Chapter 169: Sasuke's Arrogance
Sasuke watched the crowd pour through his front door with bags and boxes and general chaos, entirely calm. If he hadn't known every single one of them, he might have assumed they were here to dismantle his house.
"Sasuke, where's your kitchen?"
Naruto was already pulling ingredients out of the bags, grinning, not looking back.
"Idiot. You've been here before." Sasuke said it on reflex. "Left side."
"Got it!"
"Tonight, witness the full power of the Ninja World's Number One Master Chef!"
Naruto strode toward the kitchen holding a daikon in one hand and a cleaver in the other, radiating complete confidence. As for the "idiot" — the great Lord Uzumaki was magnanimous and above such petty provocations.
Sasuke looked around his living room.
Sakura. Choji. Shikamaru. Kiba. Ino. Shino. Hinata. Lee. TenTen. Neji.
All of them. Not a single one missing.
"We kind of showed up without asking," Kiba said, comfortable enough after the shared campaign to say it directly. "You're not annoyed, right?"
"I don't mind. Have fun."
Sasuke shook his head, slipped back to the bathroom, changed into the clothes he'd laid out before the shower, and quietly disposed of the last of the broken mirror under a layer of tissue paper. He pressed the lid down on the bin, looked at it for a moment.
He'd been thinking about this since the glass hit the floor.
Kotoamatsukami didn't create misfortune out of nothing. It worked with existing conditions — found the small frictions already present in a situation and amplified them, step by quiet step, until something minor became something catastrophic. If the target was already in a negative state, the acceleration was worse.
Casting it on himself had meant his own state became the input. Every dark thought he was already carrying had been fed back to him, magnified, stripped of resistance. And when he'd finally snapped out of it — when Amatsukami had cancelled the effect — he'd felt the curse on himself clearly, that twisting grasping yin energy working through him like something alive.
He found himself pressing his fingers against his closed eyelids.
So for him, specifically...
Was the Mangekyo itself the greatest misfortune?
The thought arrived cold and unwelcome.
That can't be right. The Mangekyo was the clan's ultimate power. The pinnacle of what the Sharingan could become. It was the thing he'd been working toward.
And yet his own Kotoamatsukami — born from his Mangekyo, recognized by his Mangekyo as threat — had identified it as the worst thing in his immediate situation?
He'd activated it without awareness, first use, and it had immediately turned on him.
Is this really strength?
"Sasuke, did you fall in the toilet? Everyone's waiting."
Sakura's voice through the door.
Sasuke pulled several tissues from the box, dropped them over the glass, closed the bin, and put the question away. He arranged his face.
"Coming."
He opened the door.
"What took you so long?"
Sakura was leaning against the wall with a lollipop in her cheek, looking at him.
"Nothing."
He moved past her toward the living room.
Sakura watched him go with a slight frown.
Something's wrong.
Sasuke had one of the worst poker faces she'd ever seen on someone who thought they had a good one. He projected effortless cool, but the signals leaked through anyway — obvious to anyone paying attention.
In the living room: Shino, Neji, and Shikamaru each registered it within seconds of him appearing. TenTen caught it a moment later.
The ones who missed it entirely: Choji, busy with snacks. Kiba, tormenting Akamaru. Hinata, whose attention was entirely in the kitchen. Lee, congenitally incapable of noticing social weather.
A brief silence settled over the room.
"So — what if we played a board game?" TenTen said quickly, reading the atmosphere and moving to fix it.
"Board games are boring. There's a bunch of us." Kiba pulled a face.
"Not this one." TenTen's expression shifted into something knowing. In one smooth motion she produced an old-looking box from her equipment scroll and set it on the table in front of everyone.
"What is that?" Ino asked.
"Great question." TenTen squared her shoulders with visible ceremony. "I have named it: Cataclysm — the Fracturing of the Earth at the Dawn of Creation."
"Also known as: Pandemonium."
Three question marks appeared over Ino's head.
"So is it called the Cataclysm thing or Pandemonium?"
"That's not the important part," TenTen said, dismissing the question entirely. "The important part is that everyone can play."
"Hold on."
Sakura cut in before TenTen could start distributing pieces.
"Naruto can't cook for this many people alone. Ino, Hinata — go help him."
From the kitchen, Naruto's voice came through the wall without a single beat of hesitation:
"It's fine! I've got Shadow Clones—"
You absolute idiot, I'm creating an opportunity for you.
"Be quiet." Sakura didn't raise her voice. "Ino. Hinata. Kitchen."
Naruto had no follow-up.
"Aww." Ino looked at the board game being laid out with genuine regret.
"Na — Naruto..."
Hinata's eyes had already found the figure moving around in the kitchen. Her face was slightly pink.
Board game, no board game — it didn't matter. Proximity to Naruto was all the math she needed.
Sakura watched them disappear through the kitchen doorway and turned back to the table.
Ideally I'd have sent Hinata alone, but the risk of a shyness-related collapse is too high. Ino's there as a failsafe.
She genuinely could not understand what there was to be nervous about. But Hinata liked him, and that was what mattered.
"Deal me in."
She pulled up a seat and looked at the board with full enthusiasm.
"Stop — STOP — that's salt, not sugar!"
"I — I'm sorry, Naruto-kun!"
The kitchen sounds started arriving within minutes. Naruto's yelping, Hinata's distressed apologies — neither of them registered much in the living room, where the game had fully absorbed everyone's attention.
"Hinata, that's a sweet potato! I needed a tomato!"
"My tomato beef stew — !"
A groan of genuine anguish from the kitchen as the contents of the pressure cooker revealed their new configuration.
"I'm — I'm so sorry, Naruto-kun!"
Ino, meanwhile, had her fish soup on a low simmer and was regarding it with complete satisfaction. She wasn't as good as Naruto, fine, but she held her own.
She glanced sideways at the other two.
I still don't know what Sakura is trying to accomplish here.
Naruto clearly didn't like Hinata that way. This was going nowhere. Hinata was going to keep suffering from a one-sided thing and that was just how it was.
What a waste of an evening.
"My lamb soup!"
Naruto's voice cracked on the last word. The broth — which had been white — was now a deep reddish-brown.
"Hinata, why is there soy sauce in my lamb soup—"
Naruto was a patient person by nature. About most things. Cooking was one of the exceptions. He took it seriously, and watching a dish go wrong was a specific kind of pain.
He looked at the soy sauce situation. He looked at Hinata, who was standing beside him visibly wanting to disappear, poking at her fingers.
The irritation had nowhere to go.
"...Ino."
"What?!"
"Nothing. Your fish soup. It's good."
"I didn't ask!"
Night.
The cooking disasters had ultimately been handled through creative improvisation — the lamb broth dumped, the lamb rescued and braised. The sweet-potato beef turned into skewers over a grill. Not what anyone had planned, but no one at the table complained.
The evening had been genuinely lively, but three people had been somewhere else internally the whole time.
Sasuke: still turning over the question of why his own Mangekyo had flagged itself as a misfortune.
Naruto: still quietly mourning the dishes that had never become what they were supposed to be.
Hinata: cataloguing every mistake.
Finally.
Sasuke exhaled as the last person left. He was already thinking about the clan archive — there had to be something on Mangekyo in the restricted collection, some record of abilities like his, some framework for—
"Where are you off to?"
The voice came from directly behind him.
"Sak — Sakura?"
He turned. She was leaning against a tree just outside, arms folded, watching him. She'd left with Ino. She was still here.
"You might as well have 'I have a problem, please ask me about it' written across your face."
Sasuke looked at her.
His acting was genuinely terrible and he knew it.
He thought about it for a moment.
He did like her. That wasn't a question he was confused about.
But the clan massacre wasn't resolved. The debt he owed his parents, to everyone who'd died that night — that was his alone to carry and repay. It had nothing to do with Sakura. She hadn't asked to be part of the Uchiha's history, and he had no right to drag her into it.
She was different from the others, he'd always been able to see that. Not like Ino, who wore her independence cleanly. Not like Hinata, who had learned to fold herself inward. Not like Kushina, whose stability was more a form of acceptance than choice. Sakura had a quality he recognized because he didn't have enough of it himself — sheer relentless will, the kind that didn't ask whether the goal was reachable and simply kept going.
That was why she was as strong as she was.
And it was exactly why her path was her own and his was his. She shouldn't have to deal with what he was carrying.
Besides — after watching her take a staff through the chest in the field and walk it off without apparent inconvenience, Sasuke had concluded that she was not easily killed. Immediate danger to her life was, in most normal circumstances, not a serious concern.
"This doesn't involve Sakura."
He said it as a statement of fact. He'd thought it through. He was being considerate.
Sakura's eye twitched.
Every Uchiha I have ever encountered has been exactly this insufferable. It's like a bloodline trait.
Itachi: this. Obito: this. Now Sasuke, right on schedule.
And, she suddenly noticed — all of the Uchiha who'd given her this particular flavor of condescension had been Mangekyo users.
Without the Eternal Mangekyo.
Hm.
Is there a connection.
She filed that thought.
"So I'm being nosy," Sakura said.
Sasuke felt a small jolt of regret — the words were already out, no way back — but he held the line.
"If that's how you want to read it."
Sakura looked at him for one more second.
Then she disappeared.
Fine. Mangekyo or no Mangekyo, let's find out.
Opening a Mangekyo made every Uchiha who'd done it measurably worse as a person, at least for a while — Itachi and Obito were the reference cases and neither was a comforting data point. Even canon Sasuke, during the period before the Eternal upgrade, had been an unambiguous disaster. Better than those two, marginally, but still a disaster.
If Sasuke had opened his Mangekyo, then that arrogance would not let him accept losing.
And if he hadn't?
Then he deserved it for standing in front of her with that face.
Either way, hitting him seemed correct.
Sasuke registered the movement and responded immediately.
Whatever her reason for coming at me —
I'm not who I was.
With the Mangekyo, I'm unbeatable. Even Sakura can't—
This confidence was grounded. He had full intelligence on her capabilities. She had nothing on his new ones.
And he needed a training partner for exactly this — a real test, in controlled conditions, someone tough enough to survive him finding out what his Mangekyo could actually do. With Amatsukami standing by as a safety net, Kotoamatsukami couldn't go too far — he could pull her back from the brink if it got too bad.
She was perfect for this.
He dodged the first strike and activated his Mangekyo in the same motion. Seven-pointed kaleidoscope, blazing open in both eyes.
Kotoamatsukami.
The invisible force landed on Sakura instantly.
...Hm?
Sakura noticed it the moment it touched her.
That's a lot of yin chakra.
Inner Sakura's senses flared. The foreign yin energy registered immediately — clearly not hers, wrapping around her like something trying to find purchase.
Sasuke made no attempt to hide the Mangekyo. He let her see it. He let her see everything.
"Sorry, Sakura."
His hands were in his pockets. Completely calm.
"But the me that exists right now is already beyond your—"
A fist hit him in the face.
The impact launched him backward. He'd felt that acceleration before, but knowing it was coming and experiencing it were two different things, and for a moment the world was just force and the sound of wind.
"What exactly are you performing for me?"
☆☆☆
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