They were silent. All of them. Ever since the girl had erupted into existence. Not with a flash of light, not with a noise, but with the quaking of the very air as if reality itself was splitting along its seams. Only the flames feasting on the last bits of the shrine's wooden flesh dared to make a sound. But the creatures of reason – man and wolf – had frozen, the points of sharp eyes and glinting weapons darting between each other and the girl.

They recognized her of course. The bronzed hair. The frayed hakama. The bruised, olive skin. The swollen ankle, its flesh bulging over the leather brace, her feet dirty and bare swaying beneath. The girls' eyes were closed, her head slumped, but they didn't need to see the muddy pupils to know who she was.

The air rumbled, wind whipping into action as it raced between the living things, darting from one to the other as if trying to shove them away. But all only braced themselves, remaining firm in their stances, readying themselves for what was coming. The wind left them then, forsaking them in its flight, only managing to steal the confused, searching and breathless whisper of "Wh-where's K-Kakashi?" from a kunoichi's lips.

She collapsed then, the girl who had appeared. Her limbs sprawling in a useless pile as her cheek hit the ground, hard. She wasn't moving. For those trained in the hunt, they knew she wasn't breathing either. But the air continued to silently snap, crackling with an unseen energy pouring from her.

Finally gathering her senses, the old woman dressed in a miko's garb, shrieked, "Mira!" She ripped her wrist from the kunoichi's hand and ran to the girl as fast as her hips would carry her. The kunoichi made a move to follow her before the bear-like priest jumped in front of her, his arm held out, a kunai steady in a practiced, wrinkled hand. His eyes briefly flitted to the fragile priest at his side who had slowly fallen to his knees, his arms cradled in his chest as tears began to glance the sides of his cheeks. The sickly man shook his head, his eyes wide on the girl as he murmured, "No. No. No. No."

The shinobi-turned-priest turned his gaze back to the crumpled girl, his scar shining like a beacon as the flame's light bounced off a coat of sweat. He couldn't suppress the feeling of dread that was leaching out of his old bones just like that night so long ago. It was happening again. He could see the old woman's fingers begin to blister, peeling back just as his had when he touched the girl's cheeks. How the air itself seemed to fracture around the girl, how the mountains began to quake, reality scream. But this time, he wasn't holding the prayer beads.

"What should we do, Akio?" the frail priest clacked between chattering teeth.

The man shifted the kunai in his grip, noting how the kunoichi stared up at him too, ready for any command. "Yori, we need to perform the harae and cleanse her of the kami. Get the spring water and the cleansing salt." He turned a black pupil onto the Mist shinobi, appraising the one who stared back with an inhuman grin. "Rin," he ordered the kunoichi, "cover him."

"Yes, sir ," she answered, grabbing onto the priest's shaking shoulder to steady him as he rose.

Yori buckled once, his eyes catching sight of the dead gūji, before he chattered, "Th-this w-way!"

Akio felt them leave as he maintained his gaze with the twisted creature that had once been the only student he had ever accepted. The one who had once skipped everywhere she went, somehow always catching butterflies only to present them to him during training breaks. The one who, even when nursing a broken, bloodied arm after a mission, still had fixed him with a beaming smile. The one who grew up before his eyes, who had fallen in love, and who had asked him to take her father's absent place at her wedding. The one who the same day that she had her only child, he had proposed as the Mist's only option for a new jinchūriki to the Mizukage. The one who bawled his name as she was dragged away: the one he had abandoned.

He suppressed the urge to shudder as he saw her eyes began to glow that telltale red as the bijū's chakra began to leak from her. Those same red eyes of hatred that had made him realize what he had done so long ago. The same red eyes he had been running from ever since.

"Wake up! Wake up!" It was the old miko's voice as she shouted at the girl, shaking the prone figure violently as the rocks cut into her wrinkled knees. She ignored how an oily white began to show beneath the puckered flesh of her fingers. She continued to shove at the child she had long since taken in as her own. The child the most delirious part of her believed was her own babe, given back to her by the kamigami. Her own babe whose curled locks were that same auburn. The babe who had left her just as suddenly as the man who said he loved her, who said he'd marry her despite how she had to sell herself to survive.

The delirious joy the aged miko felt as the girl began to twitch – the girl's muscles finally remembering their function – was sapped as she heard a cold, woman's voice order, "Restrain the jinchūriki before the bijū comes out. Keep her alive. I don't want her moving again."

The old woman whirled to her feet, her joints cracking as age tried to restrain her. She flung her arms out to either side and faced the twelve shinobi of the Mist, her puffy glazed eyes piercing the white orbs of their leader. The old miko was something less than human as she roared, "Stay away from her!"

Before she even finished her sentence, a Mist shinobi donning a rabbit mask made a quick series of gestures with his hand and shouted, "Suiton: Hiding in Mist!" Suddenly, fog coated the entire clearing, but the priestess had lost track of their movements long before then.

Muscles quaking not out of fear, but fury, she stood there, her old heart pounding against her frail ribs. Her brown eyes darted around as she heard the clash of metal on metal, the quick shouts of what she knew must be different ninjutsu. She could just make out a Mist shinobi backpedaling, throwing shuriken after shuriken at a humongous black wolf who shook off the weapons as easily as it would a gnat. Its thick coat keeping it from harm, the wolf leapt forward, its fangs snapping shut with a horrendous squelch around the man's head and torso before another cloud of fog covered them from view.

A fireball erupted off to her left, its light glancing off a barrage of before unseen shuriken heading straight for her. Her eyes widened. She didn't move – couldn't move, not with the little girl right behind her. Suddenly the goggled shinobi leapt in front of her, smacking the metal from the air. The boy was just about to hit the last shuriken towards the ground when a Mist shinobi burst from the fog, his mask a blazing white beneath streaks of blood. The boy had to block the attack heading straight for his throat, and at the last second, he managed to crash his kunai against hers and-

The priestess stumbled a bit, her vision growing blurry, her skin cold and wet. She thought for a moment it was just an upswell of the mist blanketing her. When she looked down, she saw the real reason sticking out of her chest. Crumbling to her knees, the woman gasped. Instead of air, something like water rushed into her lungs. Vision flickering, she looked to where she knew her daughter was and began weakly reaching out towards her, trying to shield her, protect her.

But there was grass in her way. Grass that seemed to be growing before her very eyes. Grass that was reaching for the girl just like she was. Reaching up.

The priestess choked as instead of a soft cry, blood bubbled from her lips. Even with the world fading and contorting around her, she was certain of what she saw. Certain that the girl's feet were now dangling an inch from the floor, some force lifting her up by the nape of her neck. Certain that the girl turned her head and looked at her even if her eyes were still closed, her form slumped. And in Azūmi's dying moments, she let her hand fall, knowing that she left one daughter to finally see the other.

Ten feet away, Akio was the first to see and understand what was happening with Mira. Master Yūta had explained it the day after the Kagura. That he had been worried that Mira wasn't ready, how he had mistakenly believed that she wouldn't have been able to make a connection with the kami at all. In order for a kami to manifest itself in this realm, Master Yūta had said, it needed a miko capable of harboring the necessary amount of musubi for the kami's existence – one who knew how to perfectly control and direct the musubi within herself in order to coexist with the kami. Yet if Mira wasn't ready, the kami would know and refuse to manifest – the Kagura would be a harmless failure.

Yet for some reason the kami had chosen to risk itself and manifest anyway, erratically trying to keep itself fastened to earth, its own essence leaking out in those pulses of power. It was willing to sacrifice both its vessel and itself to wreak utter destruction. Why? He still didn't know, but the kami's every movement had focused in on Habu. Anyway, it didn't manner. He knew it was happening again.

Akio could almost see It now, moving beneath Mira's flesh, trying to force control. He saw the awkward movements, the odd sickening bulging beneath her skin as the Being attempted to move muscle but shifted bone instead.

'It's a wonder Mira's still functions,' Master Yūta had said. 'Imagine your body being stolen from you. She was probably in there, fighting back and losing.'

"Mira," he whispered, his chest aching. But those memories shattered as he saw a Mist ANBU unleash a series of kunai wrapped in seals aimed directly for Mira's chakra points. Unwilling to sacrifice the few kunai the Leaf had loaned him, he snapped out "Suiton: Water Formation Wall!" The water surged from his lips. His speed and strength had slowed considerably in his age and disuse. One kunai managed to escape but was knocked slightly off course. If Mira had made any attempt to move she could have easily dodged the missile, but the dagger grazed her unflinching flesh, and cardinal blood spilled from the shallow wound along her shoulder.

Akio turned to give chase to the ANBU but the mist before him parted to reveal the person who had been watching him all this time. Habu. She tilted her head at him, a sickening smile curving the lips above those rotten, filed teeth and feverish gums. Maybe if he was still a shinobi, he'd have been able to steel his heart, but he had long since given up that life, long since given into his guilt.

"Ha-" he spoke, but her sharp hiss made the name stick in his throat.

"No!" she shrieked, her eye twitching, her knuckles white. "You don't get to say anything! Just hold up your kunai so we can spar, Sensei!" Froth built along her lips as her words became more feverish, her eyes succumbing more to that putrid crimson as the bijū gained a stronger hold over her.

He raised the kunai and told himself his hands only shook because of age. He knew what he wanted to say to her. That he knew he was wrong. That he had wanted to die, had been begging for death to take him ever since he had last seen her. That he still loved her as a daughter after all these years. That he knew she would never be able to forgive him.

But he had already told her all this before.

Told her when she was strapped down, still bloody from the sealing. Told her when her eyes first turned to slits as they were about to now. All he could say now as he embraced the fate he had created for himself, "Habu, your son, i-is he okay? How's Zabuza?"

She shrieked and launched herself at him, gouging a deep line, opening muscle from his right shoulder down to his side so that the blade glanced off his ribs. Akio buckled, wasted muscle coiling backward like a released spring, and his arms fell weakly to his sides, still functional but barely.

The kunoichi grabbed him by his throat, her chakra snapping at his skin as she leaned in close and squeezed until her knuckles nearly popped out of her skin. He didn't fight back as she snarled, "They took him away. Just like I'll take her away." Her eyes flashed towards where he knew Mira was, and he suddenly felt cold. "I'll train her well," she snarled. "Just how you taught me. I'll make sure to make her suff-"

He was flung forward just as Habu lost her footing. Blinded, he already made to rub at his eyes and gain his feet, knowing that the vertigo would fade in fifteen seconds. He looked to Mira, knowing she had been the source of a pulse of raw chakra. Though her eyes were closed, he knew she was staring directly where the Mist ANBU must have positioned himself. He heard Yori scream, and already felt himself turning to help his comrade but Habu charged him, fanatically shrieking and unable to recognize the true danger they were all in.

The scream left Yori's throat raw, the bucket of ritual water sloshing in his hands, as he saw what once was a fully-grown, muscled and lethal shinobi erupt into an explosion of scarlet gore. The flare of energy hit him a few seconds later, and he stumbled backward, nearly falling if the kunoichi hadn't propped him up. Yori watched, transfixed as the shinobi's ungainly innards flung themselves haphazardly around the clearing. They dropped amongst the disoriented combatants who, after the last aftershock, cleared their heads and recognized it wasn't rain. The surge of power cleared the mist, washing it away as quickly as it had arrived, affording Yori a view of the aftermath.

Three wolves lay on the ground dead. Two wolves – the scarred black one and the white one Mira had described and called Kizuato and Hana – remained upright but were buckling on shaking limbs. They panted, their fangs red with blood, their bulk both saving and dooming them. The reason they still stood must've been because Minato stood between them, but they had played a valuable role: the success of their alliance was evidenced by the bodies of Mist shinobi strewn around them, one on the edge of Minato's kunai.

The goggled boy – Obito, Yori remembered – was panting hard too. He needed the break the Kami-masquerading-as-Mira had afforded. He was struggling against two masked shinobi of the Mist who had him cornered against the trunk of a tree. The boy clutched at his side, his jacket turning scarlet beneath the clenched hand. But the boy's gaze wasn't solely on the enemies surrounding him. His eyes kept flicking to Mira, just twenty yards in front of him: he knew what had happened. The whites of his eyes told Yori at least that much.

It's here, Yori thought, his terrified gaze falling upon the little girl he had helped raise. He saw three of the Mist circling her, weapons raised, every muscle alert for her next move. He wanted to call out to them to run, sprint for their lives, but his lungs felt as if they were filled with cement. His shaking nearly emptied the bucket as he gasped for air, trying to work his stiff jaw as he could feel an epileptic episode threaten to begin. But his panic was stymied when he heard Akio's snap, "You remember the words?"

Yori jolted but stammered out, "Y-yes!" He looked to the grizzled priest who had mounted a defense closest to where Yori stood, making sure the path for the harae was clear. The ex-shinobi faced down the Mist kunoichi who was spilling forth a cloak of what Yori knew must be chakra. The energy falling from her was a pure yet feral murderous intent.

"Well," Akio snapped back, "get to-"

Air itself erupted again as it was ignited into light. Yori was flung mercilessly back as a surge of elemental power bludgeoned him like an avalanche. He recognized the erratic pulse of sheer energy as the same thing that had destroyed the haiden but knew in his very marrow that this one wasn't random.

Unable to help the whimper, Yori rubbed at stinging eyes, trying to spark vision back into them. His nerves stopped crying with pain, allowing him to gather his senses enough to realize that he had been flung onto his side. Panicking, he looked down. The bucket of water was still cradled in his arms and somehow preserving a good fifth of what he had gathered. On the other side of the bucket, the kunoichi was beginning to stir, her skin a blistering red as if she had been burned by the sun.

Yori looked to where not-Mira was and where the masked men had been. The former stood there, eyes still shut as blood and bits of flesh and innards licked at her skin and burrowed into her hair. The latter were those bits of gore coating her, forming a shallow crimson puddle around her, as well as those pieces hanging from the trees. Not-Mira remained there, expressionless as her shoulder twitched in an inhuman spasm.

The only thing that told him they had a chance – that they could get the real Mira back – was the lone tear trekking its way down her cheek, washing away the red. He wasn't sure what filled him then. He had always felt death's presence around him, clinging to him throughout his sickly life. Maybe that's why instead of backing away from the girl – the girl who had become an embodiment of death – he ran towards her. Maybe it was just fate: maybe his life had always been leading to this point, his courage and strength being spared for this one act that terrified him the most. An act that had him leaping over the corpses of men far better and far stronger than him as he battled wave after wave of increasing pressure to stand before the girl, the words of the harae's chant racing out of his mouth.

Yori threw the salt at her, and as it bounced against her skin another pulse of power arced away from her, punching him onto his back. But he wasn't dead. He took encouragement from that, knowing that upon taking their vessel, no Kami would allow another to force them out. Especially not this one.

Mira must be fighting! he thought, lurching back to his feet, unused adrenaline shielding him from the pain of roughshod joints. Yori grabbed the bucket and threw the cleansing water over her, shouting the last lines "-only after we purify ourselves of all negativity, impurities, faults and restore ourselves to what we are meant to be!"

The girl stood there, the blood running in watery rivulets off her face to reveal reddening, blistering skin beneath. She made a face, a twitch really, like she always did when Azūmi told her to take a bath. He was sure it was her, having battled to the surface, having subdued and exorcised the kami. "Mira?" Yori called, stepping forward.

The girl opened her eyes. Eyes whose irises should've been as dark as chocolate. Eyes which should've had irises to begin with. Instead, they were pitch-black orbs. Orbs which seemed to stare out at all of existence at once despite something within them focusing on his frail, weak form. Then the Kami spoke.

SHE IS ME, It said, the words shattering Yori's consciousness.

The priest scrabbled at his skull, falling to his knees before the kami as he accepted the full embrace of a death he had simply shouldered away all his life. His blood expanded within him, almost like his spirit was bursting free from his flesh, finally freed of the rotting cage in which it had been imprisoned. Within the fractured remains of his psyche, Yori's last conscious thoughts were Its words:

BUT I AM NOT HER.