Thunder grumbled somewhere beyond the trees.
Sasuke stood at the edge of the training field, one hand braced on his knee, the other hanging useless and tingling at his side. The grass around the target posts was scorched in an untidy arc, black spiderwebs burned into dirt and wood.
"Again," he said, before Kakashi could.
His voice came out rough.
Kakashi's answer floated over from under the tree like it had been napping there the whole time. "We've already done 'again' twelve times."
He sounded lazy. He always sounded lazy. The way his visible eye tracked Sasuke's posture wasn't lazy at all.
Sasuke rolled his shoulder until something in it clicked back into place.
"Then one more," he said.
Kakashi didn't sigh, but there was a tiny pause where a different teacher might have. He pushed off the tree and walked to the white-painted marker in the middle of the field.
"Fine. Last run," he said. "Chidori only once. No doubling back, no last-minute detours, no deciding to carve your name into the cliff just to prove you can."
He said it like a joke. Sasuke heard the warning under it anyway.
The sky over the forest was going purple at the edges, bruised clouds layering in. The air had that tight, metallic taste that said rain was coming, but not yet. Static crawled against Sasuke's skin. Helpful, in this case.
Kakashi pointed toward the far side of the field where a thick rock slab jutted up like a crooked tooth. "From here to there," he said. "Commit. Either you reach it, or you don't use the technique at all."
Sasuke stepped up to the mark. The ground under his sandals was beaten flat from the week's worth of drills: his own footprints stamped over themselves so many times they'd become one long gouge.
His legs ached all the way up into his hips. His chakra reserves felt scraped thin, sore the way muscles got after too many kicks. The curse mark under Kakashi's seal smoldered dully at his neck, less a voice today and more a hot stone lodged under his skin.
He still wanted to go again.
"That look on your face," Kakashi said conversationally from behind him, "is exactly why normal people take vacations."
Sasuke ignored him.
He closed his eyes, drew a breath in slow through his nose, and dropped his weight until his heels felt anchored to the earth. When he opened them again, the world sharpened. The Sharingan slid into place with a familiar unpleasant tug, and the training field shifted from "place" to "problem."
Distance, angle, wind. The slight tilt of the ground. Each blade of grass standing between him and the rock became a series of markers.
"Anytime today," Kakashi added.
Sasuke exhaled.
"Chidori."
Chakra surged to his hand in a brutal, practiced flood. It felt like tearing open a groove he'd already carved into himself; the energy wanted to fall into that path, that shape, as if the move had been waiting under his skin.
Lightning shrieked alive around his palm.
The first time, it had been overwhelming—noise and light and too much information, the sound of a thousand birds clawing at his nerves. Now the chaos had edges. The crackle into his fingers, the pressure building at his wrist, the way the chakra condensed into something sharp enough that his hand might as well have been the tip of a spear.
His body remembered the run.
He launched forward.
The world narrowed to a tunnel just wide enough for his momentum. Sharingan-fed afterimages flickered at the edges of his vision: where his foot would slip if he got sloppy, where his shoulder would dip too low and lose speed. He adjusted half a heartbeat early, over and over, letting those ghost-motions etch deeper into his muscles.
Step, step, step—each one faster than the last.
The lightning around his hand screamed against the air. His heart spiked to keep up. Wind tore at his clothes and hair; the smell of ozone stabbed up his nose.
Halfway.
He pushed harder, dragging chakra from everywhere—legs, core, the tight band around his lungs—feeding it into the shape in his hand. It hurt. Good. That meant he was doing something that would leave a mark.
The rock target loomed up, pitted from earlier attempts.
He raised his arm.
For a fraction of a second, doubt tried to breathe—what if his aim was off, what if he clipped it wrong and shattered the bones in his hand instead—
He cut the thought away.
The Sharingan gave him the line. He drove his arm along it.
Chidori slammed into stone.
The sound went through him like a punch. Light flared white-blue, then spat shards of rock and dust in a burst that sprayed his face. The slab split along the path of his arm, a jagged, ugly crack ripped down its center.
For an instant, his momentum tried to follow his hand into the rock. Kakashi's grip closed on the back of his vest and yanked him sideways, redirecting the last of his charge into a stumbling skid instead of a collision.
The lightning guttered out.
Sasuke ended up on one knee in the dirt, chest heaving. His hand throbbed with delayed pain, nerves jangling like he'd punched a thundercloud.
"…Tch," he managed.
Kakashi let go of his vest. "I did say 'no carving your name.'"
Sasuke looked back at the rock. The crack he'd made clawed from mid-height almost to the top. Not clean. Not all the way through yet.
Not enough.
He pushed to his feet and swayed. The world tilted a little, edges fuzzing. The Sharingan blurred; his vision slid back toward normal with a reluctant, grainy flicker.
Kakashi stepped in front of him, blocking his view of the target. "That's it," he said, tone leaving no room for argument. "We're done."
"One more," Sasuke said.
"You said that last time."
"This time I mean it."
The corner of Kakashi's eye crinkled. "You meant it last time too."
Sasuke clenched his sore hand, flexing his fingers. They trembled, just slightly. Annoying. "It's not clean," he said, jerking his chin at the rock. "I can go deeper."
"Sure," Kakashi said. "Right into your own nervous system."
He reached out and took Sasuke's wrist, turning his palm up. The skin was reddened, faint spiderwebs of burst capillaries tracing his fingers. Kakashi's thumb pressed along the tendons with professional precision.
Sasuke flinched.
"Pushing this technique with an unfinished body is like forcing a river through a crack in a dam," Kakashi said. "You get more water through. You also get a bigger crack."
"That's the point," Sasuke snapped. "I need a bigger crack."
Kakashi went quiet for a second. The wind shifted around them, carrying the smell of dirt and distant smoke from someone's cooking fire.
"This thing you're chasing," Kakashi said eventually, "you think you're going to catch it by bleeding yourself dry in a field?"
Sasuke yanked his hand back. "What, you'd rather I sit around playing cards?"
"Cards are underrated," Kakashi said mildly. "So is not falling over in the middle of a fight because you decided exhaustion was a personality trait."
Sasuke's jaw tightened.
Images slotted in without permission: Naruto stumbling into town with that idiot pervert, laughing too loud, rambling about giant toads. Naruto wasting time, getting distracted, doing everything wrong—and somehow still managing to drag himself up whenever it counted.
He could see it already. Finals tomorrow, or the next mission after. Naruto standing up, grinning like an idiot, pulling some wild, half-baked miracle out of nowhere.
He'll still somehow catch up.
The thought curled bitter in his chest.
"He doesn't have to do this," Sasuke muttered. "Not like this."
"Who?" Kakashi asked, though his tone said he already knew.
Sasuke didn't give him the satisfaction of answering.
For a moment, all that moved was the grass in the wind and the sweat crawling down the back of Sasuke's neck.
Kakashi shoved his hands into his pockets. "You and Naruto are different storms," he said finally. "He's a flash flood. Loud, messy, knocks things over by accident and somehow waters fields on the way."
Sasuke frowned. "And me?"
"Cold front," Kakashi said. "Builds quietly. Drop in pressure, long way out, and then one day the sky decides to come down sideways."
"…That's stupid," Sasuke said.
"Yep," Kakashi agreed easily. "The metaphor, or the part where both of you are going to get people hurt if you keep pretending you don't need shelter?"
Sasuke scowled. "I don't need—"
"Everyone needs something," Kakashi cut in. "Naruto collects people without meaning to. That's his shelter. You…" He tilted his head, studying Sasuke with that too-sharp gaze. "You keep walking into the rain and then getting mad when you're wet."
"I don't have time for your weather report," Sasuke said.
Kakashi sighed this time, openly. "Right now," he said, "you don't have time for a concussion and a torn chakra network either. Which is what you'll get if you try that again tonight."
Sasuke opened his mouth.
Kakashi's tone flattened. "That was not an opening for debate."
There it was—that iron under the laziness, the jōnin commander voice that shut down arguments on the battlefield. Sasuke's anger flared against it, hot and useless.
The curse mark under his collar pulsed. Just once. A quiet, ugly throb that seemed to agree with Kakashi in the most infuriating way possible.
He clicked his tongue and looked away. "Fine," he bit out. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," Kakashi echoed. "After you sleep. After you stretch. After it stops feeling like your bones are humming."
He stepped past Sasuke, clapping him once on the shoulder as he went. "Come on. I'll walk you back before you trip on a ladybug and impale yourself on a branch."
Sasuke jerked out from under his hand but fell into step anyway. His legs were unsteady in a way he didn't like admitting.
As they started down the path, thunder rolled closer. A thin fork of lightning scratched across the distant sky, white carving through purple.
Without meaning to, Sasuke glanced that way.
For a second, he imagined his Chidori reaching that far—cutting through clouds, through anything between him and what he wanted. Power enough to erase the distance between him and his brother. Power enough that no one could ever put him on his knees again.
The sky didn't care. It just flashed and rumbled and went back to gathering itself.
Kakashi looked up too, the light catching the Sharingan under his hitai-ate for an instant before it vanished.
"Different storms," he said under his breath.
Sasuke pretended he hadn't heard.
He lowered his eyes to the path, shoulders tight, hand still tingling with leftover lightning, and walked back toward the village that was getting ready to watch him fail or succeed in front of everyone.
Either way, he thought, he'd make sure they remembered.
Far away from Konoha's walls, the same storm dragged its fingers across another stretch of sky.
Rain hadn't started yet, but the clouds had done that thing where they swallowed the sunset, turning the world into a long, gray hallway. A dirt road curled between wet-smelling pines, the occasional lantern-glow from distant farmhouses pinpricks against the dark.
Two figures walked it.
From a distance, they looked like any traveling shinobi pair: cloaks drawn close, hoods up, heads bowed against the wind. Up close, the differences crept in.
The taller one carried a bandaged sword almost as big as he was, wrapped tight and slung over his back. Bits of chakra leaked from it like scent, sharp and briny. His teeth showed whenever he smirked, which was often.
"Smell that?" Kisame asked, drawing in a deep breath that had nothing to do with air. "All that lovely chakra, crackling in the same direction."
He jerked his chin toward the horizon where lightning flashed again.
"Exams," he went on. "They're still doing that little tournament of theirs, yeah? Herd all their baby weapons into one spot and have them hit each other until the interesting ones pop out."
Beside him, Itachi didn't change expression.
His hood shadowed most of his face, but his eyes were open, quiet and clear. The rain-wait in the air pressed at them, at his skin. In the distance, the lightning flicker echoed against the glassy surface of his gaze, turning black into a brief, muted red.
"Konoha likes to watch itself," he said. "It tells them they're still alive."
Kisame laughed, a low, rough sound. "That's one way to do a headcount."
He kicked a loose stone off the road. It pinged into the ditch.
"Guy from the organization said the timing's good, yeah?" he said. "All those genin, all that chakra. 'Plenty of samples when the time comes.'"
His tone made it clear what he thought about men who talked like that. It wasn't respect.
"We're not here for samples," Itachi said.
He kept walking, steps even, almost casual. His cloak brushed the tops of grass when the wind leaned in. Under the fabric, the metal rings of his hitai-ate scratched softly as they knocked against the collar.
"Yeah, yeah," Kisame said. "Higher priorities. Bigger fish." His grin crooked wider. "Still. Hard not to think about it. Little jinchūriki, Hyūga eyes, Uchiha leftovers… Konoha's really packing the buffet these days."
He said it like a joke.
Itachi's eyes half-lidded. In his peripheral vision, he could see it: the shape of the village, not as buildings but as chakra concentrations. Old patterns he knew too well—where the patrol routes usually overlapped, where the ANBU watch-posts sat on the roofs, where the Hyūga compound spiderwebbed sightlines across the streets.
He had memorized those maps years ago. They lived in him whether he wanted them or not.
"Buffets," he said, "make people greedy. Greedy people make mistakes."
"That why you're not drooling?" Kisame asked. "All this talk of tasty chakra, and you're still chewing on proverbs."
Itachi glanced at him.
"I don't drool," he said.
Kisame barked out a laugh. "No, you don't, do you? That's the creepy part."
He stretched his arms over his head, joints popping. The sword on his back shifted, eager, then settled when he did.
"Still," Kisame said, more thoughtfully, "gotta admit. I'm curious. I've heard things about this Nine-Tails kid. About the Uchiha brat. Be a shame to walk right past without saying hello one day."
"One day," Itachi said.
Not today.
Today, their orders lay elsewhere—information to retrieve, lines to test, other villages to drift past and measure.
The exams were just… weather. A pattern in the distance. A possible convergence point.
Lightning scratched the sky again, farther this time.
Kisame fell quiet for a stretch of road. The only sounds were their footfalls, the rustle of cloak fabric, the distant, low animal noises of the forest settling.
"You ever miss it?" Kisame asked eventually, tone casual in the way people used when they were asking about something that wasn't. "Village life. Chūnin exams. All those cheers."
Itachi let his gaze slide ahead, to where the road bent and vanished.
"I miss… certain people," he said.
It wasn't an answer. Kisame accepted it as if it was.
"Hn. Figures." He shifted his grip on the straps of his sword. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you walked out. Makes my job more interesting."
"Guard duty for a missing-nin?" Itachi asked.
"Trying not to get killed standing next to you," Kisame corrected. "That's different."
A faint, almost invisible curve touched Itachi's mouth. "You exaggerate."
"Not enough to make it funnier," Kisame said.
They walked on.
The wind thickened. The first, tentative drops of rain started to fall, darkening the dust where they hit. Kisame shook his head once, letting the droplets fling off his hood.
Itachi didn't bother.
He lifted his face just slightly, letting the cool specks tap against his skin, trace down his neck. The smell of wet earth bloomed around them.
In the distance, almost too far to hear, thunder rolled again—the same storm front pushing over Konoha's training fields, over one boy running himself raw against stone.
Itachi's eyes tracked the direction of the sound. For a heartbeat, his gaze sharpened, and something old and tired and knife-bright looked out through the dark.
Sasuke.
A memory: a much smaller boy chasing his shadow down Konoha's streets, begging to be trained; the feel of tiny fingers tugging at the hem of his sleeve; the taste of broth at their family table; blood on polished wood.
The image slid past without touching his face.
Kisame watched him from the side, saying nothing. He had learned, over time, that there were questions that only wasted air.
Rain began in earnest, soft and steady.
Itachi lowered his eyes. Whatever was happening under that storm would happen whether he watched it or not. The path he was walking did not bend back to that village yet.
"Come," he said quietly. "We need to reach the next outpost before the road washes out."
Kisame snorted. "Afraid of mud?"
"Afraid of delays."
"Same thing," Kisame decided, and fell into step.
They kept walking.
Behind them, lightning stitched another thin, white scar into the sky. For an instant, it caught in the surface of Itachi's eyes, turning them into tiny mirrors of a storm he was no longer under.
He didn't turn back.
The sound rolled across the hills, a long, low promise, and the distance between storms stayed what it was—for now.