A/N: I need to talk to my neurologist. I think certain side effects of an the antiseizure meds I'm on are getting worse. This isn't normal and I'm worried.

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When he came to, Kakashi sensed that five minutes had passed. He was leaning back on the floor, propping himself up on his arms, head spinning. The deluge of memories had passed, but flashes of them still danced in front of his eyes. The light. The shrinking back of his soul from the touch of the rope. The beginnings of friendships that he had formed with each and every one of the angels onboard, especially with Purple and Orange. The kindness of the captain.

"Thank you," he whispered. The captain nodded.

"What the hell happened?" Orochimaru demanded to know.

Kakashi shook his head, throwing the memories aside. Right. This was where he was: in the here and now, with Orochimaru, on a mission. There was a littler snake who needed help and healing. There were enemy shinobi about who they needed to avoid. The world outside this little bubble of light remained as dark and shadowy as it had ever been.

"Sage chakra," he began. "Those were the traces that my seafaring clone picked up." He explained about following those traces north to a sparse northern land warmed by geothermal activity, following the ship around, witnessing proof that angels have families, then following the ship south and being accidentally spotted and forced to board to maintain his cover.

He meant to go on, but found himself stopping the story there, at the moment where he had come aboard. Kakashi opened his mouth to try to describe the kindness of the medic, and the differences he had seen between angels and humans, and the great extent of the mercy the captain had shown toward a lost, needy being. But how could he? How could any of those things be described?

"Then what happened?" Orochimaru urged.

Kakashi shook his head. He couldn't describe it, so he skipped ahead to the one part of the story he could describe. "I saw and heard a lot of things. Because of them, I ended up having a crying nervous breakdown, like the other one except worse. I can still feel and understand it." Kakashi shivered.

As expected, that description gave Orochimaru pause. Simply telling him about the dangers of things he would be better off not knowing about would never work; he wouldn't understand. I should be glad for having that breakdown, then. It gives me something to refer to to make him understand that he really does not want to hear about something.

"How was it?" Orochimaru asked quietly.

"Better. Angels are mentally and emotionally stronger than normal beings. The captain was not at all overwhelmed by me."

Orochimaru glanced at the captain. It looked like jealousy. "Sounds helpful."

"What is 'Sage chakra?'" the captain asked.

"What?!"

Kakashi elbowed his serpentine companion in the ribs. "I think they treat chakra differently than we do. I saw sages working like any ordinary laborers. It can't be special in those lands."

"Really?" Orochimaru's eyes came to a sudden halt, as did the rest of his body. It was the stillness of a predator hunting something juicy. In Orochimaru's case, he often looked like this when he was hunting ideas. He studied the captain, assessed him, in the careful way of a shinobi. "Their understanding of chakra could contribute greatly to our understanding of it then…"

Kakashi sighed. Was he always going to have to be the diplomatic one? "Chakra is a form of energy that strengthens people's normal abilities," he explained to the captain. "Sage chakra is a very special and much more powerful form of it, created by absorbing natural chakra from one's surroundings. Those laborers I saw who were sitting very still, who had strange markings on their faces, were using Sage chakra."

"Sage chakra is very prized, and sages are very well respected," Orochimaru continued. "That's because they have incredible battle abilities. Strength, speed, the ability to use techniques which require more chakra than a person can normally afford to spend: those abilities are very powerful. Nobody would fight a sage in combat unless they had equally powerful abilities." Orochimaru tilted his head. "Why would you put such people to use as laborers? They could be incredible warriors. The best."

The captain squinted. He mulled over his words before answering. "We have little need for warriors. Lightbringers are well respected, and the presence of light is enough by itself to bring peace most of the time. The gods, too, keep peace; people have to coexist at their shrines. Why would we want such destructive warriors?"

"You mean there is no such thing as battles between clans for power? For prestige? For honor?" Orochimaru asked those questions in an amused way, as if he did not expect the captain to be able to answer them. "Don't tell me nobody struggles for power in your land. Everybody wants power. I've seen enough of humanity to know that."

"Yes," the captain agreed. "Power is desired. But the forms of power you describe are not. Honor is...the ability to make yourself different from others, correct?"

Orochimaru shrugged lightly. "It can be defined that way."

"Why would you want to make yourself different from others?"

Orochimaru blinked and stared, all traces of amusement falling from his face. Kakashi groaned. "This is the sort of answer I got to all my questions," he said. "It seems that a lot of things that seem to be inherently true aren't inherently true. They are only true because people believe them to be. The angels had no idea why people I didn't know would need to know all about me. The idea of a wider context to every interaction is foreign to them. Clans, villages, power imbalances, and things like that do not matter to them. They don't matter because these people don't treat them as if they matter. They just don't acknowledge or ask about anyone's clan, and because they don't, clan membership doesn't matter." Kakashi wrinkled his brow. "My whole idea of reality was upended here. That's why I was vulnerable enough to have such a breakdown on a ship full of people I wasn't very intimate with."

Orochimaru shook his head. "How can that not matter? Power matters. It is what makes people different from each other. That's the very definition of power: the force that divides people into superiors and inferiors."

Kakashi shook his head. "That's how we see it. But the angels and humans here have a different definition. They defined power as the way people contribute to the world when I asked about it. More power just means that the way you contribute is more central and more people can benefit from it."

"What?"

"It took me days to understand that. I think of it as being similar to how things that occupy centralized positions, like trade cities, have more power. It's like that, except their power is what allows them to be in the center in the first place." Kakashi wrinkled his brow again. "I think. I'm still struggling."

Orochimaru facepalmed. "If more power means that more people can benefit from their abilities...then who or what holds the most power in your lands?"

The captain glanced at Kakashi. "Lightbringers do." So he doesn't know that much about the Elemental Nations. Enough to speak like we do, but he has trouble grasping the intricacies of how we think. Kakashi wondered how the captain would have interpreted the question if one of his own had asked it.

"Why?" Orochimaru asked.

"Because there is nobody a lightbringer cannot reach." Kakashi nodded in agreement.

Orochimaru took his hand down from his face. "Angels are powerful because they can affect everybody."

"Yes."

"The people who are the least powerful, then, would be people that can only affect others in very specific ways," Orochimaru guessed. "Such as...jewel polishers. Most people don't have jewels to polish, so that's not a very powerful position."

"It is not." The captain was smiling. Evidently he enjoyed a good discussion as much as Orochimaru did.

The serpent smirked. "It's the opposite in our lands. Because few people have jewels, those who do must be very special and different, which means they have a natural right to give orders to other people who aren't that important. A person with connections in such high places would be occupying a powerful position."

The captain leaned forward. "Difference is the same as importance?"

Orochimaru thought about it. "Yes. Not everybody can be a leader. Why is that? If not everybody has the ability, then there must be something different between those who can and those who can't. There must be some distinguishing mark." Orochimaru's eyes lit instantly, glowing with the flare of fire that has suddenly been fed. "But nobody has found what such a mark might be yet! The smartest people don't always make the best leaders. Nor do the most charismatic, or the most emotional, or the most logical, or anything else that anyone can think of. Are you suggesting the entire idea that leaders are special is flawed?"

The captain chuckled. "No. You are."

'Interesting." Orochimaru assessed the captain again. "This is very interesting." Kakashi grinned beneath his mask. He's making friends! Genuine bonds! All it took was finding literal angels.

"It's luck," the captain said. "Purple happened to be setting the plank next to where the dark one lay. Because of that, he has a commendation now for the way he showed excellent hospitality to the guest. Any other one could have set the plank, and they would be the same."

"Of course we recognize that the question of who ends up in charge often comes down to luck," Orochimaru replied. "But are you saying that luck is the only thing that matters? Not merely a very important factor, but the only factor?"

The captain shook his head. "The fit between person and place matters too. A jewel polisher probably cannot have enough knowledge or skill to distribute among others unless the situation has to do with jewels. A lightbringer is more likely to have enough knowledge and skill to share in all places."

"So power influences where a person can become a leader." Orochimaru chuckled. "Very interesting idea."

The captain sat straight. "Why is a serpent interested in such matters?"

"Why the hell wouldn't I be?" Orochimaru fixed his glowing eyes on the angel's face. "I have power, and I am different, and I live in a world where the two are equated and held up as very important. Why wouldn't I be interested in the most important matters in the world?"

The captain took several moments to consider those words. "I supposed it is natural for serpents to concern themselves with the role they play in the world. But it does not usually take this form."

Orochimaru's hands tightened. "That is also a very important matter. What do you mean by, 'usually'?"

"We only know of one other serpent, and that's because he was preserved in a time capsule," Kakashi reminded the captain. "The idea of enough snakelike people to make sweeping statements is incredible. I would not have believed it even a few months ago."

"Stories passed down and records written tell of serpents that have come before," the captain answered. "Do you have no stories?"

"Before the last hundred or so years, no. Ninja clans have their own histories, but any other history was probably destroyed in battle ages ago." Orochimaru hissed. "Damn!"

"Wait… Wait a second." Kakashi's eyes widened. He knows serpents. He wears clothes like the ones the boy wears. He knows things. He has records. "If I bring our little brother here, would you look at him? He is injured from the preservation method used. He needs healing of his soul." If anything can heal a soul, light can.

The captain nodded vigorously.

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Half an hour later, Kakashi and Orochimaru were much refreshed. Kakashi licked his chops. "It might not be beef, but I like that broth they have! I wonder what kind of beast it is made from."

"The cakes are very good," Orochimaru said. "Especially after seeing the way those people so expertly used chakra-based techniques to rehydrate them. They didn't even notice what they were doing. I didn't see any hand signs…"

Kakashi laughed. "I'll go ask about the broth. If my clone comes back in the meantime, have the captain or somebody look at our little brother immediately. Don't wait for me."

In the kitchen, Kakashi asked an ordinary human crew member, "Which wild one is in the broth?" His seafaring clone had picked up a few general patterns in the way these foreign people spoke.

"It is a wild one of the sun," the crew member answered.

"Of the sun?"

"Yes, as the green ones are."

Kakashi left the kitchen very quickly. They have broth made from beasts that are part plant?! He remembered the Akatsuki member that had been part plant. Could he…?

His thoughts were interrupted by a burst of new memories as his clone flowed into his chest. He staggered back. Ugh. Could he not have been gentler? It was a surprise to suddenly have a being of darkness leap into him like that. Anyway, he found Purple, Orange, Sallow (the female guide from before), and the captain watching the medic as she used medical chakra to scan the young snake. "Healthful," the medic announced.

Kakashi nodded. "Mah, we already knew that. The problem isn't in his body. It's in his soul."

"The two are connected," the captain said.

"Not in this case. His soul has little trouble connecting to his body. The problem is that it isn't connected to itself," Kakashi explained. "My apologies. I should have told you more about the problem before."

"What?" Purple asked. "Itself? It is split?"

"Can it be split?" Sallow asked. She wrapped her arms around herself. "Never have seen!"

Kakashi nodded. "This little snake was preserved inside a storage space where no time passes. However, in order to make the last preparations, his body had to be inside the space already. The solution was to split his soul. As long as some part of him was outside the space, the part of him inside was still connected to a world where time passed, and it could make the final preparations before the rest of him was sent through." Kakashi shook his head. "But the portal into the storage space closed too early. The part of him outside was trapped outside, without its body. He has spent centuries wandering, lost, falling apart."

"Why was there no help?" Orange asked.

Kakashi shrugged. "Odds are good that there was chaos. The people helping him with the ritual probably died. Other people who could have helped him might have been under attack themselves. We know that knowledge of the ritual was lost at about the time that shinobi clans began to use chakra to grow very powerful and wage wars. He might have been sealed just before that. Warfare kept anybody from saving him, and when it was over, there was nobody left who knew how."

"The Great Divide," Sallow whispered. Her eyes were wide and her voice was reverential, awestruck.

Orochimaru looked up quickly. "Is that what you call the rise of shinobi? A 'great divide' between the peaceful way you use chakra and the warlike way it started to be used?"

Orange nodded. "There are old stories. Not strong ones, but strong enough for sadness."

'Interesting."

The medic rose, and Purple crouched where she had crouched. He placed his hands, glowing with angel light, on the boy's chest. The light disappeared. Purple closed his eyes. Kakashi looked around, raised a hand to show he was harmless, and crouched down across from Purple. He closed his normal eyes, and opened them to reveal demon eyes.

Kakashi watched the boy's soul very carefully. Parts of it were acting in a strange way that he had never seen before. He followed that strange activity with his eyes, keeping a mental map of where the angel's light was in the young snake's body. He narrowed his eyes. What was going on here? Purple appeared to be moving his soul around in a very disorganized manner, as if he was poking at parts of the boy's soul at random.

Or as if he was feeling his way around blindly.

Kakashi returned his eyes to normal. "Is he feeling his way around blindly in there?" he asked the captain. What the hell? "He can't sense souls?" Their light is made of their soul, just as my darkness is! And if they have any power to heal souls, then they should be able to perceive what they're healing. They definitely have the power to interact with souls. How could an angel possibly not be able to see what he's interacting with? That makes no sense!

The captain glanced to both sides before saying a word. Orange and Sallow were both very, very still. Purple still had his eyes closed in concentration. Orochimaru smirked. "Are you sure that was wise, Puppy?"

"Of course," Kakashi answered. "The captain understands, and this may be my only chance to find out more about the abilities of angels. It looks like they are very different, so the risk was worth it."

Orange and Sallow looked to the captain. He nodded. "The guest is a dark one. His heart is light." Both angels were visibly shocked.

Purple became very still. "A dark one?" His eyes would have widened if he hadn't been squeezing them tightly shut.

"Yes," Kakashi admitted. "You wondered what my clone meant when he said he wasn't real. You said light can't be given eyes. Well...darkness can. I would like to find out what other differences there are between us."

"You fear glowing things," Sallow murmured. She sounded hurt and confused. Orochimaru shot her a glare.

Kakashi shrugged. "Not quite. My dark clones have no body to protect them from light, so they can't stand to be touched by it. As for the medic: she was going to use medical chakra to check my clone for injuries. Darkness destroys chakra on contact, so if she'd touched me, her chakra would have disappeared and she would have known my clone wasn't a normal person. I made up a fear of glowing things to protect myself from being discovered."

"Lying? Hiding?" Sallow asked. She looked betrayed. "Why?"

Orochimaru came up to Kakashi's side. "You don't have to submit to this interrogation, Puppy."

"No, I want to." Kakashi shivered. "The why is because… Well… Demons have great sensory power. Using those powers, I can tell what other demons are like, even though I have never met one. I don't think they are…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "I didn't want to frighten anyone."

Orange shook his head. "You are not frightening."

"Strange one," said Purple. His eyes moved back and forth beneath his closed eyelids as he resumed working on the young snake.

Kakashi crossed his arms over his chest tightly. "I'm used to hiding, too. I'm sorry for lying."

The angels all looked sympathetic. Orochimaru scowled and clapped a hand onto Kakashi's shoulder. "Forget about all that. What did you see, Puppy? How could you know what an angel's doing if they're invisible?"

Kakashi relaxed somewhat. Orochimaru's hand on his shoulder was pleasant and warm. Thank you. "I guessed that his light would have an effect on our little brother's soul. I was right. I followed the pattern of effects around. It seems like he's feeling blindly."

"That is true," Purple answered. "Light does not have eyes."

Kakashi looked at his hand. "Darkness does."

"I've noticed other things," Orochimaru added. "You don't affect anything you aren't touching, but they do. This whole ship feels different because of the light in it."

Kakashi nodded. "Yeah. Even my dark clones were reassured and awestruck on sight. Now that I'm here in my actual body, it feels warm. I haven't had a moment of physical discomfort since I boarded."

"So that's it," Orochimaru said. "The power of darkness is based in the senses and material properties, while the power of light is a more diffuse aura-type effect."

Orange pushed himself off the wall he was leaning against and approached Kakashi. "I agree. You are interesting," he said. "Dark ones are in stories. Never have seen."

"Really?" Kakashi sighed in a mixture of relief and annoyance. "Damn. I can't tell if that's good or bad."

Orochimaru hissed. "I'll assume it's bad. If it's been that long since a demon's shown up, then we should prepare for at least one showing up soon. Let's hope you were right, Puppy."

"About what?"

"About being among the more powerful of demons."

Kakashi shivered. "I don't know the first thing about how to fight another demon, if that is what I would have to do. Even if I am, that won't help."

Orochimaru turned to the captain. "How does one fight demons?"

"They can be sent out of their body by cutting off the head," the captain answered.

Kakashi's eyes widened. Oh, fuck. He'd forgotten about that. More importantly, he'd only too late remembered that he didn't want Orochimaru to know about that. He knows there is a way to kill me now. That is bad. He was worried enough about the ritual; how much worse is this going to be?

"Mah, I don't think so," Kakashi hurried to say before Orochimaru could react. "Only angels could pull that off. The pain from being touched by light paralyzed my darkness. But if there was no light, it would be easy enough for any demon to use darkness to protect the neck, make a layer of armor that no weapon could cut through."

Orochimaru's soul tensed, and Kakashi knew he had said the wrong thing. There was silence. Slowly, Kakashi turned to look at Orochimaru, who was glaring at him with eyes like yellow diamonds. There was silence for a few more seconds. Then Orochimaru spoke. Softly, quietly, like a knife slipping soundlessly underneath one's ribs, he asked, "You knew you could be killed this way, didn't you, Puppy?"

Kakashi fought not to flinch. "Yes."

"When were you going to tell me?"

Kakashi scratched his head. "Never, unless I had to."

Orochimaru crossed his arms. His voice rose, barely concealing fury. "Aren't your kind supposed to be immortal, invulnerable, nearly unkillable? Then why do I find out, nearly every time I turn around, that there's some new way in which you can easily be killed? Your soul can be split from your body, your head can be cut off, you yourself could succumb mind and soul to depression." Kakashi flinched as Orochimaru listed off the ways he could be killed. But the snake wasn't done. He began to walk in a circle around Kakashi. "And everything, every last one of these ways you could easily die, is something you've decided not to tell me about. As if I have no right to know." If his pitch had been a little higher, his voice a little less tightly controlled, Orochimaru would have been shouting.

Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't want you to worry."

"You're the one that volunteered for that damn ritual, knowing that your body would fall apart without your soul in it. And now you go seeking out angels, who can easily disable and kill you." Orochimaru finished his circle. "If you don't want me to worry, stop being so fucking stupid!"

Kakashi shook his head fiercely. "No!" He opened his eyes and glared back at Orochimaru. "I was still the best one to use that ritual. I can wrap my soul around something on the outside and have a nice line of darkness to tether myself by while I rummage around inside a lifeless storage ritual. You?" He gestured at Orochimaru's whole body. "You only have a soul large enough to occupy one body, and you can't manipulate it like I can. You would've been trapped in the ritual with barely enough soul to operate your arm, and no way of getting out or calling the rest of your soul to you. Even if the initial separation was dangerous, I was still the best one to use the ritual."

Orochimaru's eyes glinted. "If you had considered all of these factors and made a reasoned decision before going in there, that would be one thing. But you didn't, Puppy. You didn't think at all about what separation meant or how it could be dangerous. You're lucky you recovered your senses quickly enough to get back to your body. You could have dissolved into body soup in there, and you didn't even prepare for that possibility!"

"I know that!" Kakashi groaned. "I know that. So why are you still yelling at me, when I already know what I need to change?"

"Do you? You seem to be charging into dangerous territory as recklessly as ever!" Orochimaru bared his fangs. "And still without telling me. No, I don't think you've learned anything at all."

"When you react this way, why would I tell you," Kakashi grumbled. "It's exactly because I don't want you to react like this."

Orochimaru growled. "You are -" He started hissing. Apparently it was just too much trouble to muster the human speech necessary for explaining exactly what Kakashi was. Kakashi was glad for that. He had a feeling the words Orochimaru would have said would have hurt very much.

Suddenly, Kakashi felt unnoticed hands pulling him backward by the shoulders. An attack? He wrestled himself free. Orochimaru had also been pulled backward. They were now two meters from each other, both breathing heavily and still glaring. Why am I still glaring? I don't hate him. Kakashi forced his face to relax.

"Thank you," he said to whoever had pulled him away from Orochimaru.

"No," the captain disagreed. "I am sorry."

"No," Kakashi disagreed. "Don't be." He opened his eyes. Orochimaru had also regained enough control over himself to not be visibly snarling or upset. But his eyes were still hard, and Kakashi could sense turmoil in his soul. "Your kind are very good at settling conflicts. This is the latest in an ongoing series, as I'm sure you noticed. It's good that we had it onboard a ship full of angels. We'll need your help."

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A/N: Regarding the name of the historical event: why yes, I did watch a disc of Avatar: The Last Airbender just yesterday, and it was the disc with the episode The Great Divide on it. It's a nice episode. I personally like it.