It's been an hour since Kakashi and Sakura entered Mist and split with the other two genin who were "tired of playing with a baby", but—something's wrong. There's something sour in the air.
It's not the hunched backs of the civilians, the dead eyes of the Mist nin. No, that's old hat—it's something else.
Sakura, at Kakashi's side, can feel it too. She's been tense from the moment they stepped through the gates, and with each step she just gets more tense.
"Sensei," she says, and—that can't mean anything good. She only ever calls him that on missions.
"Sakura," he responds, in his cheery, we're-just-normal-ninjas-here-for-the-Chuunin-Exams-definitely-not-going-to-cause-any-international-incidents voice.
Sakura pulls at his arm, lancing her chakra painfully into the tenketsu she finds there, which, first of all: Ow. And secondly: fine. He weaves a signless genjutsu around them, locking half of each of them away into a world with nothing but each other, not activating Obito's Sharingan.
"We're in a genjutsu," she says, the moment it closes. He assumes she's not talking about the one he just made, and actively relaxes his spine, getting himself nice and deep into the slump he mastered from years working with Shikaku.
They're in a foreign village. Not just a foreign village but what is probably the most corrupt foreign village in existence. (Although not the most personally dangerous to them—that honor goes to Cloud.) Applying genjutsu to everyone inside the borders of their own village seems totally in bounds for the kind of thing Mist would do.
Nothing to worry about. Just Mist being its awful, horrible self. Nothing to see here.
On Sakura's head, Gamami's chakra spikes and flickers in that way Sakura still assures him she can understand, and which he continues to maintain is total bullshit.
"It feels like the Tsukuyomi," she says, and she very suddenly has his full attention.
"Explain," Kakashi says, keeping his face in the real world nice and loose, slowly drawing Sakura over to the side of the street.
"It's lots of little knots. They're smaller and harder than the Tsukuyomi felt, but none of the genjutsu you or Kurenai made felt anything like this. Gamami says it's coming from the mist."
Kakashi, without looking away from the porn he has drawn from his pocket, focuses on the mist around them. There is chakra in it, which burns at his skin, his eyes, the inside of his throat, but that isn't anything new. It's always just been one of the more hellish aspects of being in Mist.
He can imagine a world in which a particularly powerful ninja could put genjutsu on an entire village through its own mist—but it's not a particularly pleasant thought—he's really hoping that world's not the one he lives in.
"Can you tell what kind of jutsu it is?" he asks her. He can't—but then again, no matter how much he's trained, he's never been able to get a handle on reading and understanding a genjutsu through the way it twists and knots at his chakra. It's an advanced technique, one step past cancellation, which is itself one step past simply detecting a genjutsu from the way it knots your chakra.
Sakura has been learning. She's… okay.
It's hard.
"It's a compulsion," she says without hesitation, and—
That's bad. Sensory genjutsu just lie to you. Compulsion genjutsu, though, they make you lie to yourself.
Kakashi resists the urge to kai. It didn't help against Tsukuyomi, and he doubts it'll help here. If it feels like the Tsukuyomi, then the risk that it's coming from a Sharingan in some way, shape, or form is high enough he is almost definitely under surveillance. Best way to break a Sharingan genjutsu is another Sharingan.
He couldn't break the Tsukuyomi, but that was put on him directly by Itachi's eyes. It's possible he could break this, applied indirectly from the mist. If it was him, he'd put anyone with a Sharingan under surveillance, and assuming your enemies are stupider than you is a really good way to get yourself dead.
"Tell me to stop dawdling," he says to Sakura, and she obliging starts insulting at him in the half of his perception that isn't warped by the genjutsu they're speaking in.
"I'm trying to become a chuunin," she hisses under her breath, glaring up at him.
"There's no rush," Kakashi says, leaning back on the mildly damp tree behind him. "We have all the time in the world."
"We have twenty minutes because you make us late."
"Good, keep it up," Kakashi says in the genjutsu, as Sakura jerks futilely on his arm.
"I think—I'm not sure, I think it's… mistrust?"
That's a weird thing to try to compel someone to do. Most compulsion genjutsu are to do things like betray your village or kill your family. (It's not a nice kind of genjutsu, to the extent any genjutsu can really be called nice.)
It could be the strongest compulsion someone could apply from reflections in the mist, which would explain why it's so weak. But… why?
"Is it affecting Mist nin?"
Gamami flickers.
"Gamami says yes."
In that case, the most likely reason is an attack on the village itself—mistrust is not too far removed from getting someone to betray their own village. But if you have control over Kirigakure's mist, then you have the whole village in your pocket already.
Why?
More importantly, what do they do about it?
Does Leaf care about an attack on Mist? Or, a… something on Mist? Do they care if it's most likely being directed by an Uchiha?
Most critical right now—
Do they run?
He's only here because of the Chuunin Exams. If he leaves, he can't come back. If they leave now, right after they arrived, then anyone watching them will know they noticed something.
With him and Sakura, that means they noticed the genjutsu. Kakashi has no interest in fighting someone who can put the entirety of a hidden village under a hostile genjutsu.
Kakashi's reasonably confident that's not a fight he has any chance of winning. He's gotten pretty good with the Hiraishin—but not even Minato could have taken on a hidden village by himself.
Kakashi weighs that danger against the danger of staying in the mist. If someone's done this, it could be in preparation for an attack. Being a foreign ninja in a hidden village under hostile attack is a really good recipe for dying horribly.
Bad options all around, Kakashi thinks. If he has to choose, then—
"Really? She's a genin? Oh, that's sad."
Kakashi breaks the genjutsu he's built for him and Sakura, and physically throws her to the wall behind him. Before him stands Kanashii. Tall, pale, built like a freight train, blue hair. Red eyes with enough hate to set a hidden village on fire.
She lunges at him, but he is faster, dodging the punch that topples the tree behind him, slipping into her guard, and then smiling at her like they're old friends, pressing a kunai to the skin right above her heart. The angle's right, all he has to do is push.
Behind him, Sakura coughs. He had not been gentle.
Gamami tumbles to the ground somewhere between them, and stares daggers at both Kakashi and Kanashii, which he supposes is fair.
"Is this really the best place for this conversation," Kakashi asks, trying for a lilting teasing tone like they're old friends, and not two enemies about to start a jounin-jounin fight in a foreign village.
Kanashii lunges forward, plunging his kunai into her chest and straight through her heart before Kakashi can move back. He leaves the kunai there when he backs away.
Kanashii smiles, and it is all wrong.
Kakashi really has bigger problems. He does not want to deal with a blood feud right now.
(Although, a cold, calculating part of him notes, this gives him the reason.)
(They can leave, now.)
(It's too dangerous—who would blame them?)
Kakashi doesn't let his eyes leave Kanashii's, using this as a nice excuse to break out the Sharingan. The mist glows faintly, but he doesn't feel that twinge of a genjutsu breaking. Great.
Kanashii pulls the kunai from her chest with a faint grunt, and then looks down at it with an irritated sort of scowl, like it's just a mild inconvenience to her and not that something that should have killed her dead.
If Kakashi hadn't activated Obito's Sharingan, he wouldn't have seen the chakra surge up her arm, into her fingers—he wouldn't have seen the chakra surge that lets her flick a kunai faster than Kakashi could throw it, the motion all foreign, nothing that would trigger his reflexes to dodge. It's gone from her fingers and an inch from Kakashi's face in the blink of an eye, but Kakashi is already in motion, snatching it out of the air.
It's not the first time Obito's Sharingan has saved his life, and it won't be the last.
If she's surprised he managed to catch it, she doesn't show it.
"We're in the Bloody Mist," he says. "Do you really want to start this now?"
Sakura is gone from behind him, replaced with a clone. She can make her clones indistinguishable from herself to Obito's Sharingan, but when they're on missions together, she doesn't. He doesn't know where she is, but everywhere is safer than behind him.
Kanashii's gaze shifts from Kakashi to where Sakura's clone is huddling against the wall behind him. Kakashi can see Sakura's clone quail out of the corner of his eye.
Sakura has become quite a good actor. He'd like to take credit for that, but he's not sure how much of it he deserves.
Kanashii crouches on the ground, at Sakura's level, and Kakashi moves before her, as if Sakura is still behind him.
He considers the undefended stretch of Kanashii's neck and back, but he's not confident he could decapitate her with a single strike, and knows that if he doesn't, the fight they'll have has a solid chance of starting the next shinobi war. He looks at the most perfect opportunity to take her head he suspects he'll ever have, and he lets it pass by.
"Hi, Sakura," Kanashii says, ignoring him entirely. "You killed someone very dear to me, and I know in Konoha they don't think much of that, but in Cloud we do. I have my Kage's explicit permission to hunt down both you and your teacher and then kill the both of you. I'm allowed to do it in Fire, in Lightning, even here in Water. Doesn't matter where I am, or what missions I fail to do it. My Kage has my back."
She takes a deep breath.
"But I have genin here, and if I pick a fight with you, who knows what the Mizukage might do to them in retaliation. To say nothing of what you could," she glances up at Kakashi with disgust, "with that Hiraishin of yours. We value our companions in Cloud."
Kakashi loves interacting with Cloud ninja. He especially enjoys their self-righteous hypocrisy.
Below him, Kanashii smiles. It softens her face, but it does not soften the hate in her eyes.
"But Sakura, you don't need to worry. I don't like killing children. In Konoha, I hear you're treated as adults as soon as you get your forehead protector." She snorts in derision. "In Cloud, it's sixteen, unless you're a jounin." She leans forward. "How old are you, again, Sakura?"
Kakashi takes a step forward at the threat, and Kanashii stands, hands lifted in surrender.
"Good luck on your Chuunin Exams, Sakura," she says, past him. "I'd tell you to watch your back, but I'm not like you." Some of the coldness slips from her gaze, revealing the raging fury behind her red eyes, and she turns to glance at the toppled tree Sakura is probably hiding in, and Kakashi shifts to block her path. "When I kill you, I'll kill you from the front."
"Sensei!" calls a dark-skinned boy of maybe thirteen or fourteen from behind her.
With one last glance at the two of them, Kanashii turns away. Now a bit off to his left, Sakura swaps with her clone, picks Gamami up off the ground, and sets Gamami on her head.
Before them, Kanashii greets the boy who called out to her by swinging him up onto her right shoulder with a whoop. He squawks in indignation.
"Why me!" he cries. "Isogashii is smaller than me!"
"She's busy," Kanashii says at the same time a girl at her feet, the boy's age, but only barely larger than Sakura says "I'm busy."
"You're not even doing anything!"
"I'm practicing jutsu with my mind."
Kaksahi turns away from them, back to Sakura, but finds Sakura not looking at them or at him, but over his shoulder, up up up at the tower of the Mizukage. Kakashi doesn't look, because her looking is bad enough.
Gamami flickers at Sakura, and Sakura flickers back.
Sakura makes a deferential head bow, and when her head is hidden from the Mizukage, her face contorts for an instant in terror. She rises smoothly, and then frowns at him, grabbing his hand.
Her chakra lances into him as she drags him towards the training ground where the Chuunin Exams will start.
"Sensei, if you screw this up for me I swear on the first tree's—"
He grumbles to himself, pulling back half-heartedly while grumbling, "They don't even disqualify people for being late," while weaving a genjutsu back around them, and—
"I think the Mizukage might be being mind-controlled."
Despite himself, Kakashi staggers, and Sakura is kind enough to punch him in the stomach to make it look like that's why he did it.
"Explain."
"Gamami can see compulsion genjutsu, and she says it's so thick on him she can barely see him, and—" her genjutsu self hesitates, even as her real world self drags his ass to the entry point for the Chuunin Exams "—and I can feel his chakra from here, he has so much of it and it's—it's so knotted up, Kakashi. There's barely any flow to it at all outside of the knots. It's like—it's like those knots are moving his chakra for him."
They stop, in sight of the Chuunin Exams application desk, and in the real world he says, "Look, plenty of time—we've got at least three minutes." The genin they've brought with them, Aburame Shioko and Egawa Shinzou, are there already, glaring at them.
"And um," she continues. "It feels—It feels like the Tsukuyomi. Just like the mist. It feels… Uchiha."
Fuck.
"This is dangerous," he says in the genjutsu. "We're under a compulsion genjutsu we can't afford to break, and if they know you know, they'll try and take you out during the test."
"I know that," she says. "But we have to do something."
We have to do something.
"I'll contact the Hokage. I'm going to leave a shadow clone behind. When you finish the first two stages, split up with your team, and come back with my shadow clone to the hotel room we've reserved. Seal it, burn away the mist, and wait. Do not leave that sealed hotel room under any circumstances until I'm back. If the final exam comes and I'm not here, run."
Sakura is silent for a long moment.
"Understood," she says in the genjutsu, while, in the real world, she glares daggers at him and shouts "You're the worst! You're not even a real ninja!" Heads turn, but no Konoha heads do, and everyone loses interest.
He breaks the genjutsu, and responds with a cheery, "And you're just a genin—that's hardly even a real ninja."
All of the genin turn and glare at him, and Kakashi gives out a genuine laugh. Nothing like pissing off some children to get his spirits up.
He settles back against the wall, and pulls out an Icha-Icha, making sure to giggle every once in a while. He watches Sakura vanish into the building where the exams will begin, and then begins the jutsu he created for exactly this purpose.
Clone - Hiraishin - Delayed Shadow Clone.
With a blink of an eye, he vanishes.
He is in front of the Hokage within ten minutes of returning to Konoha. It's amazing the red tape that gets cut when you have things to say like "I think a Kage might be being mind controlled".
Granted, he didn't actually say that outside of the Hokage room because it is the most dangerous piece of information he knows—and he was active duty Anbu for almost a decade—but his eyes said it.
By the time he finishes his report, the Hokage has taken off his hat, and his head in his hands.
Kakashi has to say, this is not the What total bullshit he was hoping for.
"Do you think Itachi could have done this?" the Hokage asks.
Kakashi shakes his head. When he left, Itachi was strong, yes, but he was Kakashi strong. Normal human strong.
This—this is something different.
"I do not."
The Hokage sighs. Slowly, he raises his head, runs his hand along his now-bald scalp, like he's looking for hair there. Finally he sighs, takes his hat and places it back on his head.
"Do you believe her?" the Hokage asks.
"Yes," Kakashi says, without hesitation.
The Hokage looks at him ponderingly.
"Do you, sir?"
"I'm afraid that I simply cannot afford to."
Kakashi lets out a breath. He knew this would be the response. He's not disappointed. It's what he would have done.
But—but he remembers the hunched shoulders of the civilians he passed, the blank gazes of the ninja.
If they could do something, shouldn't they?
If he could do something, shouldn't he?
"She's currently taking the exam?"
Kakashi blinks at the question. "Yes, sir."
"How long do you have?"
The rest of today for the first two stages, then a day of rest before the final stage—because Mist is insane, so—
"Two days."
The Hokage raises his hand to his lips, taps at them as he thinks for a moment. "I see." He shuffles the papers on his desk. "I will relay the information you've given me on the Mizukage to Information. It will affect our actions in Water in the future. We won't interfere in Mist's domestic affairs, of course—I mean, we couldn't even get a jounin through the gates without, well, a Chuunin Exam, even if we wanted to."
The Hokage meets Kakashi's eyes.
"Shouko has been looking for you. Since you have so much time, you should go see her, before you return to Mist."
Kakashi slows the pounding of his heart, and bows his head, expression neutral.
"You're dismissed."
Kakashi bows, and the Hokage must have sent message ahead, because when he reaches the Uchiha clan headquarters, it is none other than Uchiha Shouko waiting for him.
"I've been wanting to see you," she lies smoothly, beckoning for him to follow her.
They make their way through the uncomfortably labyrinthine tunnels beneath the Uchiha clan headquarters before they find her office. She lets him in, and then turns back to the door, digging a canine deep into her thumb before placing it against a seal on the wall beside the door.
He feels the weight of a true clan's blood room settle over him. When Shouko turns back to him, her Sharingan is active.
She takes a seat behind her desk, and gestures him to the chair opposite her, notably less ornate, because the Uchiha are known for being truly and incredibly petty.
"The Hokage said you needed to speak to me," she says.
Is that what the Hokage said? Well, in that case—he tells her everything, down to the fact that the Mizukage might be being controlled by an Uchiha. When he's done, she is resting her chin on her hands, her slowly spinning Sharingan boring into him.
"Do you know what you ask of me, Kakashi?" she asks.
"I do."
Shouko inhales deeply and leans back into the chair behind her. "I don't think you do, Kakashi."
Her Sharingan continue to bore into him.
Kakashi is pretty sure Fugaku didn't have meetings with his Sharingan active as a way to show dominance. Why does the Uchiha clan head he has to meet with have to be like this?
"Every noble house in Konoha has a way to keep their blood in line. A way to stop renegades, end civil wars. The Hyuuga had their seal, the Aburame have their insecticide, and the Nara have their deer. Kakashi, what you are asking me for is ours. The Uchiha's. Do you understand that?"
"I do."
"With this knowledge, you could destroy us. Do you understand that?"
"I do."
"You may wear one of our eyes, Kakashi, but you are not one of us, what gives you the right to ask this of us?"
"I have no such right," Kakashi says, because it is true.
The corners of Shouko's lips twitch.
"I wanted my reforms because of you, Kakashi," she says. "I saw what you could do, how the village valued you. That eye of yours that belongs to us—but in your head, it was something good, something valuable. When I saw you as a jounin, at the right hand of the Hokage, I thought—that could be us."
Kakashi bows his head. "You honor me. It is what Obito would have wanted."
Shouko smiles, faintly. "I owe you personally, Kakashi. You made me head, and don't think I have forgotten that debt. My people now stand at the Hokage's side. Our eyes are looked at not with fear but with gratitude. Hyuuga and Inuzuka and Aburame all freely trust their backs to us. You played a part in that. You even fought Itachi on our behalf, although I rather think we owe your student for noticing him more than to you for fighting him." She pauses. "However. This thing you ask of me is too much. No debt we have to you, real or imagined, is of equal value. You still ask this of me? Of the Uchiha clan?"
"I do."
Shouko looks at him ponderingly. "Tell me, Kakashi, what will you give me for this?"
Kakashi swallows.
He thinks of Sakura, with the Hyuuga curse seal on her forehead.
He thinks of the village of the Bloody Mist, its civilians hunched and its ninja broken.
"Tell me, Kakashi, would you give me that eye of yours for this?"
Kakashi's blood runs cold, and he raises his gaze to meet Shouko's. There is no warmth there. It is the gaze of a clan head—one who wants to take back what is hers.
"There are those among us who wonder if Obito truly gave that eye to you of his own free will—who wonder if you killed him for it and plucked it from his face. There are those among us," she says, "that want our eye returned."
There had been a council meeting on his eye upon his return. Fugaku had brought case against him, and the council had voted overwhelmingly in favor of Kakashi.
Fugaku had abstained to vote, because his vote would not have swung it.
Kakashi never knew if Fugaku wanted it back, or wanted him to have the legal authority to keep it. He had never had the heart to ask.
"So tell me, Kakashi," Shouko says, "would you give me that eye for this?"
There is no pity in her eyes.
Kakashi looks down at his hands. He thinks of Obito.
Obito wanted him to have it.
Obito wanted him to have it, so that he could change the world with it.
"Yes," Kakashi says, his voice quiet. Then, his voice stronger—"Yes."
A smile spreads across Shouko's face. She leans forward, eyes spinning, dizzying.
"Prove it."
She stands, and walks to the door, leaving Kakashi staring blankly at her desk, everything sorted and orderly, not a single paper out of place, before he sees her beckoning to him out of the corner of his eye. He stands, as she breaks the blood seal on her office, and follows her on heavy feet as she winds through the labyrinthine corridors of the Uchiha clan headquarters.
They arrive at a white room, its door open, a single seal array painted on the floor. There is a man waiting for them, grizzled and scarred and half of his hair burned off.
He is wearing a surgical mask and scrubs. He is standing beside a bed of instruments that make Kakashi mildly ill to look at. They had planned this.
They had wanted this.
Shouko turns to him.
"Last chance," she says.
Slowly, Kakashi steps across the threshold. He lies down, and the last thing he sees is the swirling of Shouko's Sharingan before he slips away.
Kakashi wakes to Shouko's office—he knows it by the smell of the chakra of the blood room. He is sitting in the guest chair, and his eyes are bound in gauze. They are numb, but not so numb he would not notice if his eyes were missing.
He still has eyes—both of them—although whose they are is still up for debate.
Kakashi flashes through the seals for a lightning eye, and one crackles into existence on his shoulder, giving him something approaching sight once again.
Shouko raises her gaze from the paperwork before her. She looks up at him, and smiles. Her irises are black for a moment before she blinks. When her eyes open again, her Sharingan is active.
"Welcome back, Kakashi," she says, closing the folder before her and setting it carefully off to her side.
"How long was I out?"
Not What the hell did you do to my eyes, because he's being cordial.
"Eleven hours."
So Sakura's exam is over, and his shadow clone has expired. He has no idea if she passed.
He has no idea if she's still alive.
He puts it out of his mind.
"There are things I need to tell you, Kakashi," she says. "Clan secrets, kept for centuries. Other clans talk about giving and taking blood, even our forefathers, the Hyuuga, but we do not. We Uchiha talk about eyes. A gruesome business, but it is what it is. Long ago you received an Uchiha eye, freely given, and you have now given an eye of your own. By our laws, Kakashi, that makes you our kin. Do you acknowledge us as your kin, Kakashi?"
That is—that is a hell of a question.
He would like to see someone who would refuse an offer of kin from the single most powerful clan in Konoha. Still.
Kakashi has a clan.
Kakashi is a Hatake. A clan of one—a clan which has only ever had three members.
But Kakashi still has a clan.
"I have a clan," he says.
"The Uchiha are not stingy. You can be kin to us and clan to another."
Yeah, that—that doesn't sound right.
Kakashi doesn't think he's ever heard the Uchiha clan described as 'not stingy'.
Beyond that, it's dangerous.
Kin has power over kin.
But then again, that's why he's here.
He wants that power.
"I do," he says, and he can feel power in his words—truth.
He suppresses a shiver.
Shouko's smile broadens, and she places a hand contemplatively on her lips.
"Where to start," she says. "Where to start."
She considers it for a long moment and then begins to speak.
"Long ago, it was tradition, among the ancient Uchiha, to take the eyes of those who came before us, so they could continue to live through us. It was said that doing so would allow them to layer their strength upon our own. We abandoned the practice as unnecessarily gruesome and primitive long ago, before we joined the village, before the war with the Senju, but it still lived on in our records, where I found it, after I became clan head, after the attack. As I grieved my brother's death—I revived that old tradition. I was the first, taking his eyes, taking the eyes of my brother who died so I could live—so he could live on in me." She looks at Kakashi, and then blinks. When she opens them again, they are different. A complex kaleidoscope of red and black stare back at him. "Others followed me, and eventually, all the eyes of our kin that died that day came to live again in the eye sockets of those of us left behind. Brothers, sisters, lovers, cousins. We walk with our kin's eyes in our sockets so they might yet live. No one who died in the attack is yet truly dead."
Kakashi cannot drag the gaze of his lightning eye from from Shouko's eyes, so like Itachi's and yet so different. Unlike his curved, graceful pinwheels, hers are sharp and angular, piercing two separate concentric circles, three solid radial bars filling the empty space not taken by the pinwheels.
She smiles.
"Do you know why you were able to keep Obito's eye, Kakashi?"
Kakashi gets the feeling Because the council told me I could is the wrong answer.
"No."
"Because an Uchiha eye, stolen, is poison. If you had stolen that eye from Obito, it would have rotted in your skull and killed you from the inside out. There is power in our eyes, Kakashi. The fact you still lived was evidence of Obito's devotion to you. There are those in our clan who had wanted it back, but they were ignorant—we had no right to it."
You just stole it from me, Kakashi doesn't say, but Shouko must see it in his expression.
"Show me your eyes, Kakashi," she says.
Kakashi dispels his lightning eye, and then slowly unwinds the bandages from around his head. He opens his eyes and flinches against the light.
Once he's recovered, Shouko looks at him expectantly, so he slowly, tenderly threads chakra through his left eye.
The world spins into black and red.
She is still looking at him expectantly, so he repeats the process with his right.
For the first time, he sees in binocular Sharingan vision. The world is sharp like it has never been before. The headache that has always built behind his temples whenever he had Obito's Sharingan active is nowhere to be found.
"Tell me, Kakashi, did you see Obito die before you?"
Kakashi swallows his flicker of fury. He doesn't care if Shouko is showy about this, so long as she gives him what he needs in the end.
"Yes."
Her face softens at that, the faintly predatory grin she has been sporting for the majority of their conversation fading into a sad smile as she asks him the next question—
"Did you love him?"
Kakashi swallows.
"Yes," he says, and his voice breaks.
The world breaks with it. When it comes back together again, it is just a little different.
Shouko leans back, draws a mirror from her desk, and pushes it across the table towards him.
Kakashi lifts it, and he sees a pair of kaleidoscopes staring back at him. Each a pinwheel, piercing two consecutive circles. They look—
They look like Shouko's eyes. His gaze snaps back to Shouko.
"Those eyes are mine, freely given. I'll explain the why of this little farce I put you through in a moment."
She takes the mirror back, as he memorizes this new feel of chakra in his eye. He changes the chakra flow to match how it had always felt before, and feels the world shift. He turns off both Sharingans, and the world goes back to normal.
Shouko, finished with putting the mirror away, does not turn her kaleidoscope Sharingan off. From a separate drawer, she draws out two scrolls.
She sets them before her, and then absently straightens them before looking back up at him.
She takes one, and pushes it towards him.
"Those eyes of yours are called the Mangekyou Sharingan. It is the evolution of the Sharingan past three tomoe. They emerge from witnessing the loss of someone you love dearly."
He takes it, opens it—and finds incomprehensible gibberish.
He looks up, and Shouko taps the skin beneath her brother's Mangekyou Sharingan.
Right.
Duh.
Obviously.
He activates Shouko's Sharingan. The gibberish becomes only a little more comprehensible, so he activates her Mangekyou Sharingan, and the words snap into focus, and then proceed to burn themselves into his brain.
The Mangekyou Sharingan—usage of which will eventually cause blindness.
The Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan—a transplanted Mangekyou Sharingan, which will live forever.
Susanoo, a jutsu of staggering protective and destructive power, usable only to those with two Mangekyou.
The different jutsu that could be housed in each eye—
Tsukuyomi, the ultimate genjutsu, which is housed in Itachi's left eye.
Amaterasu, the all-consuming flame, which is housed in Itachi's right.
Omoikane, the true-sight, in Shouta's left.
Ookuninushi, the law-maker, in Shouta's right.
A dozen more, with names of long dead Uchiha.
There are no more jutsu assigned to the living.
Only Itachi the traitor—
And the eyes currently borne by Shouko, the clan head.
Shouko's Mangekyou Sharingan absorbs it all in a moment.
Before he slides the scroll closed, he notes the hand—one he's seen before. On the documents before him, on the letter he received from the house of the clan head upon Shouko's coronation.
The scroll is written in Shouko's hand.
Why did she re-write this? Were there no ancient scrolls on the Mangekyou Sharingan?
Or—
He slides the scroll closed, and hands it back to Shouko.
She takes it, returns it to its partner before her and says, "Such a delicious irony, don't you think? In trying to kill us all, Itachi gave us nine users of our most powerful technique."
Despite himself, and despite the situation they're in, Kakashi finds himself grinning back at her.
Their gazes hold for a moment, and then Shouko looks back down at the two scrolls before her with a sigh. She straightens them until they are perfectly parallel, and then she takes the right, and turns it over in her hands.
She hesitates, and then sets it before him.
He takes it.
"There are jutsu that are not in the main scroll. Jutsu that can be used in all Mangekyou—" she pauses, hesitates, "—at the cost of the eye itself. The blinding techniques."
He looks down at the scroll in his hand.
"I threatened to take Obito's eye from you to test your resolve. I will not give my clan's secrets to someone who is not willing to give an eye for them. I gave you my eyes so that you would not lose the eye of your beloved friend to use that jutsu."
Kakashi is momentarily struck dumb. The weight of her eyes now feels much heavier, knowing she gave them to him for him to seal them away.
"Also, you would have needed an extra anyways," she says, with a faint little smile.
He opens the scroll in his hands, and her eyes drink it all in in a moment.
"Ame-no-Minakanushi," she says. "The Uchiha blood-jutsu. You hold in your hands our destruction, Kakashi."
It is a trivially simple jutsu. Three signs, and the will to bind.
Blood for my blood.
Eye for my eye.
The effect: a perfect seal of another Sharingan, erasing all remaining traces of every jutsu that Sharingan has ever cast.
Every character on the scroll before him burns itself deeply into Shouko's Mangekyou, and he will never forget them.
Slowly, he closes the scroll, and hands it back to Shouko.
Their gazes hold, Mangekyou on Mangekyou, in the moment after she grabs it and before he releases it.
"I trust you will keep this jutsu to yourself, Kakashi," she says.
"I swear it."
She sets the scroll beside its brother and straightens them. "There's one more thing," she says. She straightens the scrolls a little more. She swallows, then finally looks up at him. "Uchiha Madara lives."
Kakashi's blood goes to ice in his veins.
"We have seen him, since his death. He has come in many forms, often claiming to be a lost member of our clan, but he destroys everything he touches. Our histories are wrong—the old scrolls we have on our techniques filled with lies—and I only have him to blame. Sousuke was seen with a man in black before his aborted rebellion, Itachi with him before his attack. He blames us for rejecting him, wishes to weaken us, break us, kill us for that sin. It was him who saved Itachi the night of the attack, and it is him in Mist, I'm sure of it."
Kakashi's heart pounds futilely in an attempt to beat the icy sludge in his veins.
"Kakashi, I say this to you, as a clan head to her kin. Uchiha Madara is a high criminal against our people, guilty of unspeakable crimes beyond number. I renounce him here and now unequivocally and without reservation." She breathes in sharply, and her eyes rage. "As a renegade, he has lost the right to use his eyes, so, as the clan head of the Uchiha, I authorize you to use our most forbidden jutsu against him, and, as one Uchiha to another, I ask you to use my eyes to steal his from him. He does not deserve them."
Kakashi takes a deep breath.
He is going to challenge Uchiha Madara—a man who fought evenly with Hashirama—a man who (helped) carved The Valley of the End—the second strongest ninja Konoha has ever seen.
"I swear it," Kakashi says.
"Thank you," Shouko says, and the Sharingans in her eyes finally fade away. She takes a deep breath, then lets it out. She takes the folder from the side of her desk, and then looks up at him.
"You're dismissed, Kakashi. I believe your student is waiting for you?"
A moment later, and Kakashi is in a room he doesn't recognize, and he experiences a single moment of fear before he sees Sakura to his right. Her eyes are red.
"Oh, thank the Sage," she says, wiping her eyes. "When your clone dispelled, I thought—" She coughs, sniffles. "Never mind. I passed. What do we do now?"
"I have a way to free the Mizukage, if he is truly being enslaved by an Uchiha."
"He is," Sakura says, without an ounce of hesitation. "He greeted us at the end of the second stage. I know that chakra, Sensei."
And here Kakashi had been hoping he would have to go back to Shouko with his tail between his legs and give her back her eyes.
"We don't have official backing from Konoha," he says. "This is an unofficial mission. Do you still want to go through with it?"
Sakura's eyes widen, and then she smiles.
"But sensei, Uchiha-sama gave you the way to free the Mizukage, didn't she? We're not alone."
Kakashi smiles, faintly.
"Okay. We strike during the final exams. We want him surrounded by Mist ninja, so it's as hard as possible for Madara to get back to him." Also, because going and looking for the Mizukage seemed like a really good way to get killed. "If I can see him, I can break the jutsu. I might be able to break it from the mist, but I don't want to risk the two jutsu being cast by different Uchiha."
Sakura nods.
"Alright. Here's the plan—"
The final exam arrives, but Yagura doesn't come. He's late.
Sakura is already standing in the center of the stadium ground with the eight other participants, her temporary teammates Aburame Shioko and Egawa Shinzou on either side. The bad attitude from their trip here is gone, and now he can see them deferring to her, tilting just a little away from her, as if they're her left and right hands.
Before them is Mei Terumii, Mist jounin, marked as possible Boil and Lava release user in the Konoha Bingo Book, which is, if true, total fucking bullshit.
The crowd has started to stir.
Fuck.
He had trusted that a Kage wouldn't miss their village's own Chuunin Exams. Not a guarantee—the Kage can do whatever the hell they want. They're the fucking Kage.
Kakashi takes a steadying breath.
There is still a genjutsu in the mist, Sakura assured him this morning.
If Madara knew the jutsu he was going to use against him, he would have canceled it. He doesn't know.
If the Mizukage doesn't come, then, well—Kakashi can still use the jutsu, and hope that wherever the Mizukage is, he's far away from Madara.
Mei looks awkwardly at the Kage's empty chair. It's been fifteen minutes.
After another two minutes, she raises her hand above her.
The result is instantaneous, and the resulting silence is deafening in its suddenness.
"Ladies and Gentlemen," she says, voice booming before sweeping her hand across him and Kanashii and the civilians whose lavish clothes indicate their status as nobles, "esteemed guests, welcome to the Chuunin Selection Exam! We will begin the matches of the final round, between the nine candidates who advanced in the preliminaries." She turns back to the candidates. "These nine candidates have proven themselves extraordinary and capable genin. They bring honor and pride upon their villages—" she smiles particularly at the single Mist team, standing at the end, then turns her eyes to Kanashii's team, and then his. "Today, they will demonstrate if they have the capacity to become chuunin." She lowers her voice, now, speaking directly to the candidates. "This is the last, and most dangerous stage of the exam. You will fight until one of you dies, falls unconscious, or admits defeat. If I see a clear winner, I will intervene myself. I don't want to see any dead bodies today." She looks down the line of genin. "You already know your pairings. Any questions?"
None of the genin say anything.
"Alright then. Biwa Shira of Mist and Urusai of Cloud, you are our first match. Everyone else, please go to your seats."
She gestures to the empty seats, not twenty feet below the Mizukage's throne.
Fuck.
He does not want Sakura within striking distance of Yagura when he does this.
The candidates drain out of the stage, leaving the small pale Cloud girl, nervously humming as she dances from foot to foot and the large Mist woman.
Mei raises her hand, and once again silence spills through the arena.
She drops it.
"Begin!"
"Look kid," Shira, the mist ninja, says, hands spinning through hand seals. "This is nothing personal."
Urusai's humming increases in pitch and severity as a water dragon crashes into where she had just been standing. Urusai snaps her fingers anxiously with one hand as she dances back from the kunai Shira throws in her wake, keens as she ducks and her own kunai go wide.
Shira dashes across the distance between them, and Urusai dashes to the side, spinning through hands seals, but she's forced to break off when she has to leap away from Shira's hand when it emerges from the ground beneath her. The earth clone that had been chasing her leaps after her and scores a long slash across her arm.
Reasonable competence with two elemental affinities.
That's a hell of a genin the Mist have there.
No surprise, though. Villages like to keep their best genin for the chuunin exams in their village. The fact only one genin team got through the first two stages says either bad things about Mist or really good things about Kakashi and Kanashii's team.
A smile momentarily twitches Urusai's lips as she lands and dashes back, drumming her fingers loudly on a metal patch on her leg.
"You're so loud, shut—"
Urusai slams her hands together in a clap that echoes throughout the arena, and Kakashi can feel the chakra in it. Shira staggers back, and her eyes rove wildly around her before she attacks… empty air.
Urusai opens her mouth and starts to sing, her mouth stretched into a wide grin, beating the rhythm into pant legs.
"Lightning in our veins—" she chants, drawing a kunai with one hand, the other still beating against her leg.
"And the clouds beneath us—" she dashes to Shira, every step in time with her song.
"Our people at our back—" she raises her kunai as Shira dashes directly back towards her.
"And our A before us—" she holds the kunai before Shira's neck, whose eyes still rove over nothing.
"When we stand united—" her gaze bores into Mei, and she taps her kunai in rhythm against Shira's skin, raising a faint red line with every strike.
"Winner, Urusai."
"None can oppose us!" Urusai bellows, and throws her hands into the air as the stadium explodes into applause.
Shira, at Urusai's side, blinks. She lifts her hand to her bloody neck, and then turns to Urusai, who grins fiercely at her, back to humming.
"It's nothing personal," she sing-songs, in time to the rhythm her fingers are making on the metal band on her shorts.
Kakashi slides his gaze to where Kanashii sits, a third of the way around the stadium from him, still on her feet and cheering her student. That was one hell of a genjutsu. A full illusion of Urusai herself, not only moving but hitting and being hit. Anchoring it in a song, every word and every beat applying another layer of genjutsu, so that no kai could break it for more than a moment.
What were they feeding the kids in Cloud these days?
He looks back to his student, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees Yagura.
He raises his gaze to the Mizukage, whose pink eyes bore coolly into Kakashi's. Kakashi hadn't seen him come in.
Obviously.
Kakashi had forgotten, for a moment, that he was dealing with a Kage.
In the arena, Mei calls out the next match.
"Haruno Sakura of the Leaf and Isogashii of Cloud, please come down to the arena."
Kakashi bows his head deferentially, and feels Yagura's gaze slide off of him to Sakura beneath him, as she slips into the bowels of the complex. When Sakura slips away, the full force of Yagura's gaze slams into him again. His expression is flat, but Kakashi can feel the threat there. Shouko's Sharingans lie dormant in his skull, but he can still physically see a faint aura of the three-tails chakra around Yagura's skin.
Fuuuck.
If he does anything right now, he's a dead man. He needs Yagura looking somewhere else. He needs a distraction.
Sakura emerges into the arena and waves to him. He waves back, wiggling his fingers—their sign for go. She doesn't nod, doesn't even twitch, walks to the center of the arena.
Across from her Isogashii stands, three or four years her senior, but no bigger than her. She's trying to keep her face expressionless, but he sees the smirk on her face.
According to Sakura, Isogashii has some of her teacher's strength. She can use her precise chakra control to radically increase her strength, but she doesn't have the human-splitting power of Kanashii, nor is she capable of using the technique to boost her speed.
Taken together, that means that Isogashii has to get real lucky to win. It's not impossible, but she'll need at least a couple clean hits. Kanashii has to know this—which means Isogashii's smirk is bad news.
Sakura takes Gamami from her head, and sets her on the ground at her feet.
"Does she get to keep that?" Isogashii asks, breaking the skin of her thumb with a forefinger when Mei turns to glance at Gamami.
"Her," Sakura corrects.
"Summons are allowed," Mei says, turning back to Isogashii.
"Shouldn't she have to resummon it, though?" she asks, and Kakashi is certain she's gathering chakra, threading it through a signless jutsu.
"Her."
"Like, she could have spent all of her chakra last night to summon it."
"Her."
"Doesn't seem fair."
"Yes, but neither is that jutsu you're preparing right now. Anything you do to prepare for the fight beyond preemptively attacking your opponent is allowed."
Isogashii raises her non bloody hand before her in surrender.
Sakura begins to leak flower petals at the news that she can.
Kakashi takes the opportunity to activate Shouko's Sharingan, closing his right eye so he can activate both at once. When he does, he sees that Sakura has already replaced herself with a clone.
"Any more questions?" Mei asks, lips twitching when she sees that Sakura has already taken full advantage of her permission to do whatever she wants.
Both contestants shake their heads.
Mei raises her hand, lowers it.
"Begin!"
Isogashii immediately folds herself in half, and slams her palm on the ground before her. A seal races across the ground of the arena in an instant and then flares in a brilliant white.
Sakura's clone droops, melting, and then poofs out of existence.
That—that's a chakra absorption field.
That's an assassination technique.
Set it up, tie someone down inside of it, and wait for it to suck every bit of chakra out of them. The more chakra it absorbs, the faster it goes. Rock used it, once, to kill the eight tails jinchuuriki.
Kakashi glances at Kanashii out of the corner of his eye, and she is grinning nastily at him.
"You're lucky I haven't decided to classify this as an attack on my person," Mei says, chakra slowly leaking from her skin and vanishing into the air.
"You can always wait up there," Isogashii offers, pointing at the railing above them. From her skin, Kakashi can't see any chakra leaking, which means either she can fully stop the leakage, or is leaking so little the Sharingan can't tell the difference. In practice, the difference is academic. Isogashii has more than enough chakra to take that level of chakra loss for an hour, maybe more. Her biggest concern is that the chakra absorption field sucks enough chakra from Mei that it starts to pull more chakra from her as well—which is predicated on supposing that she's losing any chakra at all. Ninja with truly extraordinary chakra control can stop the flow entirely.
Sakura has that kind of control. But the question is if she'll realize what's happening before she loses the majority of her reserves.
"I'll stay here, thanks."
Sakura staggers out of her transformation, the flower petals around her going dark as the field sucks all of the chakra out of them. Sakura, he can see, is actively leaking chakra. The same rate as Mei—but Sakura isn't Mei. She can't take it.
She's got minutes, maybe less.
She looks at Mei and then at Isogashii, and—
The chakra flow from her skin abruptly stops.
Kakashi breathes out a sigh of relief.
Isogashii hmphs.
"I had been hoping you'd just die," she says, cracking her knuckles.
Sakura holds out one hand and spreads her fingers, like she did when she was first learning to manually throw chakra strings. She frowns.
And yes—that's the second problem.
Chakra Absorption Fields suck chakra out of the air. The chakra for jutsu are always moulded externally. You can't mould them inside your body. It's one of the rules.
If you overload a jutsu with chakra, and do it real quick, you can get a jutsu off. Jiraiya could do it. Kakashi could do it maybe once. There's no way Sakura can.
Isogashii leaps across the distance between them, and Sakura dodges out of the way a moment before Isogashii crashes into the ground behind her, earth shattering under her fist.
It's less than what Kanashii could do, which is again less than what Tsunade could do—it is still more than Sakura can take more than two hits of.
Her training with Guy made her sturdier.
It didn't make her that sturdy.
The field is not broken by Isogashii breaking a substantial portion of the arena.
There goes Kakashi's next best hope for Sakura's way out of this.
Sakura dances back from Isogashii as she straightens.
"What's wrong, Sakura?" Isogashii asks, dashing towards her. "Where are those flower petals of yours?"
Sakura dodges again, getting a solid blow on Isogashii's side that lands with a satisfying crack before being forced to retreat. Isogashii flinches, but only for a moment, her face relaxing.
So, in summary:
Sakura's only option here is to get in a one-one-one taijutsu-only fight with a mini-Tsunade. She needs to beat her faster than she heals, and never get hit.
He sees Sakura come to the same conclusion, meeting Isogashii head on when Isogashii comes after her again. She is even with Isogashii, that bit of future sight she has keeping her ahead of Isogashii's attacks, twisting around them and delivering her own counterattacks, but Isogashii is no slouch. It takes her three blows to realize Sakura's reading her blocks and attacks before they happen, take that into account, and realize that Sakura can't block—she can only dodge. Isogashii takes advantage, strikes at her center of mass, making Sakura really dance. Sakura closes in and punches, but Isogashii gets her guard up in time, and Sakura jerks back an instant before contact. A moment after, Isogashii jerks the arm she was about to block with forward with a heavy whoosh of displaced air.
That would have broken Sakura's hand, no problem.
So.
Sakura can't block—can't be blocked.
She can only dodge and all of her hits have to land.
And—
One last thing.
Sakura is not a taijutsu master. She's getting better, but even with foresight, she goes most days without laying a finger on Guy. He's a freak of nature, but Kakashi isn't, and he can beat Sakura more than he loses. Not only that, but all of her training was predicated on her having replacement and transformation jutsu available at all times.
Sakura overcommits to a strike.
To Sakura's credit, she doesn't try the replacement jutsu, but she does try the transformation jutsu, trying to shift into a petal over Isogashi's fists.
The jutsu fails, and a crack echoes through the stadium as Sakura is thrown halfway across the arena. She crashes into the ground, and Isogashii doesn't miss the opportunity, charging after her—
Only to be forced to duck under a sword strike straight through where her neck was a moment before.
Gamami is leaking chakra as bad as Mei, maybe worse, but she is still standing. She dodges Isogashii's return blow, and forces her to retreat with a jab at her heart.
"Thanks Gamami," Sakura says, staggering to her feet, testing her left arm with a wince, but she succeeds in straightening it. Her eyes bore into Isogashii, and she says, "Can you keep her occupied for me for a sec? Just a little while."
Gamami nods sharply, unable to use their normal chakra-flashing bullshit in the chakra absorption field.
Sakura's face pinches in concentration as she stares at Isogashii and snaps her fingers with both of her hands.
Chakra Absorption Fields are used infrequently in the field. And it's not just because they kill you just as dead as they kill everyone else, break your jutsu just as damn broken as everyone else's. It's also because they're stationary. Any jounin worth their salt can body-flicker, and if you don't have them nailed down, they can get out of it in the blink of an eye. You can't set up a barrier around it, because the field itself will tear the barrier apart.
However.
Sakura has something of an unbreakable barrier all around her—the walls of the arena.
She's in a one-on-one taijutsu-only fight with a mini-Tsunade. No ninjutsu allowed.
She snaps her fingers some more, faster. With each snap, chakra flashes down her arms. She slips out a kunai and pitches it at the exact place Isogashii's head will be if she goes for a deathblow on Gamami, forcing her to slow for a moment, and letting Gamami get away.
She returns to her snapping. Each snap is no louder than the last, but with each of them the chakra flash is a little more precise.
"Just a little more," Sakura says, staying carefully just far enough away from Isogashii that Isogashii would have to open herself dangerously to Gamami if she goes after Sakura, but close enough that Sakura can interfere with a kunai if she needs to.
Gamami's movements start to get slower, the flow of chakra out of her tenketsu faster. Mei has retreated to the wall, despite her protestations otherwise. Isogashii's chakra is starting to visibly leak from her skin as the Chakra Absorption Field grows stronger. Hungrier.
Rock killed the eight tails with it by sacrificing ten ninja—five Cloud and five Rock—down upon it to turn it into a black hole which could kill a jounin in seconds.
It killed the eight-tails jinchuuriki in thirty.
A tailed beast worth of chakra, gone in thirty seconds.
The resulting seal was a circle of death that instantly kills any ninja that stepped upon it.
They could have broken it, but they didn't.
It's still there.
The Circle of Death.
Rock still uses it to kill enemy ninja.
It's a horrible way to die.
Gamami's movements slow, and Sakura's kunai doesn't make it in time.
Gamami vanishes.
Isogashii is actively losing chakra, but her movements haven't slowed in the slightest.
She turns to Sakura, who is halfway across the arena from her, still snapping her fingers.
"Are you trying to imitate Urusai?" Isogashii asks with a faint sneer.
"It worked for her," Sakura says, and her next snap is deafening. "Why not me?"
Isogashii frowns faintly, and lunges towards her. Sakura's next snap is ordinary, and then two more deafening cracks. Sakura sidesteps Isogashii, drives an ordinary fist into her side which cracks ribs but nothing more, and then barely avoids Isogashii's counterattack.
Two more clashes, and Sakura takes a blow to the stomach, leaving her coughing blood as she rolls away from Isogashii's attacks, and then—
One two three four five deafening snaps in a row.
Fifteen minutes.
For Sakura to get a rudimentary grasp on Chakra-Impulse Strength—
It took fifteen minutes.
Some kids are just fucking monsters, straight down to the bone.
Isogashii descends upon her, and for the first time, Sakura does not dodge. She lifts her left arm to block it, chakra flashing through her arm to match Isogashii's—
Chakra flashes into chakra, and Sakura's arm doesn't break. She steps into Isogashii's guard, chakra flashing through her right arm, and drives her fist into Isogashii's solar plexus.
It physically lifts Isogashii into the air, face twisted in pain, and her control breaks, chakra pouring out from her skin and into the air around her. Sakura twists, lifting her foot, and aims it straight for Isogashii's head.
Kanashii is gone from her seat in a moment, the wards around the arena shattering, past Mei Terumii and down to her student, who is about to get her head blown off—
This is his moment.
Kakashi activates Shouko's Mangekyou Sharingan and turns to Yagura, whose eyes are on Kanashii below them, shattering the chakra absorption field with a stomp of her foot, clutching her student's head safely to her chest with one hand, and blocking Sakura's kick with the other—
He meets Yagura's eyes—
Blood for my blood.
Yagura lunges towards him, chakra boiling over his skin, halfway to Kakashi in the blink of an eye, as, below them, Sakura's foot bounces harmlessly off of Kanashii's hand, having never put chakra into it in the first place.
Eye for my eye.
Shouko's eyes drift closed, world darkening, and the last thing Shouko's eyes ever see is Yagura's eyes clearing as his body tumbles to the arena floor.
Kakashi spins through the seals for lightning eye as he teleports to his student's side, away from the swarm of Mist Anbu converging upon him.
His lightning eye winks into existence to see Yagura standing, pink eyes clear.
"Stop," he commands, and every single person in the stadium stops.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Kanashii, Isogashii still held tight to her chest, looking from him to Yagura and then up to Mei, where her hands are locked together before her where she stands on the railing of the arena above them, lava already boiling through the seat he had just been in.
Looks like lava release, at least, had been true.
Great.
Sakura vanishes from his side, replaced by a clone. If she's following the plan, she's already on the walls of the stadium.
"I have been under a genjutsu," Yagura says, young voice clear, easily carrying over the silence of the arena. "From which Kakashi appears to have freed me—" at the skeptical gaze of his jounin, his lips twitch faintly "—although I suppose that must seem hard to believe."
Mist Anbu are gathering at the walls of the arena all around them, but they have not attacked yet.
"So, I hereby abdicate." He vanishes, and appears at Mei's side, where she still stands on the arena's walls. "Mei Terumii," Yagura says, taking his hat from his head, and holding it out to her. "You are the strongest jounin of our village, and have the confidence of our ninja. They will trust your judgement, whether you rule I am now clear of mind or under compulsion."
Mei looks down at the hat before her, and then up at her Kage.
"If anyone has problems with this appointment," Yagura says, his voice clear, calm, and deceptively quiet. "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."
To Kakashi's left, a soft voice says—
"I do."
Kakashi teleports to Sakura's side a moment before where he was standing is enveloped in flame.
"Everyone, eyes closed!" Yagura bellows.
"Those were my brother's eyes," Kakashi can hear Madara say from where he stands beside where Kakashi had been a moment before. He turns to Kakashi and—
Sakura puts her hand through his lightning eye a moment before Kakashi meets Madara's eyes.
The eyes Kakashi was supposed to have sealed.
"I will make you pay for taking them from me."
"You are not welcome here, Uchiha," Yagura says. "And you will pay for what you have done to my village."
Madara laughs a low, cruel laugh.
"Everyone always thinks that closing their eyes will protect them from me." Kakashi re-conjures his lightning eye, and sees Madara's eyes bloody and bruised, as if he had just—as if he had just replaced them. "I am Uchiha Madara—and so long as you have eyes, they belong to me."
No.
Yagura stiffens, and the Mizukage's hat slips from his fingers.
Mei dashes back from Yagura a moment before a chakra tail slams into the wall where she had just been standing. "Away from the Mizukage," she orders, as the three tails chakra explodes from his skin, hunching him over, two more tails joining the first.
He opens his mouth, and lets out an earth-shattering roar. Mei spins to Madara, eyes still closed, and her hands spin. Lava crashes down upon him, but when it clears, Madara stands, untouched, a blue ribcage floating around him.
"Cover me," Sakura says, and she is momentarily the Mizukage's hat before she is gone.
No, fuck—
Kakashi teleports after her, drives a Rasengan into the tail crashing down upon her, dispelling it for long enough for her to grab Yagura's head in both of her hands. She cries out in pain as Yagura's cloak burns her skin.
There is a moment of unnatural stillness in the air, and two more tails lash towards her. Kakashi blocks one with an arm and puts a second Rasengan through the other. Yagura, however, still has hands, and he drives one into Sakura's chest with a slick, wet sound that is so much worse than a crack.
Sakura's kai shatters through the world around them a moment before she is thrown off of Yagura, and into the air. The fog in Yagura's eyes clear as every seal in the damn stadium breaks. Kakashi's pockets overflow, and, for the first time he has ever seen, the mist in Kirigakure clears.
Yagura crumbles, and Madara snarls. Kakashi wants to follow Sakura, catch her, make sure she's okay, but—
If Madara gets Yagura again, they're all dead.
He leaves a Hiraishin seal in the ground before him, throws a kunai at Madara, and teleports over to him, driving a chidori into the ribcage around him. It cracks, and he can feel Kanashii's chakra flaring a moment before her fist crashes into the opposite side, breaking it entirely.
Madara, face gaunt and bloody, looking more than halfway dead, snarls at them, pinwheels spinning madly in his face. He dashes back from them, a tree surging around him to block Mei's lava.
Kakashi feels Yagura stir behind him, and Madara smiles. His eyes snap towards Yagura's crumpled form, but Kanashii puts herself in the path of his gaze at the same moment Kakashi re-appears before the Mizukage, hoping two bodies are enough to block Madara's jutsu.
"Sir," he says, clutching Yagura's head to his chest, "you have to—
Yagura pushes him back with an effortless twist of his shoulders, and then drives two kunai into his own eyes.
Kakashi staggers backwards in shock, out of the path between Madara and Yagura. He hears Kanashii crash into the other wall of the arena, and in the corner of his eyes, he sees Madara's face freeze at the sight of Yagura's eyeless face.
Yagura pulls his kunais from his eyes and smiles a grisly, bloody smile. "I will not be your slave again," he says. Madara spins and fixes his gaze on Mei. She instinctively conjures a wall of lava, but Hashirama's trees split it and—
He takes one of Yagura's tails straight to the face.
"Everyone, behind me," Yagura says, and the ninja all scramble behind him, the civilians almost all already either gone or dead. Yagura makes a single seal, and the mist of Kirigakure returns in an unbelievable explosion of chakra, all of the mist now glowing faintly red with demonic chakra. The burn of this mist makes the old mist feel like nothing more than a tickle. "The mist of Kirigakure belongs to me," Yagura says.
Madara's eyes burn as he turns his gaze to all of them—but whatever jutsu he's trying to use, it doesn't work through one hundred feet of mist filled with tailed beast chakra. The second of Yagura's tails, hidden behind his back, begins to glow with the eerie light of a tailed beast bomb.
Madara lunges towards Yagura, and Yagura goes down on all fours and slams the tailed beast ball into his chest, blowing him across the arena with a hole in it. Unbelievably, the hole in his chest starts to knit closed.
Yagura conjures three more beast balls on his tails and closes the distance. All three balls crash into Madara, but wood burns instead of flesh, leaving Yagura standing over a charred tree. He stays there for a moment, and then says, "He's gone."
He turns back to the ninja arrayed before him, but Kakashi is already teleporting to Sakura's side, and—
Oh.
Oh, Sage.
Her arms are burned all the way up to the elbows, skin blackened, and the rest of her is burned bright red. All of that is nothing compared to the fucking hole in her chest, from where Yagura struck her.
She's still breathing, but only barely.
"Sensei," she says. She doesn't open her eyes, and her hands flail weakly at her sides. "Did it work? Is the—" she coughs, and her face contorts in agony. "Is the Mizukage free?"
She does not ask if she is going to survive.
"Yes," Yagura answers from Kakashi's shoulder. Then, in a louder voice. "Medics, on me!"
Kakashi finds himself surrounded by Mist medics on all sides, but none of them move. Because—
This isn't the kind of wound that people can be healed from.
It would take—
It would take a Tsunade.
Slowly, Kakashi raises his gaze from his student, and finds Kanashii standing over her.
"Please," he says, and his voice breaks.
Kanashii takes in a deep breath.
"Consider it a personal request from the Fourth Mizukage," Yagura adds.
Kanashii takes an off-blue charm from beneath her shirt, and touches it once.
"Oh, that's just sad," she says, under her breath. "I never did like killing kids." She turns to the medic nin. "Keep her alive." Then, to her only male student behind her. "Takai, get my ink."
Takai looks from her, to Sakura, and then runs off.
"I need a flat surface, suitable for seals, at least twenty feet by thirty."
Mei leaps down to the shattered arena, and slams her hands down upon it. The arena immediately reforms itself into a plain dirt field, and then the dirt compacts down upon itself, crunching down and down until it is white stone, from wall to wall.
Kanashii takes a concerningly small inkwell from Takai, and leaps down beside Mei. "And Mizukage-sama," she calls, not turning to face him, digging her canine into her thumb, and dripping two drops of blood into the inkwell, "I will also need about a tailed beast's worth of chakra."
Yagura looks down at her and then down at Sakura, unconscious beside them, surrounded by medic nin working futilely to stabilize her.
"You have it," he says.
Kanashii nods, and then sets to drawing. An enormous seal, from an inkwell no larger than his fist, which never seems to go empty. Every minute or two, she squeezes more blood into the inkwell. Sakura is relocated to the arena floor, which lets him stand beside her and still see the seal array Kanashii is building when he can't watch Sakura struggle to breathe any longer.
Off to the side, at some point someone brings down the Mizukage's hat from where Sakura left it on the top of the arena. They give it to Mei, who then turns and holds it out to Yagura.
"I believe this is yours," she says.
He turns his blind face down upon it, and, after a moment of hesitation, he nods and takes it, setting it back upon his head. He has cleaned up his face, and covered his savaged eyes, so he looks a bit less like a nightmare and a bit more like a Kage.
The medic nin have brought hospital equipment to them, a bed, machines, all manner of other things Kakashi does not recognize and does not care about.
Kanashii builds an array of three circular seals connected in a line: one large seal, a small seal and one sort of in between.
Kanashii stands, hands ink-stained, and sets her brush and ink aside. She steps into the locus of the middle seal and points to the locus of the largest seal. "I need her here," Kanashii says.
They lay her out on the stone. As soon as she's disconnected from the machines, her condition worsens.
"Mizukage, I need you there," she says, pointing at the locus of the final seal.
He steps forward, and kneels.
"I'm going to need you feed me your chakra," she says. "No need to be gentle, the seal will keep you from burning me out."
Yagura inclines his head and sets his hands on the activation points of the seal before him.
Slowly, Kanashii kneels. After one last moment of hesitation, she places her hands on the two points before her, and all of the seals light up as one. "Flesh to my flesh. Blood to my blood," Kanashii intones, and… nothing happens. Sakura lies there, each breath an agony. He turns to Kanashii, and stumbles back when he finds her, teeth gritted, with all of Sakura's wounds opened on her in full.
The same horrifying healing factor that had healed Kanashii from the hole he had put in her chest and her face glows around mirrors of Sakura's wounds now. Slowly, so much more slowly than they had when Kanashii had been healing only herself, her wounds start to close. He turns back to Sakura, and finds the wounds in the same state—healing, ever so slowly. A millimeter at a time.
Sakura's body is wracked with a cough that Kanashii mimics, and she grits her teeth.
"No," she says, hands burned into claws clenched before her. "You don't get to die today."
The minutes tick by, and millimeter by agonizing millimeter, the hole in Sakura's chest closes. Behind Kanashii, Yagura begins to flag and is forced to summon the three tails' chakra around him.
It takes two hours, but when it is done, Sakura is whole again. Kanashii lifts her hands from the seal, and Kakashi is immediately at Sakura's side.
She is breathing, her breaths deep, unpained. Her hands, where they had been burned into claws, are hands again. The black chakra burns are gone.
He looks up at Kanashii as she stands. She staggers for a moment, and then straightens to her full height.
She looks down at him with all of the hate and contempt in the whole damn world.
"Thank you," he says to Kanashii and means it.
She sneers faintly. "Don't thank me. Sage—I don't ever want to hear you thank me."
She turns back to the Mizukage.
"I trust the rest of the exam will be completed at a later date?" she asks, and Yagura's lips twitch.
"Yes. I believe I will schedule it for tomorrow—none of the contestants who I need to see more of have been injured."
Sakura, notably, is horrendously injured. Kakashi is comforted to see the Mizukage isn't above a bit of nepotism. It's an important quality in a Kage.
"And because my student's opponent was inpacitated before a victor was called, I trust she will be allowed to continue?"
Mei's mouth, from where she is standing against the wall, falls open at Kanashii's rather stunning gall.
Even as Kakashi holds his student to his chest, alive due to Kanashii's rather extraordinary bit of medical ninjutsu, he can't help but think—
Fucking.
Cloud ninja.
"Of course," Yagura says, not fazed in the slightest. "I have seen enough of Sakura's skills to be certain of her worth as a chuunin."
In Kakashi's arms, Sakura stirs.
"So," she says, voice weak. "Does that mean I pass?"
Kakashi coughs out a laugh, and Yagura actually smiles.
"Yes, Sakura. It means you pass."
"Cooool," Sakura says, before promptly passing back out.
Unbelievable.