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Kakashi had a feeling that getting Sasuke to function as part of a team was going to be an uphill battle. The boy was too absorbed in his own goals, while isolating himself out of some misplaced fear of what closeness to others might cost him.
Ironically, for an Uchiha, he was extremely tunnel visioned.
Sasuke's body had been strained to the point of breaking. The cumulative result of relentless, unbroken training since the day Itachi wiped out the clan. According to ANBU surveillance reports, the boy hadn't taken a single full rest day in years. It was wearing him down in ways that weren't visible yet, but would be soon.
And now, with his Sharingan awakened, things were only going to get worse.
Itachi had once described the moment of Sharingan awakening to Kakashi as something close to a surge of adrenaline. A burst that pushed the body past its normal limits while burning through reserves far faster than it should. There was always a point, eventually, where the body simply couldn't sustain the pace the eyes demanded of it.
Right now, Sasuke was seeing rapid, almost unnatural growth. But if he kept pushing at this rate without any real recovery, that growth would stall out entirely, leaving him burned out and broken.
Sasuke was a risk to himself.
Every action he took, every decision, screamed the same single word underneath it.
Revenge.
And with Naruto growing stronger by the week, displaying abilities none of them fully understood yet. Sasuke's complex was a fire with no shortage of fuel left to consume. The more progress he watched Naruto make, the harder he'd push himself in response, right up until he'd stagnate. Naruto would keep climbing. And Kakashi had no idea yet what that gap would do to him once Sasuke actually noticed it.
Thank god Inoichi caught this before it became a real problem, Kakashi thought. Spotting these patterns early had never been his strongest skill. But Naruto's effect on the rest of the team was something they had to plan around now.
"Sasuke-kun, what's your favorite food?"
"Why am I not training?" Sasuke asked, frowning.
"I figured kids liked being lazy. You should try acting your age once in a while."
"Just show me something. I'll copy it with my Sharingan," Sasuke said flatly. "Then you can get back to your 'reading'."
This brat, Kakashi thought, eye curving into its usual smile.
"My cute student. Do you know what actually separates a regular shinobi from a genuinely dangerous one?"
Sasuke considered it for a moment. "Mindset."
"Nope," Kakashi said, popping the p. "Knowledge."
Sasuke nodded understanding right away what the man mean. Despite the problems in his mindset, he was still a prodigy underneath all of it.
"If you understand exactly what an enemy can and can't do," Kakashi continued, "they stop being a mystery. Either they become manageable, or you realize fast enough that running is the smarter option. Either way, you're the one making the informed choice instead of finding out the hard way."
Sasuke was fairly certain Kakashi already knew he understood this much. So why bother explaining it at all?
Unless...
"I don't actually know anything about you."
"Ding, ding, ding. So what can you do about that?"
"Spy on you."
Kakashi pulled out his orange book and giggled behind it. "Oh my, Sasuke-kun. I really don't need any more little kids turning into my stalkers."
A vein visibly pulsed in the uchiha's temple.
"You're welcome to spend the next month tailing me around if that's how you'd rather use your time," Kakashi said. "But there's a much faster way to get a real read on a shinobi's capabilities."
"You mean the bingo book," Sasuke said.
Every shinobi nation maintained a bingo book. Though calling it a simple list undersold what the thing actually was. In practice, it functioned as a running piece of military intelligence. Filled with combat profiles, bounties and suspected capabilities of famous shinobi.
However the books were flawed by design.
A shinobi who barely escaped an encounter with their life intact rarely gave a clean, accurate account of what they'd actually faced. Fear did strange things to memory. By the time an entry made it into the official record, it had usually passed through enough frightened, half-remembering mouths that the line between what a shinobi could actually do and what people believed they could do had blurred. Which meant the book could just as easily get a shinobi killed for underestimating a threat as it could for overestimating one.
Beyond the profiles themselves, the books tracked bounties and status on anyone worth the paperwork.
In the field, chunin and jonin flipped through these things constantly, cross referencing a stranger's fighting style against known entries mid mission.
For the average shinobi, it was rare to earn a significant entry with a ephithet. As the book became something closer to a political instrument than a combat record. A name attached to a large enough bounty, or a dangerous enough profile, functioned as a deterrent all on its own. Something village leadership had to actively account for whenever elite shinobi got deployed.
"Do you know what my epithets are?"
"Multiple epithets... just like Itachi's," Sasuke muttered, mostly to himself.
Itachi had accumulated a string of bingo book entries and a small collection of names to go with them.
God of Genjutsu.
The Red Crow.
The Demon Hand Uchiha.
The Clan Killer.
"You know, it's a shame you never bothered doing a background check on me," Kakashi said, almost fondly. "Itachi went out of his way to learn everything he could."
Something in Sasuke's composure cracked.
"What did you just say?"
"When Itachi served under me in ANBU, he ran a full background check on me. Kakashi of a Thousand Jutsu, they call me. The Copy Ninja." Kakashi lifted his headband, revealing the Sharingan underneath. "Kakashi of the Sharingan."
For one brief second, something like hope flickered across Sasuke's face.
"You... you're an Uchiha?"
"No," Kakashi said calmly, watching that hope shatter as quickly as it had appeared. "This eye was a gift from a dear friend during the Third Shinobi War, right before he died. The clan wanted it returned after the fact. Your father was the one who insisted I be allowed to keep it. He honored my friend's final wish over the clan's claim to it."
At the mention of his father, something soft passed briefly over Sasuke's expression. For just a moment he remembered chasing after a man's approval he'd never quite managed to earn in time. Then the memory kept playing forward. His parents on the ground with Itachi standing over them.
"Teach me everything you know."
Kakashi held an unreadable expression. "I already gave you your schedule."
Sasuke stared at him like he'd been struck, confusion and anger spreading across his face. "You can't be serious."
"That's my first order as your instructor. Go... Rest."
"I can't. I have to—"
The jonin cut him off by slamming him back against a tree, forearm pressed to his throat.
"Listen to me," Kakashi said, releasing his killer intent that froze Sasuke in place. "I am your jonin instructor. What I say is law for this team. If you can't accept that, you're welcome to join the average genin corps instead."
Silence.
Kakashi let him drop, and Sasuke's hand went immediately to the reddening mark on his throat.
"Here's the truth, Sasuke," The white haired man said. "I am the only shinobi alive who can actually get you to where Itachi is. And I've decided I'm not going to."
"No, you can't—"
"Yes, I can," Kakashi said, already turning away. "In fact, I've decided I don't want to train you at all. Pack your things. As far as I'm concerned, you're going back to the academy."
"Wait!"
The jonin paused, glancing back over his shoulder.
"...I'll do it," Sasuke said, jaw clenched, fists trembling at his sides.
Kakashi watched him struggle visibly with the idea of doing nothing while the world kept moving without him. Why does he want me held back when Naruto and Sakura aren't? The question was written across every line of his face even though he never said it out loud.
"Let's pick this back up in a month."
"Hn."
I hope I haven't misjudged you, Kakashi thought, turning away and already mapping out the rest of his evening. He'd stop by the memorial stone first, like always. Grab some salt-broiled saury and miso soup with eggplant on the way home, something warm after a day that had taken more out of him than he'd let on.
And, well, if he just happened to pass the bookstore on the way...
Kakashi allowed himself a small giggle at the thought of the new Icha Icha volume waiting on the shelf.
A reward for a job well done.
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Author's Note: And with that, the chapter comes to an end.
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Q: What do Itachi's titles mean?
Titles and nicknames are one of my favorite parts of this series i.e. the White Fang or the Yellow Flash etc.
Itachi never got an official canon nickname, unfortunately, but given how strong and infamous he is, it felt like he should have had one. So I made a few up for this story.
God of Genjutsu.
Pretty self explanatory. Itachi stands head and shoulders above everyone else in the series when it comes to genjutsu, to the point where an epithet like this feels almost canon.
The Red Crow.
Also fairly self evident. Itachi's signature technique involves crows, and his Sharingan is red. Red Crow.
The Demon Hand Uchiha.
This one's more niche. Itachi consistently shows off ridiculous precision with kunai and shuriken throughout the series, so I built a nickname around that specific skill set.
What do you guys think?
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That's It… For Now.
I want to thank you all for taking the time to read, comment, and follow along with this story. Your feedback means more than you know, and it helps push me to make each chapter bigger, sharper, and more true to the worlds of Naruto and Dark Souls. And if you can't wait for the next update, you can read ahead to Chapter 100 on P@trEon.
Until next time,
Praise the Sun.
\-Adam-/