A/N: Thanks to Empirimancer for supporting me on Patreon! I really appreciate it, as well as everyone else who supports me or writes comments or reviews. I don’t usually get around to replying to every comment, but I appreciate every last one of them. : )

-o-

“…some kind of attempt on the Hokage. His hideout is sealed but I can see his guards running around-”

Hiashi swivelled his Byakugan from one Hyūga clansmen to the next, reading each of their lips in turn to try and gain some grasp of the situation. His Hyūga clansmen were all using their own Byakugan to observe their assigned sections of the Village as they had been trained to do, but even their combined knowledge did not tell him much. Konoha was in chaos.

His hands gripped the railing of his balcony until his knuckles were as white as robes. “Where is Inoichi? And what in the blazes are the Anbu doing? I have not heard a single damned thing since-”

“Hiashi,” his father said behind him, “the Hyūga clan needs to step up. If the Mind-transmission technique is truly being blocked, then we are the only ones left who can bring news to the others.”

“The hospital appears to be fine for now – Kato Shizune seems to be preparing additional emergency rooms, though Lady Tsunade does not appear to be with her…”

“I’m not doing a damned thing until I receive word from Intel,” Hiashi said. “This is a crisis, and in times of crisis the clan comes first. You are the one who taught me that, remember?” He cast his Byakugan around the compound. “Speaking of which, where are those bloody children? Ko, didn’t I tell you to-”

“Father, what’s going on? I heard the explosions-”

Hiashi was startled back into the present, the black and white vision of the Byakugan fading away as he looked at his oldest daughter and his late brother’s son with his own eyes. “Hinata, where is your sister? You and Neji should head to my private chambers and seal yourselves in along with your grandfather. You are not to come out under any circumstances until all this is over, is that understood?”

“It looks like somebody raided the Konoha armoury. Perhaps they were looking for some kind of artefact? No idea how they’re doing all of this; the Sand’s forces were supposed to be few in number.”

His father narrowed his eyes. “Do not treat me like a child, Hiashi. I may be old but I am still a Hyūga. I am more than able to-”

“Wait… something’s coming! Something – something big!”

Hiashi twisted around at the sound of Ko’s voice, barely even pausing to take in the sight of the approaching enemy. His Byakugan could not make sense of it – it was like an amorphous black storm of chakra racing directly towards them and taking out every single branch member in its path. He had only ever once seen something like it, and even then he had only recognized it from legend.

“Get into my chambers and seal us in,” he shouted, his feet already moving into a run. “Now!”

-o-

Naruto pushed up against the heavy lid that sealed off the exit to the tunnel, lifting it up ever so slightly just in case a sand ninja’s blade was about to come flashing through. When he saw no one there, he silently pushed it up all the way and ascended into the dark chamber above.

“Looks clear.”

Lee clambered up behind him, and blinked at the sight of dusty jars with ancient confectionary stored all around them. “Are those sweets? Our secret underground tunnel network leads into a django shop?”

Naruto shrugged. “Why not? It looks inconspicuous enough, and there’s both a front and a back entrance, so it’s not too obvious if someone enters and doesn’t come out again. Add it to your list of A-ranked secrets, I guess.”

“I’ve never actually learned an A-rank secret before,” Lee said happily. “I cannot wait to tell Neji and Tenten all about it!” His face drooped. “No wait, I suppose that would be treason and the Anbu would come after me if I did that. Darn.”

Naruto peered out through the dust-covered store window, but the area outside appeared deserted. This part of the Uchiha distract was still owned by Sasuke, he recalled, and though there was no ban on traveling through it there was also no reason for anyone to attack or defend the area.

A moment later they were out in the street, trying to orient themselves.

“The Hokage faces are to the northwest,” said Naruto, falling back on the easiest method to find your way in Konoha. “And the Uchiha shrine is over there, so that puts us pretty much in the centre of the Uchiha district.” He frowned. Seeing those blood-red torii gates loom up before them reminded him of their secret meeting, but now that he thought about it he could not actually remember what it was his clone had discussed after Sasuke had pulled him aside for privacy. How was that even possible? Shadow-cloned memories were not something that could just disappear… could they?

An explosion went off in the distance, and Naruto could not help but jump slightly. It seemed that the fighting was still going on in the center of the Village, with flashes of fire and lightning flying back and forth as shadowy figures leaped between rooftops. Yet the torrent of explosive tags was slowing down, and there was no way the Sand could realistically expect to win once Konoha was given the chance to rally their forces…

“We are pretty close to the evacuation site,” Lee said optimistically. “If we just keep moving and stick to the shadows, I bet we can make it there without encountering any enemies at all!”

“Yeah,” said Naruto. He did not say anything else.

It was not even two minutes before a lone figure emerged from the buildings behind them and began to rush towards them. Naruto cursed and fumbled for the sword on his back, but Lee’s outstretched arm stopped him. A moment later he realized why: The approaching figure was half-burned and covered in soot, but there was no disguising those round buns of hair that looked so very much like a panda’s ears.

“Tenten,” he breathed. “What happened? Where are the others?”

“There was… trap,” she gasped, barely slowing in her limping gait as she approached them. Her voice was ragged almost to the point of being unrecognizable. It reminded Naruto painfully of the time when he had forced Kurama’s burning chakra into Ino’s coils, searing her lungs from the inside out. She coughed wetly. “The Sand, we were… ambush.” She teetered and tripped right in front of Naruto, and he instinctively reached out to catch her, but an iron fist grabbed his chūnin jacket and yanked him backwards at the last second. Tenten fell face down onto the street with a painful crunch.

Naruto shot an alarmed look at his companion, but Lee was staring down at his fallen teammate with a dangerously calm look in his eyes. “Tenten, what is the code?”

Tenten looked up at Lee with a shocked, hurt expression, but it was too late to pretend: She was close enough now that Naruto could see the emptiness in her eyes – the way each individual muscle on her face strained to simulate human emotion, as though they were being pulled by invisible strings…

A dagger flashed out from Tenten’s sleeves, but Lee easily slapped it aside with the flat of his palm. Her body flew backwards through the air, a dozen knives already finding their way into her hands as she landed on the nearest rooftop above them. At the same time two other shadows dropped down behind them, one crouched on all fours and panting like a feral beast while the other loomed larger than any other genin, his vast bulk protected by thick plates of armour as he twirled a bō staff with both hands.

“Chōji and Kiba,” Naruto choked. “Lee, they’re being controlled by the puppet technique – Kankuro said in our meeting that he had a way to suppress chakra, he must be using that to-”

Lee narrowed his eyes. “Are they alive?”

“Yeah, but-”

“Good.” Lee shot forward and fought both of them back at once with a blinding series of punches and kicks, even as Tenten hurled yet more projectiles down at them from above. There had been no time to state the obvious fact that the only reason for the enemy to keep their puppets alive was so that Naruto and Lee would hold back for fear of hurting their friends. But then, it was not as if knowing about the ploy would do anything to stop it from working perfectly.

Naruto leaped back, a volley of shuriken impacting the ground in front of him as he flashed through the seals for the shadow clone technique. A trio of clones burst into existence only to be immediately destroyed as a howling tempest crashed into them. The wind lifted Naruto off his feet and hurled him bodily across the cobblestones, and he only barely managed to orient himself enough to complete the seals for the earthen wall technique. Stone ramparts rose up around him to block the raging winds, and for a brief moment he thought he might find some time to catch his breath, but then a crossbow bolt whistled overhead to strike the ground behind him and he did not even need to hear the sizzling sound to know what would come next.

Naruto hurled himself over the ramparts even as the ground behind him went up in an eruption of fire and shattered stone, and he tried to form new seals but the hurricane wind immediately crashed into him again, hurling his body back against what remained of the stone wall and knocking all the air out of his lungs.

Can’t use clones, can’t risk area-effect attacks.

He raised his right hand towards the rooftop where the bolt had come from and blasted out a blinding flash of light from the seal on his palm, narrowing it to an intense beam through the power of his transformation technique. The puppet master made no attempt to pull Tenten out of the way however, and she did not even blink as the searing white light burned away at her eyes, her hands already reaching into her pouch for new projectiles to throw at her friends for all that she could no longer see.

There was no time for Naruto to curse his unseen enemy: On the other side of the street Lee had fought his way past Kiba and Chōji, and an aura of raw chakra seemed to build up around him as he charged straight towards Temari. She seemed to welcome his attack with her fan held wide open, black kimono and red obi flapping in the wind as the storm she had created roared back in challenge.

Naruto’s eyes widened in panic as he realized what was about to happen. “Lee, stop! Temari saw us fight during the exams, she knows exactly what you can do and yet she’s standing right in front of you!”

“Understood!” The pressure around Lee seemed to dissipate as he cancelled his Eight-Gates technique and moved to flank Temari with his normal top speed. Naruto had trained with Lee and knew all too well his limitations: He was fast but it was only normal muscle movement and that meant that the laws of momentum applied to full effect. The faster he moved the harder it became to change direction, and both Temari and Kankuro were able to use invisible attacks. All it took was a single misstep for Lee to impale himself on a blade of wind or have his legs shredded by some kind of hidden trap…

Now that they were free from Lee, Chōji and Kiba turned and rushed towards Naruto from both sides, and he leaped backwards in a panic. Kiba came bounding after him straight away, but Chōji could not quite seem to reach him, and Naruto suddenly remembered that there was a limited range to the puppet-strings technique. He dodged experimentally, veering first to the left and then to the right, watching carefully how close his opponents were able to get each time before their master was forced to reposition himself. In Naruto’s mind he envisioned each of the buildings across the street, drawing imaginary circles around the two living puppets until their surface areas overlapped at a single point.

Sakura-chan, I’m never complaining about you forcing me to do academy exercises again!

Naruto reached for his holster and flung a single kunai right between his opponents and through the half-open window on the other side of the street. The explosive tag around the handle detonated with a resounding roar that hurled broken Uchiha masonry across the road along with a shadow that had come leaping out a mere second earlier, his black cloak and hood flitting in the wind like a wraith.

Kankuro.

Naruto began to charge towards the puppet master, but Kiba’s body had already interspersed itself between them, his eyes wild with an inhuman rage. Naruto realized in shock that the feral ninja’s chakra had not been entirely supressed after all, but had been left under the effects of his clan’s combat drugs, his veins bulging with a primordial chakra almost as if he were a miniature Tailed Beast. Naruto completed the seals for the summoning technique right as Kiba’s outstretched claws were about to tear into his neck, and a huge orange toad burst into existence between them, swatting the monstrous boy aside with a surprised croak.

“Gama, attack everyone except the boy in green – capture, don’t kill!”

Naruto turned and began to chase after Kankuro once more, but a swishing sound behind him forced him to dive to the side before Chōji’s staff could smash his skull in. The Akimichi clan heir was swinging his bō staff around wildly, with almost no regard for defence or for the countless needles that were still embedded in his chest – the means by which Kankuro had delivered his chakra-supressing drug, Naruto reckoned. He drew his chakra-forged ninjatō and channelled wind chakra along the blade until it could have carved through solid steel, then struck out and sliced through Chōji’s whirling staff in a single smooth motion. The heavy-set and armoured boy stared mutely at his broken weapon for a moment, then stepped forward and backhanded Naruto across the face with enough force to send him sprawling across the cobblestones.

Okay, yeah, this isn’t working.

Naruto scrambled to his feet, only barely managing to dodge his much larger opponent who seemed to have given up on using weapons entirely and was now just trying to grab onto Naruto long enough for Tenten to land a hit, or possibly just to crush him to death. It was pretty clear at this point that Kankuro could not use any of their original fighting skills and techniques, but with three of them fighting at once and Naruto unable to fight back effectively it was only a matter of time until one of them got a hit in.

He waited until Chōji lunged forward again for one of his wild swings, then channelled chakra to his feet and vaulted directly over his opponent, his glowing blue chakra blade slashing the area directly between him and the puppet master as he leaped. Chōji’s body crumbled very literally like a puppet with its strings cut, and Naruto could see Kankuro twitching his fingers to reactivate his technique. By that time however Naruto had already raised stone walls all around the fallen boy until they closed at the top, forming an impenetrable dome that put his drugged and unconscious body well out of Kankuro’s reach.

His opponent’s futile cursing would have been quite satisfying under different circumstances, Naruto reflected.

He chanced a glance at Lee, who he was relieved to find still in one piece. Temari seemed content to fight defensively, having evaded Lee’s initial attacks by conjuring a tempest directly underneath her and then using her fan like a flying carpet to float on top of her own wind. In response Lee had resorted to using the seals that Naruto had tattooed onto the soles of his feet, creating bursts of pressurized water much like Tenten’s scroll that pushed him upwards and allowed him to change direction mid-air. Right then Lee finally seemed to build up enough momentum to reach her, and in response Temari touched one of the storage seals on her fan as a result of which nothing seemed to happen.

Naruto’s mind raced in a panic, his memory flashing back to the time when they had discussed ways to optimize each other’s techniques: “The most obvious way to boost your wind technique would be to seal compressed air or maybe even poison gas into your fan like Tenten did with her water scroll, but I’m guessing since you even inscribed the summoning seal onto your fan you already thought of that one…”

“Lee, get back! She’s using poison wind!”

“Understood!” If anything Lee seemed to build up even more speed, jets of water from his feet launching him directly towards the cloud of poison gas that Temari was blowing towards Lee with her wind technique. Right at the last second Lee activated the seals which Naruto had tattooed onto his chest, releasing the giant metal shield that Sasuke had procured for him before activating the countless explosive seals that Tenten had inscribed onto it and hurling the entire thing directly at Temari with all the combined momentum of his own movement as well as the speed of his throw. The Kazekage’s daughter desperately activated the protective seals on her fan to block, only for the resulting explosion to shatter every nearby window in a cataclysmic flaming vortex that shook the buildings on both sides of the street and blasted Naruto and Kankuro backwards with a shockwave of scorching-hot air.

Naruto scrambled back to his feet, not wasting any time to wonder whether either Lee or Temari could have possibly survived that explosion, and hurled himself straight at Kankuro. The black-clad puppet master flashed through a set of panicked handseals and Naruto only barely managed to pull back his blade in time to avoid impaling the feral boy that was suddenly standing there in his place. Kiba had been substituted by Kankuro as though he were a mere physical object, looking somewhat battered from his fight with the giant toad but seeming no less feral than he had been before. There was something about that crazed look in his eyes that went beyond the effects of mere drugs, something more primal than even the raw nature chakra that was coursing through his veins, and it was in that moment that Naruto realized he had not seen Kiba’s white dog anywhere with them.

Akamaru. Oh no, Kiba, I’m so sorry…

Kiba let out a primal scream, a guttural howl that would have sent any chakra monster running for the hills in mindless fright. Then he charged forward with such blinding speed that Naruto could think of nothing to do except raise his sword in a desperate attempt to block. Kiba charged straight through the feeble defence and bodily slammed Naruto to the ground, his claws tearing through Naruto’s vest and chest like trails of white-hot fire. Naruto stared in horror at Kiba’s inhuman yellow eyes, feeling the boy’s hot breath on his face as a stream of drool trickled down from his torn and bloody lips.

Naruto’s mind distantly registered that Kiba had paused in his attack for some reason, and that thought was just enough to shake him out of it and shove the feral boy away from him before Kankuro could think to re-establish control. The puppet master had leaped right on top of Gama, and after a twitch of his fingers the huge orange toad began to turn towards Naruto, an empty expression in its wide yellow eyes despite the horrific claw marks that ran all along its body where Kiba had torn into the poor beast.

Oh no, no way I’m falling for that one again.

Naruto summoned several shadow clones to keep Kiba occupied, lending them nearly all of his chakra just to make the next step easier, before reaching into his pouch to draw his Flying Thunder God kunai. He hurled the knife directly between Gama’s legs even as he rolled underneath the toad’s tongue which had come whipping overhead, then turned and began to swing his sword towards the empty air behind him. Right in that moment the dagger impacted the ground behind his opponent, and he felt his remaining chakra lurch as the summoning seal activated, and then all of a sudden his enemy was right in front of him and his wind-enhanced sword was already in the process of slicing through his back.

The blade had already sliced halfway through his opponent before Naruto realized something was off. There was a crack of breaking wood as his enemy split in two, and then its top half spun around to face Naruto, its demented puppet head clacking manically as spindly wooden arms flashed out to embrace him in a murderous hug. Naruto screamed as his ribs bent and buckled under the pressure, while at the same time blades flashed out of hidden compartments and began to surgically carve his body to ribbons. Naruto flung his left arm forward in a blind panic, activating his explosive seal tattoo on pure instinct, and the world disappeared in a flash of white fire. When he could see again he was lying on his back, broken puppet parts littering the street all around him. The palm of his left hand had been entirely blown open in what would almost certainly have been irreparable damage for anyone who did not have Kurama’s chakra, and he felt his stomach lurch at the sight of the bloody mess he had made of himself.

Kankuro was staring at him from across the street. “How are you not dead?”

Naruto ignored him, pushing himself up painfully with one hand and half-crawling towards his animal companion before his opponent could re-establish control. “Gama, capture that feral-looking boy,” he said. “Now!” The toad croaked in acknowledgment and shot out its whip-like tongue once more, this time managing to snag Kiba and pulling the dazed boy directly into its wide open mouth. Naruto wasted no time in cancelling his technique and sent both Kiba and the toad back to the place of its summoning.

That just leaves one.

Kankuro staggered back, a panicked look in his eyes as he turned towards the end of the street where Lee and Temari had disappeared in the giant explosion. “Sis! Sis, this isn’t working – they’re not folding!”

There was the sound of moving rubble as the eldest of the Sand Siblings pushed her way out of the smoking wreckage of what had once been an Uchiha family home. Her elaborate hairstyle had come completely undone, and her eyes were only barely visible as she stared out through bloody bangs at Lee, who was just now making his way out of his own pile of rubble on Naruto’s side of the street. Somehow, they had both managed to survive that ridiculous explosion. Lee gave Naruto a brief nod of acknowledgement, but his eyes did not leave his opponent even for a second.

“Fine,” Temari said, a look of ice-cold murder in her eyes. “Switch to plan B.”

-o-

“I’m sorry! Did I make it in time?”

Kakashi stirred. There was a voice just barely on the edge of hearing, and it sounded hauntingly familiar, but his head was buried as though under an avalanche of pressure and he could not remember where he had heard it before. All he knew was that the memory was painful, and that a part of him did not want to remember – but that he would never be able to truly forget it, no matter how much time went by.

“Don’t expect anything from me! It’s a mystery how someone like you ever became a jōnin in the first place.”

Kakashi tried to turn towards the source of the voice, but found it oddly difficult to move. It was as if his whole body was paralyzed, somehow. Had he fallen asleep? He knew of sleep paralysis, of course, but no jōnin would ever assume something innocuous when there existed so many worse alternatives.

“What do I think I did wrong? Why, I shouldn’t have let my friends die, of course.”

That one was his own voice, no doubt about it. He had said that line only once before, while telling campfire stories to his team – and that thought shook him awake. He had his own team now, no matter how strange that thought seemed to him, and he knew that he had to protect them even if it killed him.

He tried to force life back into his limbs, but instead of chakra all he could feel was a flash of agony like burning fire coursing through his veins. He was suffering from chakra depletion, he realized dimly.

That’s right… I was fighting, wasn’t I?

It was all coming back to him now. He had fought Chiyo-basama of the honoured siblings in single-combat, and somehow he had managed to survive the ordeal. Obito’s eye had saved him, just like so many times before. Only this time, it had done so by virtue of a forbidden space-time technique that summoned a twisting void to consume his opponent, at the cost of his last dregs of chakra. He had opened the first of the eight gates just like Gai had taught him, and awakened the Mangekyō by force.

A part of him wondered if he was alive by virtue of tenacity or sheer dumb luck, but he could not quite manage the energy to really care.

A blast of fire lit up the sky above him, and all of a sudden he could see where he was. He was lying in a Konoha back ally, surrounded by bodies of Sand and Leaf ninjas alike. He must have somehow managed to throw himself amidst the dead right before he lost consciousness. He did not know how much time had passed since then, but it sounded like the battle was still going on around him. With a heroic effort, he bit through the pain that seemed to flare from every single cell of his body and forced himself up.

There was a ghostly sigh behind him. “Pushing yourself too hard as always, I see…”

Kakashi nearly tripped in his haste to turn around, but when he did there was only an empty alley behind him. His heart was pounding at the sheer impossibility of what he had heard. That voice…

“Rin?”

Before his eyes, a thin mirage rose up from amongst the bodies of the dead. Like a trail of white smoke, with a featureless round face – but then, he could not remember the real Rin’s face, either.

“You’re not real,” he whispered. “You’re just a hallucination.” Or a genjutsu, but he could not imagine any ninja taunting him so pointlessly, and he did not have the chakra to dispel an illusion regardless.

The mirage cocked her head and seemed to look at him sadly, though he had no idea how he could tell given that she had no face. “Logical as always, Kakashi. Though you never seem to apply that logic to yourself. Why don’t you sit down and rest for a bit? You’re in no condition to do anything…”

“Can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “Poisoned. Need to go… hospital.” It was hard to tell through the pain in his veins and muscles, but the piercing wounds in his chest seemed to burn more brightly with every passing second. He turned in the direction of the massive white building that could easily be seen above the rooftops behind him, though it was little more than a blur before his one tired eye. He did not know if he could walk even that short distance, but perhaps if he called out for help…

“Don’t be silly. What if one of the Sand ninjas hears you instead? Even a genin could kill you right now.” The mirage seemed to put her hands on her hips, which just caused her smoky outline to blur into a wider wisp. “You were always so self-destructive… Don’t you remember the promise you made to me? And that after you ripped poor Obito’s eyes out, just to make yourself a little stronger.”

He stumbled, nearly tripping over his feet. “That’s – that’s not true! He gave it, to me, as… as a gift.”

“An eye as a gift!” A ghostly giggle escaped from ethereal lips. “So, he gave you his left eye right after you lost yours? And then the other one just happened to get destroyed? That sounds very likely.” She shook her head sadly. “Poor Kakashi. You’ve been used and controlled by so many people, who can blame you for being unable to remember? But I remember. Every single sin and regret, I remember…”

Before Kakashi’s horrified eyes, her countenance began to take shape. Brown, kindly eyes set in a warm round face, with purple markings running down her cheeks – the symbol of her clan, he remembered. How could he ever have forgotten something like that? He stared at the apparition in eclectic horror.

She reached out to him, and the touch of her hand on his cheek was like a flash of white-hot lightning. “Stay with me, Kakashi. For once in your life, be true and keep the promise that you made to me.”

“Can’t,” he slurred, though he despised himself for saying it. His legs seemed to be moving towards the hospital of their own accord. “I have a… new team.” He had to protect his sensei’s son, and he had to prevent Sasuke from ending up just like him. At least he had managed to save Sakura from this kind of life, though she had nearly ended up hating him for not wanting to teach her how to kill. “I’m sorry.”

She stared at him coldly – even with his back turned to her, he could still feel those eyes piercing into his very soul. “Well, it’s not as if it truly matters,” she said. “I’m in the hospital too, just as I’m in the Hyūga compound and the Uchiha district. Wherever pain and misery exist, there you’ll find me waiting.”

Kakashi kept moving. Something was terribly wrong, but through the fog in his brain and the fire in his veins it was hard to think of what it was. He must have mumbled something to the chūnin guardsmen stationed outside the hospital building, or else the sweet spectre of death behind him must have whispered into their ears, for they hurriedly moved aside as he approached. He found himself cursing the reputation that he had cultivated: Could they not see that he needed their help? But then, he had never accepted help, even when there were no ghosts and poisons to mess with his mind…

“You’re nearly there,” Rin whispered. “One more push. You’re so close now.”

He found himself moving towards Tsunade’s wing of the hospital. She had always been the only person who could cure Lady Chiyo’s poisons, creating a bitter rivalry that lasted all throughout the wars. As he stumbled through those blindingly white halls, however, he noticed more and more bodies lined up along the floor. Had there been so many injured already, that they had been forced to resort to leaving the dead lying outside the surgery rooms?

“There. Behind that green door.”

He collapsed against the door to Tsunade’s office, pushing it open through force of weight alone. There was a clink of metal followed by several wet fleshy sounds as the person inside picked up a surgical tool and set to work on the body in front of him. The man appeared to be a doctor, for he was dressed in white medical robes and wore a pair of large round spectacles.

“Just a moment,” the young man said, without turning around. “I’ll be with you in a second.”

“Please,” said Kakashi, stumbling into the room. His pervading sense of wrongness was doubling with every passing moment, but there was no longer any time left to think. “Need help. Poison. Tsunade…”

The doctor turned around, a look of surprise on his young face. “Hatake Kakashi. I beg your forgiveness – a shinobi of your calibre of course deserves priority treatment.” His robes were black and burnt at the front, Kakashi suddenly realized, and there was blood dripping from the scalpel in his hand. There was a young woman in a green dress lying on the desk behind him: Or rather, what appeared to be a young woman, with blond pigtails and voluptuous round breasts…

Kakashi tried to run, but his legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed against a row of cabinets, medical equipment scattering onto the floor around him. His hand reached for one of the shards of glass that littered the room even as the doctor advanced towards him, blood trickling from his scalpel as he moved, and with his last remaining strength Kakashi drove the makeshift weapon directly towards the Sharingan in his left eye.

Obito, Rin… forgive me!

The shard of glass stopped short just in front of his eye, halted as if by an invisible force. The young man smiled coldly at him. “Ah-ah. Let’s leave that sort of thing to the professionals, now shall we?”

Kabuto’s scalpel shot out, and the world turned black.