Nawaki groaned as he recognized the figure standing on Hashirama's statue. What the hell was she doing here? Of all the people he had to fight to get to Sasuke, the only person he wanted to face less than her was Naruto or Oki.

Obito appeared at his side, staring across at the girl on the statue.

"Should I kill her?" he asked "Or do you want me to keep her distracted while you slip by?"

"No." Nawaki sighed "I'll fight her. If I can't defeat her, then what chance do I have against Sasuke? This will be a good test, seeing as she has a sharingan."

Obito shrugged, before melting back into the shadows.

"I will watch you then. Try and get this over with as quickly as possible."

"Don't worry." Nawaki replied, "I doubt this will take long."

He moved forward, walking out of the trees and onto the statue of Madara. Both his sharingan and his rinnegan were open and active, and as he got nearer he saw that she was the same. She was sitting down at first, but when she noticed him she stood up and walked towards the edge of the statue.

"Nawaki." she said, not sounding surprised in the least.

Nawaki kept his face blank and cold. He couldn't afford to let his emotions get the better of him. Not today.

!

Hisa watched as he drew closer. He stared at her coldly, looking the spitting image of his father. She decided not to mention that.

"Long time, no see Nawaki." she called over "I see you've grown."

"I see you haven't."

Ouch. So he was in one of those moods.

"You here to come back to the village? You can see Sakura again, and try and work things out with Sasuke."

She knew that it was unlikely that he would listen, but she had to try.

"Obito has spies in the village. He told me everything." Nawaki replied "There's no point looking at Sakura if she isn't looking back. I'm not here to talk things out with Sasuke, I'm here to kill him."

"Ah, so you're angry. You know, we have therapy for this kind of thing. Back in Konoha there are counsellors specially equipped with dealing with your kind of problems. I think they call it 'Uchiha-angst'. You should come and try it."

Nawaki's cold expression broke and he glared at her angrily.

"Are you making fun of me?" he growled.

"Of course." she shrugged "You're Nawaki. I mock you on a daily basis for normal things, but if you show up swearing vengeance and trying to be intimidating then how could you expect me not to make fun of you?"

"Because Sasuke stabbed my mother in the heart with a chidori right in front of me!" he snapped.

Hisa sighed.

"I am sorry that that happened, but you're not the only one who suffered. My dad was shattered, as were Ino and Sai, but you don't see them going around trying to avenge her."

"They weren't related. None of them would understand-"

"Naruto was treated like a pariah for his entire childhood." Hisa interrupted "Sai was forced to watch his brother die right in front of him. Hinata was made to feel like a burden to her family. Auntie Hanabi was controlled by her father to be the Hyuga heir, and then cast aside like she was nothing. Hizashi grew up believing his father was a failure and so was he. Oki was tortured daily by her own sister for years, and even I have something that could vaguely resemble a sob story. If you go up to anyone and tap them on the back, chances are that they've had some horrible trauma happen to them. I do care about you Nawaki, but if you show up with a notorious ex-criminal and try to attack Konoha, I'll bring you down, no matter what reasons you may have."

"If you knew the full story, you'd be attacking the village by my side." Nawaki said.

Hisa frowned. Something was… off about that statement. If felt like Nawaki was bluffing. Did he even know why they had been tracking Sakura?

"Well I don't." she replied "And I really don't think you're interested in convincing me. You just want to fight me so that you can continue on your merry little way. So let's stop the chit chat and get to it."

Nawaki smirked slightly. He was different, a lot cockier than normal. He gave off an air of undisputable confidence which worried Hisa slightly.

"Are you so eager to lose?" he smirked "Why not keep talking? Otherwise, I'll finish this in a flash."

"What makes you so sure you'll beat me?" she asked, keeping her voice casual.

"I beat you before, didn't I?" he said "That was before I even got the Rinnegan and the Senju DNA. You may have my sharingan, but you don't stand a chance against me."

"You're forgetting something." she said, reaching into her pocket. "Last time we fought, I didn't have these."

She pulled out one of her special kunai and twirled it around her finger. Unfortunately, she twirled it too far and it slipped off and fell down the waterfall.

Goddammit, she groaned why does that never happen in the movies?

Nawaki looked decidedly unimpressed, even as she pulled out another one.

"You may have those, but I have something that you don't know how to fight against."

He closed his left eye, and when he opened it again the sharingan pattern had changed. The three tomeo were gone, and instead two black lines made an X across the eye. The centre of the X had a red rimmed black circle, so Hisa presumed that was the pupil. The beginning and end of each line was pointed outwards, which made them look like double edged stakes. It was undoubtedly a Mangekyo Sharingan.

How the hell does he have that? Hisa wondered. She forced herself to remain calm, and raised an eyebrow at Nawaki.

"So your eye can make fancy patterns. It's not going to make you win."

Nawaki stared at her in disbelief, his sharingan going back to normal.

"Do you really not know what this is? This is the-"

"-Mangekyo Sharingan, I know." Hisa finished "But I also know that using it causes you to go blind, so I doubt you'll be in a hurry to use it. You probably just brought it out to try and intimidate me, which, as I said before, you're failing miserably at. Why are you so determined to beat me anyway? Shouldn't you be completely focused on killing your dad? Not that killing your dad is a good thing, because really, it's a very, very bad and stupid thing."

"Why did you come out here? Why are the Uchiha and Senju always fighting here?" Nawaki asked "Its fate. You sensed it, I sensed it. It's in our blood to fight."

"But… you do realise that every time an Uchiha and Senju fight the Uchiha loses, right? Besides, I know you Nawaki. You're not the bad guy."

His face could have been made of stone for all the impact her words made on him.

"There is no good and bad. There are only winners and losers. It has always been the Uchiha's fate to lose to the Senju, but I will change that today. I Nawaki Uchiha will defeat you, Hisa Uzumaki. If I am strong enough to defeat you, and turn the tide of history, then I will be strong enough to defeat Sasuke."

Hisa sighed. Somehow, Obito Uchiha had tipped Nawaki over onto the crazy side. Dealing with Hyuga's for years had made Hisa somewhat immune to all the discussions and debates about fate. She didn't think there was any point trying to live her life because of fate or destiny. Shit happens, you either learn to live with it or you don't. In Nawaki's case, he had decided not to, and all this talk about fate made that crystal clear to Hisa. However, she doubted there was any point in telling him so. She needed to use Nawaki's own logic against him.

"You're missing something pretty big here." she informed him.

He frowned.

"What's that?" he asked reluctantly

She pointed to her left eye.

"Yes, you have the Rinnegan. I know." he snapped

She sighed and shook her head.

"I didn't steal a sharingan to get this. I got it naturally."

She saw Nawaki's eyes widen in understanding.

"I'm not just a descendant of the Senju. I'm half Uchiha too."

"Don't be stupid!" Nawaki snapped "You're Rinnegan is a poor imitation at best. Hyuga blood does not make you an Uchiha!"

"Well if that's true than I'm not a Senju either, because my DNA must have done something right to produce an 'imitation'. Either way, this isn't an Uchiha fighting against a Senju. This is you being stupid and attacking my village because a madman has convinced you that it will make you feel better."

She felt Nawaki's chakra darken slightly and knew that she had hit the nail right on the head.

"You were right. Talking is pointless. I have a mission, and you're in my way."

That was all the warning she got before Nawaki lunged.

!

Kunai in hand, Nawaki lunged. As angry as he was, he had no intention of killing her unless he was pushed to the extreme. However, he needed to subdue her somehow, and Obito's warning about using the Mangekyo rang through his head. He was prepared to cripple her or maim her if he needed to.

His kunai pushed forward, aiming for her ribcage. But when he stabbed he met nothing but air. He smirked as he heard her land on the Madara statue. It was strange how different it felt. After sparring together for years, a few weeks apart shouldn't have made it so hard not to anticipate each other. But Nawaki felt like he was fighting a stranger. Of course, Hisa wasn't a stranger, which meant that she had simply gotten stronger and faster in a short period of time, much like Nawaki himself.

"Not bad." he said "But not good enough."

He made the hand-seal and smiled as the top of Madara's statue exploded. He turned around, unsurprised to see nothing but smoke and flames. She couldn't have gotten out of that without the exploding tags burning a good portion of her body.

Suddenly, he felt the cold metal of a kunai pressing into his neck.

"How?" he asked, genuinely surprised "I didn't give you time to throw any of your kunai."

"I've trained with you for years Nawaki." Hisa replied "The mark of this seal never goes away. I learnt how to mark people with it when I was eight. You were the first person I tried it out on while fighting."

"I see." he said calmly.

He quickly grabbed her arm and twisted it so that the kunai was no longer against his neck and he was facing her. He quickly assessed how much damage the explosion had caused. She looked mostly unharmed, apart from a long sharp piece of gravel sticking out of her calf.

"You tried to kill me!" she said angrily

"Of course." Nawaki replied "We're shinobi, aren't we?"

With one hand he kept a firm grip on her arm, twisting it around so that the pointed tip of the kunai was now facing her. He extended his other arm out, palm open.

"Universal Pull." he said.

She vanished.

He growled once, looking around. Where had she gone? He hadn't seen her throw any kunai, and she wasn't behind him. Had she marked the whole area before he got here? No. She didn't have enough chakra to do that. So how had she escaped? And where had she gone?

!

Hisa struggled to swim upwards as the water churned around her. For a second there, she had honestly thought Nawaki was going to kill her. Had he really changed that much? She couldn't afford to think about it now. She needed air.

Her head broke the surface of the water and she gasped, letting the air fill her lungs. It should take Nawaki a minute or so to figure out what had happened. Hisa herself hadn't planned to use the kunai that had slipped off her finger. She was just lucky that it was one of the ones she had filled with chakra before the fight.

She pushed herself to her knees on the surface of the water. Suddenly, she heard a small splash. Nawaki stood in front of her, smirking.

She was starting to hate his smirk, although seeing as she mocked him all the time it wasn't really fair of her to hate him for doing the same. It was more about the fact that Nawaki wasn't the kind of person to deliberately humiliate an opponent. Everything that she knew about Nawaki was different from the boy standing in front of her.

He threw two kunai which she easily dodged. She was surprised by his lack of accuracy, until she felt the wire tug around her stomach. She jumped upwards before the wire could wrap around her fully. Reaching into her pocket, she grabbed a handful of special kunai. She threw them, making sure that none of them went into the water. Nawaki didn't seem worried by this.

Hisa wondered how confident he really was. He had tried to hurt her with wire and exploding tags, not his eyes. Was that because he wanted to save his true power for the fight with Sasuke, or because some part of him was still reluctant to hurt her badly? Either way, he was dangerous in his current mental state. She needed to treat him like any other threat to the village.

An idea came to her then. She ran onto the marshy land between the river and the woods. Nawaki followed, still smirking. Hisa found herself grinning back. This plan had been used so many times before, and was so cliché, that it might actually work.

She fished an ordinary kunai from her pocket and held it in front of her. She started running straight at Nawaki. He seemed amused that she was attacking him with nothing but a kunai. She watched as his hand opened up and revealed a canon. He's using the Asura Path. Hisa realised.

She kept running at him, even as the canon filled up with explosive chakra. Wait for it. Wait for it.

Just as he was about to fire, she disappeared. Using the same jutsu as both her father and grandfather had once done, she appeared directly above Nawaki's back.

A Rasengan would make this perfect. she thought. Sadly, she couldn't do a Rasengan, so she would have to use her own signature move.

"Almighty Push!"

The wave of chakra slammed into Nawaki's back, shoving him down into the dirt. He smashed into the ground and lay there, twitching slightly.

Round one goes to Hisa Uzumaki. Hisa thought with a smile.