Time and Again

Time and Again

Prologue

Prologue

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Blood.

He could smell it everywhere. On him, on the burning buildings around him, leaking out of the body of the last of his childhood friends not far from him… it was even in the mud that he was lying in. Something cold and wet hit his face, causing him to stir and beginning to bring him back to his senses. Was it raining too? He couldn’t remember when it had started…

It was strange, even the rain seemed to smell of blood, though that was impossible… or at least improbable.

He could smell the fire too. The burnt stench of wood slowly being reduced to ash, a hint of sulfur being carried in the smoke as the buildings, walls, and even citizens of his village burned around him.

Slowly he became aware of the sounds reaching his ears. The creaking of the buildings as their support beams burned away and more and more weight was placed on boards and beams that weren’t meant to hold so much… the pitter-patter of rain – or blood – sprinkling down from the heavens and landing in the puddles made in the small potholes of the road… the cries and screams of those watching their friends, family members, or even complete strangers being massacred… the battle cries of their enemies who had at long last overrun them… a rasping sound that he couldn’t immediately identify until he realized that it was the sound of his own breath laboriously being pushed in and out of punctured lungs, carrying the scent of still more blood to his nose as it pushed against the mud on his face… and the laughing.

As much as he hated the other sounds, it was the laughing that he hated the most. It mocked him for his failures that day and in days past. The sound of his friend’s laughter coming out in a manner that Sasuke had never used before…

Though it was little more than a whisper, it roared in his ears, drowning out everything else.

“Ku ku ku…”

It wasn’t even a real laugh he realized, just the sound of amusement. A sound that was designed to make those who heard it realize that they were hopelessly outmatched and that their enemy didn’t even feel it was worth the trouble of actually laughing at their wasted efforts. To let them know that they would soon die, just as their friends had, just as their teachers had, just as hundreds – maybe even thousands – had before them.

Lying broken and defeated at the feet of Orochimaru.

Slowly Naruto lifted his head from the mud, spitting blood from his swollen lips and pushed his long blond hair away from his face so he could look at the snake-like eyes peering down at him from Sasuke’s face.

Orochimaru in Sasuke’s body was a horror than even his most terrifying nightmares couldn’t eclipse. Perhaps it seemed even worse because for a short while he’d been allowed to believe that it wouldn’t happen as he’d spent years fearing it would. He’d thought that Sasuke had defeated the Sannin, that the danger had passed, but, like a parasite Orochimaru was lying dormant within the Uchiha, slowly gaining more and more power until he was ready to take over and when he was, it happened almost instantly. One day there were reports that Sasuke had taken over the Sound and was searching for Akatsuki – or at least Itachi – and the next thing he knew Orochimaru had miraculously returned. He’d thought that he might get his friend back, that Sasuke and he would meet up in their search for Itachi, and while they did meet, Sasuke was even more changed than he’d been during the previous attempt to rescue him. He led his own team now, for his own reasons, and he didn’t want anything to do with his friends from the past. He eluded them that day, disappearing while they were distracted by other battles and by the news that Jiraiya had been killed.

Itachi was found dead in a long forgotten Uchiha hideout, his eyes plucked out of his skull, and Naruto had thought – hoped – that Sasuke would return to them, that having accomplished his goal of killing his brother, he’d come back to rebuild his clan. It didn’t happen. Naruto never found out if it was the Orochimaru-infected Kabuto who managed to transfer the Sannin into Sasuke’s body or if Orochimaru himself was still alive inside of Sasuke after their battle, but news soon trickled out of the Rice Country that Orochimaru had returned and that he now possessed the body of the last known Uchiha.

After that, it wasn’t long before Orochimaru and the Sound began to use his new body to take over several countries. They made treaties with stronger – but just as ambitious – countries, attacking mutual enemies until the Sound was strong enough to break the treaty (or had found another country to ally with) and then turn on their former allies. In just a few short years, the map of the continent had been redrawn, with the once-small Rice Country now dominating the majority of the continent.