Kiba opened his eyes slowly when he heard the guttural growls. They were emanating from Master Kakashi, who was poised on all fours above the three children, shielding them with his body. Sasuke and Hinata stirred and awoke, too. The two of them were confused, but Kiba was tense with fear. Only he understood the nature of these growls. In the canine language, they meant, Danger. Warning. Run. Akamaru's neck fur was standing up. Kakashi bent very close to them and breathed, "The lead ninja is coming. I'll give you an opening. When I tell you to run—you'd better run." He leaped upward and thrust his arms out to deflect two throwing knives, using the gauntlets on the back of his hands. A third knife grazed his cheek and caused blood to trickle down his face. It was the first time Kiba had seen him injured in any way. He gulped. The enemy ninja must be a better fighter than any of them had expected.

Kakashi wiped the blood off with his fingers and smeared it onto the ground. "Thanks for saving me the trouble," he commented as he executed several signs. Slapping the palm of his hand onto the blood smear, he shouted, "Kuchiyose no jutsu—the art of summoning!" Three dogs burst out of nowhere. He pointed Kiba, Hinata, and Sasuke out to them. "One of you for each of them. Guard them with your life." A little pug dog trotted over to Kiba; a retriever joined Hinata; and a collie stationed himself at Sasuke's side.

Dozens more ninja flooded the clearing, all identical, with the same eye patch over their right eyes. They rushed Kakashi without preamble. Eyeing one of them meaningfully, Kakashi began to make katas that the other started to recognize.

"You think I'd forget that jutsu?" he asked. Together, the horde of clones leapt back as Kakashi took a deep breath. "You're not going to get me with it again!"

"No, I'm not," Kakashi confirmed casually. The clones' eyes widened in confusion before a blast of flame overtook them, coming from the opposite direction of Kakashi. Sasuke stood hidden behind a bush, to which he had run while the doppelgangers had made their entrance. Now he was breathing out flames like a dragon, taking out clone after clone. The retriever next to him barked, cheering him on. When he had no air left in his lungs he stopped the attack, panting for breath. "Very good, Sasuke," Kakashi approved. "Looks like you made your own opening." He went on the offensive with sudden, furious speed. Slashing at the remaining clones with shuriken, he barked, "Run!" The three kids and three dogs obediently raced out of the clearing. Kakashi made sure to keep his opponent too busy to give chase. He made two doppelgangers of himself, and the three of him attacked the remaining seven one-eyed clones. They seemed to keep multiplying, though. More of them were always there to replace the ones that fell. Kakashi slashed with shuriken, and threw others to hit his enemies in vital spots. For each Kakashi clone that vanished, at least ten one-eyed doppelgangers were taken out. That was a net gain of twenty, yet when Kakashi stood alone without his clones, his enemy still faced him with thirty-some doppelgangers.

"You're good," Kakashi complimented him. "You have an unusually high amount of chakra, and your chakra control is impressive." He pushed his hitai-ate headband up to uncover his sharingan. "Unfortunately for you, I have a secret weapon. Consider yourself lucky. I only use it on the best opponents."

"So you have heterochromia," the lead clone noted, unimpressed.

"You've never heard of the sharingan?" Kakashi asked with genuine surprise. He stared hard at the clones. There were different levels of chakra among the various doppelgangers, a fact which surprised him further. Uncharacteristically confused, he hesitated without being sure which one to attack first. "Well, you're in for a great show," he said, keeping his tone conversational. He reached down to pull a kunai from his leg pouch. Pouncing like a cat, he drove it into the chest of the clone who had the highest chakra level. That one would be the real enemy.

But Kakashi had struck wrongly. His entire body seized up. The clone became light which flooded into Kakashi. The energy raced through him: he was electrocuted. His knees buckled, and his legs folded under him before he fell to the ground. Through wide, blank eyes he stared up at his enemy.

"Is that the best your 'sharingan' can do?" scoffed another clone. "I'm disappointed."

"A lightning clone?" Kakashi croaked. The ninja's eyebrow went up when he heard Kakashi speak.

"You're still alive?"

"I'm a lightning-type," Kakashi explained to him. "It'll take more than that to kill me."

"But you're weak," concluded the doppelganger. His eye narrowed as he picked up a kunai knife from the battlefield. "This should finish you off." The clone knelt and grabbed Kakashi's collar. Then he grunted with sudden pain. Another kunai had embedded itself in his back. He slumped over and vanished. Hinata stood behind the place where he'd been, her eyes large from fear. It was she who had thrown the knife. Her retriever companion stood stiffly next to her.

Painfully, Kakashi pushed himself to his feet. He went over to Hinata and pulled loose the sash of her pale gi. "Join the boys," he commanded the dog. "We'll be there soon." The retriever loped away, and Kakashi crouched down next to the Hyuga girl. "Get on," he muttered to her. When he had helped her onto his back, he tied her in place with the sash. He steeled himself for a final assault.

"That was an ordinary clone Hinata took out." He began walking among the doppelgangers. Angered by his nonchalance, they jumped toward him. He danced out of their way. "Earth clones, water clones, lightning clones, and normal clones, all at the same time, each imbued with a different level of chakra," he noted, shaking his head. "You're a very talented shinobi," he admitted. "I've never seen anyone with three chakra types before. You've had training—lots of it. But you're the only real ninja in your group. That was the first flaw in your plan." He squinted at the numerous clones as he evaded their onslaught. Unable to find what he was looking for, he went on. "Still, your choice of men was good. You surrounded yourself with teammates who would do anything for you—who would even die for you. Even though they weren't from the shinobi lands, they were good fighters. And your weapons . . . hmm, you forged them, didn't you? Along with your headbands, of course. You must have a fully-outfitted base of operations somewhere outside the shinobi lands. That's where you're operating from—and that's where you're planning to found a new land." The eyes of the clones widened at the same time, and they increased the fury of their attack. Kakashi was kept on his toes trying to avoid them all. He clasped his hands in the tora kata and focused his chakra, putting out the highest speed his body had to offer. Hinata's weight didn't help matters, but at least she wasn't moving as she held on to him with all the strength in her little body. "It would start small, of course; just a few select young shinobi and a barn to train them in," he continued. "They had to be so young that they would eventually forget their homeland and by loyal to you alone. The dojutsu wielders were especially coveted. That's why you decided to come after me personally," he stated, "because I have two of the three eye-jutsu kids."

"I came after you because only I am good enough to defeat you!" snarled three of the clones at once. Kakashi looked sharply in their direction. His sharingan eye picked up what he had been searching for. There was a ninja who had a similar chakra level to the other doppelgangers, but Kakashi could see the barely-detectable flow of energy in his body. It wasn't stationary chakra, like the rest of the look-alikes.

"I don't think so," he said coldly. "You're not enough to beat me. You see, that's where you made your fatal mistake. Your kidnapping may have gone smoothly. You might have eventually trained these kids to be perfect tools for your service, the basis for your new land. But you made one choice that sealed your fate." With an irate cry, the real ninja threw himself at Kakashi. The Copy Ninja's hands were still locked in the hand sign of the tora. Turning towards his opponent, he drove his fingers straight into the man's chest. They pierced through skin, muscle, and bone, and stabbed into the ninja's heart.

"You messed with the shinobi of Konoha," he finished. His hands buried in flesh up to his wrists, Kakashi felt the heartbeat cease. The doppelgangers standing around disappeared, or crumbled into dirt, or fell to the ground as water, or dissolved into blue lightning and shot into the sky. Kakashi pulled his hands free, rinsed them in one of the resulting puddles where a clone had been, and covered up his sharingan again. He didn't hesitate or even spare a glance for his enemy's body, but raced straight through the trees to where he could smell the boys and canines. The dogs barked in greeting, and Kiba and Sasuke looked relieved to see that their leader and kunoichi were all right. "I told you to run," he upbraided Hinata as he untied the sash to let her down. "But you put yourself in danger and came back. I don't ever want to catch you disobeying my orders again."

"Y-yes, M-Master. I-I'm sorry, Master," Hinata stammered. "I-it's just that—there was lightning, and you were hurt, and I h-had to . . ."

"You had to come back to protect me," Kakashi finished her sentence. Hinata seemed to realize what the idea of a cadet protecting a jonin sounded like, for she went red and ducked her head. Kakashi nodded slowly. "Good," he praised her. "Now maybe you understand what being a shinobi is all about." Hinata looked up at him with surprise.

"Y-yes, Master," she whispered. "Maybe." Kakashi looked at the other two.

"Why didn't either of you come back?" he demanded with a raised eyebrow.

"Wait, Master," said Sasuke. "Are you yelling at Hinata for coming back, and yelling at us for not?" Kakashi chuckled lightly.

"That's not fair!" Kiba spoke up, indignant.

"No, it's not," agreed Kakashi, "but never mind. We're on the border, and our biggest hindrance is now out of the way permanently." He used reverse summoning to send the dogs back from where they came. Jerking his thumb in an easterly direction, he said, "Now let's go home."

A/N: The "Thousand Years of Death" jutsu is forever shrouded in uncertainty. This chapter was my attempt at portraying what that jutsu actually does. Because I really don't believe that it's only used for poking people in the butt.