Two hours later, Kakashi is sitting at Sakura's bedside, looking down upon her unconscious form. The medics tell him she won't wake up today—tomorrow morning at the earliest—but he's pretty sure that's total bullshit, what with how she went and woke up just to confirm she'd made chuunin moments after getting just barely dragged back from the brink of death.
He's here, waiting, hoping—they kicked a hell of a beehive with the shit they just pulled. Madara is not a forgiving man.
When Kakashi closes his lightning eye, he can see Madara standing over her, punching a hole back into her chest. It's pretty graphic, as the nightmarish images that project themselves onto the backs of his eyelids always are. It doesn't help that he already knows just what Sakura's chest looks like with a hole in it.
Kakashi clenches his eyes closed in an attempt to banish the images, but he doesn't succeed. He blows out his breath in a sigh, and bows his head into his hands.
Yagura's mist still burns on his skin and in his lungs and under his fucking fingernails, still infused with demonic chakra. An early-warning system, in case Madara comes back, to give Yagura half a chance to get to Madara before he goes and kills Kakashi or Sakura, or blows a hole in the village.
The door opens, and Kakashi is immediately on his feet, an inch from the intruder, kunai clenched in one hand. He just barely manages to get himself under control before he accidentally commits suicide by kage, kunai half an inch from Yagura's neck.
Yagura is kind enough to pretend not to notice, his face serene. His face is now clear of blood, but his eyes are still gone—the ravaged sockets hidden behind a blue cloth that matches the symbol for water on his hat.
Yagura steps forward, into Kakashi's kunai, and Kakashi steps back, lowering his kunai to a pouch in his pants.
"I'll watch her," Yagura says, walking past him, to the foot of Sakura's bed. "The Hokage deserves to know what happened, and, if I'm not mistaken, you deserve to get your eyes back."
Kakashi hesitates, that vision of Madara playing once again before him.
"Thank you, sir, but—"
"If Madara was able to get through me, then you wouldn't stand a chance against him."
The air wooshes right out of Kakashi's lungs, and he is not ignorant to the second implication in Yagura's words, the if i meant her harm, you would not be able to stop me. Kakashi breathes out sharply through his nose.
After another moment's consideration, he bows his head. "Thank you, Mizukage-sama."
"Believe me when I tell you, Kakashi, that it is the least I can do." He continues his path around Sakura's bed to seat himself in all of his full Kage finery into the rickety chair on Sakura's other side. "Oh, and before you leave," Yagura says, the moment before Kakashi's Hiraishin completes, making him scramble to stop it in time. "Please inform your Hokage that if you are willing to wait for the end of the exams tomorrow, I will send my two most trusted jounin with you—Terumii Mei and Kuwabara Jouto—as protection and a gesture of good faith. Konoha has done me and my village a great service, and I do not intend to forget it."
Kakashi inclines his head, and conjures a shadow clone. He waits a moment, in case Yagura has anything else to say, but the Mizukage remains silent, and he teleports away.
The hokage's latest secretary, an old retired jounin named Akihiro looks up at Kakashi's arrival, his right eye milky and unfocused, and his left eye permanently kind of bored. He doesn't even blink, which is just a really horrible sign for how often Kakashi has had to use this particular seal.
"He's available," Akihiro says in a voice that's just a little brighter and less gravelly than you'd expect from his ravaged face. He smiles, too, a genuine one which shows all of his teeth, straight and white and incredibly fake.
Great. Awesome.
Kakashi loves having to meet directly with the Hokage.
It's his favorite pastime.
Getting over himself, Kakashi turns away from Akihiro and strides through the open door to the Hokage's office. He really, really wants to start seeing this room less.
At Kakashi's closed eyes and hollowed eyelids, the Hokage's quirks an eyebrow, gaze flickering momentarily between the eye on Kakashi's shoulder and his face, trying to determine the appropriate way to make eye contact before settling on the eye.
"Mission was a success," Kakashi says as he closes the door behind him. At the soft click of the latch closing, a privacy seal washes through the room.
"Hmmm," the Hokage says, leaning back in his chair. "I don't seem to recall giving you a mission, Kakashi-kun."
Kakashi crosses the rest of the room and stands before him, hands folded behind his back. "Uchiha Madara had, indeed, been controlling the fourth Mizukage. With Sakura's assistance, I was able to break the jutsu. He has expressed his deepest gratitudes for Konoha's involvement."
"Ah, yes, I remember now," the Hokage says. "That mission. Tell me everything."
Kakashi does.
After he finishes, the Hokage sags back into his chair and blows out a gusty sigh. "The Mokuton?" he asks. "You're sure?"
"Yes, sir."
Another sigh, and the Hokage pulls his hat from his head so he can stare up at the ceiling.
"We only know of one natural Mokuton user," he says to it, "which means either Madara stole some of Hashirama's cells or we missed someone." He glances down at Kakashi. "Can't say I'm a fan of either option."
Yeah, Kakashi isn't either.
The Hokage turns his gaze back up to the ceiling for one last moment of consideration before turning his gaze back to Kakashi.
"There might be hope for us, yet," he says. "Although the idea of Madara with Mokuton chills me to my bones, at his prime he could have easily defeated Yagura, even without the help of Hashirama's cells—which I suppose explains why he has not come against in broad daylight, only attacking in the shadows."
Kakashi inclines his head as the Hokage's gaze slips off to his side. After a moment's consideration, the Hokage pales.
Kakashi frowns, and then turns to follow the Hokage's gaze over to Minato's portrait resting on a small shrine in the corner.
Kakashi's blood goes cold as he puts together the pieces the Hokage did.
There's no way Kushina's seal could have failed with Minato by her side. No fucking way—Kakashi always knew it. Everyone knew it. But in all of history, only two ninjas have ever been known to be able to control the nine-tailed demon fox. At the time of the attack, everyone had thought them both dead.
That mother fucker.
Kakashi's vision goes red as internally all he can hear is—
Madara killed Minato.
Madara killed Minato.
That son of a bitch.
Kakashi will tear him apart.
The Hokage clears his throat, and gives Kakashi a meaningful glance.
Kakashi closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and pushes that fury down into the ice bucket in the back of his mind.
"Anything else to report?" the Hokage asks.
One day, Kakashi tells himself.
One day.
"If we are willing to stay until after the Chuunin Exams have ended," Kakashi says, "he has offered to send two of his most trusted jounin back with us, as protection and as a gesture of good faith."
"Their names?"
"Terumii Mei and Kuwabara Jouto."
The Hokage nods. "I don't believe they've done anything too objectionable, but tell me, Kakashi—if Madara attacks, do you think they will be able to stop him?"
Kakashi feels ice drip down his spine. "I do not."
The Hokage hums. "Better than nothing, I suppose, and I would like to strike while the iron is hot, as it were. An alliance with Mist is a remarkable opportunity. I don't want to let it go to waste."
Kakashi inclines his head.
"Good job, Kakashi. You've done a great service to Konoha today."
"Thank you, sir."
"You're dismissed. Thank Shouko for me. The Uchiha once again demonstrate what an asset they are to this village."
Kakashi bows and teleports away.
Uchiha Miko greets him at the doors to the Uchiha clan headquarters. She looks at his closed eyes and the lightning eye hovering on his shoulder but says nothing.
She walks him through the labyrinthine corridors of this nightmare of a building and stops before a door whose magnificence he had not fully appreciated before. Thick wood made of the First's trees, its entire front surface carved into a single unbroken seal.
Miko knocks, and Shouko calls them in. Miko pushes the doors open, and Shouko looks up from the papers before her. She blinks, and when she opens her eyes again, pinwheels are spinning in her eyes, because she's just really extra like that.
The door closes behind him, and Shouko rises from her desk to seal it closed with her blood. She gestures for him to take a seat as she passes him.
After re-taking her seat, she looks at his closed eyes, his hollowed eyelids. Her expression is conflicted.
"It was him?" she asks.
"Yes."
Shouko sighs. "I'd been hoping you would come back to me with my eyes intact and we would all laugh about what fools we were."
Yeah. Kakashi had been hoping for that, too. "He claimed I stole his brother's eyes, but he had transplanted new ones in minutes," Kakashi says, and Shouko presses her lips together in silent fury.
She pulls a single sheet of paper from her desk, and pushes it across the desk. "Draw them for me."
He does so. Three linked tomoe, each link pierced with an inverse pinwheel, spiking in from the edge of his eye.
He pushes it back across the desk, and her gaze falls to it. Some of the tenseness in her body subsides. "Thank the sage," she says under her breath. "I don't recognize them."
He gives her a moment.
"Does he still live?" she asks after storing the paper in one of the drawers of her desk.
"He does."
Kakashi tells her the full story, and then tells her of the Hokage's personal thanks.
A smile touches her lips for a moment before she smooths her lips together in an unreadable line. "I was afraid, Kakashi, for what would become of us when Madara's crimes came to light."
Yeah, Kakashi imagines he would have been, too.
He wonders if she also knows of his involvement in the nine-tails attack.
"You've done us a great service. Once again, we Uchiha find ourselves in your debt, Kakashi."
He inclines his head. "Kin for kin," he says.
She smiles, and echoes him. "Kin for kin."
After a long moment of silence, she sighs and speaks. "Now that we'll be giving you eyes your body already knows, I believe we can perform the transplant in just under six hours. Do you have the time?"
"I'm not sure," Kakashi says honestly. "Would you mind if I checked?" He draws one of his kunais from loops at his waist and holds it out to her.
She takes it, looks briefly down upon his Hiraishin seal, and then sets it on the table between them.
She nods to him, and he teleports away.
Yagura turns his face up at Kakashi's arrival.
"Welcome back, Kakashi-san," Yagura says.
"Thank you, Mizukage-sama."
Kakashi turns to Sakura and finds her exactly as he left her.
"She has not changed," Yagura says.
"I may be as many as six or seven more hours," Kakashi says to him, without turning away from Sakura's unconscious face.
"I expected you to take far longer than that already. Go, Kakashi-san, I will watch your student while you are gone."
Kakashi, after one more moment of staring down at Sakura's face, returns to Shouko's office in a flash of white light.
Shouko turns her gaze up to him when he arrives, and her Mangekyou Sharingan spin back into her eyes.
He takes his kunai back from her desk.
"I don't like that that can be used to slip inside of our blood room," she comments.
"I thought you might not," Kakashi says, honestly, slipping the kunai into his belt.
"Thank you," she says.
Kakashi inclines his head.
"Are you ready?" she asks him.
He nods.
"Let's get your eyes back into you, then," and her eyes take him then, the world fading out around him.
He hadn't known she could do that.
He's not terribly sure he likes it.
It feels like only a moment has passed before he is awake again. And when he wakes, his eyes are not wrapped in gauze. His eyes are not numb.
Shouko is sitting across from him, Mangekyou Sharingan lazily spinning in her eyes.
"Would you show me?" she asks him, pushing a mirror across the table towards him. "Obito's Mangekyou Sharingan."
His heart pounds in his chest, but he picks up the mirror anyways. He threads chakra through Obito's eye, and feels the familiar dizzying feeling of having only one Sharingan.
He takes a breath and then pushes that last little bit.
An eye of hooked pinwheels stares back at him from the mirror, and fuck if that doesn't make him break down and cry, right there in front of her.
"It should have been his," Kakashi says through his tears. "My own idiocy got him killed—this should have been his."
"He would have wanted you to have it," she says, tears leaking from the corners of her brother's eyes. "And as long as we carry their eyes with us, they are never truly dead."
They weep at each other like that for a whole minute before they both wipe their faces clear of tears they never should have cried. He de-activates Obito's Sharingan and bows his head.
"Thank you for your assistance, Uchiha-sama."
"Thank you, Kakashi," she says, and gestures that he is free to go.
He returns to Sakura's side.
Yagura turns his face up once again.
"Welcome back, Kakashi-san," he repeats.
"Thank you, Mizukage-sama."
"Was the Hokage amenable to my offer of protection?"
"We are very grateful to accept it."
"Fantastic," Yagura says, his voice not quite managing the inflection to match the word.
Kakashi dispels the shadow clone he left behind, which pours seven hours of staring at linoleum into his brain, and sits down on the chair on the other side of Sakura's bed from the Mizukage.
The Mizukage does not get up to leave, and Kakashi does not ask him to.
It's another three hours before Sakura wakes up, just after midnight, at least seven hours before the medic told him she would wake. She opens her eyes, and her eyes find him.
She smiles at him, no pain in her face.
"I'm a chuunin," she says, like she's daring him to deny it.
So, of course, he does. "Not yet you're not."
Ah, there it is. Kakashi had been worried she'd forgotten how to making killing intent. It's an important ninja skill, you know. He's teaching. Kakashi's her teacher, after all.
"Actually," Yagura says from her other side. Sakura jumps, like she hadn't noticed he was there, flinching towards Kakashi, fear in her eyes. "I happen to have the authority to grant the chuunin rank."
Sakura's fear goes right out the window, and she grins eagerly.
She grabs the bar on her hospital bed, and hauls herself up with it.
"Now, in Mist, we give these to our chuunin." He somehow draws a tiny flak jacket from within his Mizukage robes, asymmetrical where Konoha's is symmetrical, two scroll pouches on the bottom left, one pocket on the right chest, and a pouch in the lower back. "Ordinarily, we don't give them to foreign ninja, but I think in this case, I can make an exception." He folds it in his hands, and kneels beside Sakura's bed. "You saved me, Sakura. Your teacher did as well, but he did it from half a stadium away, waited for the moment I'd be least likely to kill him. You took my hand through your chest to save me." He sets the flak jacket on the railing between them. "Please, take this as an expression of my thanks."
Slowly, Sakura takes it, and then pulls it on over her hospital gown. She grins. "I'm glad you're free now."
Yagura chuckles softly. "Yes," he says. "Me too."
He stands and bows to them both. "Sakura-san, Kakashi-san. Thank you both very much. I hope to see you in the stands of the final stage of the Chuunin Exams tomorrow."
He body-flickers away from right there, the middle of the damn room, and Kakashi didn't even see him move.
Fucking Kages.
He turns back to Sakura, and she's looking at him expectantly.
Say it, her eyes say. Say it.
"You know, they say you're not really a chuunin until you lead your first mission."
It's possible, Kakashi thinks, dodging a punch from Sakura which blasts the door of her hospital room from its hinges from five feet away, that taunting your student into murderous rages might not be the best idea when they're now capable of punching trees in half.
There are no attacks from Madara. Not on the day of the exam, when Urusai sweeps the tournament, and Isogashii and Takai get knocked out in their next rounds. Not on the two days thereafter, when Yagura asks them to wait for him to get his village in order so he can send Mei and Jouto with them.
They stand at the gate, now, him and Sakura and Mei and Jouto (and Gamami on Sakura's head), and Madara has still not attacked the village. A man who tried to wipe out his own clan for rejecting him has not attacked Mist for throwing off their shackles. A man who tried to wipe out his own clan for rejecting him has not attacked Kakashi for sealing his brother's eyes away from him.
You'd think that every day that passes without an attack would make Kakashi less tense.
You'd be wrong.
He's gotten tenser with each day, and he's now wound tighter than a tripwire mine, and about as ready to explode.
Yagura stands beside them, green scarf around his neck, forehead protector around his waist. Around his eyes is now a strip of pink fabric, which Sakura is very vocally appreciating.
"I got the color of my eyes from my mother, who died in giving me life," he says. "The risk of having a medic grow my eyes back is too great, but I don't want to forget her entirely."
Sakura squeals in approval, and Yagura gives that same faint almost-smile.
"I wish I could go with you, but I am still the Mizukage—my first priority must always be my village."
"We will keep them safe, Mizukage-sama," Jouto says.
"Don't forget to keep yourselves safe as well. I need you both."
There is a moment of silence as surprise ripples across the faces of both Mei and Jouto, like their Mizukage never gave a shit about their well-being before.
"If I ever find Madara, I'll rip him into pieces, and let Isobu eat him," Yagura says into the silence, and Mei and Jouto make noises of affirmation.
Yagura turns to Kakashi, holding Kakashi's kunai in his hand for a moment before tucking it away. "Thank you for this," he says. "I trust you will inform me when you reach Konoha."
Kakashi bows his head.
"Of course, Mizukage-sama."
The trip will be seven days long, two of those days over the sea. With three jounin and Sakura, they'll just be running over the waves. They have inflatable rafts in case they are forced to make camp for the night, but they're running with Mist ninja, who know the archipelago and seas around the water country like no one else, so they should be able to find dry land every night (or, well, land. Dry land is a tall order, here in Water Country). Still, Kakashi's not looking forward to the countless hours he'll spend running on the water. If there is anything more boring than running on land, it is running on water. Literal featureless nothingness as far as the eye can see.
They are leaving Aburame Shioko and Egawa Shinzou behind (Shioko made chuunin while Shinzou did not), because it is more dangerous for them to come with them than to travel with the rest of the Leaf genin. They'll be leaving tomorrow and taking a boat. They'll arrive a week after Sakura and Kakashi do.
Yagura steps aside.
On the first day, Kakashi jumps at every shadow, every broken twig, every wave crash, but there's nothing—nothing appears out of nowhere to attack them. They make camp half a day from the coast, in a marshy sort of swamp which seems to be most of what the islands of Water are made up of. It takes them half a day to get out of Yagura's mist.
Half a day.
At full speed.
Kages may be bullshit—but Jinchuuriki Kages appear to be even more bullshit.
The mist doesn't burn with the fury of the three tails anymore, but it still burns, and he knows the instant he leaves it. By the end, it'd almost become a comforting presence. If something happened, Yagura would know and come to their aid. Now, they're alone. The four of them, against whatever Madara decides to throw at them.
In all likelihood, if Madara comes for them, they're all dead.
Well, everyone—everyone except for Kakashi.
He can always be somewhere else.
(This does not make Kakashi feel better.)
(Why can't the hiraishin teleport other people, again?)
That first night, Kakashi and Sakura take the first night shift, Mei and Jouto the second.
They wake, not at all rested, and run some more, up onto the waves and over them. However boring he remembered it being, he finds, doing it again, that it's worse. Every crash of the waves and every movement of the sea beneath his feet has Kakashi going for a kunai.
It's nothing.
Nothing happens.
They stay their second night on an island no larger than the Uchiha Compound. Kakashi and Sakura take the first watch, while Jouto and Mei take the second.
The third day is their second and final day over water. It is no more interesting than the last. Perhaps less so, even, because he has gotten used to the rolling of the sea beneath his feet, and has learned which wave sounds are safe, and which are not.
So he spends all day jumping at fishes.
Everyone is kind enough not to notice.
Once again, nothing happens.
They arrive safely on the shore of Silver country, and get two hours in before the sun starts to set. Silver Country has no ninja and therefore has opened its borders to all ninja. If they can't stop them, their policy is to then let them all run on through, with a side dish of don't kill us, please.
It mostly works—but only because Silver Country has nothing worth stealing. Fire and Water both want it as a buffer between them, so it stays independent. There's constant talk of chopping it in half, but that would give Fire and Water a border they both really don't want, so now they have what is effectively two full days' run of no man's land.
They camp. They post watch.
Nothing happens.
The fourth day, Kakashi starts to relax. Not on purpose, no. Just—
It's been four days now. He can't stay vigilant for that long.
Part of him is expecting that to be the moment.
It isn't.
Nothing happens.
They make camp halfway through the Silver Country, not too far from the capital. Kakashi and Sakura take the first watch, Mei and Jouto the second.
Fifth day: they cross the rest of the way through Silver, make it barely thirty minutes from the border with Fire. He can almost taste it.
Sixth day: they enter Fire. The sounds become familiar. They are almost close enough that Fire could send help if needed.
Kakashi is on point, Sakura behind him, Mei and Jouto at the back. They form a triangle, with Sakura in the middle. She doesn't appreciate it, but she can suck it up. They're jounin, and she's a chuunin.
Also, they've had to tolerate her snapping.
For five days.
Well.
The snapping stopped after the first day when Jouto asked if they were allowed to kill the person they're supposed to protect.
The next four days were spent with Sakura simply whipping her fingers out on either side of her. The force was enough to make her fingers audible. Fwip fwip fwip fwip fwip.
It was better than CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK.
It was not that much better, but it was better.
Kakashi misses the times when Sakura's obsessive practice was with things that just made light, and not sound. He could feel Sakura and Gamami chatting, the whole way. Little flickers of chakra, back and forth, back and forth.
He didn't know what they're talking about, and he didn't ask.
Mostly, none of them talk. This is a mission, their eyes are out.
Just the occasional, hey—
What's this thing?
It's a Silver Fig Leaf, or a Grand Nation Fire Beetle, or, or, or.
They're not friends, aside from Gamami and Sakura.
It's on the sixth day that it happens. Two hours into Fire, still one and a half days out.
Orochimaru, in a red and black cloak, standing in their way.
He stands before them as they all come crashing to a halt, like it's nothing—like they're nothing.
"I want the girl," he says, casually, like he's asking them to maybe pass the soy sauce. "I've always dreamed of the jutsu I could do, if I had Tsunade's chakra control. It's wasted on idiots like her. If you leave her, I'll let you live. Madara only cares about Kakashi, anyways, and I can lie and say he slipped away from me. The girl, though. I want her."
Kakashi takes a deep breath and activates Obito's Sharingan, dragging the world down to a crawl.
Orochimaru, candidate for the Fourth Hokage, who lost to Minato not because he was weak but because he was evil. The last, lost member of the Sannin, strong enough to have fought both his teammates as he left, burning Jiraiya's chakra system to a crisp and leaving Tsunade in two pieces. If Tsunade wasn't a better medic nin than every other medic nin on earth put together, he would have killed them both. He hasn't shown himself since, current abilities unknown.
A missing nin with the power of a Kage. Kakashi is strong, but he has never deluded himself into thinking he could compete with that. It is, however, four on one—and Mei is a woman who could be a Kage, particularly if the two rumors of her bloodline limits are true.
He knows less about Jouto—water release, known as the water dragon of the Mist.
It's four on one.
They have a shot.
"No," he hears from behind Orochimaru, and a hunchback figure appears beside him. "No you will not. Why are you doing this, Orochimaru? We don't need to ask."
Four on two.
Bad news.
That shot—it's getting pretty long.
A tail flashes towards them, and dissolves as it hits a block of lava.
"That's enough of that," Mei says, dashing forward as lava crashes down upon both of the men before them. Orochimaru gets away, but the hunchback does not, melting under the lava, a young man with red hair emerging from within it before it melts.
A face from bingo books of Kakashi's childhood—bingo books twenty years old. Sasori, of the Red Sand.
Fuck.
What the fuck?
Fuck fuck.
Mei follows them, her feet stepping on her still burning lava without hesitation, and Kakashi and Jouto surge forward after her as she inhales and blows steam between their two foes.
Orochimaru goes left, Sasori goes right.
They've been together for five days. If you're a ninja, that means you come up with secret signs, for directing your team in an emergency. Now that he has seen Mei in action, the fact he is the commander of this team is increasingly outrageous (he revises his estimates of their strength from three jounin and one special jounin to one small-village Kage, two jounin, and one special jounin), but he signals all the same.
Fake left, go right.
Don't split.
Focus all four of them on the weaker of the two enemies.
If they can wipe one of them out before the other can react, they can get back to more winnable four on one odds.
He can only hope that Sasori is weaker than Orochimaru, because otherwise they are incredibly and intensely fucked.
Kakashi throws five kunai before him, one between Sasori and Orochimaru, one at each of them, and then two more on the dorsal sides of their enemies, then turns to Orochimaru with the rest of his team. Behind him, Sakura is leaking flower petals, and Gamami is gone, leapt into the leaves around them. Jouto spins his hands through seal and Orochimaru smirks, his hands spinning faster than all of theirs, and—
Sakura appears behind Sasori at the same moment Kakashi appears before him, Kakashi driving a chidori through his heart at the same moment Sakura drives her fist into the base of his skull. In the instant he has to react, Sasori twists enough that Kakashi's hand goes through the right half of his chest instead of the left, and Sakura's fist just clips the side of his neck.
His chest does not feel like a human chest, Kakashi's hand driving through a Sage-damned mess of mechanical garbage, and Sakura's fist blowing away half his neck and a bit of his face, leaving mangled clockwork bared in its wake. He dodges away from them, and directly into the path of Mei's steam release, melting away his skin and his clothes, revealing an uncannily smooth body—
The body of a puppet.
Sasori produces a scroll, and a puppet cloaked in black bursts into existence beside him just in time to get hit by a water dragon that tears its head from its shoulders. Iron sand rises around it, but lava crashes down upon it before it can shake out the water.
Without the cloak, Sasori's body is clearly inhuman, and in the left side of his chest, Kakashi can see one piece that is different from the others, the source of all of his chakra, and—what can Kakashi say?—he has a lot of damn practice with x marks the spot.
Kakashi meets Sasori's eyes and charges, throwing a kunai he erases from Sasori's sight with Obito's Sharingan as dozens of shapes fill the air around them. Fifteen descend upon Kakashi, but Sakura is on his right, punching them into bits, and there is lava on his left, burning his skin even as it saves his life. Kakashi ducks the five puppets that make it to him, dashes forward into a horde of twenty as his kunai sails over Sasori's shoulder, unseen—and then Kakashi is behind Sasori, plunging his chidori straight through the thing that is where Sasori's heart is supposed to be.
Sasori falls limp in his hands, like a puppet with its strings cut, and every puppet he just summoned tumbles from the air with him. Kakashi has to teleport away before Orochimaru crashes into where he had just been.
"I must say," Orochimaru hisses, standing on the broken tree he just destroyed, Sasori's empty puppet at his feet, long tongue licking his lips as they regroup before him, "I do not like being ignored."
To their left is the Rashoumon itself, alone and unabused. Kakashi draws two more kunai and readies himself. His limit is ten active seals. More than that, and he can't identify them fast enough to be of use in a fight. When the fight started, he disabled every seal he has except the one on the Hokage tower floor. That puts him at eight. He very intensely does not want to throw these kunai.
"I will make this offer one more time," Orochimaru says, turning to keep them all in his sights, which coincidentally, puts one of Kakashi's kunai at his back. It's hidden in the wreckage of the tree, one of his original five kunai, but it's still a little too purposeful. Kakashi spins through the signs for Jouto's water dragon, teleports to a kunai to his right, and lets the water dragon loose at Orochimaru's back when he spins to rip Kakashi's spine out.
Orochimaru dodges, moving his body in a horrifying boneless wiggle, twisting and surging at Kakashi only to meet Mei's lava, but he hardens it into rock with a blast of water and goes straight over it. His hands are spinning through a jutsu Kakashi has never seen before, doesn't recognize, and—
"Lightning!" Sakura shouts from off to his left.
Kakashi teleports away a moment before a bolt of lightning tears through where he had just been.
Run, full speed, Kakashi signs in the moment before Orochimaru has turned.
Kakashi can't beat Orochimaru, but he might just be able to stall him long enough for everyone to get away.
And as long as Kakashi can still breathe, he can follow them.
There is no hesitation, Mei and Jouto both send two last harassing attacks at Orochimaru before turning tail and booking it in the moment Orochimaru spends dealing with their attacks.
Sakura meets his eyes for a split second before she vanishes after them, replacing herself at full speed, and—
"No," Orochimaru says, bent double, hand into the ground, and Mei and Jouto are forced to a stop that shatters the trees they land upon when a massive orange wall erupts before them. Kakashi throws a couple flaming shuriken and hides a wind-blade under them and ten degrees off on either side. Orochimaru sidesteps the shuriken and slaps away the wind blade.
The orange walls before Mei have erupted all around them, a massive cube of orange. Kakashi cannot name the jutsu because he has never seen it before. He is not The Professor. There has to be a way to break it—seals, on the outside, set by shadow clones? But Sakura could have sensed those—held by summons? Bound to Orochimaru himself?
"You had your chance. I'm very much looking forward to finding out how those bloodline limits of yours work, Mei."
"I've always been curious myself," Mei says, taking a step back from the wall. She breathes in sharply, a single ram seal held before her, and when Orochimaru lifts a water wall to block her lava, the earth comes closed around him in a massive bear trap instead.
They all know that won't be enough, so they take the chance to close in on him. I'll feint left, he signs, take his back.
But—
"Below you!"
Orochimaru still damn near rips his foot off before Kakashi can teleport away. He looks back at Orochimaru to find him licking Kakashi's blood off his hand with lazy strokes of his tongue as he kicks Jouto's water dragon straight back at him, and then has to leap back from the poisonous steam Mei belches in his direction.
"Now, I think we've done enough playing," he says, body-flickering straight towards Jouto, hand glowing with Kakashi's fucking chidori, and there's no Hiraishin seal anywhere near him, Kakashi won't—
Mei is there to meet Orochimaru, catching the wrist of his chidori hand with a hand burning with steam so hot the air wavers above it and breathing lava directly into Orochimaru's face.
Orochimaru breathes water back into it, but Mei doesn't stop, and it is Orochimaru who blinks, shedding the skin of his wrist to slip out of her grip. Kakashi throws wind blades into the path of his retreat and is there when he dodges, Rasengan in his palm, grinding it straight into the wind wall Orochimaru has blown before him. It would have blocked the Chidori, but the Rasengan isn't the Chidori—it blows right through the wall, connecting heavily with Orochimaru's chest, ripping flesh and twisting bone.
Kakashi is forced to dash back before Orochimaru's lengthened neck lets his gaping jaws close on Kakashi face. Orochimaru is not smiling anymore. There is a horrible bloody wound in his chest, and his wrist is an off-white, the hand beyond it limp.
But even as he dodges under Mei's follow up attack, he is smearing blood along the snake scroll on his forearm, and—
"Enough, I have a feast for you, Manda."
A massive snake appears around them, his coils the size of tree trunks. Beside his eye is a flower petal, waiting there like it had known exactly where Manda's head would be.
Manda screams as Sakura drives her fist into his eye the moment he finishes being summoned, thrashing and damn near flattening all of them—and Orochimaru most of all. Manda throws his head up, and Sakura is there, bloody and covered in a thicker-than-blood substance. She drives her fist forward again, and Manda screams once more, flailing and trying to bash Sakura into the barrier beside him, but succeeding only in bashing his own face into it, his flesh burning as the barrier sears his skin.
Orochimaru roars in fury as Manda unsummons himself.
"That is quite enough out of you," he says. The air is suddenly thick with a miasma, thick and corrosive and fucking toxic. Kakashi can feel the chakra attacking him, trying to wear away at him.
It's annoying, but not enough to hurt a ninja, or even really distract them.
Best it could do is burn a civilian, or kill… or kill a clone—eat a chakra string.
Sakura tumbles from the air, and Kakashi teleports to her a moment before Orochimaru's mouth reaches her. He tries to drive a kunai through the side of Orochimaru's face, but that face is gone in a moment, retracted all the way back to Orochimaru's body as a literal fucking wall of magma comes into existence between Orochimaru's body and Sakura.
Stay back, Mei signs to Jouto, and Kakashi has to agree. He follows Sakura to the ground, and signs for her to transform into a leaf and stay hidden, before following the explosions.
He finds Mei being pushed back, but nowhere near enough to be anywhere close to reasonable. The ground closes around Orochimaru's feet as his teeth close around her arm. Before he can retreat, he takes the full force of her steam to the face, and grunts in pain as he comes back to himself. Kakashi teleports to the kunai closest to Orochimaru, and serves him up with a Rasengan to the face. Orochimaru dodges back, and is forced into the air when the ground melts beneath his feet, and then into a ridiculous contortion to avoid a wave of lava above him, and then he is forced to summon a Rashoumon to block Kakashi's three wind blades.
When the Rashoumon vanishes, Orochimaru stands, all of his wounds healed over a shriveled, dried version of himself.
Okay.
Rip his head off, then. No guarantee a chidori would kill him, but there's a chance it'll stun him.
No hesitation—that's what he wants. He's breathing hard—he's not immortal.
A lightning bolt tears through the air where Orochimaru just was, and Kakashi signs that he'll be attacking to the right. The fact he is the commander of this mission is now literal fucking comedy, but switching commanders mid-mission is a real good way to die, so continue this farce they will.
He teleports to a kunai on the opposite side of Orochimaru, dodges Orochimaru's fireball, and sends a windblade that Orochimaru deflects easily. It puts him in striking range, and the ground gives under Orochimaru's feet, giving Kakashi a window to drive his chidori through Orochimaru's chest. It's Kakashi's last chidori if he's not planning on going into chakra exhaustion, and he misses, taking out most of Orochimaru's left shoulder instead. Orochimaru goes up, and then has to use a one-handed wind jutsu to move himself out of Mei's lava, and the smell of cooked flesh fills the air when he hits Mei's steam. His mouth is opening, too wide, as a Rashoumon appears between him and Mei.
A new Orochimaru tries to crawl itself out of Orochimaru's mouth, and Kakashi tries to close the distance between them, but the earth gives beneath his injured leg, and there's no kunai close enough.
Orochimaru emerges from himself, fully healed, eyes on Kakashi and only on Kakashi, not seeing Sakura blasting off of a tree behind him, her every step perfectly silent. She drives her hand into and through the left side of his chest, and because she is there, so is Kakashi, driving a Rasengan straight into Orochimaru's face as Orochimaru's left leg lashes out at Sakura before she can dodge, throwing her brutally into the ground with a crack.
Kakashi's Rasengan connects, twisting and destroying Orochimaru's face, and Mei is through the Rashoumon behind him, her lava consuming the bottom half of Orochimaru's body, leaving him nothing but half of a torso and the twisted mess of a face.
Not enough—
A white snake bursts from the hole Kakashi made in Orochimaru's face, and Kakashi's surprise makes him just too slow to catch it, too slow to see where it is going—
So that when he teleports to Sakura and crams two Rasengan into Orochimaru's waiting snake-face, one of the snakes he is made up of flies over his shoulder and down onto where Sakura lies, still conscious but in great pain behind him, mouth open and gasping for breath. The snake goes down, and Mei's lava crashes down upon it, obliterating it entirely.
Kakashi spins back to Sakura, and sees the moment the tiny snake vanishes between her parted lips. Chakra boils up from within her, more chakra than Sakura has ever had, and her face twists as she smiles at him.
No.
"Tell me, Kakashi," Orochimaru says in Sakura's voice. "Can you kill your own student?"
Joke's on him.
When it comes to putting your hand through the chest of someone you love—first time's the hardest.
A fourth chidori flares in Kakashi's hand. The fourth chidori that promises a week of recovery.
Kakashi is looking forward to it.
If it could last a year, a decade, he'd take it.
He has no interest in waking back up to a world without Sakura in it.
There is fear in Orochimaru's gaze. He can't move yet, and there's a massive wall of lava all around them, regardless.
Kakashi takes a deep breath, and—
"No," Sakura says.
The chakra that had boiled up from within Sakura gets sucked right back into her again.
"No, no, no," Sakura says. She screams, and she heaves herself up onto her knees, dry heaving onto the ground. "Get out get out get out!"
Her chakra flutters, flares—falters.
"You are not welcome here," she says, and there is chakra in her words, power in her words, but her chakra is vanishing like water through a sieve.
It won't be enough.
Kakashi remembers the seal he learned, a decade ago, after Rin had hung off his hand. There had to be another way, he had told himself. Another way, a better way. Six months, to learn—
Kakashi sucks the chakra from his chidori back into his body, and closes the distance between them.
Sakura's chakra is fading fast, but it's not gone. He flips her onto her back, the Five Elements Seal already flaring around his fingers.
Sakura's entire body goes taut, the last of her chakra dribbling away, and Kakashi crashes his right hand into her stomach.
He tries to turn it, lock the seal in place, but he can't, something is fighting him—Orochimaru is fighting him.
The last of Sakura chakra dribbles away, and she goes still.
So, so still. Kakashi's skin is burning from the lava so close to it, but he can't move.
She's out of chakra, he should—he should—
He was too late.
Again.
He was—
Gamami leaps over him and crash-lands on Sakura, both of her hands on Sakura's face.
He can feel her chakra flare from here, pouring into Sakura, and then pouring away. More and more chakra, he can see Gamami's body start to twist and harden—too much natural energy, too quickly, but whatever she's doing to herself is not infecting Sakura—the chakra Sakura is getting is clean.
A minute, and then Gamami hardens completely, a little frog statue, tumbling to the ground beside Sakura with a crack before being unsummoned with a poof. He could never—
Gamami had just spent his entire reserves' worth, and it hadn't been enough, there's nothing—
Kakashi slams his left hand onto her chest (the hand that is not occupied with trying and failing to close the Five Elements Seal on her stomach). He infuses chakra into her but she is a fucking black hole, sucking up not just that but everything inside of him.
Your chakra control is quite good, Kakashi remembers—You can make it to 3.8%.
Kakashi can feel his body shutting down, the world darkening, but he refuses to let it go. He shifts, putting his knee on Sakura's chest, infusing her with that as he scrambles with his pack, pulls a rations pill from its confines.
He swallows it, and his body sears with pain, his muscles going limp, but he is still awake, Sakura still greedily taking every drop of chakra he has to give.
90.
80.
70.
50.
20.
Kakashi's hands shake as he pulls a second rations pill from his pack.
10.
A second rations pill will kill him.
5.
He hesitates.
4.
His vision starts going black around the edges.
3.7.
Just—
3.5.
He has to—
3.4.
The chakra he is giving Sakura stops being sucked away into nothingness.
The seal catches.
The chakra he infuses into her start to fill her tiny reserves.
The rations pill slips from his grasp, falls to the hard-baked earth beneath him.
3.35.
Kakashi's world goes black.
The last thing he sees is Mei's lava walls vanishing from around them.