"Our mission might be about to fail, Shisui."
After hearing what the Takigakure ninja said, Kakashi turned to Uchiha Shisui and spoke up.
Shisui's expression didn't look great either, but he still refused to back down. Instead, he said:
"It's fine."
"It's just a tailed beast."
"Watch me knock it into the sky with Susanoo."
That's what he said… but when the Seven-Tails was actually released, Shisui's face still grew very serious.
One tailed beast on its own is only about Kage-class. Shisui wasn't afraid of fighting it.
But their mission wasn't just to defeat the beast; they had to seal it, and on Takigakure's home turf. That multiplied the difficulty.
Kind of like in the original timeline, when Sasuke strutted in to pick a fight with Killer B—only to get folded and nearly vomit up his last three meals.
The Seven-Tails' host wasn't a perfect jinchūriki like B, but Chōmei was still a tough opponent.
Kakashi and Shisui both carefully sized up the giant bug.
The upper half of Chōmei looked like a deep blue beetle—exactly the kind of big rhinoceros beetle boys love. Its lower half was long and segmented, like some cross between a centipede and a snake.
On its back were six translucent fairy-like wings, glittering in rainbow colors; together with its tail, that made seven—its tails visualized.
Those six wings were actually gorgeous, but unfortunately they were attached to Chōmei's ugly mug, so they didn't add any beauty at all. Instead, the whole thing just felt… hard to look at.
For the record, its jinchūriki in the original, Fū, had the same problem. Fairy-bug wings or not, with that face she wasn't beating any actual pixie.
"How ugly," Kakashi said dryly.
Honestly, there aren't many good-looking tailed beasts. Shisui didn't want Kakashi to keep roasting it; he just said:
"I'll handle the monster. Kakashi, you cover me."
Kakashi: "...Huh?"
He really wanted to ask, "Uh, me?" but Shisui had already launched himself forward.
"For justice, for the world, for Yorin-sama!" Shouting his slogan, he literally ran face-first into a tailed beast bomb and then charged in to brawl with the Seven-Tails.
Seeing this, Kakashi could only complain silently, then grit his teeth and rush toward Takigakure's ranks.
He understood Shisui's intent: while Shisui fought Chōmei, he was supposed to hold back the Takigakure ninja.
For Kakashi as he was now, that was a nightmare assignment.
Even after having been massacred by Shisui's seven-in-seven-out routine, Takigakure still had hundreds, maybe thousands of ninja standing. Even if they were all genin, the spit alone could drown him.
"Damn it… what the hell am I supposed to do here?"
He didn't have many options. He couldn't exactly say to Shisui, "Why don't we swap? You handle the Takigakure guys, I'll fight the tailed beast."
He'd be meeting Rin again in two seconds.
Kakashi took a deep breath.
Staring at the Takigakure ninja charging in from all directions, yelling "Get out of the way, bastard!", he got a very clear impression: they fully planned to treat him like trash by the roadside, stomp him to death, then rush to reinforce their tailed beast.
Sure, Chōmei was rampaging indiscriminately now that it was unsealed—Takigakure ninja were in its attack range too.
But so what? They weren't afraid of dying.
They were more than ready to use their lives to pave the road to "victory" in this fight.
"Kakashi!!!"
While trading blows with Chōmei, Shisui shouted his name again, reminding him to buy as much time as possible.
Shisui had already pinned the Seven-Tails down. If he just had a bit more time, he could use sealing jutsu to pack Chōmei away and leave—
Yorin's research wasn't just burning money and resources. Konoha's jutsu had advanced across the board, including sealing.
If Suna could stuff Shukaku into a pot, then Konoha could now stuff a tailed beast into something the size of a fist.
But that all depended on whether Kakashi could hold off the Takigakure horde.
Could he?
On paper, absolutely not.
But whether he could or not, he had to.
The real question was: with what?
He'd drawn his kunai. He'd drawn his blade. He'd formed the seals. Lightning surged in his hand—the Chidori.
Once meant to be his and Sasuke's signature move, it had become one of Yorin's banner techniques. Because of that, when Takigakure ninja saw that blue glow, many of them hesitated and grew wary.
This wasn't Yorin himself, but here was someone using Yorin's signature jutsu. Did that mean this man was Yorin's close protégé, maybe even a disciple?
If so, his strength might not be far from Kage-level.
If that was the case, they couldn't just treat him like a random piece of trash; they'd need to go all out to grind him into the dirt.
Kakashi: "Thanks so much for thinking so highly of me…"
He could feel death breathing down his neck.
He figured he still had one shot left—one tactic that could let him wipe out the Takigakure forces without breaking a sweat: the Sharingan.
Kakashi had always felt his life was cursed.
His mother died when he was small; his father killed himself while Kakashi was still young. He finally gained friends and a girl he loved, and then his friend went insane and his girl…
Thinking of that, his expression twisted.
If Yorin hadn't used Edo Tensei, he and Rin would have been doomed to never be together, and his future would be the same as in the original timeline—middle-aged, sharing a bench with Guy, barely muddling through life.
But now… was he really better off?
Was he really "happy" living with a Rin dragged back from the Pure Land?
In that split second, Kakashi thought through a lot.
In the end, he made a decision that would shock most people.
Once, Yorin had asked him: "Kakashi, do you desire power?"
He'd refused outright, joking, "Nah, desire what now?"
Yorin hadn't pushed then, just smiled and dropped it. Kakashi had breathed a sigh of relief, thinking he'd successfully dodged the bullet.
He hadn't.
Yorin had merely postponed the issue.
He still wanted to reshape Kakashi into someone stronger, better—someone more satisfying to watch in motion, not the half-dead silver-haired dead-fish-eyes he was now.
Kakashi: "In the end, I still couldn't escape your schemes, Yorin-sama."
He smiled bitterly. Facing the mass of Takigakure shinobi charging him from all sides, he thought:
"So in the end, I still fell right into Yorin's trap."
As he thought this, he pulled out a sealing scroll and retrieved two eyeballs from it.
Obito's pair of Mangekyō Sharingan.
Eyes that contained Kamui—that utterly broken and terrifying space-time jutsu.
Yes. This was the "power" Yorin had promised him: a gift strong enough to change the world—or at least, totally reverse the situation in this battle.
"The lenses have been adjusted," Yorin had told him, "so they won't drain chakra like the original Mangekyō. They still eat energy, but with these chakra-recovery pills, you can practically run infinite uptime.
"So go, Kakashi. Become an unkillable stim-junkie warrior—let the heavens fear you, let everyone flinch when you appear."
"Yorin-sama really is…"
Kakashi didn't even know how to evaluate him anymore.
So he didn't. He just shook his head and silently fitted the two eyes into his own sockets.
As soon as they settled, his power spiked—surged, roared upward.
"Obito!"
He couldn't help shouting the name of his long-dead friend, then adding:
"I finally understand your obsession. I finally understand your ambition!!"
And with that, double-Kamui Kakashi, newly reborn, plunged into the Takigakure army like an unstoppable force.
The White Fang.
The legendary Konoha White Fang's killing style resurfaced through Kakashi's hands.
He didn't use Kamui as a main weapon, but as a top-tier mobility skill, pairing it with the Hatake clan's deadly kenjutsu. That combination let him reap enemy lives at terrifying speed.
His technique and experience might have been a hair inferior to Sakumo's, but his space-time jutsu more than made up the difference.
And on top of a sword in one hand, he had Chidori in the other, the lightning blade cutting down foes like grass. His kill rate was now even higher than his father's had been.
This was Kakashi's new way of fighting.
A style that belonged to him alone.
~~~
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