A/N: LONG LIVE THE UPDAAAAAAATE SPREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

REVIEW FOR IT FEEDS MY ENGINE OF CREATION! Seriously! It does!

We've nearly hit the thousand mark in reviews! Lets get it there with this chapter! WHOO~!

Also! I'm going to be an uncle, ya'll! AGAIN! I've already got a little nephew running around but apparently there may be two more on the way later this year. Holy crap does that me feel old! I've already got a ton of grey hairs thanks to my health issues and I'm not even thirty yet, oi.

Is it just me or has the anime world gone crazy as of late?

There's a lot of new stuff out there that people are trying to get me to write about: Rising of the Shield Hero, Goblin Slayer, That Time I Reincarnated as a Slime, and a bunch of others. I haven't watched them and only know the bare-bones about them.

Needless to say, however, two of these seem...dark.

I won't speak to anymore specifics, just the observations of an ailing man with a unique perspective on the world. As for myself, I'm neutral. We all come here to escape the madness of the world, do we not? To read stories, to kick back and relax, to crack a smile. To unite in our shared love of all things fiction.

Now then, I updated this back in April, but with my health being the way it is, I really felt that I should've added more.

So you're getting an interlude.

Also, popular references for the win.

Sorry its short, the next one will be far longer.

"If at first you don't succeed...

...stab, stab again?"

"NO!"

~?

Waves of Change (Interlude)

Anna opened her eyes.

Grey clouds greeted her vision, a stormy sky blurred by a dark haze of pain. Well. Was this death, then? It didn't feel like death. It didn't feel like much of anything, really. Something wet splashed across her face, but in her bleary state she paid it no mind. It wasn't until a fresh drop plinked into her eyes that she realized it had begun to rain. That she could feel said rain despite her sundered state proved slightly more...concerning given the fact that she should most assuredly be dead. And yet...

...so." she murmured, momentarily at an utter loss for words. "Not dead. Huh. Neat."

With a soft groan she raised her arm before her face to survey the damage. Remarkably, all five fingers remained intact...albeit badly singed. Wait. Singed? She should have been blown apart. Destroyed. Gone. She knew this. Part of her-a very small part-remembered the moments leading up to her death. Shrieking in the face of it, desperately flinging up an arm as that "spear" tore towards her. Two elements combined. United as one, an unstoppable force that held no equal. The one person whom she trusted more than anyone else...and her beloved sister.

Fire and Ice.

They had killed her.

Yet, somehow, here she lay.

The distant trickle of water in her ears grew louder now, gradually rousing her from her stupor like an old friend, wrapping her in liquid warmth as she drifted downstream. Said warmth did little to soothe the fire raging in her veins; when she attempted to move, to rise from her prone position on her back...the world erupted. She nearly screamed, only managing to grit her teeth against it at the last second. Even then every muscle in her body clamped down, every single cell that comprised the entirety of her being stood united in stark, singular agony.

"Owwwwwww!"

Distantly she was aware of tumbling onto a riverbank, gasping softly through the searing haze.

It felt as though she'd been frozen and burned at the same time; her body couldn't decide which, thus it settled for a hellish melding of the two. White-hot pulses of heat and cold collided with one another, waging war for control of her body. On some level she was amazed to even manage that much at all; indeed it was a miracle that she still drew breath. Had her body registered the attack at all? As she looked on her limb almost seemed to shimmer, nearly transparent in its state. Almost as if it were...not there. Liquid. Water.

Then the pain came roaring back and rational thought-such as it was for Anna at the moment-abandoned her yet again.

"That hurt!" a high, frustrated shriek tore out of her. "What were they thinking?! Seriously! I almost died!"

If the world had any answers for her, it was loathe to surrender them.

Bitter tears welled up in her eyes and she curled inward on herself.

Why were they here, anyway? This wasn't their fight. They should've just stayed home. With her. Then none of this would have happened. Yes, this was all their fault. Not Naruto, nor Elsa, but those strangers who had taken it into their heads to invade their-her!-home and for what? Nothing! Wars that were none of their concern, battles without end, all for a cause she didn't understand!

Aren't you just as much to blame, then? A poisonous vine of doubt wrapped around her heart with that thought; try as she might, she couldn't drown out the voices when they came. Yes, its always about you, isn't it? Poor Anna, poor broken little thing. You went mad. You attacked them. You hurt them. You're guilty. Tainted. Wretched beyond compare. No one will want you now. No one will care...

A muscle jumped in Anna's jaw. "No...that's not...I didn't...

As things stood for all the agony she was experiencing a strange giddiness subsumed her, preventing her from seeing the situation clearly. Perhaps that was for the best. Had she been in her right mind, had she properly possessed some semblance of her wits, the pain would've likely broken her mind. Snapped her fragile psyche like a twig. Instead she laughed; a small, tiny sound born from equal parts resentment as much as resignation in the face of her fate. Something had been burned away in her, a ray of light thrust against the despairing darkness that served as her psyche.

As though a switch had been flipped somewhere in her mind.

All at once, a horrifying moment of cruel, crystal clarity rocked her world.

Aghast, she gazed at her hands-herself-those trembling fingers curling into cracked fists.

...what have I done?"

She'd wronged them. She realized that now. They hadn't wanted to hurt her, but she hadn't left them any choice. But where were they now? Surely she couldn't have been blown that far away..

For all her regret, a distant explosion answered that question. Odd. All the enemies had already quit the field. Her dear darling sister-and wasn't there a bit of bitterness there-shouldn't be fighting anyone else. Neither should Naruto. Yet they clearly were. That wasn't fair. No. Not at all. They couldn't take her away now, not when they had so much catching up to do. And they certainly couldn't have Naruto. No. Absolutely not. She needed him. He couldn't let him die. To allow him to do so now would forever stain her heart; worse, it would make Elsa so terribly, horribly sad...hmm.

Well, then.

Anna couldn't have that.

Gritting her teeth, she climbed to her feet.

"I swear, the things we do for family these days...

Maybe, just maybe, she would find redemption at the end of that road.

A/N: I DID tell you guys to wait and see, did I not?

Now you see what I intended from the very beginning; as I said before, don't believe it until you see a body, I always say. When I kill someone off, its obvious. Furthermore its heavily hinted that her body instinctively rendered itself into vapor moments before the impact.

Say what you will about them but water powers are freaking OP if used properly.

Of course, Anna didn't exactly escape unscathed either...

If you're all wondering about that big bad fight scene teased at the end of the last chapter, its coming along quite nicely. Already got nearly five thousand words devoted to that scene alone. I've got a bit of help in that regard as well, because frankly? I needed it. Naruto's fighting a three way battle against Kakuzu, Konan, and Pain. Its going to be absolutely INSANE. I refuse to release that in a half-finished state! My team and I want to polish it as much as we can before we get that bad boy out here.

So there you are. Those are our plans for the future.

Now! We're down to the final chapters!

So...in the immortal words of Atlas...

...Would You Kindly Review?

No previews this time~!

R&R! =D