Chapter 18

Sasuke felt like his head was going to explode, his migraine was on full force and the vein on the side of his forehead by his sideburns was throbbing madly. He felt stirring from his side, and when he opened his eyes, he was surprised to see Neji coming out of his unconscious spell.

Neji groaned and before he could open his eyes he felt a hand gently stroking his forehead.

"Neji," Sasuke roused. "You alright?"

"Yeah," Neji whispered, his head felt like it was going to explode and his chest was heavy making it hard to breathe. "What happened?"

Both boys took a look around, they noticed that the whole clearing was destroyed. The trees were shattered, scorched even and the green grass was now smoking black ash. The rest of their group lay scattered all over the field, either unconscious or groaning from pain. At the far end of the field, Neji saw movement.

"Sasuke!" Neji pointed about ten meters to his west. "I think it's Kakashi."

"Kakashi!" Sasuke yelled, running toward the limp mass on the ground.

When Sasuke reached the body, he was surprised to see Kakashi with only a few scratches here and there and a broken ankle but nothing fatal. Sasuke heard the older man moan, and Sasuke hastily helped Kakashi on his feet.

"Argh," Kakashi groaned, slightly tightening his jaw because of his broken ankle. "Hurts like a bitch."

"That's it?" Sasuke asked incredulously. "Hurts like a bitch? What the hell, Kakashi! I thought you were going to die using that weird jutsu."

"You have so little faith in your teacher, Sasuke," Kakashi smirked a bit. "Of course I wouldn't use a jutsu that would compromise everybody's health," He paused and as if a lightbulb went off in his head, "Where's Kabuto? Did he escape?"

Neji, who was done checking up on the rest of the group, came to Kakashi's other side to help Sasuke carry the man.

"He's dead," Neji said simply. "I saw his body by the clearing with the most damage."

"Good riddance," Sasuke declared as he heaved a sigh of relief.

"Let's regroup and establish our next move," Kakashi ordered.

When the rest of the group were huddled and settled, Kakashi made a thoughtful expression on his face.

"There are two things we can from here, either head back to Konoha or continue fighting until we defeat Orochimaru," Kakashi let his options sink in and before Sakura or Kiba could interrupt, Kakashi help up a hand and continued, "Our instructions from the Hokage is under whatever circumstances we must sever the connection between Naruto and Orochimaru."

"What's the problem then?" Kiba scowled in confusion. "We're now aware that Naruto already severed that connection."

"Yes, however, since Orochimaru is still alive-" Kakashi said.

"He can still try a number of jutsu or rituals just so he could extract the fox from Naruto," Sakura realized.

"Correct," Kakashi gravely nodded. "In order to fully rid ourselves of this problem, we have to fight and finally defeat Orochimaru."

"So, it's either ignore a Hokage order and continue fighting or we go back and complete our mission," Neji muttered under his breath.

Sasuke was torn, he could either see Naruto now or finally kill that sorry excuse of a bastard snake that almost killed all of Konoha. He might never see Naruto ever again, he could very well die, heck any one of them could die fighting Orochimaru.

"We have to take this opportunity though," Sasuke suddenly realized. "Orochimaru is weak, we can easily take him down now. Why wait when we actually have a huge advantage in gaining the upper hand? We can finally end this war."

Kakashi was slightly surprised Sasuke opted to fight, he would've thought he'd be the first one to say that they should head back so they could finally see Naruto. Sasuke had a point though, they should take this golden opportunity to finally end this war.

"Do all of you agree or are am I going to have to pull rank on some of you?" Kakashi decided.

The teens looked at each other for a short moment before nodding at Kakashi.

"Let's do this!" Kiba yelled in agreement.

"Like you said, Kakashi-sensei," Hinata said quietly, "The forest can sense victory, our victory."

"Let's go then, but first let's form a plan," Sakura suggested.

After forever, I finally updated. =] So so so sorry. Coming more soon, since I'm in term break at the moment. Quite short though.