Kakashi turned on his front to find a traumatic view, even for someone who should had become quite acustomed to losing comrades, simpler said, even for a shinobi. Corpses splattered in the dirt. Blood still fresh and warm feeding the dry earth. A sudden realization had him shivering as he stepped backwards - his foot had been sitting on an eye. The worst was he had no idea whose eye was that.

He couldn't say he had known every single one in that place, but he was sure that, if he had seen any of their faces, he would have recognized them as direct comrades. But most of faces were now irecognisable, so that he started to mistakingly think - or rather hope - that he had arrived in the wrong place. And even so... His or anyone else's, it was a whole front slaughtered to the last one. He refused to believe the Zetsu clones had been capable of such. No matter their ability to change appearance and chakra. These shinobi could maybe not have been the brightest, but they were shinobi. That alone wouldn't have possibly resulted in their death. Not so suddenly. Not like that.

In the silence around, a groan echoed. A groan!

He ran towards the sound of it. Someone still alive. Out of thousands.

Kakashi spotted him quite easily. A pair of eyes had turned with panic at the sound of his steps. One only pair of eyes moving in a sea of wide open motionless eyes.

Kakashi knelt next to the man, taking a quick look at his state. In these kinds of moments, assuring the person everything would be alright and that they'd be taken to a doctor quickly is strictly necessary, even when both parts know it's a cruel lie. Even when both parts don't mean to lie themselves, only to hope.

"Wait, wait... Leave me... huff... take a... huff... take a breath," the man was saying, after Kakashi had insisted on him being taken to a medic.

"How?" Kakashi asked it without hesitation.

"Ma... huff... Madara," the man replied.

Kakashi's eyes went foggy. Every inch of his brain ached with the refusal to understand it. At first. After, his whole body started trembling uncontrollably, put in motion by anger and a deep cutting hurt. This... This was...

He grasped tightly to the weapon he had just taken out of the dying man's hand, that had had it pinned to the ground, until it cut deep in his palm. So this was it. This was the border earlier not yet passed. He saw it now and there was no longer denying it. His best friend was a dangerous killer. Nothing of a nice guy anymore. Nothing of a Leaf shinobi remained. Nothing of a human.

Was this all his fault? This pile of bodies... Because he had just played team, thinking things could go on like that? Because he kept the secret and hoped? Because he hadn't tried to kill him himself? Tried. Because he seemed to had become too strong for that.

"Listen... huff...," the dying man caught Kakashi's sleeve, snapping him into reality, which came with the piercing pain of the wounds done in his palm. "Madara... huff... he is Madara..."

"Yes, I got th-"

"No, you... huff... didn't," the man interrupted him, pulling tighter at his sleeve. "He IS... huff... REALLY IS Madara."

Kakashi frowned, not understanding the insistance, under the cloak of anger and guilt.

"Madara!" the man insisted, spitting blood. "Revived..." He started coughing more and more. "Dead!" The coughing stopped him from adding anything for the next few seconds. When he spoked next, he sounded exhausted, "Impossible... huff... Madara under... mask. Tell them! Go!" The command had Kakashi sitting before thinking it through.

The coughing started again, this time extremely violently.

And, as it stopped, the man spat, before one last mouthful of blood, "Kawaki Kimiko. Sand. Tell her I'm sorry."

The realization of what the man had meant sank in. And he took one more look around. That tragedy, seen from another perspective. Other hands and another mind than he thought had been capable of that. Suddenly, he looked at a picture unknown. He didn't know what that settled. Just that out there was someone worse than Obito in all ways and that it had to be somehow reported to central.

Also, he kept in mind the name Kawaki Kimiko.

"I didn't send troops to the medical tents!" Obito bursted out. "How come I hear a report of an attack there!"

The clones stepped back in fear. They had never seen him like that. Not once.

"I did. As a man in charge of battle strategies. Attacking their source of mending was an obvious step in the process," Orochimaru showed up. He sneered, seeing the surprise in Obito's visible eye. And, to make it grow even more and make things funnier for him, he added, "But why worry? You prepared things beforehand, so she's safe and sound... Obito."

After the first moments, in which he was simply petrified, Obito snapped out of it and started laughing maniacally, as he moved around the room. He took his mask off, too, threw it on the desk, leaning against it.

"And now you think you have me at your hand, don't you?" He laughed again, massaging the back of his neck, the tension and tiredness of the last days gathered in there. "You think that, in this right moment, it still has any value?" he asked after straightening his pose back again. "You might think that the intent of keeping a couple of shinobi alive has so much relevance that it could stay in my way? It doesn't," and, as he said that, his eyes glistened darkly in Orochimaru's direction.

The older man wasn't discouraged at all by Obito's assurements. His eyes kept their devilish enthusiasm. "Young boy, did I ever say anything like that?" he approached Obito smoothly, keeping a cool, detached exterior. "Keep your puppies, I'm not interested in them. And I'm no longer interested in the Hashirama cells, either. I'll continue helping you. This war game is funny for me. However... What I want is Madara's body, once you're done with it," he hissed.

"You can't experiment on a revived body," Obito frowned.

"But you WILL revive him for real, in the end. Do you think I didn't guess it by now, that he's not in your plans? And you will keep him in this immortal state, as long as he's useful. But he'll be revived, after, made to think it's at his will. But you only want to make it possible to kill him, don't you?"

"Nice for you to guess that much," Obito grimaced, not interested a little. He raised his shoulders, neutral, "He's yours, if you desire to pick up what's left of him, afterwards."

As if. Not that he would mind. His disinterest in the matter was genuine. But, lost in his ambitions and desires, Orochimaru seemed to miss thinking of what would be the outcome of this war. He was obssessed, lost in his science, missing crucial matters. Just like Kabuto had been, he remembered. But that had been many years before, 'the other war'. He couldn't remember what had happened to Kabuto, in the very end. He was possibly defeated by one of his own puppets. Too lost in crazy experimenting with Eddo Tensei to calculate the risks.

Things had changed and still many were the same.

After Orochimaru left, he remained there! thinking for a while. It was time he went out there and put things in motion, but something kept him on the spot. His eyes fixed on the mask on the desk, once again. Contrary to 'the other war', when it had been glued to his face all the time, he kind of fancied continously throwing it around lately and heard a voice scream no at the thought of picking it up again. Who was that? Whose voice was it? It felt like a stranger, yet like an old, dear being. Something inside was calling out for him. But he could not understand the message just yet. He could not recognize its identity just yet. But he knew that, sometime soon, he would.

A/N: A very short chappy for now, sorrry for this. I'm trying to update each of my stories this next week and a new update will come for this story as well.