"I'm blind, I'm blind!" Naruto cried, weeping bitter tears. "I'm…"
He blinked.
"…not blind, ya know?"
All of a sudden, Naruto found himself crouching behind a bush, his trousers bunched around his ankles and his right hand grasping his limp Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi tightly. Sakura must have released her Mind Body Switch Jutsu, because he was finally back in his own body!
Naruto abruptly straightened his body, arms pinwheeling as he fought to regain his balance.
"Hang on… then doesn't that mean…"
His face paled.
That meant Sakura-chan was now back in her own body, which meant that she was all alone with Sasuke… a Sasuke powered up by the Sage of Six Paths, who had already proved he wasn't above forcing himself on her! If he tried anything against Sakura-chan in her current state, she wouldn't be able to fend him off!
"SASUKEEE!" Naruto roared as he pulled up his trousers and zipped up his fly—
A series of expletives that shall be omitted here for the good boys and girls in the audience spewed forth from Naruto's mouth. He had forgotten that, now that he was back in his own body, he had to carefully sheathe the sword in his trousers before zipping them up… but thankfully for his and Sakura's future children, that was nothing yin-yang style ninjutsu couldn't fix.
"Oh good, you're back," Kakashi said, lifting his eyes from his dirty book as Naruto stalked out from behind the bush Sakura had entered to… take care of business. He sniffed at the air, catching a certain squid scent. "Did you, er… have fun?"
Kakashi was sitting next to a bonfire at the foot of a great earthen basin. By this point, the sun had already fallen behind the horizon, so he had stoked a small fire to give himself some reading light and keep himself warm.
"It's me again, Kakashi-sensei, ya know," Naruto said, crying bloody tears. "Listen, we have to go after Sakura right now, she's in trouble—"
"We're back, everyone!"
Upon hearing Sakura's voice, Naruto and Kakashi both revolved to face her. She was beaming at them happily, and Sasuke was standing beside her. He was not wearing his usual expression of casual disinterest; rather, there was a certain emotion in his eyes that they had rarely seen before.
"I see you've found Sasuke," Kakashi said good-humouredly. "Excellent work… Sakura."
"I'm the one who found Sasuke!" Naruto hissed. "But that's not important right now, ya know!" he added, pointing an accusatory finger at his comrade. "You'd better not have done anything to Sakura-chan while I was gone, ya know!"
"Unlike you, I would never do something so uncouth," Sasuke said haughtily. "We Uchiha are above such things."
Sakura discreetly patted herself down while Naruto started another of his interminable squabbles with Sasuke. Her clothes were more or less in the same state she had left them, which meant that Naruto had shown considerable restraint in his explorations of the female body. Other than a slight tingling in her lips, he didn't seem to have done much beyond over-the-clothes groping.
"Would you mind telling us what you've been up to all this time, Sasuke?" Kakashi asked with a hint of concern, inviting them to sit next to him at the campfire with a wave of his hand. "We've all been worried about you…"
Kakashi felt more than slightly uneasy about Sasuke's mental state. The trail Team 7 had been following was a bloody one, and their interrogations of Sasuke's survivors had painted a picture of a broken man with only one thing on his fractured mind: revenge, at any cost. What's more, it was awfully convenient that they'd run into each other so easily— of course, they indeed had been following his scent, but he'd had a significant head start…
"I was trying to figure out what had happened to the village when a certain member of the Akatsuki approached me… that Venus Flytrap-looking weirdo whom Naruto calls Aloe Vera bastard," Sasuke said evenly. "He told me about the Akatsuki's true aim, the Eye of the Moon Project… Madara and Obito are planning to use the Tailed Beasts to plunge the world into a great genjutsu called the Infinite Tsukuyomi."
"And you told him no, right?" Sakura said anxiously.
Sasuke hesitated for a few seconds, before finally nodding. "I told him I wasn't interested in any fakes," he replied. "Before I could burn him to death, he slipped into the ground and vanished."
Sakura's glistening lips parted slightly as she tried to find the right words. She desperately wanted to believe him… so, instead of using the Mind's Eye of the Kagura to verify whether he was lying by analysing his chakra for flickers of falsehood, she simply nodded and closed her mouth. Sasuke didn't know she possessed this ability, but at such a short range, he would definitely be able to tell she was doing something with her own chakra, and she didn't want to betray his trust.
"Did he tell you why approached you?" Kakashi asked. He was less trusting than Sakura by nature.
"Madara's alliance with Obito has completely fallen through," Sasuke explained. "Apparently, Obito stole the Ten-Tails they'd been restoring together, and since he's a right slippery bastard, even though he's weakened, Madara had his Will Incarnate, or so that thing calls itself… come and ask me for help, promising me some degree of control over the Infinite Tsukuyomi in exchange."
Sakura frowned. What in the world was going on with those two…? There was nothing Obito wanted more than to see Rin, so why jeopardise that by ruining his relationship with Madara…?
"Ten-Tails?" Kakashi echoed.
"Apparently, it's the Tailed Beasts' precursor," Sasuke explained. "To know more, I'd have to check the Uchiha Stone Tablet again… the hidden truth of this world's history is inscribed there, left behind by the Sage of Six Paths himself, and now that my eyes have reached this level, the tablet should hold no secrets before me… or at least, that's what that bastard told me."
Using the Eternal Mangekyō Sharingan, the last secret Sasuke had been able to interpret from the Stone Tablet was the following line: One god seeking stability, split into light and shadow; light and shadow unite, giving rise to all things in this universe…
However, if Sakura and Sasuke were to look again now, with the new Rinnegan eyes they'd obtained… then the full extent of the fake history Black Zetsu had painted would be revealed.
"I don't know that it would be a good idea to follow the enemy's advice," Sakura said uneasily, knowing perfectly well that Black Zetsu had tampered with the Sage of Six Paths' advice. "For all we know…"
"Only the Uchiha's ocular power can decipher the Stone Tablet," Sasuke said, scowling. "I think it's safe to say that the words inscribed upon the Uchiha clan's most sacred relic represent their author's unadulterated thoughts... to imply otherwise would be an insult to our clan's honour."
Sakura rolled her eyes.
Maybe she ought to hurry back to the village, smash that thing to pieces, and then blame it on the invaders, at least before Sasuke returned and started getting funny ideas reading the fanfiction penned by Black Zetsu…