14.

"Listen, you can't just give up!" Sakura took Sasuke by the shoulders and shook him gently. "We'll work this out...I'm sure it's just a mix-up or something."

"Sakura!" Mrs. Haruno called up the stairs. "The Anbu are coming up, they want to search your room."

"I understand!" Sakura called back. "No, don't lock it, Naruto," she whispered as Naruto stepped forward to do just that. "That will only make it more suspicious."

Sasuke grabbed Naruto's sleeve as he passed the bed. "Take this," he said, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a scroll Naruto recognized as the one he had used to demonstrate the door between their worlds. "If something happens to me you can at least let my brother know before—"

Naruto hurriedly slipped the scroll into his jacket pocket as the door opened and three masked Anbu entered the room, followed by Hyuuga Neji. Luckily the jacket he was wearing was bulky enough that the small scroll was easily concealed, and in any case the intruders were more focused on Sasuke than him.

"Who is this?" the lead Anbu said, pointing to Sasuke.

Sakura quickly repeated the explanation she had told Hinata. "He's, um, the son of one of my father's business friends?"

"Then why is his chakra so similar to that of the deserter Uchiha Sasuke?" Neji demanded.

The alternate Sasuke looked at Sakura with blank confusion. "The what?" he gasped.

"Ssh!" Sakura hushed him again.

"He looks like him too," said the Anbu agent, pulling Sasuke off the bed (still holding the pillow) to the center of the room where there was more light. Sasuke yelped at the rough treatment as his hood was yanked back, fully exposing his face. "But…"

"It's not actually Sasuke," Neji said, activating the Byakugan again and studying the alternate Sasuke. "It's some sort of duplicate—possibly it was sent here to trick Sakura and Naruto into revealing state secrets."

Naruto bristled at the way Neji was referring to Sasuke as if he wasn't real, but quelled his anger when Sakura looked at him warningly. Right now, any disturbance he made would only cause the situation to become worse.

Unfortunately, it was Sasuke himself who didn't seem to understand this. "What are you going to do?" he protested, trying to pull his arm out of the Anbu agent's grip. "Let go, that hurts!"

"Fighting us will only make it worse," the Anbu agent told him, pushing him towards the door of the bedroom.

Sasuke gave a sharp gasp of pain as he was dragged from the room surrounded by Anbu, and Naruto would have followed to make sure he wasn't injured but Neji blocked his way.

"That is no longer any concern of yours," Neji said coldly.

"Are you mad because he was hitting on Hinata? Is that what this is about?" Naruto demanded.

Neji blinked slowly. "...no."

"Nobody's going to believe you if you take that long to deny it."

Neji ignored this statement. "If you have any problems with what just happened, go to the Hokage about it," he snapped, before turning sharply and storming out of the room.

A few minutes later, Naruto and Sakura relaxed as they felt the chakra of the ninjas surrounding the house vanish.

Sakura stamped a foot in frustration, hard enough that the floorboards began to crack. "Just because Neji's a jounin now doesn't mean he's got the right to barge in and push people around like that!" she ranted. Naruto took a step back in case some of her anger was released in his general direction, but this proved unnecessary as Sakura's shoulders drooped and she sat heavily back in her chair with a sigh. "Now what? I can still prepare the stabilization seals, but without Sasuke we don't have any way to deliver them."

"About that…" Naruto shifted a small throw rug to cover the cracks in the floor as he walked over to the desk. "Sasuke gave me this," he said, setting the small scroll by Sakura's hand.

"What is it?"

"It's the doorway he used to get here," Naruto explained. "But shouldn't we be thinking about how to get Tsunade to let him go?"

Sakura shook her head. "Not yet, not until we have the seals ready. I don't think Sasuke would be very happy if we took the time to bail him out and let his world implode in the process."

Naruto could see the sense in that, but he didn't like the idea of leaving the alternate Sasuke in the hands of Anbu, especially since they seemed to think he was a spy. Hopefully they would realize how unlikely his personality made that soon, before they could interrogate him too much.

"How does this work?" Sakura asked, tapping the scroll on her desk.

"Well, um…" Naruto scratched his head as he tried to remember. "There were, like, five seals, and then you just unroll it and it makes a gate or something."

"Okay, and what were the seals?" Sakura took out a fresh piece of paper and prepared to write.

"Let's see...first was Tiger, then Ox, and then…" Naruto laughed nervously. "I don't really remember the other three."

Sakura sighed, making some quick calculations on the paper. "Well, there are only 1,728 possible other combinations, so get to work! I'll finish the stabilizing seals so they'll be ready when you figure out how to use that thing."

"But...only 1,728?" Naruto whimpered.

"Imagine if you'd forgotten four seals."

…

"You know, I figured you'd end up here at some point, but I thought I'd have something to do with it."

Sasuke blinked drowsily, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the morning light now shining through the barred window of his cell so he could get a better look at who was addressing him.

"You're the one who jumped me in the library," he stated finally. "My arm still hurts, you know."

"You still remember that?"

"Please, my short-term memory isn't that bad." It was, however, bad enough that Tsunade had eventually ordered the Anbu to give up on interrogating him, since half the time he couldn't remember the question they were supposed to be making him answer. The Fifth Hokage seemed convinced that he was (consciously or not) a spy sent by either Madara or Kabuto, so he had abandoned the idea of telling her his true errand as that would only serve to partially confirm her suspicions. Currently he was locked up until they bothered to think of something else to do with him. He was honestly a bit happy for the chance to rest—yesterday had been exhausting, and the prison bed wasn't any worse than Naruto's decrepit couch.

"So how'd you get yourself arrested, anyway? All I know is that Anbu raided that Harunos' house and grabbed you."

It was clear his visitor wasn't about to go away, so Sasuke sat up and leaned back against the wall. "Neji used the Byaku-whatsit on me after I made a pass at Hinata, then he came back with the Anbu while we were at Sakura's place." He felt a bit proud of himself for actually remembering half of the actual term this time.

From the sudden shift under Kakashi's mask, Sasuke could guess that the man's mouth had dropped open. "You were hitting on Hinata? Kid, do you have a death wish?"

"How was I supposed to know her cousin was psycho? He wasn't where I'm from!" Sasuke protested. "Well, not that way...Anyway, what are you doing here?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Since I ran into you yesterday morning I decided to finally make a report to the Hokage about it, then I thought I'd check up on you since I haven't heard a peep from Naruto or Sakura since last night."

That might be a good sign, Sasuke thought. Maybe they used the gateway scroll to go to the other Konoha. And now I feel like I've forgotten something important, not that that's new…

"I still don't trust you, though," the jounin continued, "so don't try talking me into letting you out."

Sasuke sighed and picked at a loose thread on the blanket. "It doesn't seem like anybody does around here. Naruto and Sakura didn't even bother to tell me the reason they were really trying to hide me from everyone."

"Maybe they were just worried about how you'd take it," Kakashi offered, but Sasuke barely heard him as his thoughts suddenly began to swirl again.

"It's so boring in here," he whined once they had settled. "There aren't even any girls."

"Can't help with that," Kakashi said, taking out a pen, "but I do play a mean game of tic-tac-toe."