The Harsh Truth

Epilogue

Sasuke was staring, with his twin sharingan eyes, at the most problematic dilemma ever.

On one side, his clearly girlfriend had definitively hinted at something, when she told him she wanted him to be on the look-out near the small lagoon. On the other, he was an Uchiha, and as one he shouldn't be peaking with his sharingan infused eyes that made it so that everything he saw was memorized. Still, the sight of his naked girlfriend wouldn't be perverted…would it?

The fact that Ino was there too meant nothing. Like Tenten's presence too was clearly overrated. He was doing this because there was Sakura, naked, bathing. Not because there were Kunoichis, naked, doing kami knew what while giggling like schoolgirls.

Furthermore he was half-way sure Neji was doing pretty much the same with his Byakugan…but if he actually was, then it meant he was peeking on Sakura too…the damn Senju!

Growling slightly, Sasuke turned his gaze to where the Senju stood, eyes closed, but with a strange twitch at the bottom right corner of his lips. The nerve of the Senju! To listen to the giggling of the girls!

Truly, Rock Lee was being held back by a strange sort of mantra that he kept on repeating while his eyes stayed closed too.

"The flames of youth do not burn for those who peek. The flames of youth do not burn for those who peek."

"Uchiha," Neji commented, "I believe no-one can giggle for half an hour straight."

"My sharingan detects no Genjutsu being used on us, Senju."

"What if it was only auditory in nature?"

"Senju, I'd know if…urk!" Lee had promptly tried to remove the Genjutsu, after Neji's theory, through the only mean that Gai had taught him: pain inflicting.

As a fist was driven straight into Sasuke's guts, and another quickly reached Neji's stomach, the two turned their murderous glares at the same time on the green spandex clad boy.

Sasuke coughed for a moment, before letting Lee explain himself through his usual ranting…he'd give the teenager one chance to say his few last words.

"Yosh! Painfully exiting Genjutsus is the sign of the flames of youth burning brightly!"

"Or maybe of your own stupidity," Neji retorted, wincing from the boy's high voiced screams. If, by any chance, there were any type of shinobi, even half-trained academy Genins, looking out for them…then certainly they'd end up being found by the sheer noise of Rock Lee alone.

If not from the giggling that had been going on for at least half an hour.

"I'm still thinking it's not normal for the girls to giggle that long," Neji pointed out, "and why is your sharingan still alight, Sasuke?"

"Huh? What are you talking about Senju? My sharingan's off."

"No it isn't. Both eyes are activated."

"Listen here…" Sasuke closed his eyes, concentrating for a second…

"This is my activated sharingan." And then, pitch black darkness emerged from the Uchiha's eyes, tendrils of pure black matter darting forward, as the giggles became screams of pain and promises of murders most foul.

The next second Neji opened his eyes in shock, the dream all too vivid within his mind.

They were in a small clearing in the land of swamps, halfway towards the rendezvous point to get the Godaime Hokage and his family back from the land of iron's samurais. They had merely decided not to return to Konoha and wait for the couple of days of the Kage meeting in the nearby land.