Chapter eighteen
Preparation

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Kabuto evaded the first attack and ducked, spinning around low on the ground to knock Kakashi's legs from out beneath him. He in turn somersaulted backwards, landing lightly across from the Sound nin, and they sized each other up before running in again.

"We've faced each other before, haven't we, Kakashi-san?" Kabuto asked, slicing down with a kunai that seemed to sizzle through the air. Kakashi rolled to the side and brought his fingers to his face, hunching over and concealing them as he performed a single seal.

"Your memory is as good as mine," he replied dryly, before smoke grew around him and he felt the familiar separation of consciousness that marked the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu.

There was a reason it was a forbidden jutsu. In the hands of a ninja with a small reserve of chakra or little control over what they did have, it was a dangerous and potentially fatal technique. Because each clone took an equal share of chakra, the number of replications made was very important. Kakashi's preferred application of the jutsu was to make only one clone, as it then had nearly as much power and stamina as he had. He was free to relocate his true form somewhere else, safely away from immediate combat. It wasn't that he was afraid. It was just that he'd made a promise once, and he had a much better chance of fulfilling it away from ground zero.

Besides, despite their past matchup, Kabuto was still an unknown. Kakashi had no idea of what to expect because he'd never seen the man actually try. Staying out of sight and out of danger would be a lot more conducive to living through the day.

He used the last vestiges of the fading smoke to blur to Kabuto's left and managed to situate himself up a nearby tree. Low, leafy branches shaded his form and he concentrated, pressing a hand to his temple so as to see through the Bunshin's eyes.

Below, Kabuto had given up on the kunai, perhaps realising it was as good as useless in the face of Kakashi's speed. He thrust it back into his hip pack and leaned over, bringing his hands up and starting a seal. The Bunshin watched the movement of his fingers and up in the tree, Kakashi's Sharingan whirled as the shapes formed and he worked to determine the best counter-attack. He focused with his left eye and saw an imprint in the air, an etching on the breeze of what Kabuto was planning.

It involved fire. Lots of it.

"Katon Gyoukyou no Jutsu!" Kabuto cried, his abdomen swelling with the charging chakra before it travelled up his windpipe, ready to blow from his mouth.

Now! he told the Bunshin, whose fingers flashed in a dance of figures before it shouted in his own voice, "Ikkaku Hakuge!" Liquid leeched from the air and his face felt suddenly dry as parchment. His tongue was rough and scratchy in his mouth and he blinked rapidly, trying to return some moisture to his eyes.

Down on the shore, water sizzled and hissed as it was torn from its home to fuel his jutsu, to repel Kabuto's in the only manner he could think of at this time. The younger man's face contorted as he leaned back to blow the fire, and just as a funnel of flames burst from his lips a great crack split the air. A large, horned whale made entirely of ice leapt from the stream and planted itself in the fiery path. The air steamed and misted where the two elements clashed, but with a whistle like a tea kettle the ice stopped the fire from reaching his Bunshin and Kabuto's stomach deflated back to its original state.

Hot water sloshed along the pebbles and both combatants leapt backward to avoid being burned. The small torrent melted into the stream and small waves appeared where the temperatures met.

Kabuto watched the bubbling water for a moment, before turning back to the shadow clone. "A bit flashy, wasn't it?" he asked with some amusement, removing his glasses and holding them up to the sky. "Your little display fogged up my lenses, which is always an inconvenience."

"Where did you learn that?" Kakashi made the clone ask. It was a Fire country jutsu and had once been a specialty of the Uchiha, but surely it couldn't have been…

"Why, Sasuke-kun, of course," the Sound nin replied, taking a section of his shirt and wiping it across the glasses with slow, methodical strokes. "I mentioned my interest in the jutsu and he graciously offered to show me how it worked. I'm," he paused, bringing the glasses to his face and blowing on the lenses, "a very fast learner."

In the tree, Kakashi's mouth thinned to a hard line. On the ground, he allowed his clone to do the same. "You and your master are like peas in a pod," he directed the Bunshin to say in a cutting tone. "Never making up your own jutsu and just stealing everyone else's."

Kabuto replaced the spectacles and his lips turned up into a smirk. "Oh? I'm being lectured on originality by the great Copy-Nin himself?"

Ah, that's right. Whoops.

"I exploit no one to learn these things," he made the clone reply evenly, although he felt rather slighted by Kabuto's observation. "Any technique I've acquired has been through painless means, with no foul done."

"And you forget," the Sound nin replied, dropping down into an attacking stance, "that Orochimaru-sama no longer has any need to convince people to give up their jutsu." He brought a hand to his face and pointed. "The Uchiha eyes have been a big help, in that regard."

Kabuto kicked off, running at the Kage Bunshin, and his fingers flew in readiness of yet another set of seals.

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Sakura repressed the urge to step back and curl her lip at Yumi's drastically changed appearance. The seal was doing disturbing things to the girl's body and she was suddenly glad she'd never seen Sasuke's final form, even though Naruto had told her about it when she'd asked.

"His skin went black, Sakura-chan," she remembered him saying, his bright eyes dulled and lined with pain. "His hair grew longer and his eyes were different, scary." He'd looked away, staring unseeingly over her shoulder. "He grew wings," he'd whispered, voice breaking. "He grew wings and he flew far away from us that day."

She eyed Yumi's shoulders apprehensively, but there were no extra appendages appearing as of yet. Her skin hadn't turned black, either, but it was fast becoming a mottled brown with hints of blue, reminding Sakura of a week-old bruise. Her eyes were larger and violet, her hair had become longer and faded to white, and her teeth had elongated to sharp points that protruded from her mouth like fangs. Sakura was reminded unpleasantly of a snake and it seemed appropriate. Regardless of the respect she showed for him, Yumi was Orochimaru's creature through and through.

"I see you tremble at my powers, precious," Yumi said, and even her voice had changed, deepening and lowering and acquiring a whispery edge.

"I'm trembling all right," Sakura replied with false bravado, because she didn't know how else to react, "but it's at your freakish transformation." She stuck a hand behind her and clutched in her pack for some shuriken. Yes, way to go. Intimidate the enemy by being a smartarse!

Yumi's glowing eyes narrowed and she hissed her irritation. "You mock me now, precious, but soon you will be sorry to have done so."

Sakura swallowed and fitted the shuriken between her fingers. "I thought I was going to die. How can I be sorry if I'm dead?"

"I'm sure there's time for regret in hell," Yumi countered, pushing off and running at her with incredible speed.

If Sakura hadn't been trained in the ways of evasion, she might have been terrified. If she had never seen her teammates race, she might have been overwhelmed. If she'd never sparred with Kakashi, she might have been suitably impressed. As it was, she'd been spoiled by the fastest nin in Konoha and had been, for years, so Yumi's running speed was pretty much crawling to her heightened, enlightened eyes.

She sidestepped the Sound nin neatly, stepping out of her path and flipping the shuriken with precision. The blades whirled, slicing through the air towards Yumi, honing in on her white-haired form before veering off and thudding loudly into the trunk of a tree behind her.

Her head turned toward the sound, just as Sakura had hoped it would, giving her time to raise one leg straight in front of her and slam it straight down into the ground, her heel making a slight noise in the dirt.

Yumi's eyes slid back to her. "You missed," she said, a smile beginning to form.

"Did I?" Sakura responded archly, as the ground beneath the Sound nin rumbled and split apart. Yumi scrabbled for sure footing, her sandals slipping on the crumbling earth.

Sakura took the moment of inattention to start running over, her arms out behind her so as to hit the best speed. Her feet flew lightly over the loose ground, having raced on much worse during her training with Tsunade. Close now, nearly there; Yumi's eyes widened as Sakura drew back a fist, and then her hand was travelling forward, the air around it sloughing back as if frightened by its very force. And then her punch connected and something shattered with satisfying certainty.

It just wasn't the girl's nose, as she'd hoped it would be.

Sakura scowled at the splinters of log around her, and cursed the idiot who'd dreamed up the Kawarimi no Jutsu. Sure, it was fine when it saved your arse, but when your opponent fooled you, it was just annoying.

"That would have hurt." Yumi's voice came from behind her and she whirled, caught by surprise at the nin's stealthy approach. She leaped away, putting distance between them, but the other girl followed, her arms out and reaching, long talons appearing and growing on her hands.

Sakura landed and cartwheeled, flipping to the side to avoid the wide swathe of Yumi's pointed fingernails. The tips were bubbling and hissing and she was willing to bet her hitai-ate that they too were poisoned, and that she wouldn't be too thrilled with whatever happened should they make contact with her skin.

She jumped back again and slammed a fist into the ground, watching the earth tear a path to Yumi, dirt and rocks flying everywhere. She'd tried subtlety and it hadn't really worked at all, so an all-out offensive was in order. In fact, she shouldn't be watching this at all. She pushed off and sprinted along after the line of destruction, blurring to the side before swinging her arm down to hit Yumi and hopefully snap every bone in her body.

She'd been fast. Her movement had been camouflaged by the path of the dirt. She was confident that the other girl couldn't have sensed her approach, much less see it. But overconfidence had been the downfall of many a good nin, and Sakura had too much force, too much momentum to do anything aside from mouthing an expletive as Yumi ducked under her arm and kicked her clean across the clearing, where she smashed into a tree.

Ow. The Sound nin's foot had connected solidly with the small of her back and she had to be covered in splinters after this little encounter. Sakura slid off the tree and rolled weakly to the side, coughing into her hand. Her palm came away specked with blood and she scowled, angry at Yumi for causing the damage but furious at herself for failing to avoid it.

Yumi laughed, high and cold. "I don't know what it is about you, precious, but I just want to hurt you as much as I can." She tilted her head, considering. "Maybe I just like your tears. So helpless. So pretty. So warm."

"You're more than a little freaky, you know that?" Sakura clung to the tree bole and managed to get to her feet. Probably nothing was broken but something had cracked and she knew she'd be in for some major bruising tomorrow.

The girl shrugged. "I do my best. Oh!" Her eyes lit up. "You're so good at reminding me. I'm not doing my best at all. No wonder this has been dragging on."

One of Sakura's kunai from earlier had embedded itself up to the hilt in a tree behind Yumi, and the nin crossed over to it, wrenching it from the bark with a low grunt. Sakura blinked. She'd applied a great deal of chakra-strength to that throw. A normal shinobi shouldn't have been able to just pull it out like that.

Although, she thought, she does have that extra power of Orochimaru's running through her body now. The curse seal had altered her completely, so who knew what it was doing to her chakra system, her inner coils. It would be foolish not to expect that her strength and power had increased dramatically.

Yumi turned, the kunai dangling carelessly from her hand. "You've got quite a throw," she said, indicating the point of entry on the tree. "It was a trifle awkward, getting it out."

""I do my best"," Sakura replied sarcastically, hugging her injured body and using the action to mask a stealthy hand reaching into her shirt. She had some senbon of her own stashed in there, and they'd come in handy right about now. She'd stitched them into the seams after Kakashi had returned with the clothing. If she could just reach, there were a couple of pressure points, a few vital spots that she could puncture to induce unconsciousness, or, if the situation warranted, bring death instead.

It was a tough call. She'd never killed someone before. But she was a ninja and ninja did what had to be done. It might hurt using her abilities to end a life instead of prolonging it, but it was probably all right. What had Yumi done, after all? How many people had she killed, just to get close to her and Kakashi? The numbers were horrible and unfair, but the guilt could hold over to later. She needed to stop Yumi, and it didn't really matter how. She doubted Tsunade would care if the girl wasn't alive for questioning.

"But is it good enough?" Yumi mused, caressing the tip of her finger with the kunai. She traced lovingly across her own skin, smiling dreamily down at her hand. "Will it ever be good enough?" she continued, and Sakura had a few seconds to be baffled before Yumi pressed down and sliced across with the weapon, bright spots of her blood dancing momentarily in the air.

And then she was reaching down to the upturned earth, slapping her hand against the crumbling dirt.

"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!" the nin cried, before time stopped and the air stood still and smoke filled the clearing.

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Kakashi fell out of the tree.

He didn't even notice the ground's harsh welcome, didn't even register the rough scratch of undergrowth against his flesh. The pain that caused the tumble was far more powerful, was sudden and consuming and felt like a hundred different things at once. Surely he was being scorched and hammered with burning nails, his skin simmering and yet tingling, frozen and exposed to pricking ice. And boiling oil had to be pouring over him, scalding and crisping him, while shards and strips were methodically carved from his bones. His organs heaved and shuddered and it took his last ounce of willpower not to empty his stomach all over his lap.

Somehow through the haze of sensation he had a flash of foresight, and commanded his Bunshin to throw down a smoke pellet. The clone obliged and Kakashi dismissed it, welcoming the return of chakra and that essential bit of extra strength.

He drew a shaking, ragged breath and focussed his chakra, honing in on the burning, freezing mark on his back. The curse seal Yumi had placed upon him was the epicentre of the pain. The mark he'd thought he'd taken care of obviously hadn't been sorted out. Overconfidence had weakened him and the girl had used that to her advantage, managing to weaken him further. And at a time like this…

"A Kage Bunshin, Kakashi-san?" Kabuto's voice held a note of clinical interest. "How clever. And repetitive. You seem to favour that method of approach, using a clone to do your initial attack, before coming out and finishing the fight yourself." From Kakashi's prone position in the undergrowth, it seemed like Kabuto was getting closer, making his way gradually to where he lay. "I knew this from my research, of course, but it's different when you're actually facing the technique. I'm ashamed to say I quite forgot."

Kakashi gritted his teeth against the seemingly relentless pain and tried to get his scattered thoughts to congregate, to get the shards of his logic to smooth together and help him out of this situation somehow. He was almost helpless, lying on the ground, brain clouded and senses dulled by these constant waves of pain. His chakra was still moving sluggishly through his body, meandering though paths and coils and gradually getting closer to the stinging symbol on his back. He'd underestimated Yumi's power and severely overestimated his own, in this case. And if he wasn't careful, he'd be paying dearly for his mistake.

"Kakashi-san?" Kabuto had to be on the other side of the tree by now. He'd spoken softly but his voice was loud to Kakashi's suddenly oversensitive hearing, his ears raw from the pounding that had struck his head along with the other various pains. The nin was only metres away, all that separated them was a tree trunk and some shrubbery, and Kakashi hadn't felt this vulnerable since Itachi had come for Naruto all those years ago. The pain of the illusion he'd suffered through had been on par with this weakening, racking hurt that spasmed through his body, and he closed his eyes as the chakra found the curse seal and threaded through the marking, slipping through the weave of Yumi's chakra in an attempt to nullify it. He set it to work without his instruction, and took a deep breath, bringing shaky fingers to his chest and whispering a technique, the words barely forming through a jaw tensed against the pain.

"Shinju Zanshu no Jutsu," he managed, and the ground pulled apart to swallow his body into the welcome embrace of the earth.

Darkness and silence greeted him first. The need for air was something that always hit him a little later, and that was why he'd practiced this so often when he was younger. The Sharingan only gave one so much, and everything else needed to be worked out separately. He considered it fair. The Uchiha bloodline limit was one that had attracted much jealousy and dissent over the years.

Not that it mattered, any more.

Usually he employed this jutsu to travel through the ground and then eject himself from it, confusing his opponent and hopefully catching them unawares. It had other, darker, uses, but they were rarely necessary. He wasn't ANBU any longer, after all. This time, he wasn't sure if he could move even if he wanted to, so the relocation underground was just to buy a bit of time in which he could at least pause the pain that still assaulted his senses.

His chakra was still trying to work out the specifics of the seal, and he returned his awareness to it, gritting his teeth since thought seemed to aggravate the hurt further. He focused inward and was finally able to get a shaky picture of what the mark was doing to him.

Oh, shit.

It wasn't enough that she was sending him wave after wave of debilitating pain. It wasn't enough that his strength seemed to be leeching from his body, making his senses weak and thoughts unable to process. None of this was enough, apparently.

That conniving, spiteful Sound nin was poisoning him as well.

Oh, this was completely screwed. From his view within he could see the seal he'd created to contain the mark in the first place, and it had done its job just fine. But the seal Yumi had placed upon his body was double-faceted, and he'd only addressed the surface aspect. It seemed there'd been a second part that had sunk into his body, undetected by him, and it was now sending out chakra to be converted to a substance that eroded his energy and poisoned his bloodstream.

She was killing him. And he most definitely couldn't allow that. Not after he'd been reunited with Sakura. Not after he'd met up with Naruto and Jiraiya. Certainly not after everything they'd been through.

He clamped down on his fragmented thoughts and directed all his will and most of his chakra to the mark, weaving power around the creeping poison and stymieing its effect. The pain lessened but still remained, a numb, fuzzy stinging at the edge of his awareness. It didn't matter. At least it was bearable. He opened his eyes and was just contemplating leaving the dirt when a hand smashed through the soil above him and clamped down on his arm, wrenching him from the dirt so abruptly that he felt the bone creak and snap as he emerged back into the open air.

Kakashi kicked out, catching Kabuto on the ribs and causing him to drop his grip. He spun before hitting the ground and landed – barely – on his feet, his wounded arm jarring from the sudden impact. He winced and jumped backwards, managing to land another blow to Kabuto's torso before shimmering and fading, reappearing safely ensconced in the shadows of a tree.

Kabuto leaned over, catching his breath. "That's quite a kick you have there, Kakashi-san," he wheezed, bringing a hand up to his side. "But injuries like this one won't stop me for long, I'm afraid."

Kakashi watched as blue light grew around Kabuto's palm, the Sound nin pressing up and down his torso, healing himself as he went. There'd been no hand seal, no incantation, but it wasn't a kekkai genkai, either.

How utterly convenient.

"You and your sister have such dissimilar abilities," he called out, eyeing Kabuto carefully. "You can extend life and she works only to end it."

Kabuto let the light fade and stood still for a moment, before reaching up and sliding his glasses higher on his nose. "It's funny what people believe, isn't it?" he asked, voice casual. "You tell them a partial truth and they take the story up on their own. I suppose it depends on how much they want to believe something. They read into things what they will."

Kakashi cradled his broken arm and sidled around, leaning heavily against the tree. If it wasn't one thing, it was another.

And what was Kabuto saying?

"Or maybe it's that you're so gifted in the art of manipulation," he said, pressing his fingers into the flesh of his arm to find exactly where the bone had snapped. "Maybe you're not telling a partial truth at all. Maybe you're just telling a whole lie."

There was a long silence and Kakashi resisted the urge to peer around the tree to see if Kabuto had moved. He extended his chakra net and sensed the Sound nin's location through that instead. It didn't appear as if he'd budged.

"I don't like to lie, Kakashi-san," Kabuto said, after further hesitation. "I much prefer taking something that is fact and then building upon it, allowing other people to interpret it as they will. Everyone does it, to a certain extent. Yumi just believed more than most."

A tendon in Kakashi's neck jumped. "She's not your sister," he said flatly, fingers finally finding the lump beneath his skin. The bone had stretched and broken in his forearm and it hurt like a mother.

A flash of light from across the clearing – Kabuto's glasses had caught the waning sun. "The word 'family' can be interpreted so many ways, Kakashi-san."

If he didn't dislike the younger man so much, Kakashi would almost have to admit a grudging respect for the amount of planning put in to this deplorable, diabolical scheme. "You've been manipulating her for a decade? Ten years of planning, for what? This battle? Her fight with Sakura?"

Kabuto chuckled, dry and amused. "That would be somewhat pointless, Kakashi-san. We both know this matchup is meaningless. The aim of my planning has never changed. I swore loyalty to Orochimaru-sama around the same time I obtained Yumi, and from that point I have never wavered."

Kakashi swallowed, trying to focus past the pain. Kabuto was telling him something, confessing something, and he had to listen, had to hear, had to get him to repeat himself. "But why?"

Kabuto blurred into his vision right before him, shimmering into existence before Kakashi knew what to think. The nin reached out and grabbed his broken arm in a bruising, crushing grip, smiling coldly at his hurt and surprise. "I should think it obvious, Kakashi-san. I want Orochimaru-sama's vessel to be myself."

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Notes on jutsu:

Katon Gyoukyou no Jutsu: Great Fireball Technique. The one that Sasuke practiced a lot on that ol' pier by himself. It's actually an Uchiha-exclusive technique (dodgy anime canon notwithstanding) so Kabuto using it is really a slap in the face.
Ikkaku Hakuge: One Horned Whale. I guess I can't talk about dodgy anime canon because I took this from the first movie.
Kawarimi no Jutsu: Replacement Jutsu. They rely on this one a LOT.
Kuchiyose no Jutsu: Summoning Technique. Generally for animals, but...
Shinju Zanshu no Jutsu: Well, wiki calls it the "Inner Decapitation Technique" but I used it out of context. Used correctly, it puts an enemy into the ground. Kakashi used it here to hide himself under the ground.

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...and there we have it. A fight chapter - I'm sorry if it's not all that exciting but I'm not comfortable with writing action and I've done the best I can. Sorry also for the delay - uni has been very, very full on and I've got two weeks of holidays before I'm back at the grind. Thanks in this chapter go first to the usual crew (DS, M, C, other C and other D) and to Sharingana, who supplied me with links and love for Inoue Kazuhiko songs. You made my week!

To everyone who reads and reviews: you make this all worthwhile, and a special welcome to those people who seemed to have picked TS up at chapter 17. Not much longer now! (I hope...)