A familiar scent enters my nostrils. Slowly opening my eyes, I see mostly darkness. There should be many questions I could ask myself. What is this place, why am I here, or what happened? For some reason none of those seem very pressing at the moment. I'm at peace, I know it. Perhaps this is what it's like to die? Even this question doesn't seem terribly important right now.

I see some shadows here and there, behind a few rocks there's a source of light flickering like a small fire. Maybe it's a camp fire. And that smell?

I take a few steps in that direction, towards that light. There's a couple of rocks to sit on, and the smell is that of cigarettes. There's someone sitting next to the fire.

"I should have known I'd find you here." I tell him.

"Don't flatter yourself, kid. I'm not completely here, it's only a part of me that stayed within you." He tells me as he draws breath, taking in some smoke from his cigarette. He leans over on his knee, and breathes out, releasing the smoke, keeping eye contact during it all. We both smirk.

After a little moment I decide to sit down. I just fought with Sasuke, somehow I dragged out some sort of uneasy draw, I remember falling down and passing out, and yet sitting here, I don't seem to care about any of that.

Now he looks at me a little more seriously, and holds out his pack of cigarettes for me to take one. Tentatively I take one, remembering that we never actually smoked together, it's making me feel a little uneasy at first. Though the scene is so bittersweet I can't help but smile a little as I light the cigarette. A hint of a tear starts to form in my eye, it must be the smoke.

"Shikamaru, how have you been?"

"Not bad, I guess. Every day life is troublesome sometimes, but I shouldn't complain, not really.

"I'm glad you grew up a little. I know I shouldn't play favourites, but part of me stayed to linger within you, to see what becomes of you and our Konoha."

I'm not sure how the afterlife works, if it's even the same for everyone to begin with, or even if there is one at all. For all I know this is my own mind representing this scene for me. In fact, I'm not even sure whether I'm dead or alive yet. For now I just go with it.

"So now what? Are you acting like my conscience?"

"Ha ha! No, no. Not like that. It's not like that at all. I just want you to tell me your life."

I tell him everything. My life after fighting Hidan and Kakuzu, taking care of Kurenai, my intentions of becoming jounin, reading the bingo book, Jiraiya's death and how the village has been, the way the system of the shinobi world in some intangible way starts showing cracks at the foundations, Danzou's Root becoming more open in their dealings around the village, this mission, I tell him everything I can think of. Slowly, and meticulously I tell him every detail. My thoughts and memories come to me easily. More easily than I'm used to.

Finally, I get to the point where I explain my fight with Sasuke. He's now sitting in front of me, his chin resting on his hands, elbows resting on his knees. And always with a cigarette.

Just as I'm about to tell him that I passed out and ended up in this situation, he interrupts me.

"I know you have questions. But unfortunately we'll save the rest for some other day. I hope it won't be too soon. There's a girl waiting for you right now."

What?

The darkness becomes more painful and I taste something weird. There's something stuck in my mouth. It's somewhat sweet and salty, and soft. But there's the metallic taste of blood as well.

I hear the moans of a girl as the light returns to my eyes. I start coughing. My mouth freed as I grabbed what turned out to be an arm. I'm still holding it as my vision starts to adjust. Apparently I'm on the ground. I look at the arm I'm holding. It's covered in marks and there's some blood on it. I remember those marks.

"You!" It's the only thing I manage to say before being overcome with pain and dizziness.

"Yes it's me, you idiot. Now hold still and bite my arm, or else you'll never recover."

Too weak to start a troublesome argument, I grab hold of her and just do as she's told. A wide range of sensations takes over, the taste of skin, the sounds of slight moans, the touch of a girls hands on me, a crazy kaleidoscope of feelings overcomes me, to the point that I become numbed. It's strange, I don't understand it at all, but I recover fully. In fact I feel great, as if I slept under the open skies in a field in Konoha. The whole scene feels too intimate, and leaves me thoroughly confused.

When I let go, I look at her questioningly. She stands up, dusting off her robe and pulling down her sleeve.

"I don't understand any of this."

She's a little pissed off, and adjusts her glasses. She seems to be the impatient type, which is not unexpected seeing how she's a girl, after all.

"What don't you understand?"

"What did you do to me?" I figure I might as well start with the least problematic questions first to ease her into telling me more easily what I want to know.

"It's one of my abilities. That's all you need to know."

"Is it supposed to feel oddly.. eh.. sexual?"

This seems to have pissed her off. Either she's blushing or she's getting mad. Again she adjusts her glasses. It might be a nervous tic of hers. She answers nonetheless.

"That's just a side effect of my ability. Trust me, it's nothing personal, even if your chakra isn't directly revolting like others."

Scratching the back of my head I have to conclude that she's just straight up crazy, that answer barely made sense.

"I guess the real question is, you're supposed to be Sasuke's ally, why are you helping me?"

She sighs. I get up slowly, and take a look at my surroundings. It's the place I fought with Sasuke. We sure left a big mess, broken trees, charred moss, grass and leaves everywhere, and the ground is littered in kunai and shuriken. The only thing missing is Sasuke himself.

It dawns to me, we had left her in captivity at the house we tracked down earlier. How did she escape? What happened to my team? I have to know what's going on.

"Tell me what happened."

She starts walking towards the edge of the forest. When I follow her, she starts talking.

"I was stuck on that wall in that sticky goo, so that sucked. I could hear the fight outside, but then after a while I suddenly didn't hear anything. Not too long afterwards the goo dissolved, and I got to see what was going on outside."

"So? What did you see?"

"Nothing, it was empty. I did see a lot of new tracks, I think my team and yours got ambushed and caught by some other group."

I'm reluctant to believe her, but I let her finish the story.

"So I scanned the surroundings for chakra, and yours were the only ones close by that I could find."

"Ours? You mean Sasuke and mine? So where is he?"

I can tell she's telling me this story against her better judgement. The tick of hers is her tell, no need to be a Hyuuga to pick up on obviously things like these.

"I made him recover, but then he went on ahead and told me to heal you as well. So he went after the other group that caught our teams. On his own." The emphasis on that last part had a bitter sound about it. She must be another of Sasuke's fan girls. Some things never change, do they? She continues her story.

"The way I see it, you owe us for keeping you alive, since you would have died on your own. So to make it up to us, you'll help us find the rest of our team, and who knows, you may even find your own team as well."

It's easy to see this isn't her own plan. Sasuke must have told her to say this to me. So he's running his team with a certain hierarchy instead of equals. Different style than what I'm used to, but he's not really a people person, so it probably fits him best like this.

But no matter who said it, I'm in their debt, that's undeniable. If they had wanted to they could have killed me or left me to die. If what they say is true about my team, then I have no choice, this is better for the both of us. I could even spin it, and say that my team getting captured is the reason I'm alive right now. Is there no end to my luck?

Regardless, this whole situation has gotten even more troublesome than it already was.

"Before I decide to help you out, I want to see the scene for myself."

"What makes you think you have a choice?"

"You know what? Never mind, arguing about it like this, it's too much work."

I can tell she thinks of this as some sort of victory, but I learned long ago to let girls think they get what they want. It's just less hassle.

We arrive at the village, on the spot where both our teams fought. There's some signs of explosions and impacts from heavy weapons here and there, they must have fought for a while until they got caught.

"You said another group ambushed our teams?"

"So? What about it?"

"Well, there's no signs and tracks that point to another group fighting them."

"Like I said, one moment I hear them fighting, then the next moment it's quiet."

It's possible this was a jutsu. It happened once before that a genjutsu took out several people like that. Something similar to Kabuto's Temple of Nirvana technique. This would explain why the fighting stopped. Izumo and Kotetsu aren't really genjutsu types and neither is Kankuro, and from the looks of it, the two from Sasuke's team weren't very refined either. All of them could have easily been caught in an illusion or trance.

So the Hidden Rock has made their move. I wonder if there's something this girl is leaving out. It doesn't seem there's much to gain by that, but I could be working on a need to know basis. Come to think of it..

"Hey, you. What's your name anyway?" I think someone mentioned her name already but it didn't seem very interesting at the time to remember it.

"It's Karin. Sasuke told me yours already. Let's just get going and back him up."

So hasty... I need a cigarette first. I reach for it, and open the lighter.

"No, you don't smoke around me! It's smelly, got that?!"

I ignore her and inhale. It's soothing my nerves and just having something to fiddle with helps me focus my thoughts. I may work together with this Karin girl but it doesn't mean I have to be polite.

"Hey! Do as I say, come on!" She demands, as she takes a sort of school teacher pose, one hand on her hip and the other adjusting her glasses. That gave her away, again. Looks like she has a tough time dealing with people who ignore her.

I exhale some smoke in her face, causing her to make a little cough. Sorry, Karin, but it seems you just don't have what it takes to boss me around. I pass her, and hands in my pockets, smoking a cigarette, I nonchalantly start going in the direction she pointed out, jumping to the trees. She did point towards the edge of another forest.

She quickly catches up with me, and I let her lead the way from now on. It's a silly girl, Karin likes to think she's in charge but when she's not, she becomes silent and meek. Nonetheless it seems she has something to say.

"You know, you should be thankful Sasuke spared your life, after you had a fight with him. I can't even believe you're someone who could last more than a few seconds against him."

Still mad at me, are you? Hiding behind almighty Sasuke now. Be that way, I won't pretend to get along with you or him anyway, when this is over, I'll still have to kill him. It's better for everyone.

Sometimes you hear people say, there is a spiral of violence, people fighting generates hatred that eventually causes more people to fight. It's inescapable and inherent to us as humans. If I were to succeed in killing Sasuke, she could be one of the people that would become hateful and sooner or later want to fight me.

If you consider this spiral of violence, it's not the perfect solution. But on the other hand if I let Sasuke live, his actions will generate even more violence. Him having joined Akatsuki has made him a pretty important missing nin, and being from Hidden Leaf, if he ever raises his hand against another nation, it could cause a rift in this already uneasy agreement between the five great nations. There is so much that could go wrong, it warrants an assassination.

Even if it will make it harder for me to find my team's whereabouts, if at any point it seems Sasuke has been sighted by Hidden Rock, I have to either kill the messenger or kill Sasuke in order to prevent a worst case scenario. Unlike Karin or Sasuke, I still have the future of my village to think about.

For all you people who are not yet reading the manga up to the latest chapter, it's probably better to skip this part, there's some spoilers.

So as it turns out, Kankuro has revealed a new puppet, and it's Sasori, how interesting. Now where did I read about this before?
There's also some spoilers out for the chapter that will be released tomorrow, and it's very interesting to see how Shikamaru feels about this whole deal with Sasuke. Which I already had decided upon in the previous chapters, so it was very encouraging to see I got Shikamaru's character right, canon-wise.
And not to mention according to Mifune the leader from Iron country to hosts the summit, Earth country has apparently been expansive, and reinforcing their military contrary to the other great nations who have been busy with disarmament. Even this fits in with my story perfectly.
A little too perfectly, even. Seriously, if Shikamaru ends up summoning Hidan's head, then as far as I'm concerned, it's proven and Kishimoto reads my fanfic.