It was a dispirited group that slowly made their way back to the village hidden in the leaves. While their mission objective had been successful, that success had come at too high a cost. Instead of four shinobi returning from Wave country, there were only three. Three shinobi, each too lost in their own sorrow to offer the emotional support the others needed.

The most experienced of the three, the one charged with looking out for the other two - and their deceased team mate - found himself sinking into a depression he'd long thought dealt with. After many years of turning away any genin team sent his way, Hatake Kakashi had finally taken one on. But their first mission of note had turned into a repeat of the first mission he'd completed as a jounin; a cocky, stubborn genius had finally warmed up to the goofy member of the team. The genius had insisted on focussing on the mission. The goof had insisted on saving his team mate instead.

Eyes were injured beyond repair. A shinobi was fatally wounded. And the dying shinobi had offered their own eyes as a replacement for those that were lost. The rift in the team was ended in the same moment that irreparably tore the team apart.

Uchiha Sasuke, the last member of his clan loyal to Konoha, was dead.

Everything that Kakashi had learned from the fateful mission were his teammate Uchiha Obito had died felt like it was for naught. All his effort to stress the importance of your team, all of the effort spent telling his genin that they needed to value their comrades above all else, it all fell flat in the fact that Kakashi himself had failed to do so. The sharingan - the gift from Obito to replace the eye Kakashi had lost - had not been enough to help Kakashi save his ward.

Kakashi had never fully managed to let go of his guilt about the death of Obito. It was his decisions that directly lead to Obito's death. But he'd learned to manage the guilt. At least, until now.

Now, the guilt was threatening to drown him.

Still, he held himself together - at least externally. While he wasn't yet in an emotional space to properly support the two surviving genin of team 7, he knew that he had to gear himself up to do so. He owed his old team that much.

Haruno Sakura's world had been thrown upside down.

For several years now, her life had revolved around one thing - her crush on Uchiha Sasuke. Sure, she had enrolled in the ninja academy before the crush had developed, but once love had taken hold, her whole motivation for being a ninja was that Sasuke was going to be a ninja. She had been determined to do whatever it took to earn his love. She'd lost her first real friend over this, as Yamanaka Ino also longed to earn Sasuke's love, and the two girls had been rivals ever since.

But the rug had been swept out from under her. All of her goals. All of her hopes. All of her dreams. They all revolved around Sasuke, but Sasuke was dead.

She wasn't sure what stung more - that Sasuke had died, taking her dreams with him, or the fact that her entire reason for being had been so easily dislodged.

The tears had flowed freely at first, but now it felt like there were no more tears left to cry. All that was left was emptiness.

Looking around her, she could see her sensei stoically walking beside her. No book in his hand this time - he was too lost in his own thoughts to read one of the books he so liked to carry around. And Naruto, her remaining teammate, walked on the other side of her with a face constantly shifting between anguish and anger.

The facial expressions on Naruto's face felt wrong. He was quick to laugh, and quick to anger, but the anger she could now see on his face was different. It was... real.

It was frightening.

The red eyes, tomoe constantly swirling within the sharingan gifted to him by Sasuke seemed made for anger. Made for a cold rage.

Sakura had thought she'd hated Naruto's overenthusiastic personality. Currently, she missed it. She needed some sense of cheerfulness to be there. She needed the normalcy of the old team 7.

She needed to know that she hadn't lost Naruto as well as Sasuke.

Uzukmaki Naruto's mind was in a state of turmoil. His memory of what had transpired was still foggy, but the situation now he could see with cutting clarity.

He'd finally found someone he might truly consider a friend, even if it wasn't something that he would have uttered out loud. He had butted heads with Sasuke all throughout the academy - Sasuke had all the acknowledgement from his peer that Naruto had so deeply desired, and at a young age Naruto had somehow reached the conclusion that if he could beat Sasuke, if he could get Sasuke to acknowledge him, then all the praise lavished upon Sasuke by the others in Konoha would be Naruto's by proxy.

In the end, Sasuke had indeed acknowledged him. Sasuke had even gifted his eyes to Naruto, who's own eyes had been gravely injured in the fight.

His new eyes saw everything with a crystal clear sharpness that hurt.

The magnitude of Sasuke's gift weighed heavily on Naruto's mind. For a brief, foggy moment, he'd considered his career as a ninja over, and probably his life too. But he'd managed somehow to fight blind. How, he wasn't quite sure, but it had felt like a consuming anger had carried him. Strengthened him. Rendered him nigh on invincible.

It had been too late to save Sasuke's life, but apparently Sasuke had still appreciated the effort. And now, that bastard's eyes were in his head. The increased perception of everything in his field of vision was so great that it hurt. It was information overload.

Naruto had long professed his goal to be to become the Hokage. By becoming the leader of his village, everyone would be forced to acknowledge him. But now, all he could think about was what Sasuke had said the day they'd met their sensei.

There was no goal, but an ambition. To kill a certain man.

Sasuke would now never get that chance. But Naruto silently made a vow to himself that Sasuke's eyes would.

And Naruto would never go back on his word. That was his ninja way.

Unbeknownst to the three shinobi, a fourth mind was also in turmoil.

Kurama, the nine tailed demon fox felt something... concerning.

The fact that the numbskull he had been sealed inside had now acquired the sharingan was a matter of no small displeasure for him. He detested those accursed eyes. Eyes that held the power to force him to act against his own will.

Eyes that held the power to make him even more of a slave than he was already, being trapped in a seal.

But there was something at work beyond the scope of a mere sharingan. Nested within those eyes was an uncomfortably familiar presence, the essence of one that Kuruma thought long gone. And this new presence had made Kuruma aware of another familiar essence, held by the ninja that bore the seal imprisoning him.

The essence of each of the two sons of the sage of six paths had come to meet in a single person. And as those essences began to mix, a third was very slowly becoming apparent - the essence of the sage himself.

So far, the essence of the sage was barely the shadow of a whisper. But Kuruma knew that with time, it would only grow.

And with this, Kuruma knew something else that he'd long thought forgotten.

Fear.