God I wish I could show you guys my Plot Point Notes for this story.

Which, by the way, will have 60 chapters total. I'm a little over ⅓ of the way there!

It smelled like seagrams strawberry kiwi daiquiri's.

Sharp, alcoholic, but the fruit is underneath to soften the assault and coax in the unweary. I can't say why that smell sticks so harshly into my head. It doesn't make sense, I know it doesn't, but smell connects most to memory and this smell is so very, very familiar. There's something else underneath it. Sandalwood. Salt. Something stale and sulphuric. Sickness.

I open my eyes, very slowly, and find violet staring back at me. A blink and I realize its a mirror, and I've been laid in front of it. My arms are tied tight behind my back, threatening to cut off all feeling to my hands, that are starting to tingle by then. I could still feel the sting on my cheek where Sasuke had slapped me, and the bruise forming and healing on the back of my neck where I'd been struck. Knocked out, caught unawares even though I knew what was going to happen.

I cursed my own stupid, impulsive decision to walk out the door and the anger that bubbled in my bones when Sasuke started talking. My eyes narrowed at my own reflection, darkening with my thoughts. I always yelled at Naruto not to be so hasty, but here I was. Captured all the same.

There's a crick in my neck now too, from where I'd been laid down on a floor that's seen better days. Listening close with jinchuriki ears I can hear bugs singing outside and the footsteps of passers by. I'm in a town, somewhere, or at least near a busy road. The mirror is full length, lifting all the way up to the ceiling and stretching out across the entire wall. I've seen them before.

They're used to ballet classes, gymnastics, and martial arts. So whoever is there can see themselves and see what they're doing wrong.

There's no use hiding that I'm awake. Kisame and Itachi are both good at what they do, they'll already have felt the change in my chakra that comes with waking up. So I sit, slowly, awkwardly, and find my feet bound together too. The seals on the ropes dangle, taunting me. Cutting off my chakra.

I almost grin.

The thing about chakra suppressant seals is that they do that. Suppress. They don't cut someone off from their chakra, they just force it deep under the skin and try to keep it from coming out. Like closing up pressure points, it's a cheap mimic of the Hyuuga's oh-so-sacred technique.

That means, of course, that they can be overcome. They can be unlocked, if someone knows what they're doing and if they're clever enough to figure out a way around the seals. Which, of course, I was.

The only problem, the reason I hesitated, was because I didn't know where the other guys were, and I wasn't sure what, exactly, I was supposed to do if they came barreling in to kill me. Maim me. Capture me again.

Whatever they were going to do.

I was very sure that I wasn't going to be able to fight them off. And Kurama was a trump card I kept to myself. No one else needed to know we were in communication, let alone friends. Besides that, Kisame was insanely powerful, his sword literally ate chakra, and Itachi had a sharingan that could hypnotize my little furry friend. If I fucked this all up, they might actually start cutting off limbs.

Kisame would, for sure. Itachi might now like what he was doing, but between me and Sasuke I knew who he'd pick, every single time. Sasuke was his brother. I was just an old family friend.

I tried not to think too much about that. I liked Itachi. I always had. Him and Shusui, and Mikoto and even Fugaku had been kinder to us than any villager outside of their clan. Either because we were Sasuke's friends, or Kushina's children. I didn't care. I just missed them.

They'd been the closest thing to parents I'd had in this life, the closest things Naruto had ever had in any life, and they were gone. I hadn't been able to do anything about it. And now I was sitting here, thinking about them, instead of escaping.

The obvious and immediate solution was to teleport away, but I'd been caught right outside the hotel room.

I didn't know if they had Sasuke or not, and I wasn't about to leave him. With my chakra still sealed I couldn't sense where any of my cards or any of my markers were. I hated to admit it but it made me sick to my stomach.

I closed my eyes again.

I tried to calm down. I couldn't even hear Kurama. That was maybe the most unsettling part of everything. Being completely alone.

Only I wasn't. Itachi was here, somewhere, and he was my friend. Practically my brother, Sasuke's brother. He'd shown Naruto and I kindness when he didn't need to, had guided us home on dark nights and guarded us from hurtful looks and words. Even though Sasuke would always be his number one priority, he was still important to me.

Carefully, I worked at the roped along my wrists. They were rubbed almost raw, but that didn't keep me from twisting almost all the way backwards to loosen a pin in my long hair, easily hidden against my skull. The clip came undone into a small saw that made quick work of the ropes around my wrists, and my ankles. The skin under was pink and raw, but I tried to push away the sting of it. I needed to get moving.

They'd taken my shoes sometime in this whole grand advetnure, and I was forced to walk around barefoot. I made a mental note to switch to regular boots instead of weird open toed shoes as soon as I could. As I walked I ripped the paper seals off, setting my chakra free.

It roared under my skin so suddenly I felt my eyes turn red and my cheeks flush with the heady rush of power that came along with it. I looked down and found my nails elongated into veritable claws and my muscles bunched, ready to spring.

Took you long enough, Kurama grumbled irritably. I'd never been so happy to hear his grumpy voice.

Sorry. They took me by susprirse.

What are you, stupid? You knew they were there!

I thought they left! And we've got better things to do now, you know!

He grumbled more, but agreed eventually.

Yeah. Your little friend and your brother are here.

I stiffened. I hadn't even noticed. Of course, Kurama's senses were sharper than mine, even like this. His chakra pulled back finally, giving me a little bit of a break, and I rushed out the room door. As long as I had my chakra, my seals would work, and I could teleport us out of there. Now that I was focusing though, I realized that the only markers I could feel were three - no, four. Close by. The one Itachi, the one on Kisame. The one I'd given Naruto and Sasuke respectively. I coudln't feel any of the others. Not my deck of cards, not Jiraiya, not any of the ones in the village. There was nothing.

How far away did they take us? \

Kurama didn't have an answer for me. And I didn't wait for one. My escape plan was gone now, and there was no way that Kisame and Itachi hadn't felt me wake up and the sudden surge of chakra that came with freeing a Jinchuriki. So we needed to move, and now.

I jumped and landed in another room, where my brother was tied up on the floor. He didn't look drugged, but he hadn't gotten himself out of it yet. I made quick work of his ropes and did an assessment while he hugged me tight. We had no weapons. We had no quick escape. We only had our ninjutsu and taijutsu, which I did not specialize in, and whatever seals Naruto and I could come up with on the fly.

In layman's terms, we were fucked.

As soon as I had Naruto we went and snagged Sasuke. I could heard, or feel, or something told me that Itachi and Kisame were coming for us. But we must have been faster than I thought, or they weren't paying that much attention, or trying too hard, because we managed to bolt out the window and into the night outside.

The air was cool, chilling my heated skin. Sasuke was the most beat up out of all of us, and Naruto and I kept him carefully between us. We didn't talk much. We didn't need to, and the quieter we were the better off we would be. We had to get away.

The forest was unfamiliar. Wherever we were it was more tropical than Konoha, but they couldn't have taken us that far in the time i was asleep. We had to still be in the same country, or at least just in one of the neighboring ones. For the most part, shinobi stuck to their own countries. Incursions required permission, paper work, or a damn good excuse. So help would be delayed in tracking us.

It was smart.

"Have i mentioned," I said quietly as we approached a break in the trees, "How much I hate your brother?"

"Not really," Sasuke nudged me gently. Naruto stepped in front, ever the least patient, and pushed the trees aside.

My breath caught.

There, towering before us, was a massive stretched high into the starlit night, reaching its branches to the half lit moon. It was surrounded by water, deep and dark, and I could just barely sea a mist of foam rising up from somewhere far behind it. The sound of water roaring down was impossible to miss, and I knew with a terrible clarity where we were.

They had taken all the way to Takigakure. The village hidden in the waterfalls.