"What did you do?" Kisame snarled, grabbing the front of Sasuke's high-collared shirt after seeing Itachi vanish right in front of his eyes.
Sasuke groaned, a large trickle of blood running down his face and dripping onto his shirt, his chakra dangerously low and his left eye already blurring from the one use of it. If the eye was 100% before activating the ability, it was now around 70%, or maybe 60%.
Kakashi appeared to Kisame's right and gripped Kisame's wrist.
"Let go."
Kakashi's own Mangekyo flashed, chakra and haki boiling to the surface.
"He'll be expelled from the space when he's fully healed."
Sasuke explained weakly before passing out, Kakashi pushing Kisame back and catching his student before he could fall.
"Sasuke!"
With a brilliant silver flash, Kakashi materialized inside his room. He didn't stop to catch his breath. Pivoting instantly, he burst out the front door into a dead sprint. Purple lightning crackled beneath his sandals, propelling him forward in a violent blur as he tore through the dense forest toward Konoha Hospital.
A sudden shockwave swept the street, knocking a group of playing children flat onto the dirt. They blinked in confusion, searching for the source of the violent gust, but Kakashi was already long gone. He blurred across the rooftops, closing the final distance toward Konoha Hospital.
Kakashi moved with disciplined haste, blending speed with absolute composure. The hospital doors swung wide, and before they could even settle, he stood directly in front of the reception desk. The nurse's eyes widened at the sight of Sasuke. She slapped an emergency button, barking into a speaker for a trauma team and a rolling cot.
Kakashi transferred Sasuke onto the mattress with swift, practiced care. The moment the medical team took over, he retreated to the waiting room, finally sinking into a chair. The sudden commotion drew Sakura's attention inside a patient's room; she peeked out just in time to see Sasuke's cot rushing down the hall. Pale with worry, she hurried over to her teacher, dressed in a long white coat given to medics, a clipboard pressed against her side.
"Sensei, what happened?"
She kept her voice down out of respect for the quiet corridors, but a deep, anxious tremor cut through her whisper.
"He severely exhausted his chakra to the point of near death; his body probably shut down to save his life."
Kakashi replied as Sakura took a seat across from him.
"Then what was wrong with his eye?"
Sakura asked, having caught sight of the dried blood right away.
"You're very sharp; you couldn't have seen more than a glimpse of him as he was rushed down the hall."
Kakashi deflected with honest praise.
Sakura smiled, accepting the compliment with a sense of pride.
"I've been trained to notice these things. Sensei Tsunade and Shizune have been through, but please don't deflect. What happened?"
Kakashi raised a hand, scratching his cheek with a guilty, half-hearted smile.
"Let's just say he had a breakthrough with his Sharingan that he wasn't quite equipped to handle yet," Kakashi said. He met her worried gaze evenly.
"If you want the full story, you'll need to ask him. It's his right to reveal his own growth. Besides, even if he decides to keep it a secret, these kinds of things always manage to reveal themselves eventually."
Sakura stared down at her shoes, digesting his words, when a sudden page over the hospital's intercom system snapped her back to reality, her head jerking toward the ward.
"I understand," she murmured, adjusting the clipboard tucked under her arm. "I have to get back to the outpatient ward anyway; we're short-staffed today. Just... let me know when the doctors say he can have visitors, okay?"
Kakashi offered a gentle wave of his hand. "Will do. Go take care of your patients, Sakura."
The moment Sakura rounded the corner, the real Kakashi vanished from his spot without a sound, leaving a solid clone behind to maintain appearances.
"Hmm?"
The receptionist lifted her gaze, ears pricking at a shift in the room. She scanned the waiting room, but everything looked perfectly ordinary. Kakashi and the few other patients were simply sitting there, entirely still. Convinced she was just imagining things, she went back to typing, while the real Kakashi was already moving undetected through the upper levels of the hospital.
'Have to get to him. If Itachi is spat out onto the floor while he's being looked over, then it'll be bad.'
Kakashi thought to himself before his form shimmered with a couple of hand seals, the jutsu being the one responsible for the cut along his eye.
Kakashi silently and quickly made his way through the hospital, observation Haki letting him know the exact room as he slipped past doors, sidestepped rushing nurses, and even clung to the ceiling when the hallways were too crowded.
Slipping into the room and into the corner, Kakashi silently waited for anything to happen that he'd have to cover with genjutsu, but thankfully for him, it didn't come to that; they simply hooked Sasuke up to some machines and ran an IV to him before hurriedly leaving, perhaps having more patients to look after.
Kakashi leaned back, closing his eyes and relaxing a bit now that he knew he wouldn't have to cover up an S-Rank missing ninja appearing out of a pocket dimension like a legendary Pokémon.
Barely fifteen minutes after the nurses had scrambled out to report the boy's bizarre ocular nerve damage, the hospital room door slammed open, sliding violently along its tracks with the unmistakable force of someone who completely despised subtlety. Tsunade strode into the room, her sharp eyes scanning the space before locking instantly onto the corner where Kakashi stood.
Kakashi let the technique drop, sitting down on the chair next to him, waiting for the question he knew was coming.
"What happened for him to severely damage his optic nerve in his left eye?"
Tsunade got right to the point, stepping up and seeing the situation for herself, green medical chakra wafting off her right hand as she held it over Sasuke's closed eyes.
"He's barely alive too; what the hell happened, Kakashi?"
Kakashi sighed, wondering where he could even begin. The situation with Itachi needed to come up eventually, but he wasn't sure this was the best place to explain it. Explaining what happened to Sasuke without the involvement of Itachi, something that someone like Tsunade would pick up the gaps in the story.
"Well… I'm not so sure this is the best place for this discussion, as you can imagine, it's complicated. But the simple answer would be that Sasuke has awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan and used the ability of his left eye, severely damaging his eye and nearly killing himself."
Tsunade's eyes widened in shock at the mention of the legendary eyes of the Uchiha, having not expected something like this when she came to check up on Sasuke after the nurses reported being unable to heal Sasuke's eye, not that she herself could either. The Mangekyo, from what she had observed, couldn't be permanently reversed or cured. All Tsunade could do was prolong his use of the eye with her medical expertise.
"That's really something. The ability must be insane if he put himself in this sort of state using it. Though I don't recommend using anything like this again, he might just ignore the doctor's orders on this one."
Kakashi chuckled at her joke, nodding along, knowing that Sasuke was very stubborn and something like this wouldn't dissuade him, but would motivate him even more.
A sudden swirl appeared and deposited Itachi on the floor at Sasuke's feet, Tsunade jumping in surprise at the sudden spatial rift, hands glowing with chakra and the power to flatten this entire wing, but the control to keep it to the one she wanted to feel it.
'Well, shit.'
Kakashi hurriedly threw up his hands, palms facing Tsunade.
"Wait, wait! I can explain this all, but let's not make a scene, yeah. Itachi is here for a good reason, and the reason Sasuke is in such bad shape is that he used his ability to heal Itachi's terminal illness."
Tsunade sighed, chakra in her hands dimming down slightly.
"Everything involving you is complicated. You make me want to drink."
Tsunade couldn't even wrap her head around Kakashi at the moment. From how he was acting, Kakashi had been in contact with Itachi for a while now, and the fact he knew about Itachi's apparent health conditions showed a level of trust, or maybe she didn't have all the facts to judge, but she at least knew the situation was far from simple.
Itachi's eyes snapped open, his pupils shrinking as a violent convulsion racked his chest. Before he could even draw a breath, he leaned to the side, retching a thick torrent of deep, almost black blood onto the sterile floor tiles. It poured from him in a gruesome rush, looking less like a standard hemorrhage and more like a poisonous illness actively flushing itself out of his body, a physical filter finally being purged after years of toxic buildup. As the last of the dark fluid splattered against the ground, his labored breathing suddenly smoothed out, leaving his lungs lighter than they had been in nearly a decade.
Tsunade stepped forward without flinching, her long life as a ninja and medic having hardened her against scenes far worse than this. Still, what a sight it was, a gruesome pool of bile and black blood spreading through the cracks of the floor tiles like something out of a horror movie. Ignoring the foul stench, she leaned down, her hand glowing with a vibrant medical chakra as she ran it over his chest.
She blinked, her diagnostic senses struggling to process the readout. "You're perfectly healthy," she murmured, a rare note of disbelief coloring her tone. "Almost too healthy."
As she looked closer, the physical transformation was undeniable. The sickly, ash-pale tint to his skin had vanished, replaced by a smooth, radiant complexion full of natural warmth. From his heartbeat to his breath, every single one of his bodily functions seemed to be operating as it should.
Itachi sat up; there was no pain in his lungs, or anywhere for that matter, but what really surprised him was the pure clarity. He could see everything in perfect detail, and his Sharingan wasn't even activated, but he also had the sneaking suspicion that his Sharingan was slightly stronger now as well.
"Sasuke."
Itachi immediately got up, remembering a pair of Mangekyō before passing out; his brother had unlocked it, and he had saved his life.
- Chapter End -