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If anyone asked Sasuke where his sense of adventure was, he would claim that it had been strangled in its sleep by his teammates. (Said teammates would probably laugh and dredge up years old stories of adventures he had dragged them into, but they were assholes like that.) The frozen wasteland they had found themselves in was a good example of why his sense of adventure was marching far away. He could see, which meant that it was daytime, but there was enough fog that he couldn't see much other than large chunks of snow and ice floating in water.
"Where are we this time?" Sasuke asked. (To be pedantic, Sasuke didn't actually use the Japanese word for where. Like many subject matter experts, Team Seven had evolved a special vocabulary all their own. The word he actually used was a special term they used that encompassed where, when and what fucking universe. They technically had a version that didn't contain the swear, but it was used so infrequently that Shikako was probably the only one who remembered what it was.)
"Beats me," Shikako replied far too cheerfully.
"Land of Snow before we thawed it out?" asked Naruto.
Sasuke groaned. "Please don't go there. Dimension travel is bad enough without entertaining the idea of actual time travel."
"C'mon, Sasuke, live a little!"
Sasuke glared at the orange menace. "There are some much warmer places for that. One of these days the portal is going to open up on a nice tropical beach with a bar serving fruity drinks, and I'll be perfectly happy to live it up there."
"With our luck, the beach will be full of cannibals," Shikako noted, which Sasuke couldn't actually disagree with. "And there are a couple of possibly not cannibals in that direction."
"Are they close enough to see without the fog?" Naruto asked.
"Maybe."
Then the idiot decided to use a wind jutsu to blow away the fog.
Sasuke heard "Your other left!" from that direction followed by a crashing sound.
"Oops."
The thing that was giving Sasuke a headache was that these dimensional jaunts were allowed partly so that Naruto could develop field experience. Translation: get all the stupid, careless mistakes out of his system somewhere where there was no one that anyone in Konoha cared about before they let him be hokage. (The implication there being that no one in Konoha cared if Sasuke and Shikako got hurt from Naruto's careless mistakes.) So this shit? This was exactly the kind of thing they were here for.
To make things worse, Naruto was smarter than this three years ago, the proof being that he made Chunin before either Sasuke or Shikako did. Part of that was dumb luck, but the rest was that he genuninely was smarter back then. Well, no. Ino's theory was that Naruto was attention starved and making stupid mistakes was his way of getting attention. In other words, Jiraiya had been criminally neglectful during their three year "training" trip and had trained Naruto into making stupid mistakes just to get attention from the pervy sage.
(While Sasuke had calmed down about this, Mr. Chakra Saber still had some unresolved issues regarding the subject and wanted to have an up close and personal discussion about it with Jiraiya's spleen, or possibly liver. Sasuke wasn't clear on which, but he would be happy to introduce Mr. Chakra Saber to both.)
"At least I understand the language here," Sasuke muttered as they moved towards the sound of the crash. Now that the wind had blown away most of the fog, he could see they were on a series of icebergs in the water. Incidentally, the sound of the crash was on the other side of an iceberg, which gave some indication of just how badly Naruto overpowered his wind jutsu.
"What's the matter? Don't want another orange skinned space babe kissing you for language knowledge?" Naruto asked.
"Shut up, dobe." Sasuke would deny blushing at that reminder.
"Did that girl say something about bending?" asked Shikako. "The one over there, not Starfire."
"Bending?" Naruto replied.
Sasuke got a sinking feeling. He wasn't sure if it was the worst part of dimension travel, but definitely one of the crappiest parts was the discovery that all the universes they visited were fictional. The first universe they visited was literally out of an Icha Icha novel. Hell, their own universe was semi-fictional, Shikako having picked up a complete set of the "Naruto" manga while they were in the Titans' universe. (The guys in intelligence still haven't stopped giving Sasuke funny looks about fictional him going traitor.)
So somehow when they were in the Titans' universe, Shikako had binged around three decades worth of fiction in about a week. It wouldn't have been so bad if it had just been books. Sasuke could speedread with the best that the Nara could offer and could at least see how that was possible, but Shikako somehow managed to also do music, television and movies. Even if you stuck Sasuke in a room with fifty televisions going non stop with his Sharingan activated, he wouldn't have been able to replicate that feat.
"It's what they use instead of chakra here. Everyone only gets one element though," Shikako replied.
"And why are we moving so slowly?" Naruto asked, seeing as Shikako was only moving at a lazy stroll.
"Plot."
Sasuke winced. "How bad is it?"
"Just a genocidal ruler in charge of the largest army in the world."
The sad part was that the 'just' wasn't sarcastic. It wasn't a demon invasion, the moon eye plan or a scheme to invade the afterlife and overthrow God.
Naruto sighed. "Why can't we find a world where nothing-"
"Do you want to go back to Icha Icha Paradise?" Sasuke asked.
"Hard pass."
"Didn't think so." Objectively, it wasn't a bad universe, or really all that different from home, but everyone talked like they were in an Icha Icha novel. It made sense because they were, but it was still creepy as Hell. Actually, Hell wasn't actually all that creepy. Sasuke wouldn't want to live there, but it was fairly straightforward in its unpleasantness.
A pillar of light suddenly erupted on the other side of the iceberg in front of them.
"What's that?" Naruto asked.
"Plot bullshit."
Sasuke kind of hated the fact that that was a reasonable answer after all they had gone through. "Do we want to get involved with the plot?"
"I don't know about you, but I want to pet the flying bison," Shikako answered.
Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other. "The what?"
"That light signaled that a flying bison just came out of suspended animation… and I suppose the prophesied savior, too."
"But the bison is the important part," Sasuke said dryly.
"Exactly!"
Naruto dramatically clutched his hand over his heart. "I'm hurt."
Shikako gave him an extremely unimpressed look. "I've seen you try to eat a rock before. My respect for prophesied saviors is rather low."
"I thought it was candy!"
"Anyway, Aang is twelve. Think Naruto at the same age if he had better socialization and could do wind jutsu."
Naruto stopped. "Wait. Aang? Flying bison? We're in 'Avatar: the Last Airbender,' right? What? Beast Boy thought I would like it."
Shikako nodded. "Seems like it. Didn't you realize it when I mentioned bending?"
Naruto winced. "I don't think we should interfere, then."
Sasuke blinked. "Why not?"
"Because Aang is a lot like me and learns best from his mistakes, and we really don't have the years necessary to sit on him to teach him without letting him make those mistakes. Honestly, his journey was more about learning about how to be the Avatar than it was about defeating the Fire Nation."
Finding the Naruto manga was good for at least one thing: making Naruto very introspective about the shit he had put them all through, especially Shikako. (Though, it wasn't worth the nightmares they all had about Shikako dying as a baby. Seriously, you'd think Shikako had been put on house arrest considering how long it took before any of her family would let her out of their sight after that.)
Shikako sighed and looked over towards where they could hear voices. "Well, it looks like they're on track, I suppose."
Sasuke shrugged. Considering half his job was protecting the worlds they visited from his idiot teammates, he was fine ignoring the plot. "If we know where we are, is there any point to staying in this world?"
"There was a noodle restaurant in Ba Sing Se I thought looked good," Naruto replied. "I'm sure it's no Ichiraku's but it's worth giving it a try."
Sasuke gave him a flat look. "Seriously?"
Shikako tried to give him puppy dog eyes. "Maybe we can find some flying bison on the way?"
Sasuke threw up his hands. "Fine! We'll visit the noodle restaurant and play with some flying bison!"
"Great! I think I sense some flying bison a few hundred miles that way!"
Sasuke shook his head. "Your sensing range is bullshit."
"And there are some penguins over there!"
Sasuke sighed. Only Shikako would treat traveling to an alternate dimension like a trip to the zoo.
Naruto poked at an iceberg. "So… penguins and-" He scooped some snow off the surface. "A snowball fight?"
Sasuke's eyes widened. "Don't you fucking dare-"
Zuko gestured at the light. "That light came from an incredibly powerful source! It has to be him!"
His uncle remained unmoved. "Or it's just the celestial lights. We've been down this road before, Prince Zuko. I don't want you to get too excited over nothing. Please sit. Why don't you enjoy a cup of calming Jasmine tea?"
"I don't need any calming tea! I need to capture the Avatar! Helmsman, set a course for the light!"
A blast of wind washed over the ship, prompting Zuko to take out a telescope to see if he could find a source. He was about to give up when he saw three figures running on the water. "Waterbenders!" he shouted. "Three of them!"
"How can you tell?" asked his uncle.
"Because they're walking on the water!" And running and jumping on the water. "They're-" Zuko rubbed his eye and looked back through the telescope. "Having a snowball fight?"
Zuko's uncle sighed. "In this weather? Well, to each their own."
Zuko had no idea that water bending would let someone jump so high. Were they bending the water in their bodies? If they could do that - especially if they could bend the water in other people's bodies, water benders just got a lot scarier. He wasn't sure if pounding icebergs into powder for their snowball fight was outside of what he knew water benders could do or not. Taking a ship to this part of the world was suddenly a far less intelligent decision than he previously thought.
Then one of them burst into flames.
"The Avatar!"
"Let me see." Zuko's uncle was next to him before he could blink, and he passed on the telescope.
"I think you mean three avatars." His uncle's voice cracked in a manner that was very out of character for him. Zuko was so caught up on that part that it took a moment for him to parse what his uncle had actually said.
"What." Zuko took back the telescope and saw that one of the benders was flying. Another was wielding a blade of lightning to swat snowballs out of the air, while the guy who was on fire remained cheerfully ablaze. "Well…. Fuck."