XIX. An Unexpected Meeting

Back in Konoha, Sarutobi Hiruzen sat behind the Hokage's desk puffing at his pipe as he considered his late-night visitor, stuck between the competing feelings of pleasure at seeing his student after so many long years and borderline outrage at his failing to keep in touch. Unable to decide, he chose instead to clear his throat diplomatically, keeping his expression appropriately stern and Hokage-like as he addressed the younger man.

"Jiraiya."

"Hey, geezer," Jiraiya said, his head swiveling around as he surveyed the office—gaze alight with curiosity as it landed across the random belongings Hiruzen had amassed throughout the long duration of his post: statues, a set of useless ceremonial swords, the decrepit monkey paw Jiraiya had given him years back, some traditional ink paintings—before he turned his full attention to his old teacher, smiling that same irreverent smile he'd thrown around since childhood, though now its corners were growing creased with age. "Been awhile."

Hiruzen exhaled and a pall of white smoke erupted towards the ceiling as he considered Jiraiya's broad form. Even as a child his old student had a substance to him that went beyond his stocky frame, a kind of density usually characteristic of boulders, mountains, and other things immoveable. If Jiraiya had had a more solemn bent, this quality would have made him an excellent successor. Instead, no matter how often Hiruzen had chided, harangued, and at times even shouted, his voice had fallen upon Jiraiya like wind blown against the rocks.

Jiraiya had continued his split from his teacher's austere path, choosing instead his merry march down a road paved by booze, women, and all the rank hedonism Hiruzen had spent his life condemning. And, as if wanting to remind Hiruzen of this fact, the unmistakably sweet and sour scent of alcohol rolled off Jiraiya in insolent waves. His feelings on his old student's sudden reemergence from god-knows-which-whorehouse began to slide towards outrage, especially when considering all that had happened within the past few weeks.

"What're you doing back?" The Third asked, growing less and less generous with every whiff of booze that reached his nose.

Jiraiya gave no notice to the bristling in Hiruzen's voice. Instead, the corners of his smile pushed themselves even higher into his flushed cheeks. "Oh, you know," he guttered a burp, "'xcuse me. Just thought I'd drop in."

His teacher now leveled him with open disapproval. "It appears you made a few stops on your way over."

"Oh yeah, just doing some market-research for my next novel. My agent suggested it. Super helpful. Got to interview lots of boobs—women. Lots of women-"

"Jiraiya," Hiruzen said, cutting him short. "You don't have an agent."

"Yes, I do—it's me!" Placing his hands on his hips, Jiraiya threw back his head, booming in laughter.

Hiruzen heaved a groan and massaged his eyes, trying to ease the acute migraine drilling against the side of his skull. "If you're here to tell me about your inane antics, leave. I don't have the time for this."

Jiraiya scratched at his stubble, the sloppy smile still plastered to his face. "I'm just here to look for my godson. Couldn't find the runt anywhere. Has he taken after his doofus of a dad? You know, I didn't think it was possible, but getting older has turned you into even more of a hardass."

"Well, running a country does that to you," Hiruzen said and placed his pipe between his teeth to free up his leathered hands. He pawed through swathes of paper covering his desk, rooting through his unending hell of fine-print bureaucracy. "Where did I put it…?"

"That's just an excuse—I can tell you Minato stayed fresh as a babe in the woods while he sat in that chair."

Hiruzen snorted, disgruntled. "You can't compare his two years to my forty-three—even you would grow crotchety. Here it is," he said, yanking out a slip of paper that, from its creases, appeared to have originally been folded over many times, and held it out for Jiraiya.

"What's that?"

"The sort of thing that's turned me into a hardass."

"You were always a hardass," Jiraiya said, taking the paper anyways. The message was coded, as pursuant to protocol for all messages sent from the field, but the code was simple and the message itself short—just a few lines. It didn't take him long before he cracked the cipher.

Hiruzen's chair groaned as he slumped back into it, puffing his pipe as he waited for Jiraiya to finish reading, the passing seconds marked by the tick of the minute-hand and the buzz of the old light fixtures overhead.

"You're going to burn a hole into my rugged good looks at the rate you're staring at me," Jiraiya said without looking up from the message. Unabashed, Hiruzen continued to watch him with hawk-like intensity, waiting for the inevitable explosion, and when it hit, Jiraiya swore with all the delicacy of a bomb going off. The stupid smile he had been wearing all evening abruptly upended into a deep frown.

He shook the paper in his teacher's direction. "What the hell is this? What do you mean the kid lost his arm?"

Hiruzen shut his eyes against the heat of Jiraiya's anger, his brows furrowing as he sought to hang onto the last vestiges of his inner-peace. "I don't know, Jiraiya. All I know is what's written in that message. As you can see, Kakashi wasn't clear on the details."

Jiraiya swore again. The drunken glaze had cracked, revealing the man beneath, an old legend in his own right, and dangerous when the situation called for it. His eyes narrowed. "When was this sent?"

"Last week. Kakashi hasn't followed up. We likely won't know the full situation until they arrive."

"Orochimaru's growing dangerous," Jiraiya said, and this time it was he who was watching Hiruzen, reading the map of his teacher's grooved features as he negotiated the conversation forward—he knew the other man had never fully overcome the guilt. "Have you been keeping an eye on him?"

"I've tried," he said in a weary voice, reluctant to open up old wounds and heartaches he wished would stay buried. A dusty long ago, Orochimaru had burned with all the brilliance of a newborn star, and it had been Hiruzen's mistake for his inability to recognize him for what he actually was: a terrible meteor burning across their skies, hurtling towards them with a world-shattering truth. It struck them that night in the underground lab, shook Hiruzen to his core as he looked upon the ghoulish bodies piled atop the examination slabs, obliterated that thin veneer of peace they had all skated upon for so long, and Team Hiruzen had never been whole again.

"How hard have you actually?" Jiraiya asked, pressing the point—his godson had lost his arm, after all.

His words sent a spark of irritation through Hiruzen. While he knew he avoided the unpleasant subject of Orochimaru, it rankled him when anyone else pointed the fact out to him. "Every time we try to send an operative after him, we lose communications with them. Pieces of my best men and women are probably floating in pickle jars by now, and for what? Just to keep tabs on an old ghost?"

This time, it was Jiraiya who bristled. "Well, from the sound of it, that 'old ghost' nearly killed your precious Jinchuriki, and you're telling me you don't even know where he is?"

Something hot swelled in Hiruzen's chest. Perhaps in his younger days it would have exploded into fury, but he was getting on in his years, and he didn't have the energy to sustain it. The feeling merely pressed uncomfortably against him before imploding, leaving him suddenly drained. He sighed, palming his forehead as he tried to massage away yet another impending migraine.

"Jiraiya, why are you here, really?" He then took his pipe and waved the pointed mouthpiece in the other man's direction, hot ash spilling from its smoking end onto his hand with each admonishing shake. "You've been gone for twelve years. Twelve without any correspondence—not even a carrier pigeon. I understand you're upset, but by the gods, man, after over a decade, and now you're concerned for the boy?"

"I've been doing research-"

Hiruzen flung his pipe at Jiraiya, who snatched it out of the air before it could crack against his head. "Calm down, you're nuts! Just let me finish, you crazy geezer. I've been doing research on a syndicate that's been growing more active. They're calling themselves Akatsuki." Jiraya saw the other man stiffen in his seat, telling him everything he needed to know. "You've heard of them—you've probably even employed them a few times after the war," he said, accusation barbing his tone.

"I needed to keep the peace," Hiruzen said with a hard set to his jaw. "The missions weren't anything I wouldn't have assigned to our own operatives, but I didn't want to take any chances in implicating Konoha. The Third War took too much, we couldn't risk another one."

"It doesn't matter what your reasons were. Thanks to leaders like you funding them with all your dirty missions, it seems they've finally got the cash flow to expand their business."

"Expanding their business?"

"It seems they've gotten into the collection business."

"Enough! Just tell me without trying to sound like you're writing a damn story."

Jiraiya scowled with distaste. Uninspired souls like his old teacher wouldn't recognize art even if it slathered itself in oil and crawled into his lap naked—no wonder he had ended up marrying a flat-chested stick-in-the-mud like Biwako-san, may she rest in peace. "They've been collecting Jinchuriki."

"What do you mean by 'collecting Jinchuriki'?"

"I mean 'collecting Jinchuriki' like the way someone collects stamps on their reward card. They first gathered the ones unaffiliated with hidden villages, so it's been hard to tell, but according to my sources they're preparing to shift to Phase Two of their plan."

"What? Phase Two? Going after the hidden village Jinchuriki?"

"That's right. Within the next year or two we'll see them making their move."

Hiruzen's fingers hauled at his beard as he weighed the information, turning it over in his mind. Displeasure rumbled in his chest. "This is worrisome," he said. "The Go-Ikeban are already unhappy with what happened to Naruto out in the East Sea."

"Those old crones still alive? Just give 'em some porn and prune juice if they're getting cranky."

"They want me to keep him in the village."

"For how long?"

His teacher sat in his chair, silent.

Jiraiya searched the older man's face for an answer with furrowed brows. "You told them no."

"It would be for the boy's safety."

"You'd be holding him prisoner! I think you senile fogies at the top have forgotten that he's the son of a goddamn hero!"

Hiruzen felt the edges of his temper beginning to prickle. He needed another smoke. He yanked his desk drawer open, rummaging through the standard office debris—discarded paper clips, loose sticky notes, a treaty he was supposed to sign three years ago, oops—until he came across his spare pipe. Salvation.

As he shoved tufts of tobacco into it, he could feel the heat from Jiraiya's anger fall upon him in heavy waves. "Oi, you old monkey-"

"Just give me a second," Hiruzen said, the edges of his voice curling in anger as he struck a match. He placed the lit end into the pipe's bowl, and blew a few puffs before pulling in a longer drag. He exhaled a mix of smoke and sighed.

As a kid, Jiraiya had always found the greatness surrounding him a bit suffocating: Orochimaru, the generation's genius; Princess Tsunade and her illustrious lineage; Sarutobi Hiruzen, a heralded genius himself, and at the time, the Hokage's successor. And who was he? An orphan from Konoha's backstreets who scrapped his way through the Academy at the bottom of his class. If he said it never once bothered him, he would be lying. Yet by the same token, his younger self unconsciously placed his teammates on pedestals. As a mere mortal, he had the license to be a fuck-up, but everyone else was from a higher plane of existence—they could do no wrong. He was of dust and they of mana.

Then the reality hit. Orochimaru was a homicidal sociopath with way too many loose screws rolling around in his head. Tsunade was just a big-boobed drunk and a gambling addict. Looking upon his teacher in that moment, Jiraiya saw a frail-shouldered man getting on his years, his stooped frame half-consumed by the sheer size of the Hokage's chair. Jiraiya saw the reality, and his rage contracted, less of a wild-eyed thing, though it still burned warm in his chest.

"You know, that stuff will kill you."

"Mmm, well I've made it this far without a problem. At this point there's a better chance of your liver failing from all that booze."

"Are you really going to keep the kid locked up in the village like some animal?"

"What do you expect me to do?"

Maybe have some goddamn heart? Jiraiya wanted to roar. "There's another way," he said instead, though he wasn't sure what it was. "There has to be."

.

.

.

A subdued atmosphere weighed upon Team 7 as they ate their fish by firelight, the day's travel leaving the three genin too exhausted for even the idlest conversation. Kakashi had turned down his portion, choosing instead to keep his roost in the trees rather than join his students, one eye on his book while the rest of his senses kept tabs on their surroundings. To his knowledge, the region surrounding Amakusa was free from conflict, but complacency was the great enemy of all shinobi, and he would not breathe easy until they stepped past Konoha's reassuringly massive gates, especially after all that happened within the past week.

Sakura's eyelids began to grow heavy from the fullness pressing against her stomach, and she was the first to turn in for the night. After slurring a tired "g'night," she staggered into their tent and collapsed onto a bedroll she could only guess was hers. As soon as she slipped between the thin polyester blankets, her body went slack and she fell headlong into a dreamless sleep.

Sakura's eyes next cracked open to the tent seeped in a watery gray light. It was almost morning. She sensed the two boys' warmth laying beside her, catching the soft in-and-out of their sleeping breaths. At first, she thought it had been the patter of rain that had woken her. She shifted, pulling her blanket closer around herself and shut her eyes, waiting to dissolve back into sleep.

Then she heard it and she jerked awake, throwing off the blanket and bursting through the tent's zippered entrance. She emerged outside into the deep-blue light of the coming dawn, kunai raised, her wild eyes darting from tree to surrounding tree, trying to cut past the undergrowth's dim lighting.

She slowed her breathing, channeling her focus to her hearing. She wasn't sure what she was listening for, but not even time-travel could expunge the instinct carved into her from years of experience. Something had triggered her alarm, though she wasn't sure what. At the moment, all she could pick up on was the sound of falling rain and Naruto and Sasuke groaning awake behind her in the tent. The tension in her spine loosened, and she began lowering her blade when a realization snapped her back into high-alert: their teacher was nowhere to be seen.

Naruto staggered out of the tent while rubbing an eye, and Sasuke plodded out behind him, silent but equally mussed with sleep.

"What's going on?" Naruto asked.

"Something's wrong," Sakura said, her attention fixed on the dark woods before her. "Kakashi-sensei isn't here."

"Really? Where'd he go-" Naruto began to ask, but a jaw-breaking yawn swallowed the tail end of his question.

Clarity entered Sasuke's gaze, and he was beside Sakura in an instant, Sharingan slipping over his eyes as they followed her sightline into the woods. "Did you see something?"

"No, but I think something's wrong," she said, worrying at her lower lip. "Something woke me up."

Naruto's hand slipped under his shirt to scratch at his belly. "Are you sure it wasn't the rain? Maybe it was thunder?"

A silence fell over the three as they strained to listen for rumbling in the skies. Save the sizzle of rain, the forest was still.

Sasuke's pupils darkened and shifted to give Sakura a sidelong glance. "Naruto might be right. It might've just been thunder," he said. His Sharingan hadn't picked up on any anomalies either.

"Maybe," Sakura said, still staring out into the woods, still locked into her defensive stance. "But what about Kakashi-sensei?"

Sasuke shrugged- the man was always coming and going as he pleased, responsibilities be damned. "He probably got lost on the road to life," Sasuke said in a rare attempt at humor. His valiant efforts went unappreciated, however, and Sakura remained agitated, her hackles raised.

"C'mon guys, let's go back inside. It's raining," Naruto's voice began to inch towards whining. This whole experience of standing in the rain at the buttcrack of dawn-an hour he didn't think actually existed-was becoming more and more agonizing with every passing second.

Sakura turned to face her teammates, her green eyes vibrating with anxiety. "Maybe we should leave camp-take cover somewhere else. For a bit. A few hours, maybe."

"What!" Naruto was now fully awake, his blue eyes wide with horror. "For where? Like now? It's raining, Sakura-chan. We don't even know where Kakashi-sensei is!"

"I know, I know it seems a little crazy, but I just have this bad feeling." Sakura turned to Sasuke, pressing into him with her words and gaze. "Please. At least for an hour."

The corners of Sasuke's lips twisted as he wrestled between believing his own eyes or Sakura's gut feelings. A few weeks ago the choice would not have beleaguered him, and he would have dismissed her concerns and slunk out of the rain and into the tent without a backward glance. But, a few weeks ago, he had not known she could break ships open with her bare firsts. The rainfall grew heavier, and he could feel his t-shirt beginning to cling to his skin. He turned his attention back into the woods' depth with searching red eyes.

Naruto began to trundle into the tent. "Ah, man! It's really coming down. I'm going back inside-"

"Okay, fine. Let's do it," Sasuke said, wiping away the water sluicing down his chin. "Sakura, leave a coded message for Kakashi. Naruto and I will grab our things. We'll leave in three minutes, is that enough time for you?"

Naruto shoved his head back out through the tent's opening. "What!"

A warm rush of relief flooded Sakura. "Okay. Yes, it is. I'll let him know that we've left for those hills to the west. We can leave him more messages along the way."

"Is that where we're headed?" Sasuke asked. "We'll probably be able to find some caves to take shelter there—good idea."

"Wait, guys—you guys!" Naruto said, visibly distraught as his teammates scattered into action—Sakura whisking away towards their camp's edge, and Sasuke marching towards Naruto, forcing the other boy back as he entered their tent.

"Are we seriously leaving?" Naruto asked again. Instead of answering, Sasuke crouched to gather their packs, unzipping each one and pawing through their contents to take stock of their supplies. The nylon fabric snapped over them in the growing storm.

"Did you see something out there?"

"No," Sasuke said, frowning—they didn't have much weapons between the three of them. "But Sakura's right. Something's off. Kakashi wouldn't have just left like this."

"He might just be taking a piss."

"He wasn't anywhere in the near vicinity. Even if he had left to take a dump, he'd have stayed nearby."

Naruto's lips twisted as he shook out the water from his hair. "Still...don't you think this is kind of an overreaction? Maybe we should wait it out a bit longer. It's raining," he said, feeling as if he were the only one in his team who was aware of the winds and rain howling outside.

Sasuke straightened. "Do you have any shuriken on you?"

"No?"

"How about your kunai?"

Naruto frowned, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "No," he said, trying to feel out where Sasuke was leading him. "I used almost everything up out on the ocean. You did, too. We haven't had time to restock."

"Exactly. Between the three of us, we have Sakura's weapon pouch, her two spare kunai, and a handful of shuriken."

"So?"

"So, that's not a lot of weapons," Sasuke said as he attempted to herd his teammate through the necessary deductive hoops. Unfortunately for the duo, Sasuke was not known for his patience, nor Naruto for his mental agility.

"Yeah, kind of sucks. We have, what, like seven weapons to stab people with all together?" Naruto said, trying to contribute, though not entirely sure why Sasuke was bringing up the topic of their weapons. A particularly heavy gust of wind rammed into the tent, sending the entire structure seizing about them. "Listen, Sasuke, I don't know if you and Sakura-chan have noticed, but the rain is getting pretty bad, and I don't think it's going to get much better."

"Okay, listen, here's the situation, moron. Our teacher's missing, you don't have an arm, we're lacking in weapons, and all three of us are probably scraping the bottom of the barrel for chakra right now. Agreed?"

"Sure."

"Sakura might be wrong, but on the off chance she's right, and there's something out there strong enough to hold up our Jonin-level teacher, yes or no, would we be in a pretty bad spot?"

Naruto was silent as he struggled to do the math in his head. Having difficulties, he enlisted the help of his fingers to reason out the complicated arithmetic. "Uh…"

"The answer's 'yes,' dumbass," Sasuke said and tossed him his pack, slinging the other two over his shoulder.

The tent's entrance came alive as Sakura burst through the flap, pink hair wet as a mop and lips tinged blue from the cold. "Hey, are you guys ready?" She asked between chattering teeth, wringing out a waterfall from her dress with shaking hands. "We should leave soon."

Naruto looked on in horror, realizing her half-drown state was a glimpse into his own near future. "Guys, maybe we should-"

Then, Sakura barreled into him, yelling his name. She was such a skinny girl, but she hit like a locomotive, knocking him clear off his feet. He crashed to the ground with a yelp, preemptively shielding his face with his arm in hopes of warding off her wrath.

"I'm sorry! I'm ready to go! Let's go!"

"C'mon, you idiot! Get off your ass!" Sasuke yanked him to his feet and began to drag him along by his arm. Naruto followed along at a confused trot, blue eyes darting around in a desperate hunt for information. Somehow, in the very short time between Sakura sacking him to the ground and his getting back to his feet, they had ended up outside. More accurately, the top half of their tent had been shorn off, and the remaining untethered bottom billowed about his feet in the open wind as he stepped over it, buckets of rain falling upon him in cold sheets.

"Wait!" Naruto dug his heels into the ground, trying to twist out of Sasuke's iron grip around his wrist. "What's going-"

"Goddamnit!" Sasuke roared, yanking Naruto ahead of him and shoving him forward. "Run, idiot!"

Naruto stumbled, slipping on the slick moss before he scrambled back to his feet. Under different circumstances, he would have turned around, defiant, but he caught the note of desperation in Sasuke's voice and it triggered his own alarm. Naruto began to lope forward in an awkward gait, and as he attempted his poor facsimile of a run, he threw a glance over his shoulder.

A looming figure shrouded in a black coat stood over the collapsed remains of their tent, still as stone, monolithic. A broad sword larger than any full-grown man lay across the figure's shoulders, the blade swaddled in bandages. The sweep of a wide-brimmed kasa obscured his features, but even without seeing his face, Naruto felt dread expanding in his stomach like a black pit. A jolt of fear seized his heart and the hairs along his flesh snapped upright in turn. The primal memory residing in each of his cells screamed at him to turn and run, and he would have listened, but through the murk of rain and dull morning light, he saw the smudge of pink by the man's foot and his heart leapt into his throat.

"Sakura-chan!" He turned, and took a step forward. A few paces behind him, Sasuke's face blanched. The other boy threw a glance over his shoulder to confirm his fears, and pivoted.

"Keep going, idiot! I'll get her!" Sasuke yelled, forcing his legs forward in the sprint towards the dark figure, fighting against the instinct roaring at him to turn tail.

Earlier, Sakura had been a hair faster, pushing Naruto out of the way moments before their assailant had lopped off the top of the tent—and almost their torsos—with his strange sword. Sasuke had felt it soon after—a bloodlust of tidal proportions, so heavy it broke upon him with all the force of a monstrous wave. When he clapped eyes on its source, a cold realization slipped down his spine and he knew in that instant they would die, so he had grabbed Naruto and ran without hesitation.

But now, Sakura lay beneath Death's foot. He thought she had escaped with them—she had been the first to sense the danger after all. What had happened? Why wasn't she moving? Where was that damn teacher of theirs? The flurry of questions whirred through his mind as he charged headlong into what he felt was certain death, Sharingan gleaming red, with no real plan other than to save Sakura and survive.

The figure moved, lifting his chin, and Sasuke saw his face. Confusion crunched up the gears of his thoughts as he beheld the gills and carnivore grin, each tooth as sharp as knife points. The man was a veritable monster. The monster then spoke, its voice incongruously commonplace in light of his appearance.

"Ah, if it isn't Itachi-san's younger brother."

Sasuke slammed to a stop as if he had collided with an invisible wall. The creature's words snuffed out the world in an instant. The forest, the rain, the overwhelming fear, even Sakura disappeared, leaving nothing behind, save that molten core he had always stoked deep within himself. Recently, its outer layer had cooled, the surface growing so dull he had almost forgotten about it. Itachi's name had reminded him of it, had touched it, the false shell around it falling away as it flared back to life, white-hot and blinding, and the sudden conflagration consumed his entirety in one great burst.

He stared the monster down, uncaring of the absolute death that lay behind it. His fears had been burned away.

"Where is he?" Sasuke did not know this, but a third comma had appeared on his red irises, pulled to the surface by the strength of one feeling alone: hatred.

.

.

.

If asked what had gone wrong, Kakashi would have answered "everything." For starters, sometimes he thought he probably should not have even been born. Not that he regretted being alive, but he was certain the gods had it out for him. Proof was in the pudding, or rather, in the morass of Unfortunate Circumstances he had been mired in since birth. His mother, dead. Father, suicide. Teammates all killed before him. Teacher, dead.

Was he missing anyone?

And now, he might have to add his three students to the ledger, which was horrible for many reasons, the least of which being it was becoming hard to keep track. Though, by the looks of the current situation, it was quite possible he would be too dead to even care.

"Itachi," Kakashi said, his mouth feeling dry despite the rain sifting down around them. Without hesitation, he brought his forehead protector up—he'd be a fool to think he wouldn't need Obito's eye for this one.

The other man stood a few yards away, a smudged shadow in the pre-dawn gloom. He was dressed in a dark coat, the high collar covering the lower half of his face, while a kasa shielded the rest from view. It would have been impossible to recognize the mad Uchiha from this distance and in this lighting, but in Kakashi's attempt at an ambush just seconds ago, he had crossed kunai with him, had glimpsed at his face and those eyes glowing beneath the straw brim like two embers, unmistakably red.

The figure standing next to Itachi peeled away from his side and cut around Kakashi toward the camp. Toward his students.

Kakashi whirled. "Wait-!"

Before he could attempt to stop him, Itachi was upon him at once. Kakashi raised his blade to meet the kunai aimed at his jugular. His arms shook as they struggled to keep Itachi's weapon at bay. The younger man had struck with the suddenness and ferocity of a whip of lightning, and Kakashi grit his molars as the blowback rattled his body. The kid was as frightening as he remembered—a force of nature, made all the more deadly by his keen intellect, and once upon a time, Kakashi would have added level-headedness to the count, though he didn't think that was accurate anymore in light of the massacre.

"I'm afraid you'll have to stay here, Kakashi-san," Itachi said, his voice far too civil considering he had just tried to sink a blade into Kakashi's carotid.

"You know," he said, struggling to hold him back, "as much as I'd love to hang out and catch up with an old kouhai, I have some things I need to attend to-" and with a grunt of exertion, leaned in before pressing off the other man's weight, throwing himself backward to try and beat a retreat back to camp where he'd have at least hair of a chance in saving his three munchkins.

But Itachi was relentless and fell upon Kakashi once more, not giving his old senior a breath of respite, his kunai blurring through the air in a wicked gleam of silver, hungry for a taste of Kakashi's flesh.

Kakashi parried where he could and wove and duck where he couldn't, his open red eye straining to keep pace with the challenge of both the poor lighting and an inhumanely fast opponent—fast even for his borrowed eye. The Sharingan was a powerful tool, and without it, Kakashi would have been minced meat, but no matter how hard he trained, at the end of the day it would forever be a secondhand eye, and Itachi was well aware of this. He took another stab at Kakashi's neck, a straightforward strike Kakashi easily met with his own weapon. However, instead of pulling back his kunai and looking for another opening, Itachi pressed his weight forward, essentially keeping the other man pinned in place as he spoke, his tone even and conversational, if not a bit distant.

"I've always been impressed with how well you used Sharingan despite not being an Uchiha," he said. "But you know, Kakashi-san, your flesh and blood can wrap around it, but that eye will never be a part of you."

"Well, it is sort of on indefinite loan," Kakashi said as his lips twisted into a grimace from the exertion of trying to hold off the younger man. Itachi was of a slightly smaller build than him, but the kid knew how to leverage his body weight at the precise angle that lent his stance maximum strength. The Uchiha couldn't have been more than 130 pounds wet, but the technique probably tripled the force with which he was boring down.

People had always thrown "genius" around to describe Kakashi when he had been growing up, but the word was so overused these days, the village might as well have been up to its ears in them. Kakashi was cleverer than most, and perhaps he pushed the boundaries of what was humanly possible from time to time, but he did not break past it, did not exceed it by unfathomable margins the way true geniuses did. No, the term had originally been reserved for those of Itachi's caliber.

"Yes, I suppose that is the inevitable ceiling you will meet. You'll never be as compatible with the Sharingan in the same way as someone who had been born with it." As if wanting to prove a point, Itachi broke apart into a murder of cawing crows.

Kakashi had just enough time to draw in a breath to bite out a curse before Itachi fully undid the genjutsu, revealing his true body to be behind him before he shoved the length of his kunai into Kakashi's back, up to the hilt. Kakashi grunted in pain before collapsing toward the ground in a heap of mud and soil. An earth clone.

Itachi straightened and glanced up into the trees, glowing red eyes zeroing in on a lower hanging bough. Kakashi would not know it—both the coat and the dimness obscured Itachi's face—but annoyance had tugged the corners of the Uchiha's mouth down.

He said in a voice too soft for Kakashi to hear: "Let me show you the difference between you and those with the birthright to this eye."

Up in the foliage, Kakashi had thought himself safely secreted away behind a heavy wall of genjutsu when his insides suddenly felt as if they were being pulled to taffy, but he had sensed the disruption to his chakra flow far too late. The dark skies overhead had turned an angry crimson, and an airless hush fell over the atmosphere. The lashing winds died and the raindrops froze mid-air.

Tsukuyomi.

Author's notes:

1. Happy New Year! We made it to the other side y'all! +1 For humanity! Whoo! Thank you all again for the support! This story has made it TEN EFFING YEARS on your love (and I guess my weird sense of responsibility).

2. Uber Mega Appreciation Shout-out to Amraklove, a.k.a. THE REAL MVP, for the wonderful beta-ing, especially for doing it over the holidays. *gross grateful sobbing*

3. I hadn't planned on Hiruzen and Jiraiya's relationship to be so warped, but the scene wrote itself and I was like, "Huh. I guess I'm okay with this."

4. Comments and unintelligible keyboard slamming is always appreciated. If you want something specific to comment about, I think this chapter was a slight shift in style (exam week did loopy things to my brain) and I'd love to get some more feed back on it. Stay safe everyone!