The mist was finally starting to lose.
It peeled off the river in thin, ragged sheets, turning from choking white to damp air and ugly reality. As it thinned, the battlefield came into focus in pieces.
Naruto clones everywhere.
Mud shredded.
Wire strung through trees at idiot-neck level.
And under all that, the lingering, sour aftertaste of genjutsu in the air.
Sasuke's Sharingan traced the ghost-images automatically: double-exposed trunks, half-formed bodies that didn't cast proper shadows, ripples in the grass where nothing was actually moving. Team Oboro's illusions were good—for genin—but the structure was fracturing now, too many plates to keep spinning.
A Naruto to his left was arguing with a Naruto to his right.
"Quit copying me!"
"Quit copying me!"
"NO, YOU—"
One took a swing at the other; the punched one went up in smoke.
So, that one had been fake.
"Tch," Sasuke said. "Focus."
A third Naruto—very real, loud chakra blazing—stuck his tongue out at him and immediately split into three more clones just to be obnoxious.
The ground shifted.
A kunai hissed toward Sasuke's cheek from the left, slipping out of the thinning mist.
He tilted his head a fraction. The blade passed close enough to stir his hair and thunked into a tree behind him.
His hand was already moving.
Three shuriken flicked from his fingers, thrown not at any visible target but back along the exact line the kunai had traveled. Two cut through a flicker of human shape that broke into mist. The third rang off something solid.
Someone hissed through their teeth in the fog.
Got you, he thought.
Oboro dropped the half-formed illusion, rolling out from behind a trunk with one hand pressed to his cheek where the shuriken had grazed him. The other two rained down from the branches with him—Mubi low and fast, Kagari hanging back, fingers tight on wire.
"Earth Style—"
Sasuke moved before the jutsu name was finished.
His sandals tore mud, but his sprint wasn't wild. Clean genin-speed. No wasted motion. The curse mark under the bandage at his neck twitched hot, like something flexing in its sleep.
No.
He shoved his chakra through the old, familiar lines instead—into his legs, into the Sharingan, into the basic jutsu that were his, not that snake's.
Mubi slapped both hands to the ground. The dirt under one Naruto liquefied, swallowing him up to the neck in an instant.
"HEY!" buried-Naruto yelled. "I just got out of one of these, c'mon—"
Two more Narutos launched themselves toward him. They hit the half-real ground, dropped straight through, and exploded into smoke halfway down.
"Those are fake," Sasuke snapped, without looking.
"How was I supposed to know?!" another Naruto shouted from somewhere behind him.
"You have a brain," Sasuke said. "Use it."
"I AM using—"
Kabuto's voice slid in from behind a tree, annoyingly mild and composed. "They're trying to funnel us to the riverbank. Watch your footing. The real attack will be where you least want to stand."
Sasuke didn't answer. Kabuto wasn't wrong.
Kagari's wires webbed the trees along the river, lines supposed to be invisible. To normal eyes, they probably were. To the Sharingan, each one lit up—clean angles and tension traced in bright threads, a grid laid over the forest.
He adjusted his path, turning a straight run into a slide under the worst knots, letting two wires slice his sleeve instead of his throat.
Fine, he thought. You want to turn the environment into a weapon?
He could do that too.
He pivoted hard and dove toward the densest part of the web—the gap they'd left "open" on purpose.
Kagari's mouth curled, fingers twitching to yank the trap closed.
Sasuke's hands snapped into a quick, sharp seal. "Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu."
Small fireballs burst from his mouth in a scattered pattern, low and wide. Most weren't aimed at people at all.
They hit wire.
Flame crawled along metal, flashing red, then white. The entire web lit in a dozen points at once, turning the clearing into a glowing cage.
Kagari's smirk crumpled.
He jerked his hands back fast—too fast. Heat traveled the wires quicker than his chakra could compensate. The lines yanked, recoiled, and snapped him out of his perch. He fell hard, crashing through lower branches and into the mud.
One hot strand brushed his forearm on the way down. The smell of scorched skin drifted up.
One down, Sasuke noted.
Mubi erupted from the riverbank, half-submerged, water clinging too thick around his ankles. Illusion layered over terrain; anyone chasing straight would sink.
Sasuke didn't bother with the ground.
He kicked off a nearby rock and went up, body twisting through the remnants of the mist. From above, depth didn't matter.
His heel caught Mubi square in the shoulder.
The boy went under with a splash and a choked noise. The false "deep water" rippled and popped under the impact, illusion shattering under the shock. When the surface smoothed again, Mubi stayed down.
Sasuke landed on the stones of the bank, body absorbing the impact with a practiced bend of the knees.
The curse mark flared hotter for a moment. He ignored it. Pushed more chakra into his limbs the old way. He could fight like this. He would fight like this.
"Are we done yet?" he asked, eyes scanning.
An Oboro dropped from the canopy in front of him, kunai low, posture tight.
The Sharingan took him apart in pieces. The way his shoulders loaded before he struck. The slight misalignment of his weight. The timing.
A feint. Not bad.
Sasuke stepped into it, not away. He caught Oboro's wrist with a twist that sent pain up the other boy's arm. The kunai clattered loose. Sasuke's knee drove into his gut, not hard enough to break anything, just enough to fold him.
Sasuke used the body like a springboard and kicked off, launching himself away before any counter could land.
Behind him, Oboro hit the ground with a breathless grunt.
Two Narutos skidded into the space Sasuke had vacated. One tripped, went face-first into the mud, and broke into smoke. The other planted a boot on Oboro's chest.
"Ha!" Naruto crowed. "Got you, you sand-in-the-shoes creep!"
"Rain," Oboro wheezed. "We're… from the Rain…"
"Whatever, puddle freak!"
Sasuke's attention snapped sideways.
A torso slid out of a nearby tree like it was made of fog—another Oboro, head and shoulders emerging from the trunk, kunai in each hand. The "body" under Naruto's heel blurred, then puffed into smoke, revealing the real trick.
Clever. Sasuke's mouth thinned.
Naruto didn't see the new Oboro yet, too busy preening over the fake.
Kabuto did. He opened his mouth—
Sasuke was already moving.
Oboro flicked his wrists, sending both kunai screaming toward Sasuke's face.
He didn't dodge.
A blur of orange cut across his path. Naruto—real, this time, chakra solid and loud—shouldered in, batting one kunai aside with a forearm and letting the second bury itself in his own shoulder.
"Gotcha—ow—gotcha, bastard!" Naruto grunted.
That was enough.
Sasuke hit Oboro in the same heartbeat. No wasted spin, no flourish. Just a solid, clean punch to the solar plexus that shattered what was left of the boy's control.
Oboro's breath left him in a harsh wheeze. His knees buckled. Sasuke swept his legs and dumped him on his back in the mud.
Oboro's fingers twitched toward a seal.
Sasuke caught his wrists and pinned them above his head, one knee lightly on his ribs—not crushing, but promising.
"Yield," he said.
Oboro stared up at him. The mist, the extra Narutos, the spare trees—every illusion still clinging to the field—shivered.
Then collapsed.
Clones winked out all at once. Duplicate trunks went transparent and disappeared. The last of the thick, genjutsu-made fog peeled off the clearing like someone opening a window.
Cold, real air rushed in.
Sylvie let out a breath on the far side of the river, a small, ragged sound. She stood in the middle of a crude circle of tags she'd slapped down—ink on paper, paper on rocks and roots. Genjutsu-disruptors; even from here Sasuke could feel the way they fuzzed the chakra in the area, adding static that made illusions harder to maintain.
She looked like hell.
Mud on her donated clothes. Ink all over her hands. A smear of dried blood at her hairline Kakashi would yell at her about later.
And her hair—
short.
Sasuke's gaze snagged there without his permission.
Bright pink still, but chopped raggedly to her jaw, uneven chunks where she'd hacked it off herself during the Sound fight. Light brown at the roots, growing out. He remembered it longer, messy but full, fingers twisting through it when she thought. Cutting it had not been careful.
She'd done it while he was unconscious, curse mark burning through his skin.
It lodged in his chest like a stone.
How much had she had to cut away because he'd been too weak to deal with Orochimaru without that mark?
"Are you satisfied?" Oboro rasped, dragging Sasuke's attention back down. The boy's chakra was frayed, thin and tired. "We're… done. You win."
Sasuke held his stare a heartbeat longer.
Then he let go of Oboro's wrists and stood. "Tie them," he said, not bothering to check if Naruto heard.
Naruto was already staggering toward the riverbank, one hand clamped over the kunai in his shoulder, grinning like an idiot anyway. "They're fine," he announced after poking Mubi with his foot. "Just real knocked out. That's what you get for drowning people, losers."
Kabuto stepped out from behind a tree with that same polite half-smile, glasses glinting. His teammates appeared behind him, forgettable and neat.
"You handled that well," Kabuto said, voice mild as ever. "Especially considering the circumstances."
Naruto puffed up immediately. "Of course we did! I—I mean, we're awesome!" He winced as his shoulder throbbed. "Ow. But awesome."
Kabuto's gaze slid to Sasuke. "As expected of an Uchiha," he added lightly.
Expected. Like Sasuke had ticked a box on some invisible chart.
The curse mark itched under the bandage, a low, ugly hum. Sasuke touched the edge with two fingers, more out of habit than need, and felt a faint answering pulse—not from the mark, but from the little seal Sylvie had inked there. Her Pulse Tag. Quiet. Steady. A reminder that she was tracking his heartbeat whether he wanted her to or not.
He dropped his hand.
Naruto yanked the kunai out of his own shoulder with a hiss and promptly held it up to Sasuke like a trophy. "Did you see that?" he demanded. "I blocked that for you!"
"You bled on it," Sasuke said. "Congratulations."
Naruto scowled. "You're welcome."
A quiet snort drifted from the bank.
Sylvie had moved again, already in medic mode by default—kneeling by Kagari, hands glowing faint green as she examined the burned arm he'd gotten from his own wires. Her fingers shook a little; she pretended they didn't.
She felt him looking.
Her head tipped up, short hair sticking out unevenly around her glasses. "What," she said. "Do I have mud on my face or something?"
He almost said yes just to end the conversation.
Instead, the truth slipped out, clipped and awkward. "You cut it."
Her hand went automatically to the back of her head, fingertips brushing the jagged line. "Yeah," she said. "Kunai versus girl-trophy-hair, the kunai won."
Naruto trotted over, peering. "You look cool!" he blurted. "Like you're gonna punch a cloud and win."
"That's not how clouds work, Naruto," Sasuke muttered.
"Not with that attitude," Naruto fired back.
Sylvie huffed something that might have been a laugh. "It's fine," she said. "It was in the way."
Sasuke didn't say the thing that clawed at the back of his throat: it should've been me in the way, not your hair.
He pushed it down where it belonged.
Kabuto looked up at the thinning canopy. "If we move now, we can reach the tower without running into any more desperate ambushes," he suggested. "My team is already set—we're just escorting at this point."
Naruto brightened. "Tower. Food. Naps. Let's go!"
He charged ahead, nearly stomping on one of Sylvie's leftover tags. She snapped her fingers; the seal fizzled out just in time.
"Watch your feet," she warned.
"Watch your landmines," he shot back.
Sasuke fell into step a little behind them. The river slipped away to their left; trees thinned just enough that the silhouette of the central tower finally showed through the remaining mist—dark stone against pale sky.
The curse mark pulsed once more. Not flaring now, just… there. Waiting. A snake coiled under his skin.
He remembered the feeling of it taking him, drowning everything in that hot, sick power. Remembered Sylvie's burnt hand pressed to his neck, the way she'd refused to let go even when he'd told her to.
He hadn't used it this time.
He'd read Oboro's illusions with his own eyes, broken their tricks with his own jutsu, won with his own fists.
It should have felt like a victory.
Instead there was a thin line of fear running through the satisfaction, taut and invisible. Fear that next time, it would activate on its own. Fear that the line between his chakra and Orochimaru's wouldn't hold.
He glanced once more at Sylvie's hacked-off hair, bright and wrong, the visual proof of what it cost other people when he lost control.
He turned his head away.
Next fight, he told himself, he'd be stronger. Strong enough that he wouldn't need, wouldn't touch, wouldn't even feel that mark.
He made himself believe it.
Because the only other option was admitting how much of him already belonged to a monster he hadn't beaten yet.
Ahead, Naruto whooped something about being first to the tower. Sylvie cursed at him for stepping where she'd just stabilized the mud. Kabuto laughed quietly, eyes too thoughtful behind the lenses.
Sasuke walked with them, footsteps mostly in sync, a quiet promise and a quieter fear beating time in his chest.