Authoress Chat: Thanks to everyone who reviewed or took an interest. I've been sitting on this idea for at least a year now, so please give me feedback whether you enjoy it or not. Without further ado...

The Loss

Sasuke looked, dumbfounded, at the the risen body before him. This simply could not be! The woman on the floor was as horrified as he, looking down at her pale skin, cracks still closing up. Her eyes, for a moment, were onyx before turning an unmistakable crimson hue. Her hair filled out in the way it used to be, into an untamed plume of black. And again, she screamed.

"Itachi!"

She bolted up quickly, clutching a hand at her left side, but upon squeezing it she realized that there was no need. There was no more blood left to bleed from a wound that no longer existed. Her head snapped up as she sensed a chakra that she knew.

"It cant..."

No sooner than she had started to turn around to look, Sasuke had driven his sword deep into her sternum. Since she hadn't turned her head fully, she had been taken off guard, so that her only thought was to remain still until her senses were longer dulled. 'Odd,' she thought. 'This type of injury should hurt more than this.'

Looking out the corner of her blood red eye, she was able to confirm her suspicions.

"Why- why are you stabbing me...Sasuke-kun?"

His Sharingan was activated as he stood over her body pressing his her further to the floor. Why wouldn't she fight back?

"Who do you think you are?" Sasuke screamed. "Orochimaru! TEME! You have no business desecrating my clan's grave! And why her? OF ALL PEOPLE, WHY KAIKYU-CHAN?"

Orochimaru's eyes widened, his mouth turned in an expression speaking fully of his pleasure at the news.

"Oh? You know this woman? How touching..."

"Shut up! Explain! Why have you done this! Make it good!"

Orochimaru, as well as Kabuto, lowered their heads. Kaikyu, reacting in a split second to the familiarity shown between Sasuke and the despised missing-nin, kicked Sasuke away, able to force him to take his blade with him. There was a deep wound in her chest but no blood. For a brief second, she could see her hollowness before a light closed her wound with a painless hiss. She looked at Sasuke furiously, her Sharingan more advanced than his.

"So I died after all, and I returned to life, only to be stabbed by favorite sibling! Thanks a lot, Sasuke-kun!" Her gaze traveled over to Orochimaru as she snarled, her Sharingan spinning. "And this Orochimaru...you serve him? I see now! Betrayal really does run in the family!"

Both speedy ninja ran towards each other, hot-blooded. Sasuke went in to lop her head off but she sprang upwards and teleported behind him. Kaikyu went in to grab his arms but he kicked behind himself, right into her gut. Their eyes analyzed each other and both saw an opening. Quicker than both could think, they had regained their composure and were closing in on their opponents.

Sasuke was coming in for her heart, while she closed in with a punch. Milliseconds before he could graze her chest with his katana, she bent backwards and kicked his feet out from underneath him. In the moment of his lost equilibrium, Kaikyu pinned his elbow down to floor with her knee and wrapped the other leg around his arm. His katana dropped with a clang. But he smirked at her. A chirp sounded in the distance and a sharp metallic swoosh sounded before her body went rigid and dropped to the floor.

"You were really going to use the Chidori on her?" Orochimaru asked, now hovering over the two of them. "How cruel."

"Shut up! She was going to break my arm! Besides, she was upset because she was alive to be upset! Why have you done this?"

Orochimaru frowned, tapping Sasuke on the shoulder with his foot.

"For someone who knows her so well, you sure don't happen to know anything about her body, do you? Do you know how vital she is to your training?"

Sasuke sucked in a deep breath before deactivating his Sharingan. Knocking Kaikyu's stiff body to the side as he arose, Sasuke was able to see the kunai lodged in the base of her skull.

"What have you done to her? And what do you mean? How'd you even get her remains?"

Orochimaru chuckled darkly, bending down to her emotionless, unblinking face. He put his hand around her chin, forcing her docile eyes to look into his.

"Don't be so dramatic Sasuke-kun. She only has been calmed. I've removed her memory of her betrayal, of you, of this fight. Now she'll listen. As for why she was so special, I don't think that even the Uchiha head, Fugaku, knew of it. She was very rare to come across, wasn't she Kabuto?"

Kabuto pushed his glasses further up on his face.

"Indeed, she was."

Kaikyu was huddled up with Itachi. Standing in the rain, they were both drenched from head to toe. How strange then that she appeared to be crying, even with the droplets from the sky distorting the truth. Sasuke couldn't make out the words in their entirety but he was sure that he heard her say that she was a killer.

"I can feel her chakra...consumed...like my parents...evil."

If only he could have known in advance the true meaning of the word evil.

"Let me see if I can explain this in a way that you'll understand. Kaikyu Uchiha had a rare form of chimerism. She was a tetragemetic chimera, meaning that she fused with what would have been her twin sister at a very early stage in her mother's pregnancy. In layman's terms, she is a perfect fusion of two cultures of cells and she inherited the chakra natures of her sister. In other words, on top of her special training, her chakra only occurs in every thousand or so shinobi."

"I never knew..." Sasuke began.

"And she used that knowledge to train two separate Sharingan eyes. So, naturally, we had to find a way to duplicate her."

"You can thank Niji-sama for her sacrifice."

Authoress Chat: Aaand, cliffhanger. Review and I may be nice. But the events leading up to Kaikyu's resurrection have set a shit-ton in motion. Prepare for epic-ness.