling and crying with his whiskered cheeks red from the spice of it. 'Ahh! Get me some water! Sakura help me! Ahh I can't feel my nose- is it still there? Is it gone? Did that pepper melt my face- stop snickering Teme!'

Sasuke shuddered, slumping forward under the weight. Draped along his back and shoulders, along each thigh and ankle and every toe on his foot. Amaterasu engulfed him like a tailored outfit, choking him carefully without ever damaging his airways.

Breathe in with the sun, Amaterasu said with its chakra rumbling against Sasuke's vocal cords. Sasuke inhaled hurriedly, near panting under the strain. The sun beat down above him, his heart thrumming its warrior's cry in return as his chakra pulled itself through inflamed sore pathways. Amaterasu coaxed it along, painfully and blistering. Breathe out.

When Sasuke breathed, so did Amaterasu. When he shuddered, Amaterasu's presence rippled through the secondhand movements. Sasuke's left arm felt dead and foreign, a useless limb that did not belong to his body although he couldn't fathom life without it.

His back arched the weight of intangible power, settling oddly along his spine. Familiar and not, a distorted freakish anomaly of Nature Chakra and eldritch wings made of wriggling clawing fingers-.

Amaterasu thrummed a soothing power that did nothing to quell the heat. Sasuke suffered, simply put, and endured the twitching spasm of his coils and pathways protesting a change so suddenly without cause. He felt as if ropes were tied around his bones and throat, each jerking a cardinal direction with no relief.

Open your eyes, Amaterasu said. Sasuke did, the field of flowers distorted and glowing in a patchwork configuration of glowing trails. Bright impossible pigments, pastel purples hazing in the darkness with bold patterns and soft mint greens and pastel blues. Something otherworldly, a subterranean environment of exotic flora and fauna that Sasuke had never seen before-.

Amaterasu thrummed, a burning presence that left Sasuke's teeth grinding together.

Visually, everything pulsed. Fading into and out of focus sharply and dizzying. Sasuke recognized he made a noise of pain, vertigo swooping to taunt his brain into a shift in gravity. Sasuke endured, as he always did.

The flowers were warping, the hazy display of bright bioluminescence flickering impossibly to dull yellows and whites- then back to spectacular vibrant shards of stars. Repeatedly, until Sasuke blinked firmly and opened his eyes to a setting sun and the normal haze that dusk brought with it.

The flowers, utterly unremarkable wildflowers (daisies, violets, sunflowers) stood in the same orientation and location of the gemstone flora from before. The Sharingan lit them bright with hyperfocus and awareness of every deformity in the velvet petals. They were utterly unimpressive.

"What?" Sasuke croaked, his mouth dry and stiff from hours of clenching. "How…?"

He never meditates beyond an hour, certainly not for an entire day. The sun was rising when he last opened his eyes, the air was cool and crisp and his heartbeat strong with the sunrise.

Now the settling dusk revealed the ache in his body, unlike anything he knew before. A deep horrible burn like growing pains in his skin. His head throbbed, breath shuddering as he tried to fathom what surreal genjutsu he had seen.

My eyes, Amaterasu rumbled contently. Not exhausted, but strained and tired through mental devotion rather than effort. My sight.

"You see- what…?"

The other sight, Amaterasu explained horribly. The shift of pattern.

Sasuke had used the Sharingan extensively, he had grown up hearing the stories of its power and abilities. He had never heard of the different vision, of the overlapping contrast of glowing colours in a blackened night and yellow flowers turning into moonstone. "No..what was that?"

My eye, Amaterasu said once more.

Sasuke wanted to shout, to argue that such a thing was impossible because he had seen the Mangekyo and it did not give a transformation of all living things. He wanted to argue and remembered the ominous sight of a purple eye swirling forever in the dragon's skull.

Sasuke's mouth turned dry, lacking all moisture. Bakashi, sleeping peacefully a fair distance away snored gently. The bats were emerging, crickets screaming into the night.

"What is it called?" Sasuke asked hoarsely, body trembling. No human could ever wield such a power, it was too much for anyone. Sasuke had seen only a glimpse but knew it to be a forbidden apple on a tree with branches tantalizingly out of reach. "The eye."

Amaterasu rumbled, closer than ever before. The Rinnegan.

Sasuke shivered, his body felt flushed and warm which left the air cold. Bakashi snorted, adjusting in his sleep. The bats squeaked loud overhead, darting back and forth just above the tallest strands of grass and thistle. Sasuke settled from his stiff crouch into an uncoordinated droop near the side bags and makeshift firepit.

It is a blessing, Amaterasu explained quietly, from the Sage of Six Paths.

"The father of the bijuu," Sasuke realized unconsciously, "that's what you're waiting for. You're stalling until you can- can give me that."

Yes, Amaterasu said. It holds the power needed to prevent a horrible future.

Sasuke remembered it, the sight and smell of battlefield and blood. The pain of betrayal and loneliness and the overwhelming urge to give up. Sasuke looked up at the sky, darkening in the night, and slumped relieved that there was no moon in the sky.

Sasuke walked with Bakashi following faithfully. Occasionally nipping with yellowed teeth to snag and pull on Sasuke's hair. It was long now, tied back with a leather lace stolen from his fur boots. It brushed the bottom of his shoulder blades, an untamed array of spikes pulled back into a loose tail swishing with his movements.

The border of Rain marked itself with a thick scar engraved by Doton and remnants of ash. All trees were uprooted and left upturned, fire ravaging the bark and bodies until blackened stumps remained.

I have never been here, Amaterasu said. Sasuke shrugged one shoulder, tugging Bakashi's lead to haul the animal over the rock ravine that made the border.

The land of Rain smelled wet like that of its Northern neighbour. Instead of Grass's tropical climate, Ame felt cold and slimy. Mud squelched underfoot, squeezing between Sasuke's toes in his Shinobi sandals. It was overcast, not yet raining but staying dry was impossible here.

The forests were dark, the bark slick like fish skin and blackened. Bakashi jerked, dirt coating the bottom of his rounded belly and thoroughly clumping the long strands of his tail.

They walked together, quiet because the forest of trees did not speak, deeper into Ame.

Once travelling through East, Sasuke would detour south along the Southern border to skirt widely around the capital. Bloodshed followed the rains of Ame, it welcomed no persons either nin or civilian.

Sasuke made camp under the canopy of a young tree, not yet tall enough to join its kin with their tall trunks. Bakashi shuddered, spraying raindrops from its enormous ears to decorate Sasuke's face.

"Cute," Sasuke deadpanned to the animal, smacking its forehead affectionately. Bakashi scoffed, flapping his velvet lips and tried to eat the collar of Sasuke's jacket. He pushed the animal's face away, directing it to the bag filled with grain and grass which had been filled only for Bakashi's appetite.

"You're such a dumb animal," Sasuke scoffed, watching the ass try to eat the bag instead of the grain. Sasuke sniffed, fearing he would develop a cold before he broke the southern border of Rain.

His campfire crackled and spluttered on the fallen branches from the trees. It popped loud and smoked on leaf mould when Sasuke struggled to fuel it. Ame was a damp cesspool of mud and grime. There was nothing redeeming about the place.

Sasuke slept horribly, dripping water and shivering under the curious bite of a thousand insects. Chakra killed them, Amaterasu kept him warm, and still, the grey sky left Sasuke in a bleak mood. If he pushed forward, it would be a week of wandering at Bakashi's rate to skirt widely around Ame and reach Suna's border. Sometimes, Sasuke dearly despised the animal.

Sasuke succumbed and complained audibly on the third day in Ame. The green plants and ferns smouldered a pungent smoke that, although cooked meat, gave it a horrible taste. The bag of grain for Bakashi had begun to mould from constant rain although the sealed foods remained preserved. Bakashi ate some of the plant greenery, including a suspicious mushroom, which led to the animal violently heaving for a rather short day's walk.

"I hate Ame," Sasuke seethed, glowering at a frog stuck to a tree with bulbous eyes. Knowing his luck, the damn thing would end up being poisonous.

Bakashi of course snuck closer to eat the frog. Sasuke smacked away the animal's nose, scolding it with a sharp, "no!"

Bakashi snapped his teeth angrily, ears flickering about before the animal sulked.

Sasuke glared at it, the ass smelled horrendously bad with the multiple layers of mud and damp hair. "You are a repulsive individual."

"Oi! Some could say the same about you!"

Sasuke spun on his heels, senses flaring quickly to locate and target the individual in question. His eyes itched to channel chakra, but best not use the Sharingan against an unknown person.

Sasuke took once glance at the man and his ridiculous weapon before Amaterasu drooped heavily with a shared muttered, "shit."

The man frowned, eyebrows scrunching in childish disappointment. "That's it? Damn, rude little punk aint'cha?"

Sasuke's fingers twitched, Amaterasu's lack of awareness burned a bright warning in his skull. Diluted memories, distorted through a secondhand appraisal warped a name and general impression. Amaterasu struggled, attempting to recall through a filter of something else.

"Aww, and a quiet little brat," the man sulked. He held his scythe across the tops of his shoulders, wrists looped over the shaft like he was restrained in stocks. Sasuke's mouth dried as once more, he failed to think and understand anything about his enemy.

"Wow," the man said, arching both eyebrows with a thoroughly unimpressed expression, "maybe you are just a washed-up bastard."

Sasuke grabbed Bakashi's lead and held it tighter. He recognized the cloak in both dreams and waking memories. It felt forever ago and perhaps it was. His last enemy (a man he knew and never would) had been formidable, but this one he knew barely any about.

"Sorry to disappoint," he said flatly.

The man did a double-take, eyebrows scrunching so high his forehead wrinkled like Bakashi's nose. "Holy shit- holy shit. Wait, oh my god you look just like pale-and-grumpy."

Bakashi tried to pull his head away, curious with the new voice and person. Sasuke held firm, even as Bakashi made efforts to bite him in frustration.

The man stepped forward, face lighting up in genuine glee and curiosity. "Damn, you look just like him. Say something else!"

Sasuke eyed the scythe, dangerously long with three forked edges. He hadn't seen a weapon like it before, but given the Akatsuki cloak, the man could use it. Sasuke said, flat and monotonous, "something else."

The man looked overwhelmed with delight. "Oh, man. This is fantastic. Deidara-chan is going to fuckin' lose it!"

Sasuke thought this man already had lost it, considering he was shrieking about like an oversized child. Sasuke did not like the situation or the odds around him.

Bakashi wasn't prepared to move, his saddlebags were set against a tree in the highest point out of the mud. A rather pathetic fire pit made from scattered rocks and mud smouldered wetly, the rain trickled in a gentle mist that made Sasuke feel dirty.

"What's your name, baby-bastard?" the man snickered, pulling the scythe off his shoulders to twirl decoratively and nimbly along his left arm. "You seem like a cute little dumbass."

"Why is it important?" Sasuke asked flatly.

"So I can scream it to Jashin-sama when I rip out your spleen," the man said, looking very much as if Sasuke had asked a remarkably stupid question. "Although you are kinda hilarious, man, maybe I should skin your face and take it back to show off to the others."

That sounded absolutely horrible. No form of morality around- the casual idea of skinning someone's face.

"It's polite to offer your name before asking for a guest's," Sasuke said flatly.

The man stopped walking and looked entirely flabbergasted. "You- uh, alright? I'm Hidan, loyal servant to the holy Jashin-sama, god of-."

'Oh great, he's a heretic,' Sasuke thought a tad dazed. Sasuke said, a tad off-kilter but doing his best to disguise it, "a pleasure to meet you, thrall of glorious Jashin."

The man froze, jaw floundering a few times before he closed it and squinted suspiciously at Sasuke. After a few very long seconds Hidan paused and looked thoroughly miffed, "huh, I guess I am a thrall...but that sounds like I'm a dumbass...but... Jashin-sama…"

Sasuke waited a few long seconds tensely until Hidan slumped with an annoyed expression. "Ugh, you really are like that fuckin' blank-and-boring. Dammit, now I can't slaughter you because you complemented Jashin-sama so killing you would be like, blasphemy."

Hidan sighed loudly and leant on his scythe obnoxiously, one cheek squished under his scythe blade. "Guess I gotta' just follow you around, pipsqueak until ya' fuck up then I can butcher you."

'Who is this guy?' Sasuke thought, maintaining a blank face. He bowed, skin itching to keep the man out of his sights even for a second. When he rose, the man had a flush on his cheek and looked a mixture of awed and infuriated.

"You…" Hidan struggled to think of words, "...are a fuckin' douche, you know that?"

Sasuke shrugged slightly, keeping a careful eye on Bakashi. He wouldn't trust this man as far as he could throw him.

"So," Hidan said, snorting in disgust at Sasuke's camp, "you call this a...a fuckin...I don't even know what it is, it's that pathetic."

Sasuke knew that, but he didn't like a random creep throwing that information back into his face. Anyone could observe the land of Ame and recognize that the environment was a ridiculous climate. It wasn't fair to have high standards.

"Anyways," Hidan said, plopping himself happily into the mud and soiling the Akatsuki cloak he had draped around his shoulders. "You move so slow. Like, it took you days to get here. Days!"

Bakashi sneezed, coincidently right into Hidan's face. Hidan went carefully blank, his hand drifting towards his scythe.

Someone else said, "don't."

Hidan twitched and lowered his hand. Sasuke stilled, Amaterasu surging in wordless emotion and an overwhelming array of thought and feeling and-.

"Hey, black-and-bitchass," Hidan waved with one arm lazily, "come meet your weird little copy-."

Amaterasu shuddered and Sasuke followed the movement, his chest stuttering as his breathing became much tighter. How long had it been? A year? Two years? More? It felt forever and yet not any time at all. Amaterasu ached and Sasuke ached and at this point, the emotional connection was inseparable.

"I- I offer an armistice," Sasuke said with a croak in his voice, hands falling limply from Bakashi's rope to settle limply at his side. "For...a parlay- the terms agree for the… the duration of the night with further terms given tomorrow."

Hidan's jaw dropped slightly, finger shifting to point between the two with a confused expression. "Wait, why are you now all chatty-."

"I am in accord to those terms," Itachi said. He reached into his cloak and withdrew a blade, throwing it across the distance to settle on the ground.

Sasuke's stomach fell when he recognized the markings, the carefully polished blade and the beautiful blue patina. His mother's knife- their mother's knife.

'Something of equal value,' Sasuke thought with a confusing bubble of affection. A precious heirloom, the only reminder Itachi had, somehow equated to one night of equal conversation.

Sasuke exhaled heavily and let his body drop and mud squelch around his legs. Sasuke collected the knife, sliding it under his cloak to rest against the obscured Kusanagi. Itachi emerged from the trees, eyes glowing red and expression entirely flat. He skimmed his eyes over Bakashi for a tad longer than necessary before focusing on the sad state of the fire.

"Alright," Hidan said firmly, "you two...are fuckin' weird."

Itachi said nothing, settling himself primly on the mud although no dirt adhered to his cloak. Sasuke wouldn't put it past him to flash hand signs inside the cloak to dry the ground before sitting. Itachi's arm half hung from the cloak, resting gently with the impression of being bored.

Sasuke knew that Itachi was incredibly curious.

"So," Hidan said, a ridiculous conversationalist apparently. "What's with the fuckin' horse?"

"It's a mule," Itachi corrected in a low murmur.

Hidan looked at Bakashi again. "Is that a species of very ugly horse?"

Bakashi sneezed again, Hidan looked ready to murder him. Sasuke reached out for Bakashi, Bakashi avoided him which ultimately led the ass to walk further away. Hidan glared at the animal, Bakashi glared back.

"My name is Sasuke," he greeted in a quiet apathetic voice. Hidan looked at him, thankfully leaving the animal alone now.

"He's my younger brother," Itachi said, somehow even more apathetic. Hidan's eyebrows hiked up, eyes rapidly flashing between the two.

"Okay…" Hidan said slowly, "...so this one is... not okay to kill?"

Itachi looked at him with dark red eyes. Hidan flushed angrily, fingers tapping quickly along his scythe. "I wasn't going to! He praised Jashin-sama. I can't kill him after that."

Itachi closed his eyes, appearing bored of the conversation. Hidan clearly wasn't. He leaned across the pathetic smoke pit and asked with a manic gleam in his eye, "does that mean this fucker here actually slaughtered all his family? Because you're here and I really didn't think he was the liar. I mean, Sasori is a humpback whore, but slaughtering a clan? Nah."

Itachi stiffened ever so subtly, so small that Sasuke hadn't seen it. It was Amaterasu's eye peering through his collar that watched the fine tension of his jaw.

Once, the thought and memory hurt, but now the saccharine joy of finally finding him overrode the horrors of before. Sasuke said entirely flat, "no, that's true."

Hidan blinked quickly, "really? Damn. Stone cold, how did you get out of it?"

"I didn't," Sasuke said apathetically. "He left me alive because I was too pathetic to kill."

Hidan very slowly turned his neck to look at Itachi, who still seemed bored.

"Dude," Hidan said seriously, "the fuck?"

Itachi blinked, which was his equivalent of a shrug. Sasuke felt a strange urge to laugh. The entire situation was hysterical.

"Okay...not touching that," Hidan said pointedly. "Why the hell are you crossing into Ame? From the West?"

"I was travelling," Sasuke said simply. "I'm a missing-nin."

Itachi's eyes opened in a flash, fixating on Sasuke with a narrowed intensity. "No you are not."

Sasuke lifted his chin, bristling slightly at the subtle barb. 'You aren't capable of being a missing-nin' his expression said. Sasuke said a tad viciously, "not everyone needs to murder their way into being a missing-nin."

"Uh, I did?" Hidan said, raising his hand sheepishly. "What the hell did you do then?"

"Yes, otouto, what did you do?"

Sasuke glared and said a bit too sharply, "got blessed by a god and became a messenger."

"Oh," Hidan said a tad surprised, "I did that too actually."

Itachi stared unblinkingly for a long moment. When he spoke, he said his words slowly as if that would make them seem any more rational. "You...became a messenger. For a god."

"Yes," Sasuke said equally slowly.

Itachi said, "what were you possibly thinking to run away using that as an excuse-."

"Careful, nii-san," Sasuke said with petty delight. "Don't go speaking sacrilege."

"Okay, I like him," Hidan said cheerfully. "Fuck off, Itachi. He's mine now."

Itachi closed his eyes and looked, in Sasuke's opinion, pained. Sasuke snorted under his breath, internally glowing from delight.

The rains of Ame were miserable, Sasuke was muddy and tired, Bakashi smelled like something died in the dirt legwarmers he used to call ankles, and Sasuke felt at peace.

"Can I offer you food?" Sasuke asked flatly, expecting Hidan's bright enthusiasm and Itachi's silence.

"Hell yeah," Hidan crowed delighted, "not like poison will kill me anyway. Give me what you've got."

Sasuke stored that fact away for future evaluation. Amaterasu rumbled wordlessly, watching intently as Sasuke fished around for the portion of preserved food not tainted by disgusting fern smoke. Hidan tore into the salted meet with reckless abandon, Itachi accepted his small piece with strange reverence and held it almost confused.

"Ignore him," Hidan said, swallowing a chunk of food large enough to cause choking in a normal person. "He'll warm up to you. Maybe. Or just set you on fire."

Itachi silently slid the meat into the sleeves of his cloak, likely into a hidden pocket. He closed his eyes and resumed his strange meditative sit.

"So, where are you going, mini-tachi?" Hidan asked.

"Further East," Sasuke said. "Then South along the Suna border, then East."

"To Konoha?" Hidan asked, whistling low. He ran his hands through his hair, flatting the slicked back strands further to his scalp. "Crossin' that many borders will fuck you up."

"You set off perimeter wards, seals," Itachi murmured quietly. "Along the border of the Land of Birds."

The ravine, Amaterasu realized immediately. Sasuke rolled one shoulder halfheartedly. Hidan snickered a bit, peering at Sasuke with outright fascination.

"I don't know you," Hidan cooed, sounding every bit like a fangirl. Except much larger, and much more deadly. "Jashin-sama doesn't know you, little Sluts-uke."

"I am nobody of importance," Sasuke said entirely monotone.

"Aww, no follower of a god is entirely worthless," Hidan crooned, casually touching the burning embers of the fire and searing his skin until it cooked. The smell rolled Sasuke's stomach, although the man didn't pay it any attention. "Tell me, little bastard, what did your cute little god bless you with, eh? Do you sleep in coffins? Eat fetuses?"

Sasuke twitched ever so slightly. Hidan's smile sharpened further, his eyes alighting with a manic gleam, "or did you lie to me, eh? Maybe you don't care about the old gods, maybe you were trying to... weasel your way out."

Itachi didn't move. Amaterasu told Sasuke that Itachi hadn't breathed.

Sasuke swallowed thickly and said with a measured voice, "I am blessed with terrible sight, thrall of Jashin-sama."

Hidan frowned. "But...but you aren't squinting at me."

'Is he joking?' Sasuke thought a tad unbalanced. Amaterasu said, I don't believe so.

"Beyond the physical plane," Sasuke explained after a suitable pause elapsed. "Prophetic dreams and messages."

"Ah," Hidan said, looking suspiciously at Sasuke. "Where's your marker then? All loyal followers of the old gods hold a marker-."

Sasuke quickly tugged down the side of his caller, the Mangekyo on his through swirled once clockwise before stilling. Hidan harrumphed in frustration, accepting that and quenching his bloodlust. Itachi on the other hand froze entirely and stared at the mark with a tightened jaw.

"Okay yeah," Hidan muttered sourly. "That's a god's mark. Jashin-sama says you're touched, so If I rip out your liver I'll be pissing off someone else."

"That makes things messy," Sasuke agreed, trying his best to withhold the tremor in his words. "What...gift has Jashin-sama given you?"

Itachi said a very low quiet, "Sasuke…" which he ignored pointedly.

Hidan brightened, the mania oozing from his pores. "Oh! Jashin-sama whispers to me her wanted sacrifices, and I make them beg for death and blood, and I give them pain which we share together before she takes them to her arms."

This man is insane, Amaterasu told him calmly. Sasuke entirely agreed.

"What about you?" Hidan asked, clearly fascinated. "I don't meet others like me. What does yours demand of you?"

"A pound of flesh," Sasuke said immediately. "The injuries of prophecy."

Itachi looked at him with barely withheld horror. Hidan nodded contently and chirped, "yep!"

"And...your curse?" Sasuke asked carefully.

Hidan hummed in thought, fingers dancing quickly along the shaft of his scythe. "Mmm, I don't die. A horrible thing, I can only meet Jashin-sama between sacrifices, I wish to praise Jashin forever so I must kill and kill and kill…"

Hidan's face turned serious, he looked at Sasuke expectantly.

Sasuke said a tad stressed, "I burn."

Hidan pouted, "that's it? You burn?"

Itachi jolted visibly, looking at Sasuke with a strange horrified expression. Hidan scowled at him, annoyed at the distraction. "Stop looking at us like that! Like- like you're judging us you- you non-believer."

No, Amaterasu said with slight worry.

"He believes," Sasuke confirmed quickly. "I hold the blessings of Amaterasu."

"I- yes," Itachi quickly confirmed, looking at Hidan with a quickly formed blank expression. "I worship Tsukuyomi and her divine message."

Hidan scowled darker, "bullshit. You're a fucking faker, you don't hear anything-."

"I heard the word of goddess Tsukuyomi of the moon as a child," Itachi said, entirely deadpan. "She delivered prophecy I hold dear."

'What.' Sasuke thought, thoroughly caught off guard.

What. Amaterasu said, absolutely floundering.

"...fine," Hidan growled low. "If you're fuckin' lying…"

"We are on peaceful grounds," Sasuke said immediately, "breaking it is sacrilege."

"Not to be a dick," Hidan said viciously, "but I'm positive Jashin-sama would wreck the fuck out of your gods."

Hidan settled himself comfortably, stretching into a lounge despite the tension of the fire. "You know, just saying."

Sasuke looked at Itachi, now carefully blank. Sasuke, for the first time in a long time, felt fear in Itachi's presence but not directed at the man. Rather, fear for him.

Hidan, whatever ability he had that ensured he couldn't die, was a very dangerous threat. Now, Hidan knew information that granted them peace currently, but how long could Sasuke roam freely with that information known? What could he do to the man if apparently poison couldn't kill him?

He can not die, Amaterasu said, stiltedly and tentatively. Hesitating in memories unfamiliar, flashes of a sword clean through Hidan's chest and somehow the man continued. He will not die.

'Then he needs to be incapacitated,' Sasuke thought with cold certainty. If the man would not die, then his legs would be broken so he could not walk. If he tried to kill them, then his arms would be shredded to the bone. If he tried to bite them, then Sasuke would tear his neck from his body.

It may be the only way, Amaterasu settled in agreement. Kusanagi could certainly cut the man's limbs off, decapitate him if Sasuke was fast enough. Would Itachi fight back? Would he try to combat or counter him?

The embers smouldered, Bakashi snorted then sneezed loud once again. Hidan's face shifted into something vicious, insanity collapsing and leading to something animal.

"That's it!" Hidan roared, lunging forward with his scythe spinning to tear Bakashi apart. Sasuke countered on instinct, hand finding his mother's knife and lifting it to deflect the blow.

"I'm going to murder that stupid horse!" Hidan howled, lunging forward again.

Itachi moved so swiftly, Sasuke almost missed the flash of color. He swung one arm around in a simple taijutsu move, smashing his forearm into Hidan's face and fracturing his nose in one movement. Hidan's head snapped back, blood dripping from his nostrils as he flailed in surprise, one of the scythe blades tearing Sasuke's outer cloak and another ripping through Itachi's sleeve.

"Ow!" Hidan howled, clutching his face in surprise. Blood dripped slowly, his nose bent clearly towards the right side of his face. Hidan blinked twice, processing it. Then, his expression darkened viciously. "You. Broke my nose."

Itachi's face settled into an impressive apathetic expression. Somehow, he looked disappointed."Stop rising to simple taunts."

"You broke my nose," Hidan repeated slowly, looking very calm. "I am so, so sick of you."

Itachi tensed ever so slightly. Sasuke's hand shifted to grip Kusanagi's handle and draw slowly from its sheath. Hidan didn't look upset at the sight of a sword, instead, he smiled a bloodied grin.

"Oh, yes." With a careful twist of his blade, the scythe twirled in a heart-stopping feat of control, "I'm finally going to get my revenge. Poor Deidra-chan will be heartbroken."

Itachi, still calm, drew four kunai. Hidan's expression warped and Sasuke found himself levelling Kusanagi in a practiced stance he knew from dreams.

"I'm going to gut you," Hidan promised Itachi with a wide grin, "I'm going to rip out your organs like a pig."

"Otouto, stay back," Itachi said, pleasantly calm. The kunai glittered in his hands, still, one hand stayed inside his cloak. "Hidan is dangerous."

The sun was above him, even obscured by the clouds. It was late in the evening yet- the sun still existed above the storm. Steady and warm, Sasuke grounded himself and breathed in and breathed out. Buh-dum, buh-dum.

Amaterasu settled on him, a sweltering inferno engulfing his body and blood. Sasuke said calmly, "so am I."

Itachi frowned, Hidan laughed, and blades began to fly.

Itachi's kunai lodged itself near Hidan's arm, the other three deflected skillfully from his blade. When Hidan yanked the knife free and hurled it back, Sasuke spun Kusanagi in and smacked the kunai back in Hidan's direction.

Hidan yelled, ducking the blade whilst countering Kusanagi between two of his scythes. Hidan cackled loud and free, looking entirely unhinged.

"Oh, you are fun!" Hidan cackled in delight, "maybe Jashin-sama won't mind just this once!"

Itachi's lip curled, the lines of his face deepened. He moved with further devastating accuracy, maintaining a safe distance. Sasuke knew Itachi was a capable taijutsu fighter- there was a reason he kept a distance.

Hidan twirled, cackling a loud delighted noise. He didn't care how many knives lodged themselves into his skin, or how much blood painted the mud. Bakashi screamed and ran off at some point, leaving Itachi and Sasuke scrambling to hold their own.

Something is wrong, Amaterasu rationalized. No injury was keeping the man down, even a cut femoral artery from a careful Kunai Itachi threw.

He wasn't trying to kill the man, he was trying to bleed him out. Presumably even humans who could endure injuries had a set amount of blood in them- Itachi wasn't fighting to win, he was attempting to stall the fight long enough for the man to pass out.

He's impressive, Amaterasu said simply. Itachi, somehow, had hit both femoral arteries and one radial artery without Hidan ever noticing. Sasuke in comparison was simply countering with Kusanagi the best he could.

"I am sick of you!" Hidan screamed, nearly losing his footing in the blood-made mud. The man lost his cloak somewhere, now twirling about shirtless and bloodied with a massive scythe. "I am- oh, oh I'm done playing!"

Hidan, inexplicably, lifted the scythe to his face and licked down the top blade. Sasuke staggered- driven out of confusion. "What-..."

"No!" Itachi snarled. Sasuke felt his heart jump, he had never heard such a tone before. The air burned with chakra, a once familiar sensation settling oddly under the shifting tide of genjutsu. Sasuke staggered, wincing under the sensation and presence of chakra.

Hidan gagged, contorting yet cackling a horrific deranged noise. The blood on the ground was moving, changing into a strange symmetrical circle as Hidan's skin melted black with viscerally white markings.

"Get him out of the circle," Itachi said, voice layered with something. Sasuke jolted, slamming Kusanagi overhead only to be blocked by the three-blade scythe.

"Not today!" Hidan howled, eyes sinking and resembling a human skull.

Itachi hissed a wordless noise. The chakra heavy in the air manifested, slashing forward with luminescent ominous bones of a chakra formed arm-.

Hidan cackled, spun his scythe around him in a far reaching loop. The upper two blades countered the skeletal chakra manifestation, the bottom blade plunged straight into Hidan's torso.

Immediately, Itachi made an aborted sound. Sasuke turned, Sharingan manifesting to permanently remember the exact second that Itachi's eyes widened, his cloak tore open, and blood began to gush from his body.

"Oh," Itachi said quietly, looking at his bloodied hand in surprise. He blinked quickly, inexplicably looking relieved, "I thought it was you."

"Itachi?" Sasuke said, brain not registering the sight. The strange chakra manifestation, a Susanoo, evaporated as Itachi stumbled to the ground, both hands struggling to his lower abdomen where something was falling out.

"Hah!" Hidan cheered, whooping loudly in blatant glee. "I told you I'd gut you! I told you!"

Sasuke's Sharingan whirred, quick enough to process the exact sheen of entrails and the precise quantity of blood or the waxy flexibility of internal fat pooling between Itachi's trembling fingers. Sasuke blinked, trying to process it, and felt himself grow entirely cold.

"No…" Sasuke said and thought and felt in his body. Itachi slumped, too relieved in the face of his intestines falling out. "No, no."

"Jashin-sama will be pleased with you," Hidan crooned delighted, twirling his scythe again and again. His mirror injury spilled his guts across the ritual circle, the pain didn't prevent him from moving. "I will tear open your throat-."

"No," Sasuke repeated. Amaterasu was shaking, a trembling force like gale winds and tectonic plates shifting. The dragon screamed a horrible noise, a wretched wail that made the ground shake and Sasuke's vision swim- or maybe it was Sasuke screaming.

No, no, no. The idea was impossible, too outlandish to be true. He couldn't just- just keel over and- Sasuke had come so far.

He had come too far to fail, and Sasuke screamed and dropped his sword. Hidan said something unheard in the roar of blood, but logic and Sharingan processed faster than the brain could think. The ritual circle somehow made injuries apply outside of it- a warped distorted voodoo doll with blood somehow being the anchor.

Itachi said to get Hidan out of the circle.

Itachi was dying on the ground.

"No," Sasuke whispered. Dissociative, he didn't feel like the world was happening. Everything felt so different and odd and Amaterasu was screaming.

Itachi remembered the sight from so long ago in the forests of Konoha. He remembered the sound of his little brother screaming, the instinctual moan of pain under broken bones. Itachi recalled the exact sound of Kisame's sneer and could match it to the memory of his expressions and posture.

Itachi remembered the screaming and the horrible churning pull of chakra. There was a dark feel to it, aged and deepened like alcohol locked in a cellar deep below the ground. Then, Itachi watched helplessly as a strange tug pulled in his brother's chakra coils. Back then, Sasuke screamed and burned and Kisame burned as well.

This time, through the warm blur of blood loss and a crippling pain too great to process consciously, he felt the same tug and flow. A gentle ebbing and pressing of chakra and emotions- rage and fear and crippling loneliness. Itachi wanted to smile, to comfort that it was only him dying- Sasuke would be alright.

His otouo who had grown up in his absence. Who stood tall and lean with muscles and too few scars, who had his hair pulled back like Itachi himself and a fully matured Sharingan burning in his eyes. The Mangekyo on his neck was something Itachi couldn't fathom, but when had the gods been nice to the Uchiha?

'It is alright,' Itachi wanted to say. The feel of abdominal fat and fluid distracted him, running between his fingers. Sasuke screamed a horrible noise, turning on Hidan with an expression Itachi couldn't see- but the Jashin worshiper froze and looked genuinely baffled.

"What?" the man asked, gaping for a second and spinning his scythe around again, "what are you-?"

Sasuke threw his knife, their mother's knife, at Hidan. Itachi smiled tiredly, silly otouo that will kill me, but it missed. Over Hidan's shoulder, well above the man to ever hit.

The chakra spiked and surged, not ocean waves but a hot warmth of magma tugging and pushing, and Sasuke vanished as the air rippled with power.

Sasuke reappeared in place of their mother's knife, just behind Hidan and close to touch ( impossible ) and spun around with a feral expression and an eye glowing a legendary purple ( impossible ) and clamped one hand on Hidan's shoulder and somehow the world parted in half, torn at the seams of reality and ate Hidan like that of a breaching whale.

Impossible, and it closed and Hidan was gone except for half of his scythe, melted exactly where the man had held it. Sasuke stared forward with an otherworldly crack of chakra and a glowing gaze of a single legendary eye.

"Impossible," Itachi whispered, the haze receding as reality informed him that he would not die there. He would not allow himself to die like this.

Sasuke looked at him, a foreign expression but undoubtedly silly little otouto, and Sasuke said relieved, "Nii-san."

Itachi watched Sasuke's chakra shuttered, sucked dry too quickly his coils protested raw and inflamed with the infamous signs of exhaustion- and Sasuke crumpled into the bloodied mud unconscious.

Alone, Itachi held his intestines inside a gaping wound. Sasuke unconscious from severe chakra exhaustion after an impossible feat, Hidan simply gone, and both in enemy territory where no healers would give aid.

The clouds rumbled and began to rain.

Thank you for reading!

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