Chapter 62

A/N:

AIGHT! PREPARE FOR THE WORST

Third Person POV

Kakashi knew his student the best. That is for certain. The speed of her hand signs, her posture as she feints a jab, the way she pivots her foot after landing a clean hit, how she would react to certain attacks, how she evades, and how she would plan her next step. 

But, did he really know her?

Felt like he only knew a little bit about her on the surface level. He probed once about her dreams, she didn't reply back then. 

So when he saw Konoha in a mess as soon as he got back home from a mission where he barely gotten sleep, he didn't had a clue to who the infiltrators were. Was it Orochimaru and his henchmen again? Surely, no. The Third Hokage already sealed the snake's arms. The neighboring Great Nations? No. He would have noticed their movements to Konoha first before they even got close. 

Then, judging by how half his village was burnt, craters and holes around their Hokage monument, and the countless rows of white linen sheets covering his co-shinobi, and civilians. He even saw a kid cut in half, impaled with a wooden plank between his ribs. Surely, this was orchestrated by an unknown evil organization. Probably the Akatsuki, perhaps they were already on the move? He doesn't have much intel on them, but they're the only ones he could think of.

But.

He was wrong.

Amid the ruins of what was once a training ground, Shikamaru lay on a stretcher, his face pale and twisted in pain, yet his eyes were dry--resigned. 

His left sleeve hung limp, stained red and cut jaggedly near the shoulder. Where his arm shoud've been, there was only the brutal truth of absense which was bandaged haste by a medical-nin, chakra glowing green over the wound as they tried to stop the bleeding and keep him conscious. 

He didn't cry out. He didn't complain. He simply turned his face toward the tent as another medic pressed a hand to his chest to steady his pulse. A line of sweat trickled down his temple but he ignored it. 

What burned more than the searing pain was the weight of presence just a few steps away.

Kakashi stood still, his face unreadable behind the masl. But Shikamaru didn't look at him. Couldn't.

Because how do you look at the man who trained her, who trusted her, who saw her like a daughter, when it was her hand that tore your arm from your body.

A medic whispered something about sedatives, but Shikamaru spoke, barely louder than a breath. 

"You don't have to be here," he clenched his jaw. 

"I know," Kakashi said simply.

There was a pause. A long one. Heavy. 

The medical-nin retreated without being told. Even they could feel it: the weight of unsaid things.

Finally, Shikamaru exhaled through his nose, bitter. "You're really not gonna say anything, huh?"

Kakashi didn't move. "What do you want me to say?"

"That it wasn't her," Shikamaru stared with an empty gaze, just trying to find reason in betrayal. "That it wasn't your favorite student who cut off my arm. Who burned half the village. Who killed Iruka-sensei."

The silence after that was deafening.

He turned away, tired. "I watched her smile, Kakashi-sensei. When she did it. I begged her to stop, and she smiled."

Kakashi's hands were clenched at his sides.

"She was our friend," Shikamaru said, softer now. "Yours more than anyone. So don't just stand there and act like you're some impartial Jounin. You loved her."

There was no bitterness in his voice. No accusation. Just tired understanding. He wasn't asking for an explanation. He wasn't even sure one existed.

"I still do," he said quietly.

And Shikamaru laughed. Dry. "Then you better be the one to kill her."

The Hokage's office was a storm without wind.

The walls trembled not from jutsu but from the fury barely contained behind Tsunade's clenched jaw and white-knuckled grip. Her amber eyes burned—not with disappointment, but with the fury of someone who had watched too many children become weapons... and now one of them had turned that weapon back on the village.

On them.

"You trained her!" Tsunade shouted, voice rough and ragged. "You taught her how to walk among us like she belonged, how to earn our trust. You looked at that girl and saw yourself in her, didn't you?"

Kakashi stood before her, unmoving. The shadow of his mask gave him the illusion of calm, but Tsunade knew better. 

"You called her family," she hissed.

Then, with a cry pulled from the pit of her grief and rage, she grabbed the nearest stack of reports—incident files, casualty lists, mission logs, surveillance records, autopsy notes, bloodstained statements—and threw them into his chest with the force of all the deaths she could not undo.

The papers burst into the air like a flock of white birds in a funeral pyre.

They slapped against Kakashi's vest, face, arms, before fluttering to the floor in a chaotic rain. Some still bore the smears of red from medics' gloves. Others listed names: Iruka Umino, presumed deceased. Kurenai Yuhi, critical. Asuma Sarutobi, comatose.

A photo slid to rest at his feet—Lhexi, smiling between Naruto and Sasuke, next to her Sakura, a bright summer sky behind them. And behind them was none other than himself.

Kakashi didn't flinch. Didn't speak.

His lone visible eye lowered slowly , tracing words he already knew by heart.

"Suspect used chakra-sensitive paper bombs planted over multiple years. Exact placement suggests infiltration planning began during Genin years. Explosives timed to maximize civilian casualties and distract from primary escape route."

"Interrogation notes: Subject showed no emotional reaction."

"Primary suspect: Takeda Alexa, registered Konoha shinobi. Affiliated with Team 7. Student of Hatake Kakashi."

Tsunade's breath was heavy now, her chest rising and falling as the papers settled around them like snow.

She hadn't meant to throw them. Not really. But how else could she scream at the man who had already taken the blame into his bones?

Kakashi said nothing.

His gaze remained on the floor, where his student's crimes lay scattered like shattered glass. His silence cut deeper than anger ever could.

Tsunade turned her back to him, voice low now—ragged, grieving.

"She killed them, Kakashi. She knew what she was doing. And we let her in because you told us she was safe."

The hawk's wings sliced through the clouds, high above the forest canopy. Wind howled around them, carrying the scent of scorched bark and blood left in her wake.

Kakashi crouched near the hawk's head, sharing the view with Inoichi. Beside them, Naruto and Sasuke kept silent for once—too focused. Behind them, Tenzo maintained their balance with a spread of chakra underfoot, eyes constantly scanning below for movement.

"Asuna's chakra trail splits here," Inoichi muttered, his fingers glowing faintly as he focused. "She's trying to bait us into splitting up."

"No," Kakashi said. "She's trying to isolate one of us."

They all knew which one she wanted. The only one who might be able to stop her.

"Stay with the kids. Don't let them follow me. Inoichi-san—please guide them away. I believe she wants me."

Then the hawk gave a sharp cry, shifting mid-air.

"Kakashi-senpai—?" Tenzo asked, eyes narrowing.

But it was too late.

There was a burst of smoke where Kakashi had been—and in his place, a wooden log.

Tenzo's voice sharpened. "Senpai!"

Tenzo cursed under his breath. Naruto leaned forward, knuckles white. "What the hell?! Where'd sensei go?!"

Sasuke didn't speak, but his eyes were already scanning the horizon.

Inoichi closed his eyes again, fingers pressed to his temple. After a moment, he nodded once.

"He's heading southeast alone. Straight for her," he lied. Inoichi plans on taking a detour just like Kakashi had requested. The kids can't see her. They shouldn't. 

 Meanwhile—

Kakashi moved through the trees like a ghost—no sound, no chakra signature, nothing but the rush of air and the occasional gleam of his Sharingan under the sunset. His dogs were gone. His team was safe—for now.

But she wasn't running.

She was waiting.

Up ahead, a clearing opened between cliffs. Her chakra shimmered like frost over water, calm and cold.

"Lhexi," he whispered, landing softly at the edge of the glade. "Or should I say, Asuna?"

She stood at the center, wrapped in the pale-blue shimmer of her Seiryuugan's partial activation, ice blooming around her feet like wild roses.

"You came alone," she said, not looking back.

Kakashi didn't answer.

She turned, and the reflection of the sunlight caught in the blue rings of her gold eyes. "How kind of you."

The air in the clearing was still, too still. Even the wind seemed to hesitate, uncertain whether to whisper or scream.

Kakashi stood at the edge, one hand hovering near his kunai pouch, the other hanging loose, tense at his side. His eye locked onto her silhouette—familiar, and yet so wrong.

She stood tall, unbowed, arms loosely at her sides, one hip slightly cocked in the stance of someone who welcomes a fight. Her clothes were torn from her escape, streaked with ash and blood, but the way she wore them, it was like they were armor. Ice crusted over her boots, spiraled up the grass beneath her like creeping veins.

And her eyes—the Seiryuugan was half-activated, three blue rings orbiting her iris like chained spirits. They glowed faintly even against the sunset.

"Lhexi," Kakashi said, voice low and heavy, "You don't have to do this."

Her smile was cruel, lopsided. "But I want to."

That hit harder than a blade.

Lhexi—his Lhexi—used to stand with her weight evenly balanced, always ready to dodge, never aggressive unless cornered. She would tilt her head in thought, purple eyes flickering with a dozen quiet ideas before speaking with that soft, deliberate tone. She never raised her voice. She never smiled with malice.

Lhexi would have bowed her head when he arrived. She would have greeted him with, "Kakashi-sensei," and waited for permission to speak. She would have stood in his shadow and yet somehow carried light in her own.

But this girl—this woman—tilted her chin upward, defiant. Mocking.

"You're thinking of her again," Asuna said, voice sharp like broken glass. "Of your little favorite."

Kakashi's eye didn't flinch. "You killed Iruka. You nearly killed Asuma, Kurenai. You cut off Shikamaru's arm." A pause. "And now you're asking me to forget that... for what?"

She tilted her head. "You trained a monster and called it 'daughter.' That's on you."

"I trained a girl who risked her life for her teammates," he snapped, his voice cold steel. "I trained someone who could outthink Shikamaru and outmaneuver Sasuke when she wasn't holding back. Someone who wrote the mission reports so her team could sleep."

Asuna's eye twitched.

"Lhexi," he said, quieter now, "knew who she was. You're the one pretending."

Her chakra flared. Sharp and sudden. The ground around her cracked with veins of ice.

"Don't say that name."

A whisper.

A warning.

But Kakashi stepped forward.

"She wouldn't have done this," he said, every word deliberate. "She wouldn't have turned her back on the ones who trusted her. You want me to see you as Asuna. You want me to hate you."

"And you do, don't you?" she said, smiling wider now. "Admit it. You hate that your perfect little girl turned out to be just like me."

Silence.

A kunai dropped into Kakashi's hand with a soft click. His stance shifted. "I'm done talking."

"Finally," she whispered, eyes glowing, frost curling up her arms like armor. "I was getting bored."

The afternoon sun cast long, golden shadows over the clearing, bleeding light through the trees. The warmth in the air did not reach the two figures facing each other.

The silence between them broke with a sound Kakashi knew too well.

That chirping.

That electric cry of a thousand birds trapped in a storm.

But it shouldn't have been there.

His eye widened—just barely—as blue lightning erupted from Asuna's right hand. The Chidori screeched and writhed, the very ground beneath her cracking beneath the raw force. The chakra pulsed with alarming stability.

Kakashi's breath caught.

No...

Her stance was perfect. Feet angled, body low. The same posture he once drilled into Sasuke on the edge of a ravine. His hands tightened around the kunai. He never taught her this. He wouldn't have. Not something so lethal, so volatile—so fatal—without the eye to see through motion. One misstep, one miscalculation, and the Chidori would pierce through the wrong heart—her own.

"You idiot," he whispered.

"You should see your face," Asuna said with a smirk, her Chidori casting her face in flickering light. "You look like a proud parent at graduation."

"That jutsu," he said slowly, the edge of disbelief finally cutting through his voice, "you don't have the Sharingan. One misstep—"

"—And I die?" Asuna finished for him, grinning as her hand split the air like a blade. "You think I don't know that?"

She stepped forward, and the ground cracked under her feet.

"I just don't care."

Then she was there.

She lunged, arm thrust forward, Chidori shrieking with murderous intent. Kakashi moved in a blur—sidestepping, ducking low, sliding past the bolt of lightning that seared the space beside his ribs. The sheer force of it tore bark from a nearby tree as she passed.

Her control was terrifying.

He spun, intercepting her with a roundhouse, but she caught his leg mid-air—pivoted, twisted, threw him. Kakashi flipped, caught a branch, rebounded off it—and she was already there, meeting him mid-flight with a knee aimed at his ribs.

He blocked with both arms. Pain lanced down his forearm.

Too fast.

Her movements—her old movements—tight, clean, coiled like a serpent and striking like lightning. The same stance. The same pivot on the ball of her foot. The same ghost-quiet inhale before she countered.

Lhexi.

And yet... stronger and wild. 

They clashed again, fists meeting fists, legs colliding mid-strike. The clearing rang with each blow—taijutsu fast as breath, brutal as war. He saw flickers of her training, the feints she used to test Sasuke, the spin she once practiced behind the academy with Naruto giggling in the dirt.

But she fought now like someone who wanted to erase all of it.

"Why this jutsu?" Kakashi asked, parrying a strike that nearly broke his wrist. "You knew I'd recognize it."

She ducked under his arm, lightning still crackling in her palm, and whispered near his ear. "Because I wanted you to see what I became."

He grabbed her arm, tried to force the Chidori downward—but she slipped out, fluid as water, and used the momentum to drive her knee into his gut. He staggered back, breath knocked from his lungs.

She didn't press. She stood over him now, calm and steady, lightning still humming around her fingers.

"You look proud, Kakashi-sensei," she said, voice sweet and venomous. "Is this how it felt when Sasuke learned it? When he earned it from you?"

Kakashi didn't answer.

Because he wasn't proud.

He was in awe of her precision, her power—yes.

But pride? No.

He was sick. Because every move she made was a mirror of a girl he once believed in. Every step was a shadow of someone he thought could never fall this far. And that jutsu—that damned jutsu—was a death sentence for anyone without the Sharingan.

She should be dead.

The moment Kakashi stood, the temperature dropped.

He exhaled once. 

Then the black cloth slipped down from his face, and with a quiet hiss, his forehead protector lifted—revealing the scarred, crimson eye beneath.

Sharingan.

The tomoe spun slowly in the sunlight, like blood circling a drain. It caught the glint of Asuna's Chidori and painted the world in red and white contrast.

Asuna's smile faded.

"Oh?" she murmured, lightning fizzling out in her palm, replaced by the subtle hum of cold chakra coiling through her limbs. "So you are taking me seriously."

Kakashi didn't speak.

But his eye locked onto her with something deeper than hatred—deeper than grief.

He watched her. Her breath, the twitch of her fingers, the slight shift of her hips. He saw everything.

Asuna's body tensed. She could feel her heartbeat in her throat. For years, she had imagined this. Slaughtering him. Breaking him. Making him feel the way she did.

"You've gotten slower, sensei," she said, almost gently. "Is it the years, or the guilt?"

Kakashi blurred toward her.

She leapt back—fast—but not fast enough. His kunai grazed her shoulder, shallow but precise, aimed for tendon. She twisted mid-air, exhaled, and formed the hand signs with muscle memory burned into her bones.

"Hyōton: Senbon Hyōshō!"

The ground beneath her feet bloomed with sigils as jagged ice spears erupted in every direction—hundreds of glinting needles suspended in the air like frozen stars. They hovered a breath too long—then launched, screaming toward Kakashi with impossible speed.

He vanished.

Reappeared to the side.

But the needles curved.

Asuna extended two fingers, guiding them. Her eyes glowing.

"You taught me to calculate angles, remember?" she said, weaving more hand signs. "You shouldn't have."

Kakashi deflected three. Dodged seven. One grazed his thigh. Another lodged into his shoulder plate.

Still he moved forward.

"You're afraid," he said, voice calm as thunderclouds. "That's why you're keeping your distance."

"I'm being smart," Asuna snapped.

"You're stalling," he said. "Because you know what happens when I get close."

Asuna's next jutsu cracked the sky. "Hyōton: Kokuryū Bōfūsetsu!"

A massive dragon of black ice erupted from the earth, screaming toward Kakashi with gnashing fangs and a blizzard's roar.

Kakashi didn't move. Until the last second.

He leapt straight through the dragon's maw, chakra swirling into his palm—

"Raikiri."

A scream of lightning, cutting through cold.

Their jutsu met midair, light and shadow crashing in a burst that shook the clearing.

Asuna skidded back, ice splintering under her heels. Blood ran down her arm. She didn't feel it at first.

She was breathing hard. So was he. And yet—she was smiling again.

"Killing you," she panted, "will feel better than killing the rest."

Kakashi's Sharingan fixed on her. 

Asuna stood, her breath sharp and shallow, blood dripping steadily from her arm. Kakashi's Raikiri had grazed too close. Her jutsu had faltered just enough.

It wasn't enough. It was never enough.

Her fingers trembled—not from pain. From rage. And then—

Her eyes shifted.

The vibrant blue deepened into a darker hue, almost crystalline, as three circular seals bloomed in her iris—glowing with unnatural light. The Seiryuugan flared, casting azure across the battlefield. The wind stopped. Even the trees seemed to recoil.

Kakashi's eye widened.

No.

He moved to intercept.

Too late.

"Seiryuugan: Hengen Shinchū."

Asuna exhaled, and the world shifted.

It was invisible at first—then Kakashi staggered, ever so slightly, as the flow of chakra in his body began to twist.

His lightning sputtered. His breath hitched. His very energy... draining.

"You feel it, don't you?" she said, voice low, heavy with power. "It's beautiful, isn't it? You were the first person I swore I'd use this on."

Kakashi dropped to one knee. It was working. And gods, it was intoxicating.

She could feel his chakra threading into hers. Pure, rich, controlled. Like tasting a forbidden fruit. And yet—as it fed into her Seiryuugan, she felt something else, something precious, fall away in her mind like dust scattering in wind.

A name? A face?

Gone.

She blinked.

She didn't care.

"Just like that," she whispered. "You feel it, don't you? That hollow ache? That weakness? That's me inside you."

But—

Kakashi wasn't panicking.

And then...

He exhaled slow and calm.

He raised one hand into a simple, one-handed seal—Ox—and in the next breath, he expelled a sudden shock of chakra, a violent surge rippling through every tenketsu in his body.

The connection snapped.

Asuna gasped, staggering backward as the Seiryuugan stuttered, reels of chakra screaming out of sync. Her grip on his energy broke—shattered like glass under pressure.

"What—?" she choked, eyes flickering, the seals on her iris dimming slightly.

Kakashi stood, blood dripping from his temple, but his chakra already stabilizing.

"You didn't even know it could be countered, did you?" he said softly. "Kyuuji taught me that five years ago."

The weight of the name hit her like a blade.

Kyuuji.

Her chest constricted.

"You..." her voice wavered, just for a breath, "you knew about the Seiryuugan before—"

"I knew everything about it," he said.

His voice was not cruel. But it was final.

"You lost something and yet you didn't gain anything."

She stared at him. The flickering remnants of her dojutsu shimmered in the air. Her hands clenched into fists as her chakra spiked again.

Asuna stood still.

"...Liar," she breathed. "You're lying."

Kakashi didn't flinch.

Asuna screamed, chakra flaring, ice surging in spikes from the ground around her—but her hand trembled. Her breathing cracked. Her eyes dimmed for a moment, then brightened again.

She couldn't feel the memory yet, not exactly. But she knew something was gone. Something important. And it hadn't even worked. Her power. Her inheritance. Her sacrifice.

Kakashi's voice came quiet again, grave and worn. "You think you're free. But that eye is a cage. Every time you open it, it takes from you. And for what?"

"Shut up." 

The ice cracked beneath her feet from the pressure. 

Asuna launched forward like a bolt of frozen lightning, hands blurred with seals, her chakra flaring with frigid brilliance. Her eyes burned in the afternoon sun, one glowing with the Seiryuugan's stormlight, the other dark, hollow.

Kakashi met her in the center.

She spun low—leg sweeping to take his footing. He jumped, as she predicted, and her kunai came next, a feint—because the real strike came from her elbow, reinforced with ice chakra and aimed at his ribs.

It would have crushed a normal shinobi. But not him.

CLANG.

His forearm blocked hers—softly. Not with power. But with timing.

"Too direct," he said quietly, almost like a teacher correcting a student's stance. "Your follow-up's too fast. You rushed the rhythm. I would've never let you do that."

Asuna snarled, spun away, and twisted the angle of her next strike midair. Her hands wove again—dozens of hand signs in seconds.

"Hyōton: Tsurara Kiba!"

Dozens of massive spikes burst from the earth, wide enough to skewer a tree. They launched as she moved, pressing Kakashi into a corner, then—

She appeared behind him mid-strike.

A kunai in one hand. Chidori humming in the other.

"NOW DIE!"

Kakashi turned just enough to let the kunai slice cloth, not skin.

Her Chidori? Too wild.

He caught her wrist.

She froze.

"You never use two chakra types in one breath," he said into her ear, voice calm as a blade. "Your ice destabilizes lightning. That's why it crackled just now."

Asuna shrieked—twisting violently out of his grip, drawing a cut across his shoulder as she tumbled away. She landed like a cat, breathing heavily.

Hair wild. Clothes singed. Face shadowed by her bangs. Her Seiryuugan flared again, her smile twitching—lopsided, jagged.

"You're reading me," she said, eyes wide. "Like a book."

Kakashi didn't answer.

He knew that tone.

"Do you want to die, sensei?" she whispered. "Would that make you finally pay for what you did to us?"

She charged again.

More violent this time.

Her taijutsu was almost perfect—but not quite.

Her shoulder rose too early in the strike.

Kakashi ducked under, grabbed her forearm, flipped her.

"Drop your weight next time. You're fighting too much with your arms."

She caught herself mid-air. Ice formed beneath her feet instantly. She grinned as she bled. "Should I thank you for the advice?"

Asuna's hand flickered with light. Kakashi did the same. Their stance, identical.

Their Chidoris screamed against the quiet woods—two bolts of lightning streaking toward each other in mirrored arcs, each born from the same discipline, the same hand, the same past.

And yet—

Only one strike landed.

Kakashi's.

His arm blurred past her defense.

She tried to twist away.

Too late.

The sound of lightning cut into flesh—then bone.

His hand plunged between her ribs, lightning crackling violently as it hit the edge of her lung. Her mouth fell open. A choked sound escaped, small and wet, and—

Blood splattered across his flak jacket.

He held her there, arm still buried in her chest, the glow of his Chidori fading fast.

Her Seiryuugan flickered, dimmed, then stabilized. She looked up at him—eyes wide, dazed, lips stained red.

"...Well," she rasped, smile crooked, "That's new."

Kakashi's voice was low, heavy, like stones in his throat.

"Don't move."

Asuna chuckled.

It bubbled into a cough.

Blood dripped down her chin.

"Still the same Kakashi-sensei," she murmured, leaning her weight forward so he had to hold her tighter. "Always apologizing with your eyes."

He didn't speak.

Couldn't.

The wound was too close—half an inch from her heart. If she hadn't shifted a fraction at the last moment...

She should be dead.

Only her monstrous chakra reserves kept her standing, let alone conscious. But even that was fraying—he could feel her body trembling, weakening with every second.

"You... gambled," she rasped, voice hoarse. "Tried to kill me... and hoped I'd live?"

His hand trembled.

And still, she laughed. Bitter. Beautiful. Broken.

"You always... did suck at holding back," she coughed. "Guess that hasn't changed."

He didn't answer.

He couldn't.

Lightning hissed and died on his hand as he slowly drew it back, blood coating his palm. Her body slumped forward—he caught her before she hit the ground.

Her chakra was still active. Burning wildly, as if refusing to go out. Of course it was. She had the reserves of a demon. It was what made her so hard to kill.

It's why he dared to take the shot.

And yet—

He could feel it in his bones. No one could take that kind of hit and walk away unscathed. Not even her.

"Still..." Asuna murmured, her voice cracking, "Still playing the mentor, huh? Look at you. Still trying to save me. That's so you, Kakashi-sensei."

Her head lolled against his shoulder.

"You could still die," he said flatly.

And yet—

Even now, she still smiled.

"Hurts less than I thought it would," she whispered. "That's... annoying."

A/N:

Calm down. Folks. 

never really imagined that I would actually reach writing this far into the story. 

I know you've got a lot of questions. I'll entertain them hehe.