Kakashi did not come into this expecting edo tensei. Orochimaru can take Kakashi on blindfolded, after all, so what need does he have for summoning another ninja to help him?

Hoshigaki's presence as well might warrant it, but, with all due credit to Hoshigaki, Orochimaru can win against him. Not easily, and not cleanly, but nonetheless it's the more likely outcome than not. Orochimaru isn't a Sannin for nothing.

But this other Kakashi's body apparently doesn't have the instinctual, counterproductive fear response to Orochimaru that Kakashi's accustomed to.

He didn't even realize the depth of his usual reaction until he felt the lack of it here. He didn't expect edo tensei, but some foreign part of him still acknowledged the possibility and planned for it. He hasn't fully reoriented from the mindset of Orochimaru residing on a separate level of power from him, and the fear hasn't vanished, but he can think through it.

Relatively.

Before Orochimaru went ahead and summoned -

"Stop bleeding on me or I'll summon you back from the afterlife," says the woman whose remains Kakashi watched burn more than half of his lifetime ago.

Her expression is slack, her body statue-still and unbreathing, but the cadence of the voice, clear and uncompromising, belongs unmistakably to Uzumaki Kushina.

"Did you know she was a jinchuuriki?" Hoshigaki asks under his breath. Kakashi nods faintly, and Hoshigaki says, "She can't always have been."

"She was, actually," Kakashi murmurs.

Hoshigaki digests that, and then he mutters, tone conversational aside from the volume, "We don't have the ability to take them both, Kakashi-san."

Yet Hoshigaki doesn't leave.

Kushina's gaze flicks between Kakashi and Hoshigaki, and the lingering moment she spends on Kakashi's scarred headband burns.

She's dead. Edo tensei can't change that. She's not a living person, not an ally or a war hero, not his teacher's wife, not his genin's mother. She's an enemy summon, and an obstacle.

Orochimaru grins, his weight propped on her unmoving shoulder. "Would you like an apology for the inconvenience?"

Kakashi's never personally seen him and Kushina in the same place before, but he knows they used to study fuuinjutsu together. They know each other at least decently well.

"Depends!" says Kushina, more sharply than he's ever heard from her. She didn't act anything but friendly in front of him or Rin or Obito. Of course she didn't, they liked her and they were her boyfriend's charges and they were tiny – that was twelve years ago, longer for Obito and Rin, and Kakashi is older than she and Minato were when the Kyuubi killed them. One day he'll outlive everything in his world worth living for. "How long has it been?"

"About twelve years," Orochimaru answers silkily. "He's fine, before you ask. Completely unremarkable as a ninja – less than unremarkable, truthfully – but the Uchiha clan has all but adopted him. I wonder if that might make up for it."

Naruto, Kakashi realizes. Kabuto's in the Village and spying for Orochimaru, and that's only the spy Kakashi knows about.

Kushina says nothing for a second, frozen to stillness aside from her wind-tugged hair and cloak. Then she opens her mouth and asks, voice rough, "Did you drag me here to say 'hi' and catch me up on what I've missed?"

"Your company alone is not nearly worth a limb."

"I wouldn't want to meet me either if I'd summoned me into this situation, 'ttebane."

The verbal tic jars Kakashi back into his chuunin and ANBU days, so that for an instant he's standing in half a dozen places overlapping, eight years old on a street in Konohagakure and thirty under a cloudy sky in Rice Country and fourteen in the shadows of the Hokage's office while the Yondaime digs her nails into the underside of the desk and the door swings shut behind Councilman Danzo's exit.

"Whatever the situation is. Sensei, explain yourself. And for the love of god, do something about this blood."

Sensei?

Is Kushina referring to Orochimaru in his capacity as a medic, is she being bizarrely respectful of his status as an established professional (since he didn't defect until after the Kyuubi attack and since Kakashi's never known him to wear a headband, slashed or not, and since he's been staying just slightly too far out of Kushina's line of sight for her to fully see the body he's wearing, Kushina might not have caught on to his being a missing-nin and might think he's... a legitimate Konoha ninja facing down a... oh, that's nearly embarrassing), or was he her teacher? The other Orochimaru never took a genin team.

The other Kushina wasn't Hokage, either. And a kage wouldn't call their own subordinates by sama. That might be the only reason.

Orochimaru sighs, aggrieved, before solving the leg issue by vomiting himself a new body.

The technique is a masterful blend of sealing and medical ninjutsu. Why, again, did Kakashi think he stood a chance of winning against a Sannin?

(Although he still has every reason imaginable to at least try.

In the momentary window while Orochimaru's not watching, he creates two trapped lightning clones behind a nearby boulder without moving, riding out the wave of fatigue from the chakra expenditure, and doesn't look at them as they burrow into the ground. Hoshigaki doubtless notices – he's got some kind of sense for electricity – but with luck no one else does.)

"Are you two on the same side?" Kushina asks while Orochimaru's occupied, her tone gentling very slightly.

Kakashi opens his mouth behind the mask, but he can't quite manage an answer.

After a second, Hoshigaki sighs. "Under duress," he replies.

His tone doesn't match the words. He sounds more enthusiastic than he has in a while, his teeth bared. Kiri-nin. The war forged legends of two Konoha-nin: Namikaze Minato, who near-singlehandedly broke Iwa's back line, and Uzumaki Kushina, who slew the Sandaime Mizukage on the field and thereby ended Kiri's participation in the war.

"That right?" Kushina squints at Hoshigaki. "Shark kid."

"Hoshigaki Kisame. It's been a while, Hokage-sama. I'm honored you remember."

"I'll say, how'd you get even taller? You already had a full head over me."

Kakashi somehow finds his voice. "You've met?"

"Yeah," replies Kushina, "at the – actually, where do I know you from?"

"We met at Naou." Kiri's final battle in the war.

Once upon a time, Hoshigaki promised to kill Kakashi for his role in Zabuza's death. In contrast to that, Hoshigaki's response to meeting his former Mizukage's killer is...

...whatever the emotion behind his words is, it isn't anger. Bloodthirst, sure, but not anger.

"Right, we did, yeah," Kushina muses, "so you shouldn't have issues fighting me. Kakashi, now... you doin' okay there? Don't overthink it, it's just a technique. Know how to end it?"

Kakashi isn't normally one to assign moralities to chakra techniques, but edo tensei deserves an exception.

Ninja are weapons is a broken metaphor only good for raising broken shinobi. Out loud, Kakashi uses soldiers instead; in the privacy of his mind, he prefers dogs. A ninja doesn't follow orders because they're a blade with no will but that of the hand guiding them; they follow orders because they've been taught to, and because they see more good coming out of obeying than out of other courses of action. A commander who loses their subordinates' confidence will find themselves no longer a commander.

If one strips the agency from shinobi, then the Will of Fire becomes an empty creed, Konoha an armory of soulless tools perpetuating a system that improves the lives of nothing and no one. Loyalty means nothing if it's not a choice. A technique that can dredge a shinobi twelve years dead out of her grave and turn her into a knife has no place in the world.

"Yes," he says.

"Good, that's good. And if you can't beat me, you can run, 'ttebane. Normal summon rules don't apply to edo tensei, it takes chakra just to keep me on this plane and the farther I get from the summoner the more – "

"Who are you helping, Kushina-kun?" Orochimaru interrupts as he rises to his feet. "Shouldn't you be more favorably inclined towards the one between us who isn't running around with a scratched headband and a Kiri-nin?"

"I trust Kakashi not to do anything without a good reason," Kushina bites out.

Kakashi suffers through whiplash that she can say that with a straight face when she knew him as a chuunin (even though edo tensei means she can only wear one expression), and Hoshigaki raises an eyebrow in a look best described as you haven't met him recently, have you.

"Sensei, you're brilliant, but you haven't given me any reason to rule out the chance that I'm here because Kakashi ate something a tiny bit too smelly near you once."

Orochimaru presses a hand to his chest, amused affront a thin veneer over his irritation. "Does anything change if I tell you Kakashi-kun and Hoshigaki are affiliated with the same bijuu-hunting organization?"

"Seriously?" says Kushina. "Bijuu-hunting?"

"Apparently," says Kakashi.

"Why?"

"They said they'd kill me if I didn't?" Kakashi tries. Kushina keeps staring, and Kakashi hunches his shoulders a little. "It was more convincing."

Hoshigaki, evidently taking pity, adds, "The leader is difficult to win against."

Wait, the other Kakashi fought Pein? And lived?

Kushina says, "No, that's not what – I mean, I wanna hear about that too, 'ttebane, but what's that got to do with sensei summoning me to try to fight you?"

Less than nothing. But Kakashi says, "Someone else here was also a member."

"You might observe that I left," Orochimaru says, dry, "years ago."

"Got everything you wanted out of them?" Kushina asks him, sounding neither surprised nor judgemental. "So they sent Kakashi to tie up the loose end."

Sure. Exactly. Orochimaru, from behind Kushina's shoulder, meets Kakashi's eye with a narrow-eyed gaze that says he wouldn't buy it if Pein himself showed up to confirm.

Kushina continues, "Why're you both missing-nin? Is everyone a missing-nin?" Some kind of realization must strike her, because she gasps then and shouts, "Wait no, sensei, you didn't – what did I say about snatching kids off the fucking street?"

"But there were just so many of them orphaned after the Kyuubi attack."

"I gave you criminals – !"

She what?

"Only for a year. And then where were you?" Orochimaru says. "Don't act so surprised, now, when you knew from the beginning what I was. You invited a snake to your table. Did you expect it not to bite?"

"Snakes don't bite you if you don't step on them!"

"It depends on what you are. You're not a human in this comparison, Yondaime-sama. Only a mouse. But," he drawls, stretching the word out, "that isn't what Sarutobi-sensei chased me out over. What happened is I started working on... oh, let's just say a project. I set the notes down somewhere and a rat got into them, and the next thing I know the Sandaime's remembered he still had one student he needed to drive from the Village if he intended to complete the set."

"The soul container. What you were working on, was that it?"

"Yes," says Orochimaru. "Somebody didn't care for its existence, I assume because he knew I wouldn't sell it to him. I've long since finished that seal, by the way. The missing piece involved nature chakra and a transformation bloodline from Rice Country. It took hardly any time at all to incorporate those into it. I made my own Hidden Village and all of the red tape I have to deal with these days is my own, it's a refreshing change."

Kushina takes a long, deep breath. "Okay," she exhales. "You're gone. Kakashi's gone. Who's left in Konoha?"

Not many. Not due to missing-nin status or lack thereof, but simply because twelve years is a long time. The majority of Minato's and Kakashi's generations are both dead, and, as far as Minato's generation goes, most of the remainder – clan leaders, specialists in non-combat fields, ninja with chronic injuries too severe to work through – have retired from fieldwork.

Though that might not be what she's asking about, because Orochimaru sets his knuckles against his chin, makes a show of trying to think of names, and then drawls, "There's Sarutobi-sensei, Shimura Danzo..."

Kushina adds tightly, "Naruto."

"I told you he's fine. Sensei plays favorites with him, I hear."

"He – "

"Sees him as his own grandson," Orochimaru continues. "And then his real own grandson was born, and that child gets the privilege of speaking with his grandfather once in a blue moon. You know how Sarutobi-sensei is." Does Orochimaru make Kabuto write about the Sandaime's personal drama when he runs out of other news to report on?

"Yeah," says Kushina. "I know."

"There could have been more names still," Orochimaru says. "But Kakashi-kun is lying about why he came to be here. You've missed out on certain developments. These days, Kakashi-kun needs neither help, encouragement, nor orders from on high to attack his erstwhile comrades, you see – "

Oh, fuck.

" – why don't you ask him about Mikoto-kun?"

She doesn't do that.

A second passes, and another, and she does not ask the question Kakashi cannot answer.

Kakashi's counterpart snapped and attempted to end a bloodline on a conspiracy theory. Maybe some subvariant of the Sharingan can hypnotize bijuu, but if it can then Kakashi's evil alternate still had no justification to slaughter an entire clan because a single member possessed an ability that, in all likelihood, they never once used. There is no reason or excuse for what that monster did.

Why did Orochimaru bring it up, then? The other Kakashi would be too terrible to care, so the only result of mentioning it will be upsetting Kushina.

Which is primarily useful if Orochimaru still doesn't have a full grasp over the technique, like he apparently didn't when Sasori and Deidara found him, and if he's aiming to unsettle her first before he makes the attempt to claim control -

"Kakashi," Kushina says, and fear flashes cold through him.

Maybe the reason Kakashi hates his counterpart – more than the treason, more than the murders, more than the Akatsuki ring – is because that man's monstrousness sits on the outside, bared for the world to see, instead of buried under all of the copied personalities Kakashi has layered into a grave over the person he would have been.

Kakashi, at his core, is someone who gets his comrades killed. That's all he is.

Obito's and Rin's friends called him friend killer to his face, back when they were thirteen or so and Kakashi was still the only one in their generation who'd outlived his teammates and sensei, back when Kakashi was Hatake Kakashi instead of the messily-tied patchwork of neuroses and stolen character traits he shaped himself into. Some of those ninja tried to apologize much later, but very little of what they'd said had been factually incorrect.

All that the alternate Kakashi of the new history did was go the extra mile. If Kakashi was put into the same circumstances, whatever those might have been, he would have committed the same atrocity that his counterpart did.

The other Kakashi is worse than him, but Kakashi himself isn't better.

He knows that. Of course he knows.

But if he has to hear it spoken aloud by a dead woman who's only ever been kind to him, and whose best friend he killed while Kushina wasn't alive to protect her, he doesn't know what he'll do.

Other than survive, because that's all he's good for.

"Orochimaru-sensei is doing something," Kushina says, "but whatever it is it's sure not being helpful. You tell me what we're here for."

Kakashi... can't answer that, either.

Orochimaru's planning to attack Konoha. Hoshigaki will want to know how he found out.

He's using a Konoha citizen's body. Kakashi learned of that fact fifteen minutes ago.

He tried to kill me one time. Some ninja are motivated enough to go out of their way years later to track an enemy down over a single murder attempt, but Kakashi is not. Nobody present would believe him if he claimed otherwise.

Leader actually did send us after him. Kushina might buy it, but Orochimaru can tell her, truthfully, that that would be incredibly out of character for Pein. He wouldn't send a team after Orochimaru out of the blue, years after the defection, unless the team actively asked for the assignment.

"I don't think I'll do that," Kakashi says faintly. What would it have cost the other Kakashi, really, not to betray every kindness ever done to him? Gai and Team 7, and now Kushina, and Kakashi still has an entire Village's worth of former comrades waiting in the wings. He has two lifetimes' worth of crimes to atone for, but first he has a mission to complete. "Sorry."

They've all got motives for having let the interaction play out for so long. Kakashi's stalling until the clone gets into place, Hoshigaki's waiting for Kakashi's lead, Kushina's genuinely benefiting from the conversation itself, and Orochimaru's presumably trying to turn Kushina against Kakashi enough that she won't put up as much of a resistance when he tells her to kill someone she knows.

But Kakashi's reason has run its course.

Orochimaru straightens from his boneless slump against Kushina. "Rude," he murmurs – Kakashi has to lip-read it – before leaping away and clean off of the rock spire, an instant before Kakashi's clone bursts out of the ground with a kunai aimed at Kushina.

She hasn't made a single move of her own yet, but Kakashi figured Orochimaru would have summoned her with the order to defend herself if someone else attacks first. It'd be a massive waste of chakra for Orochimaru if he had to reconstitute her from a death he didn't let her avoid.

And Kushina does respond to the threat. She lurches backward, eyes widening, and in a movement almost too quick to react to a thin chakra chain snakes out of her back and curves around to stab the clone through the shoulder. If it were the real Kakashi, the injury would be incapacitating but non-lethal.

But clones are more fragile.

The clone loses cohesion and turns back into the other ninjutsu Kakashi imbued it with, and the lightning rasengan impacts Kushina from point-blank range.