"Forget about little old me," Kakashi said weakly, suppressing a hiss as his arm brushed against the cauterised wound on his side. "Go save Naruto… compared to someone past his prime like me…"
"Stop talking, you're making things unnecessarily annoying for me," Sasuke said, his brow furrowed in concentration as he stared into his sensei's exposed eye. "Do you want your head to explode, or not?"
The instant they had crash-landed in the Valley of Hell, they had been set upon by an odd midget girl.
Although Sasuke had been forced to show several openings in order to protect the badly injured Naruto and Kakashi, that woman had still managed to duel him to a standstill. Sasuke had eventually been forced to retreat due to his dwindling chakra, and Naruto had gone missing during the battle, but even so, the fact that someone had managed to force him back at all went to show that this world was still filled with crouching tigers and hidden dragons.
"…"
Sasuke redoubled his concentration, trying to root out the chakra the enemy kunoichi had injected into Kakashi's body. At the time, he had plunged his teacher into a genjutsu as a last-ditch attempt to shut down his body before she forced him to explode, and he had temporarily succeeded… but her inert chakra was still flowing through Kakashi's pathways.
"I managed to drive that chibi's chakra out of your brain," Sasuke said a few minutes later, sounding a mite tired. "The rest is up to you."
At least now, the detonation of Kakashi's blood would no longer result in instant death. As long as he cycled his chakra a few times, much as one would to dispel an illusion, he would be fine.
"As usual, you have terrible bedside manners," Kakashi grumbled. "I'd like to have a word with your sensei, give them a piece of my mind…"
Sasuke gave an amused scoff. If Kakashi was still capable of cracking jokes, then he would be fine.
"Now, where did that idiot run off to?" Sasuke muttered to himself as he emerged from the rocky overhang beneath which they had taken cover. Feeling rather hungry after expending so much chakra, he took out his emergency supply of Uchiha-style dried meat, tore off a chunk, and swallowed it. "If I were an Usuratonkachi, where would I go..."
After turning the matter over in his head a few times, Sasuke decided that he'd rather not know what it would be like to be a stupid loser, and that, anyway, he didn't need to. With a quick bite to his thumb to break skin and draw blood, he summoned his ninneko.
"Nyahallo, young master Sasuke-nyan!" said Denka as he appeared in a puff of white smoke. "Ooh, is that treat for me?"
Sasuke frowned as he tossed the cat a piece of dried meat. What kind of greeting was that? Kittens, these days…
"Remember the orange idiot's scent?" Sasuke asked. "I need you to find him for me."
Although dogs possessed a superior sense of smell compared to cats, felines were much better at identifying and isolating individual scents from a multitude than canids. The only reason dogs were favoured as tracking animals was that they weren't nearly as capricious… but luckily for Sasuke, his family was quite popular with ninneko.
"Lost your friend, eh?" said Denka sniffing at the air. "The air reeks of blood… but it's no issue, I've caught his trail— follow me, nya~"
Denka took off running on all fours with Sasuke hot on his heels, and half an hour later, the cat stopped in his tracks, sniffing at the air. Their quarry was close!
"Bastard… bastard… bastard… bastard…"
And that was Naruto's voice echoing off the valley's walls! Sasuke accelerated his pace. He could see Naruto running towards him, waving… and then he exploded into white smoke.
"A Shadow Clone…?"
Following Naruto's scent, Denka guided his master to the bank of the crimson stream flowing along the valley floor.
"Hmm…" Denka said, sniffing at the ground. "Naruto-nyan spent some time over there. His scent is thick, and it's all over this rock… I also smell a human female's scent, it's pretty strong… looks like they went over there, nya."
Denka pointed ahead with his furry little paw. They had arrived at the part of the canyon that tapered off, where the path became rather narrow. A dark cave loomed ahead, marking the canyon's end.
"I'll take it from here," Sasuke said. "Hang back and guard the entrance."
Sasuke clambered through the hole in the earth, advancing slowly to allow his eyes to adapt to the darkness. His eyes gleamed scarlet, glowing faintly in the gloom; though the Sharingan lacked the Byakugan's ability to see in the dark, it was not entirely useless in pitch blackness.
Normally, chakra was invisible to the naked eye unless it was exceptionally dense, but the Sharingan could perceive the wavelength chakra emitted no matter how sparse it was, appearing in the user's vision as bright colours… and, luckily for Sasuke, pockets of blood-red chakra drifted everywhere in the cave, their dim light reflecting off the cave's floor, walls, and ceiling and making them just barely visible to his eyes.
Taking care to avoid brushing against the blood mist floating about, Sasuke discreetly wended his way through the darkness into the bowels of the earth. The enemy had almost certainly captured Naruto, and if he was to rescue him, he would have to do so without a sound…
"Wait, stop, don't attack! It's you, isn't it, Chino?" came a male voice from deeper within. "It's me, Nowaki! From the coliseum! I've been looking all over for you!"
Sasuke pricked up his ears. It sounded as though the enemy was not just one…
"Nowaki?" a young girl's stupefied voice rang out. "Nowaki!" she exclaimed happily. "It really is you!"
Sasuke slowly tiptoed closer. Flickering torchlight illuminated the craggy tunnel ahead, and glancing around the corner, he saw the silhouettes of three distinct figures, one tall, one extremely curvy, and one irritating to look at… Naruto!
"By the way, that figure… you look ridiculous!" Nowaki said with a laugh, admiring Chino's curves; she had taken Sakura's appearance. "Did you really think you'd look more adult-like if you puffed yourself up with blood?"
"Mou~! We haven't seen each other in so long, and the first words out of your mouth are sexual harassment, you bastard~?" Chino pouted. "For your information, I've already tried to hypnotise that blond fellow into trusting me five times, but each time he came running over for a hug like an excited puppy and instantly realised I wasn't his friend! Don't you know how exhausting it would be to keep up an illusion for the entire walk from here to the Hokage!? I had to do this to lower his guard and get inside his head properly!"
Without warning, Chino started waving her arms excitedly.
"Oh, right, I nearly forgot! Get this, Nowaki!" she exclaimed. "This whole huge war the Five Great Villages are fighting? It's all because of some stupid civil war between the remnants of the Uchiha clan! Some bloke called Obito is planning to ambush the Hidden Leaf's Hokage in the Land of Rice Paddies. We've got to get there fast, or they'll kill each other before I can get my revenge!"
"I've always known the five great villages were corrupt, but to think they were nothing but pawns," Nowaki scoffed, his voice dripping with derision. "It's because of evil bastards like them that our companions all died—"
He broke off as Naruto abruptly vanished in a puff of white smoke.
"My hostage to draw out those Uchiha bastards!" Chino shrieked. "Where did he go!?"
Another Shadow Clone, eh? Sasuke thought to himself. Maybe that idiot doesn't need my help after all.
But unbeknownst to the three of them… Naruto was no longer anywhere near the Valley of Death. He had well and truly vanished.