Title: Dreaming of Sunshine

Summary: Life as a ninja. It starts with confusion and terror and doesn't get any better from there. OC Self-insert.

AN:

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Chapter 140

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Then from on high - somewhere in the distance

There's a voice that calls, "Remember who you are"

If you lose yourself - your courage soon will follow

So be strong tonight - remember who you are

~Sound The Bugle Now; Bryan Adams

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"You know, I really thought it took longer for Tailed Beasts to reform."

That was, what, two years? Less? No wonder everyone went for 'sealing' as their first option. The amount of effort that went into killing them and you only got two years before you had to do it again? No dice.

"Probably not our biggest concern right now," Sasuke said dryly.

Well no. That was true. The ocean had turned from 'pleasant gentle waves lapping at the shore' to 'very definitely a storm', and forceful white capped waves were sweeping up onto the beach, floating the wooden pews and trying to either slam them into each other or drag them out to sea. People were starting to evacuate up to dry land but quite a few of the heavily robed guests were having trouble, though there were enough ninja on hand to help them out. Kankurou was pulling people out of the surf with chakra strings, which seemed highly effective, though possibly terrifying for the rescuees.

Out at sea, the Three Tails screamed again. It was far enough out that I couldn't really sense it, but it looked like that was going to change very rapidly.

It was coming our way, and fast.

Ahead of us, Mei bent down and grabbed handfuls of her skirt, ripping the heavy fabric of her wedding dress and revealing that, underneath her finery, she was wearing her shinobi boots. I was suddenly glad that I was wearing blues and hadn't been dressed up – it wasn't my usual field gear but it was close enough. "We can't let it get to shore," she said grimly. "Ao! You're in charge of evacuation – get everyone into the shelters! Haku, I need you with me, instead. Zabuza… we need to slow it down."

Zabuza shed his jacket and Chojuro was hurrying forward with his sword. It clearly hadn't been too far away and while I doubted that they'd expected this it was nice to see that they had been prepared for something. About another dozen Mist ninja were already starting to assemble on the water forming a clear defensive line.

Tsunade turned back towards the beach for a second, searching for the rest of the Konoha ninja who had been at the back of the wedding crowd and were now getting swept away with the exodus. "Anko, assist with the evacuation and get Sakura to start triage on the injured."

No one was terribly injured yet but.. there was a Tailed Beast incoming. It probably wouldn't stay that way.

Anko saluted and Sakura bowed deeply, hands clasped in front of her chest. The three genin seemed shocked, huddling near their sensei, but hopefully they'd be fine.

I didn't have time to spare many thoughts for them, anyway, because Tsunade followed the Mist contingent out onto the water and Sasuke and I stuck with her. Temari followed us, but she was the only one of the Hidden Sand team to do so – though I could feel Gaara's chakra seeping deep into the ground below us, probably trying to create more sand.

Oh. Iron sand. That was a totally different technique, wasn't it?

Damn. If Gaara only had his gourds worth of sand, then that we were down a lot of firepower. Unless he went full Shukaku, anyway, and while bijuu vs bijuu was probably fairer it would result in a lot of collateral damage.

Actually, that might just result in having to fight two bijuu. Bad plan. Scratch that.

And the Tsuchikage was … not following. The Hidden Rock team was assisting the wedding guests but making no moves to join the fight. The thought crossed my mind that they might take this opening for … something, but that was going to be a problem for the Mist ninja to deal with, not me. Or hell, maybe they were just looking forward to seeing everyone get wrecked. Schadenfreude at its finest.

The Sanbi seemed impossibly large. Shukaku had towered over even the tallest trees in Konoha, but out here on the ocean there were no such points of reference. Distance seemed like an illusion – it kept getting closer and larger, outline blurred strangely by the misting water thrown up by its movement. I'd heard the Three Tails referred to as a turtle, but that didn't really seem to encompass it. It had a spikey, thick carapace like a crab, or a shell like a clam, and it's face was equally as armored with a fringe of spikes. One of its giant eyes was closed – a blind spot?

"The Sanbi secretes a hallucinogenic mist!" Mei shouted in warning, proving that no, that misting water wasn't as harmless as I had assumed. "Be careful!"

I thickened the layer of chakra around my skin. If it could prevent scent tracking – keep my skin from leaving an impression on the world – it could hopefully work in reverse and prevent poisonous gas from getting to my skin.

Poisons are the worst.

"I've got it!" Temari shouted back and snapped her fan open to three moons. She spun and launched a gale of howling wind at the Sanbi. It wasn't quite the sky-dragon-tornado thing, but it wasn't far off it, either. It ripped past me and tugged at my clothes and I was beside her, not ahead. The mist around it was blown away, along with a fair portion of water carved out of the ocean and flung into the air behind it, and the Sanbi reared back and up, almost standing and it towered. It's underside was red and striated, almost muscle looking and Mei spat rapid fire balls of lava at it like bullets - they scorched but seemed to do nothing.

The Sanbi slammed back down into the water.

A great wall of water swelled and rose, growing larger and larger the closer to us it got. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the water draining out of the beach. The ninja on the water were scattering but there was nowhere to go, the tsunami was making a straight line between the tailed beast and the village and we were by necessity blocking the way.

Hell. That's going to be bad.

"Out of the way!" Tsunade growled.

Sasuke and I quick stepped, sliding out of the way as Tsunade placed herself directly in the path of the oncoming wave. It was several stories tall now, a solid wall of natural disaster about to ruin our day.

Tsunade stared it down, waiting until the water we were standing on started to rise into the curl of it – and then she clenched a fist and punched upwards. "Hyah!"

The wall of water wobbled, like a water balloon under a slow motion camera, and I could feel her chakra along the length of it, as thin and precisely controlled as a scalpel delivered with all the force of a sledgehammer.

No. 'Sledgehammer' was too gentle.

The entire wave exploded upwards, coming apart and pelting down as rain. Freezing cold rain that drenched us in seconds – but entirely without the devastating force that would have crushed the island. I licked my lips, tasting salt, and tried to wipe it out of my eyes, but the rain kept coming down. Temari's winds turned them into pinpricks and we'd be in trouble if this fight turned into an endurance slog because people were going to be burning chakra just to stay warm.

Visibility was awful. We were cold and wet. The wind was howling. It had gone from a pleasant day at the beach to nightmare conditions in no time, and the fight had barely even started yet.

The Sanbi was on us now, plowing through the first line of mist ninja, their jutsu bouncing harmlessly off of its hide. The spiky shell on its back seemed a natural defense, but even the exposed muscle looking skin was impossibly tough. Water bullets splashing off, water needles failing to find weaknesses to exploit, water lances doing about as much damage as the ocean itself. Some of them were tossed aside, not even attacked, just collateral damage from its movements.

For a second it seemed like Zabuza had some traction – a giant water dragon rising out of the ocean and winding around the Sanbi's torso – especially when Sasuke copied the jutsu immediately, sending another water dragon out and between the two of them they tried to drag it back. Some kind of long, water whip wrapped around the left front leg.

Then it screamed again, that wild, animal sound, and spun into a ball, shredding the dragons with the spikes on its back and charging unimpeded to the island. It moved fast, rolling over the water like a cannonball.

It's chakra felt so… wildly disjointed. So much like the spread out screaming anger, twisting around and around upon itself, that I'd felt on the trip to the island without anything to indicate that it was a real, living creature.

I body flickered ahead of it - staying parallel and not in front - pushing as fast as I could and slapped up barrier seals, one then another and another. It tore through them like they were less than wet paper, barely slowing let alone stopping, and slammed head first into the cliffside, slightly along from where all the guests had been. Chunks of stone went flying, massive boulders chipped off, and sand and dirt crumbled as it collapsed.

(And there was that point of reference I'd been looking for, earlier. The Sanbi was as tall as the cliffs of Hidden Mist.)

An arrow of golden sand whirled past me, homing in on the Sanbi's open eye with terrible and deadly ease. Another thin ribbon of it circled the snout, trying to clamp it closed. Back on the beach, Gaara stood with hand outstretched in our direction. More sand was sluggishly rising through the air, but not much. Certainly not enough.

And then the Sanbi pulled back. Was pulled back. It's claws – hands – dug into the stone with terrifying ease, but inch by inch they left furrows in the ground as it was dragged backwards.

Tsunade had it by the tail.

The water under her feet was strangely still, despite how tumultuous the ocean around her was. How much chakra control did it take to gain enough traction on water to hold back a Tailed Beast? Was she anchoring it all the way down to the bedrock underneath?

She twisted and heaved, dragging the Sanbi by its tail in a circle and throwing it back out to sea. It didn't go far – I doubted even Tsunade could throw a Bijuu far – but it was enough.

"Haku! Now!" Mei commanded, even as she spat ropes of binding lava around its neck and legs. They steamed – or the water steamed from them – and turned into black and solid rock as they cooled. She spat more and more, keeping a constant stream going to layer over what had already been applied.

Giant glittering walls of ice started to rise out of the ocean, surrounding the Sanbi and trapping it. They were serious, solid things, layers and layers of walls, around and underneath it.

"Restraint team into position!" Zabuza ordered. Four of the Mist ninja moved, circling the Ice Prison at equal distances from him, so that they were forming a pentagram, and beginning a long series of handseals. Whatever they were doing it was clear that it would take time, and that they would need the Sanbi restrained while they did it.

Haku's ice was very, very strong.

Except Naruto had broken it. Naruto had broken it with Kyuubi's chakra and so I wasn't at all surprised when they started to crack.

Horrified, maybe. But not surprised.

This was the power of a Bijuu. This was why Konoha had been devastated by the Kyuubi. I'd felt it – felt the chakra – but I'd never really known what it was like, to face any enemy that you couldn't touch. That ignored everything you threw at it on such a massive scale.

Seals! That's how they deal with them!

But they were trying to do that. And I didn't know how to seal a Bijuu – that was a scale I couldn't touch. Wasn't the area I'd studied, wasn't a thing I'd looked into. Chakra itself, maybe, but the Sanbi's chakra was so unbalanced, so unstable that none of those seals would possibly work. They'd just collapse.

The Sanbi's giant head crashed through on of the walls, right eye still stubbornly closed, and pillars of ice and water slammed down around its neck, desperately trying to hold it in place.

But its head was facing Sasuke, open left eye on display-

-and it twisted away, right into Mei's lava attack, taking it full in the face.

Like it knew. Like it avoided him on purpose.

"Oh," I said. The twisting disjointed chakra, like there was someone else's chakra there. Like someone trapped in a genjutsu. The animalistic behavior. The lack of sapience – Bijuu could talk. Shukaku had been crazy but verbose, intelligent.

There was none of that on display here.

"Oh," I said, again, as the Sanbi finally burst free of the ice prison, spinning and knocking the ninja around it back, rupturing the slowly forming jutsu like popping a balloon. I caught a glimpse of Tsunade pulling people out of the water, dealing with the injured, but an idea was finally percolating in my mind now.

I regrouped with Sasuke. "Can you catch it's eye?" I asked, sliding to a stop beside him, both eyes fixed on our quarry. This really didn't seem like the time to take your attention off of it. "I've got-"

"A plan?" he finished. "I've been trying. But-"

"Part of a plan, yeah," I said, bobbing my head in a nod.

He nodded back. Like part of a plan was good enough for him. Good. I was winging it.

I held my left hand out to him in a half seal - rat for shadow jutsu. After a split second he took it, fingers folding around my own like it was something we'd practiced before. It wasn't. I'd never done this with anyone else – had barely done it on my own. I curled my right hand in towards my chest, around my Gelel stone.

Here goes nothing.

I pushed chakra through the stone, using it to transform into Shadow State. Heart, body, skin, clothes, Sasuke- all shadow. The world muted. Went to grey and noise, sounds transmitted to me from a dozen shadows all at once, an overlapping barrage of noise and information.

Mei-sama, we can't-

-move now-

-look out it's going-

-going to attack-

I was those shadows, and I spread and regrouped, finding the biggest shadow of them all, carefully tugging Sasuke along in my wake.

Then upwards – bursting free. Dozens of shadow stitching tendrils looping up and over, tying down the body of the beast, over the snout to hold the mouth closed, around the legs. The shadow underneath primed with paralysis jutsu. As many layers of restraint as I could hope to hold at the same time. Our bodies, sliding back into their real shapes, emerging at the Sanbi's head right in front of the eyes.

I could feel it's chakra. What was not it's chakra. The looping, chaotic feel of it.

"Remember who you are," I ordered and pushed our joined hand seal forward, resting on its snout.

The Sanbi's right eye snapped open.

Red and circling, its right eye was a spinning sharingan.

Next to me, I could feel Sasuke's sharingan genjutsu activate, like a car switching into gear, could feel the chakra pulse and settle. It clashed and resonated at the same time, like water entering a channel that was already full.

And the world around us vanished – went black – and all that was left was us and the Sanbi, trapped in chains, and a looming spectre above us with sharingan eyes.

"Seal space," I breathed. Though was that right? Was it Genjutsu space? Jinchuriki space? An extra dimensional space, connected but not connected to the real world. A pocket of space-time, however it had been created.

"What the hell?" Sasuke breathed back, hand tightening on mine. The hand seal wasn't exactly necessary any longer, but I made no move to let go.

The Sanbi was thrashing in his chains, maybe mirroring the thrashing his body was doing outside. They were worn down and rusted, some of them pulling free, but still so many left to go. We pulled back, away from it, so we didn't get hit by it, and even though this dark space had no real dimensions, we managed to get some distance.

I took a deep breath. Would this solve our problems? Was this the right thing to do? I had no idea. But there was a very clear path ahead of us.

"We need to get rid of that," I said, glancing upwards at the almost-certainly-Madara figure. Who else could have trapped the Three Tails in a genjutsu strong enough to last beyond its death and reformation?

"How?" Sasuke asked, dubiously.

"… that's a good question." I looked around. There was nothing here but us. "Well, um, sealing relies largely on theoretical understanding and willpower. If this place is a sealing space – or operates by the same rules…"

"We just… think it away?" Sasuke translated. He rolled his shoulders back, like squaring up for a fight. "Okay."

Will it away, I corrected, mentally, but he wasn't wrong so I didn't correct it. Willpower. The power of my will.

The Sanbi thrashed again. Weakly. It seemed so tired. How many years had it been fighting this? Sealed, not just within a Jinchuriki, but within itself?

I let go of Sasuke's hand and stepped closer. "Isobu," I said. "Please, stop fighting! We're going to get you out of there!"

I put as much force, as much truth into my words as I could. They seemed so small in this endless dark, under the watchful sharingan eye.

God, that's going to give me nightmares.

Isobu stopped moving and his giant eyes cracked open, just a fraction. "Really?" his voice was surprisingly young and childish. And hopeful. "You'll help Isobu?"

Sapience. Anything that talks can be reasoned with. Work with that.

I managed a smile. "We will," I reaffirmed. "We just want the fighting to stop, okay? If we get you out of there, will you stop attacking us?"

He seemed to ponder that, which was actually nerve wracking. Like, what was I going to do, if he said 'no'?

Sasuke was side eyeing me extremely hard. "Is this a good idea?" he hissed under his breath.

I gave a minute shrug, barely a twitch of my shoulders. "It can hardly make this worse, can it?" I answered, equally quiet.

Well, it probably could. Then we'd have to fight an intelligent, impenetrable chakra beast. Which was maybe worse than a chakra beast thrashing around in pain? Really, there were just no good options here. And actually, what was going to happen if it did stop fighting? There was just a Bijuu roaming around on the ocean? Somehow I didn't really see that going over well.

One problem at a time.

"Okay," Isobu rumbled. "If you take the chains off, Isobu will stop fighting. It's a promise." He wiggled his front leg out forwards and curled the fingers down except for the smallest.

Blank faced, I approached and held out my own pinky finger against it, like that was even manageable. His whole entire hand was about as tall as I was. "It's a promise," I agreed.

Of course, then we had to work out how to actually get the chains off. Grabbing and pulling hardly worked – they were strong and thick and stuck hard … however they were affixed to the ground.

"Let me try," Sasuke said, drawing the chakra sabre from his back. The blade lit up white and sliced through the chain easily enough, making it crumble and disintegrate into nothingness.

"Duh," I said, rolling my eyes at myself. We weren't physically here, and neither was our stuff. But mental representations were mental representations and it would work if I thought it would work. Willpower.

I twisted my hand and flicked my lightsaber on. "Now we're talking."

Clambering over Isobu to cut the chains wasn't actually all that physically demanding. A bit intimidating, sure, especially since we'd been ineffectively fighting him a minute ago and up close the carapace was still spikey and rough enough to grate your skin off, but he wasn't actually moving, so we didn't get squished or otherwise injured.

And when the last chain broke apart under our swords, the figure in the sky cracked apart like a kaleidoscope, into a thousand brief and colourful parts –

- And then we were back on the ocean, cold rain pouring down and the wind buffeting us. My shadow stitching tendrils gave out, collapsing off his back like an oil slick, overextended to the max.

Isobu opened his eyes. "I'm scared," he said, voice small.

My hand, joined with Sasuke's in a half seal, was still on his nose. I patted it awkwardly. "I know," I said. "I know."