A replacement chapter three created by a friend of mine, Lionheart. A much better peice of work than I could have cooked up on my own. Only downside for this is its a two part chapter, so now you'll have to wait until he finishes it.
I added a few bits myself, mostly changing the phrasing in some sentences, though I did create one scene for this.
Still, this is 95 percent upwards his stuff, so all praise, criticisms, flames, and complaints will be passed on to him.
A Note/Request to all of my reviewers:
You're reviewing a story, not typing an Instant Message. As such, I would appreciate it if you guys would take the time to type out your responses in a legible form of english. I'm not asking for much, just that I don't get reviews like this:
!/\/\ $0 \/\/3$0/\/\3!!! this story is 2 kool 4 words i wnt more!!! rite more! plz????
Using phrases like LOL or ROTFL are fine, since they're shorthand that most people know (though I might not understand them,) but the abomination above is like stabbing myself in the eyes with a rusty needle covered in AIDS.
I take the time to write this story, spell check it, and proof read it so you can actually enjoy the story, please return the courtesy. I'm not demanding an in depth review, I'm just asking that you all take a little pride in your work.
Sorry if that offended any of you, but it needed to be said.
Now that all that junk is out of the way, here's the new Chapter Three. Hope you all enjoy it.
--- --- --- --- ---
Haku slowed her pace, working to control her breathing before she entered the mansion Gato maintained in the forest, and where her Zabuza-sama had retreated to make his recovery.
The kunoichi's breathing was quite regular by the time she entered his presence, but in spite of all of her care to lend herself a normal appearance Zabuza noticed right away. "Haku, report."
The maiden nodded and came to his bedside, busying her hands with changing the dressings on his wounds while her voice was otherwise occupied. "I came upon a boy in the forest, one of the Konoha nin who faced you, the one who became a windmill shuriken to break your water prison technique."
"The orange one." Zabuza grunted sourly, but continued on a more hopeful note, "So, he is dead?"
"Unfortunately not, Zabuza-sama," Haku felt uncomfortable over her loss of nerve at not killing the boy, but decided that need not be emphasized. She would simply be stronger the next time. "He was guarded by a new Konoha nin who was not involved in our previous battle, possibly jonin ranked."
Haku kept her head lowered, facing his wounds, avoiding the mighty swordsman scowled. His condition had begun improving to the point where he had some mobility, but wasn't up to any great big fights - and both knew it.
The Demon of Mist lay back and expelled a great lungful of air. Staring at the ceiling, he asked, "Did she bring a second team with her?"
"I do not have that information, Zabuza-sama." Haku apologized, straining the water out of a cloth as she moved to dress a new wound. "Given how easily the new kunoichi sensed me, I do not feel confident in my ability to collect that information out without risk."
Zabuza scowled under his mask, raising a hand to touch his head, judging his own fever. "We will have to rely on Gato's spies to uncover it for us. I admit there is enough of a bounty on my head for Kakashi to possibly have sent for another team specifically to take me out. That will complicate our assignment. Haku, what is your assessment of her strength in relation to yours?"
Both missing nin had accepted by now how Zabuza freely admitted that Haku was better than him and had Haku analyze his opponents for weaknesses.
"Too close to say, Zabuza-sama. It would depend on other conditions," the girl demurely replied.
Her mentor nodded, accepting this information. "Only a fool commits to a battle he is not certain he can win, and an extra jonin is no small thing to account for. I believe once I have healed that I can take Kakashi. You have identified his weakness, and I already beat him once before. But I will have no time to spare for facing another jonin, nor will you be able to face both her and whatever genin they have about. We must call in extra resources and refine our strategy."
"Gato will object," Haku said softly, pulling the knots on the new bandage tight.
"He cannot object to that which he has already agreed to," her mentor corrected. "True, he would forbid us from hiring extra reinforcements, but he cannot deny us that which we already had. Haku, you will have to go to Konoha and release the Demon Brothers. We can trust them, and they will be useful. Gato has already agreed to their presence among us. He will have no excuse to deny them when they reappear with us. Plus, there are still ninja who owe me favors. Bring me a pen and paper. I will write to one close by who may help us, even without Gato's money."
"Your recovery will be delayed by my absence," Haku stood to obey even as the young lady launched the most mild of objections.
Zabuza waved a hand, dismissing her concerns. "I will still mend. You have healed me to the point where I can take care of myself now. The rest will be delayed, that is true, but it does not matter. It is our side that decides when the next fight happens. That bridge is more than a month to completion. We can delay a few days if needed."
She lay paper and pencil and a board to write on by his side, then helped him to sit up to compose his message. The Mist Swordsman gave it three seals with his chakra and different jutsu before he signed it and gave it over to Haku, who took the table away and helped him to lie down again. "Send it by messenger bird and go. There should be no surprises."
Nodding, Haku took up her mask and departed into a closet, emerging a short time later in a disguise that should take her out of the land of Wave. She would don another for the rest of the journey to Konoha.
Zabuza smiled even as he extended his senses to cover the rest of the house. Gato was a greedy coward who would as soon betray himas pay him, he felt sure. As weak as he was, the missing nin decided not to be trusting of his shady host in the absence of an able bodyguard.
--- --- ---
Haku, for her part, got only partway down the road to the docks before she caught up to a group of Gato's swordsmen, who were also departing to spend their month's pay and bonuses for killing that fisherman.
It was impossible not to fall in with them, as they were all heading out to the same boat, which she must use if her disguise was to have any value.
But it was also impossible not to kill them when they tried to stop her from continuing on the assignment Zabuza-sama had given her.
It started simply enough, as just another rape by mercenary samurai who felt they had rights to anything female that walked. They did not recognize her as Haku, that was what the disguise was for, but nor could they be permitted to learn she was Haku, else Gato would know she had departed out of his lands without his orders and assume treachery by Zabuza.
So they had to die. She could not merely escape or evade them, as that was impossible to do without revealing her true abilities and would leave behind witnesses to a story that could be construed as her departure, and thus, treachery by Zabuza.
Nor was she about to submit to rape.
Haku hated killing, and preferred to pretend she would never do it.
That was a lie, just like her being a boy was a lie, but she did find it distasteful, and feared that one day she would kill someone who's death would haunt her forever. But that would be a pure soul, not these murdering swine, who were more monster than man.
Swiping off the slime who had dared to touch her, Haku leaped away to stand on the side of a tree, made a one handed gesture, and a ring of ice spears suddenly grew, surrounding the fallen samurai. She poured more chakra into the ring and it grew. Spears from all sides impaled the warriors, ending their lives to the sound of short, ugly screams.
She hated killing.
It was disgusting, but necessary, to release the bodies, dissolving her ice spears back into the plentiful fog that characterized Wave, then quickly and efficiently strip the bodies of valuables. The life of a missing nin was hard, almost unbearable at times, and no scrap of advantage could be discounted. She took their swords, sealing them all into a scroll, as well as their money.
Twenty mercenary samurai who had just been paid. It would be a little less lean for Zabuza and her in the coming months.
She then used a Doton jutsu to bury the bodies tracelessly. Let Gato think it was his mercenary samurai that ran out on him. It would make him a little more wary, and a little more dependent on Zabuza and herself.
---- ----
Konoha was lousy with traitors these days. You'd like to think that security would have been tighter in the strongest of the Great Five ninja villages, but it wasn't.
In the past few years their administration had become enormously efficient and streamlined, and that had led to many of the past and previous moles keeping their heads down to a much greater degree, sources drying up and so on as informants and traitors kept quiet for fear of being caught. But by the time Haku arrived that near legendary and mysterious increase in their bureaucracy had disappeared utterly, and the administrative ninja who had come to rely on it were set back to where they were even worse than before, having grown accustomed to doing nothing they were still struggling to relearn their own jobs and acquire that skill they'd had previous to the efficiency increase.
In other words, get things back to where they were running before years of laziness took their toll.
It was due to this that Haku was able to call upon one of Gato's traitors in the infrastructure, bought and paid for by the merchant long ago, but forced to go inactive of late to avoid scrutiny and discovery.
That was no longer a concern with so many ninja running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The Hokage was struggling to restore discipline, but having lost it once himself, he was facing an uphill battle to get control back.
That created an opening that Haku was not the only one to exploit.
She and Zabuza had used their ninja skills to pilfer Gato's list of emergency contacts shortly after taking up employment with him. Those lists, and codes for contact, were vital in their profession and doing the same to previous employers had helped keep them alive on the road so long. Doing it without Gato knowing meant he would not change those contact codes to thwart them and the information would stay useful longer.
She made contact with a mid level bureaucrat whose love for gambling had led him deeply into debt and corruption by the one to hold those debts, thus landing him in Gato's pockets, and shortly thereafter she had another disguise, as a card carrying official ninja of Konoha with the full paperwork, attire and forehead protector to back her.
Anything a bureaucracy controlled a bureaucracy could give away, and the bureaucrats were the mechanism by which that happened. All the safeguards that would ordinary have prevented such a thing were not working just then, and those able to do anything about it were busy with emergencies elsewhere.
Disposable identities were among the most valuable possessions a missing nin could have, but also the rarest and most difficult to obtain. The central grief of a missing nin's life was having no home, no allies, so she wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to get IDs that people weren't actively trying to kill. For that matter, she used a Henge so the paper pusher could take pictures and acquired a second and third such identity while the organization was still vulnerable, all listing herself as inconsequential genin. Then she went on to do the same for Zabuza and the Demon Brothers.
Gato's pet bureaucrat then put all but one of these identities on leave, long term assignments, or otherwise inactive - including one where herself and the Demon Brothers were a genin team, with Zabuza as their jonin sensei, all out on a semi-permanent mission to spy on Gato!
It was amazing what you could do to a vulnerable bureaucracy. And that was one story they'd have eloquent background details for.
It was as that sole active kunoichi that Haku went about the village, using the money she'd gotten from those samurai earlier to search around Konoha under the guise of shopping - and more than a bit of that actually happened.
Being missing nin meant a person often went without things, so she picked up an extensive list of supplies, clothes, comfort items (particularly camping gear) and generally outfitted her small party as best she could on the budget she was given, sealing it all into scrolls (because when you've got Hunter nins chasing after you on your tail, you must travel light and fast, so sealing scrolls and the skill to use them are a simple necessity).
While shopping, Haku had been memorizing the layout of the city, selecting shops and restaurants she could commit to memory as 'favorites' to use as bits of evidence to reinforce her identity should she ever be questioned by a Konoha nin. She walked the grounds of the Ninja Academy after hours, found the place unguarded, studied the layout, bathrooms and classrooms, along with a few offices, memorized what pictures she could find, but also all of the names for the teachers and disciplinary personnel.
It was important to have such facts at your disposal. Being able to name a 'favorite' teacher or two, or casually supply a fabricated story of discipline undergone, would do more to support her false identities if she came under scrutiny than all of the paperwork a clerk could provide.
Having finished her reconnaissance, Haku proceeded to search for the prison.
Unfortunately, Haku took too long with her explorations, and blushed lightly as her stomach growled loudly.
"Kunoichi-san! Over here!"
Haku turned and saw an older girl waving her over. Approaching cautiously, Haku was caught off guard by her smile.
"You look pretty hungry kunoichi-san, would you like some food?"
Haku attempted to refuse, but another, louder growl cut her off, and caused her blush to deepen.
The girl giggled softly, "If you're concerned about money, it's fine. I'll cover it, and you can pay me back after a few missions. Sound good?"
Haku returned her smile, "Thank you. I appreciate it. However, before I can accept you gift, i should probably know you name, right?"
"Oh, I'm sorry! I completely forgot! My name is Ayame Ichiraku, and it's a pleasure to serve you!"
"Thank you Ayame-san... Now what would be a good order? I've never been here before..."
"Well, we specialize in ramen, though we do have a wide variety of other foods. How about starting of with some riceballs and fruit juice, and then have a bowl of ramen to round out the meal?"
"It sounds delicious." Haku replied honestly.
"Great! It will be ready in just a moment."
"Could you give me another two orders to go? I'm meeting my team, and I promised to get them something to eat." Haku requested, thinking quickly.
"Not a problem! I'll hold off on preparing it until your done, so it's nice and fresh!"
"Thank you."
Within minutes, Haku found herself devouring
"I'm glad that I managed to catch your attention. To be honest, business has been a little slow for awhile, and it's kind of boring."
"Oh? Is there a problem?" Haku asked between mouthfuls.
"Not really, our number one customer is just out of town."
"Really?"
"Yeah. On his first real mission. I'm a little worried though. Generally missions like his are pretty safe, but I can't help but worry something bad will happen..."
"Don't worry. That's why we're give jounin as our senseis. I'm sure your friend will be fine."
"Yeah, you're probably right. Naruto's way too stubborn to die." Ayame laughed.
Haku felt the delicious food turn to ash in her mouth.
"Well, here's your take out."
"Thank you."
"Don't forget, you owe me, so make sure to stop by again sometime!"
Haku waved uncertainly, before shaking her head and returning to her mission.
--- --- --- ---
Normally, the ANBU headquarters, which contained the prison cells, was an extremely well hidden location. It was hidden behind walls of deceptions lies, and misdirections. The fact that they traditionally did all their paperwork themselves also meant that they maintained a higher level of functionality than the rest of the village, seemingly avoiding the crisis altogether. Combined with their higher state of alert due to the chaos, it would be almost impossible for a regular ninja to find it without being detected.
However, while she was scouting the town, finding and visiting such obvious landmarks as the compounds of the famous clans, the Hokage monument and war memorials, she was also forming tiny ice mirrors through cracks and crevices in walls, and doing so had spied out the location of several things without any detection, the Demon Brothers among them. So, making sure her gear was all set and ready for travel, bags were packed with spare food and clothes for the people she was about to rescue, Haku went into a lady's restroom, locked herself in a stall, causing the water from the toilet tank (not the bowl, that's just sick) to rise up and form a mirror, which she then leapt into.
Her reflection appeared in a mirror she'd previously created above the inside of the door of the Demon Brother's cell, where the guards could not see it. Haku leaned out of her reflection, used ice to break the chains the brothers were wearing free of the wall, and they were smart enough to take their chains with them as they and leapt up to grab her arms, whereupon she dragged them into her mirror.
Having used a small spying mirror to time this, they pulled it off and were gone between passes of the guard. She even caused her ice to disperse behind, so there was no physical evidence in the cell of how they escaped.
Gato's pet bureaucrat would also slip a paper into their files saying that they had died under questioning and been properly disposed of, hopefully erasing their tracks there forever.
Returning to the bathroom, they then leap through a trail of mirrors she'd left through Konoha while on her shopping trip, dispersing each one behind her, then down a river along a series of mirrors she would raise and disperse behind them. Doing this quickly exhausted her chakra in short order, but it gave them a big head start and left behind a very hard trail to follow.
The demon boys, who had been scarfing food up to this point, took over and carried her along as they made their own best time away from Konoha, partly by running fast and partway by jutsu, surfing along waves they formed on top of the water for time, including short teleports to confuse their trail, hiding in puddles along the riverbank to avoid standard patrols, etc.
Their escape was swift and determined enough they were able to shake off all pursuit and make their way back to Wave country.
When they returned, they found Zabuza sitting up in bed being tended to by a female medic nin they all remembered, one of those who had supported him in his bid to become Mizukage.
Grim smiles were had all around.
They took a day or two while Zabuza was still regaining his strength for the demon brothers to get back into fighting form, replace their equipment (even forging their once prison chains into new weapons) and for Haku to replenish her chakra.
Then it was time.
---- ----
Morning dawned over the uncompleted bridge, as it had many times before. It was misty, as mornings by the sea often were, and the walk to work was as routine as it had come to be for Team 7.
The solemn mood was broken, of course, by Anko's brash complaints.
"Hey, Kakashi, didn't you have three students earlier?"
"Oh, I'm sure Naruto will be along shortly!" he waved off her concerns.
"...You're such an idiot, maybe I should start calling you BAKAshi instead."
"Now, now, no need for insults..."
Everyone stopped, conversation freezing and Tazuna gasping in horror as they set foot on the bridge to find lifeless bodies of the work crew strewn everywhere.
"He's right you know." As one, they turned to face the recently arrived Zabuza and his accomplice, looming out of the mist farther down the incomplete bridge. "You're going to die, so you should spend your last moments praying to God, instead of insulting your ally."
"Ah, Zabuza-san, so glad you could join us today!" Kakashi commented, smiling underneath his mask. "Do you want to have breakfast before we fight? It's the most important meal of the day after all, and I'd hate for any of us to fight on an empty stomach."
"For such a dangerous ninja, you certainly are an idiot." As if Zabuza's criticism was a signal. Mist began rolling in even more thickly, shrouding everything.
"Sakura, Sasuke, guard Tazuna," Kakashi mildly commanded as he revealed his Sharingan, acting almost casually. "Anko, you're with me."
Zabuza laughed, now just a dim shape in the mist. "Yes! Kakashi! Bring your girlfriend if you must! It will not help you. Each of us has defeated the other once, I with my water prison and you with a water dragon. But now I know the weakness of the Sharingan. It cannot help you against that which you cannot see! Our third fight will decide who is supreme between us for the final time!"
Almost immediately as the missing nin had started to speak, Anko clenched her teeth. Her hands clenched into fists and began to shake, and she blew up once he'd finished gloating. "YOU ACTUALLY THINK I WOULD DATE THIS MORONIC, PERVERTED, PORN ADDICTED LOSER?!?! DIIIEEEEE!!!!"
Kakashi stared at the enraged woman as she took off with a wild scream like a wolf howling after its prey, tearing the head off of Haku on her way to reach Zabuza, before turning his gaze to the pocket containing his favorite book and jumping off into the mist to support her.
'Am I really that bad?'
Before he could ponder the way others viewed his habits, and how they affected his social life, he closed so Zabuza loomed out of the mist.
'WAIT!!' his Sharingan eye went wide. 'A clone!!'
The section of bridge Zabuza and Haku's clones had stood on exploded, its underside covered with explosive tags timed to go off at precisely that moment, catching both Konoha jonin in the blast and dumping them down onto the surface of the water below.
As they fell, Kakashi felt himself get hit by several senbon from behind, as the real Haku had waited in ambush for precisely that moment, clinging like a spider to the underside of a safe section of the bridge to hit him as they fell, counting on the disorientation and damage the two jonin had received from the explosion, as well as using the shrapnel and chunks of rubble from the demolished concrete bridge section, to disguise her small needles until they'd struck home in their targets.
A near perfect ambush tactic.
'Two nerve clusters and... a poison,' Kakashi concluded, even as he dismissed the damage from both as inconsequential. It would slow him down, but not by too much, and the poison was not a strong one. He twisted to remove the needles and counterattack the girl. But Haku was already gone and as he landed on the water, still completely shrouded in mist, the real Zabuza was upon him, nearly catching the Copy Nin in a second Water Prison.
Kakashi decided this fight deserved all of the attention he could give it. Just then a scream came from Sakura.
'Clever,' the infamous Copy Nin decided. 'They drew us down to the water, where as Mist nins they hope to have an advantage. But they also used this ambush as a decoy to draw us away from the real target: the bridge builder.'
"Anko! I've got Zabuza. You go back to cover Sasuke and Tazuna!"
The former apprentice of Orochimaru looked up from where she just finished off a water clone of Zabuza's, holding a hand to her neck where a poisoned senbon had bitten her during her fall from the bridge. She scowled at the legendary Copy Nin, but did a quick handseal and disappeared in a swirl of leaves to reappear on top of the bridge.
Haku had known she'd have only seconds to assault the two genin before one of the jonin senseis pulled out of the fight with Zabuza-sama to come and confront her. So she had not held back.
As they'd expected, once the jonin were drawn off and she moved to attack the bridge builder, the strongest of the genin had moved to oppose her. That one instantly became her target. There could be no playing around, no toying with her prey. She'd slicked the ground underneath the two genin with ice and was raining down poisoned needles before either even realized they were under attack.
The pink haired one took three in non-vital locations, tried to take a step then slipped and fell on the unexpected ice. The dark haired boy with the attitude problem (and resenting your own teammates was a BIG problem in the eyes of a missing nin, who had to rely on whatever support they got) also took a fall, but used a flashy and chakra-expensive fireball technique to clear the ground around him so he could stand up to meet her attack.
That only meant that he got treated to a ring of ice spears exploding from the uncleared areas around him, lunging inward as a sharpened forest of deadly crystals.
When the young man performed a completely predictable and expected jump out of the way of those lethal crystals, Haku caught him in the air, dropping him like a stone with a surprise lightning jutsu.
"SASUKE!!" Sakura screamed, suddenly horrified more by the boy's state than her own inconsequential injuries.
Then Haku could do no more as Anko was upon her. A few exploding forests of ice shards later (a refinement of the wild, uncontrolled technique Haku had used to save her life when her father had tried to kill her) and the female jonin was relentlessly driving Haku away from the two injured genin, forcing her to stay on the defensive and away from the vulnerable bridge builder.
Perfect.
All according to plan.
Once Haku had allowed the jonin to push her a sufficient distance away from the charges they were guarding, the missing nin formed her hemisphere of ice mirrors around her, trapping the jonin inside and going from a defensive stance to one of attack.
Anko was trapped. She had to focus on defeating Haku to survive.
Down on the water Zabuza and Kakashi were slaughtering each other's clones as they played a deadly game of hide and seek in the mists below on the water, so far replaying one of the earlier fights between them as they each trapped and slaughtered copies of the other trying to ambush the real one, each seeking for the slightest hint of the other's location to launch a deadly attack.
That meant that both Kakashi and Anko were fully engaged and not able to divert without giving openings to their opponents in already close fights. That was the signal for the Demon Brothers to rise from their disguised states as two more fallen workers among those many bodies and launch a surprise attack on the true target of this little war: the bridge builder.
It was a foolproof plan, executed flawlessly.
But you know what they say about foolproof plans. No sooner do you get something foolproof than somebody provides a better fool.
It came as a flash. The two Demon Brothers disappeared from where they had been hiding as yet more corpses among the bodies and leapt instantly to the attack, chains flying, when all of a sudden Naruto was in their path.
The orange garbed shinobi took their attack on himself, and while he was bleeding, grimaced stubbornly at his attackers. "You know, you guys scared me pretty bad before. But now..." his shoulders shook as if in laughter as he reared back and started throwing punches. "I AM SO GOING TO KICK YOUR ASSES!!"
"NARUTO!!!!" Anko shouted, hearing the unmistakable battle cry of the orange clad nin and feeling a freezing chill hit her body that had nothing to do with the ice techniques of the girl who presently fought her. Seeing a flash of him getting torn up by chains out of the corner of her eye and in between the mirrors filled the lady jonin with an almost frightening resolve of her own.
With a blast, Anko blew THROUGH the bridge under her feet, falling right out of the center of Haku's trap down to the surface of the water. As she did so Anko heard again the unmistakable cry of "KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!!" and the surface of the bridge above her was suddenly filled with orange.
Haku, for her part, had a choice. There wasn't much she could've done to stop the jonin from escaping her trap when she'd blown out the bridge from beneath her. It was as that happened that she was faced with a decision: it was either follow her down to the water's surface to continue the fight or allow the Konoha nin to circle around and throw her weight into one of the many other battles, probably deciding it in her favor. She couldn't really allow that, so Haku decided to follow her down and fight on the water, where Anko was already frantically moving around to try to escape back to the surface of the bridge and avoid letting Haku reform her trap of mirrors.
Also, sending one sudden lunge of snakes out of her sleeves Anko came close to tearing Haku's face off. A near miss did leave a gouge mark in her mask.
That was when the ice nin decided to change tactics and prove that her bloodline had more powers than simply forming mirrors.
Water flowed up across Haku's body from the waves she stood on, forming an inch thick suit of full body armor, which her ice powers then animated, augmenting her strength and agility by flexing the icy material in tune with her own body's movements, increasing both her speed and strength dramatically.
It would also blunt the fangs of snakes nicely. Anything less than a major summon could only shatter its needle-like fangs on that armor ice.
In her hands an ice copy of Zabuza's legendary sword formed, which in the newly formed armor and Haku's bloodline, she was able to wield with equal ease. Then she started to form identical seeming clones out of ice, and Anko's senses sharpened in on her opponent, revising her threat level.
The jonin couldn't help Naruto if she was dead, and the threat of the little ice bitch had just leaped up to an unignorable degree. She had to face this first if she wanted to survive to go save Naruto.
Stupid little bastard better survive this, or she was going to kill him.
---- ----
Kakashi panted, taking a momentary breather in the interminable battle of hide and seek, long moments of searching interrupted by seconds of fierce and deadly clashes with every weapon and jutsu at their disposal. Zabuza was good, and his Sharingan eye burned as he sweated under the force of Zabuza's mocking laughter.
"Ha ha ha ha ha! Have you figured it out now?" The muscular man's voice appeared to come out of everywhere. "Haku informed me of what should have been obvious. That precious Sharingan eye of yours is a transplant. You are not an Uchiha to have it born to you naturally. But, Kakashi, while there are drugs to assist a body in not rejecting a transplant, there are also drugs to CAUSE such a rejection. Do you feel it now, Kakashi? That burning, it is your body slowly coming to reject that precious eye of yours. Your vision is growing blurry. Soon now you will go blind in that eye and lose the Sharingan forever! Can you find me before then? I carry the antidote on me, Kakashi."
Noting that his Sharingan did indeed begin to grow blurry, knowing that no genjutsu was behind this, and feeling the poison of those senbon working through his veins, Kakashi decided that he did not have many good options and moved to press the attack more fully.
He was running out of time.