A minute after waking up, Atsuo could only speak a few words at a time. After five minutes and two jugs of water, he could speak full sentences. After fifteen minutes, he pushed himself to sit upright with strength no one thought he should have. After half an hour, he finished eating his first bowl of plain mushy rice. A single hour after waking up, Atsuo stood on his own two feet.

  Before immediately stumbling and being caught by several hovering Uchiha.

  The entire clan experienced a dramatic change in mood, and cooking fires were lit early despite the hot afternoon sun. Atsuo’s share of back slaps were kept to a minimum as any force greater than a breeze could topple him over. From his own perspective, Atsuo felt… strange. The things he could last remember were garbled nonsense that felt like they happened years ago. However, after eventually getting the full story by several people, everything rushed back to him.

  The last few moments before he fell unconscious were now vivid in his mind. It marked a turning point inside of him. His feelings on what had occurred were still raw, and he didn’t want to discuss how he felt about what happened with anyone else. Not yet, at least.

  For the near two hours after he woke up, Atsuo had been inundated by too many people wanting to check on him or just generally stay by his side. His mother eventually came to the rescue, forcing everyone to give him space.

  “The food won’t be ready for quite some time, so take some time to rest. I will keep everyone from bothering you.” His mother had said, before leaving him alone in a tent on the other side of camp.

  Atsuo spent several minutes just sitting and breathing, finding even that simple act difficult. He had strained himself to stand, and walking pushed him to the limit. When he found his rhythm, he shut his eyes and focused on finding and strangling the tiny man beating a drum in his head. Several times during his walkabout with Dan, Shingo and Okita, he kept seeing things out of the corner of his eyes. They were random, yet similar enough in appearance that Atsuo was convinced he had seen something. So, he attempted to use his Sharingan in response, which failed and resulted in a massive splitting headache.

  He sat completely still, letting everything around him wash away as he focused on the strange shapes floating around in his head. His vision continued to pulsate to the beat of a migraine. After some time, it began to subside, and his breathing grew steady.

  Before he knew it, the pain was completely gone. He opened his eyes, and suddenly found himself in a crowded tent. Several Uchiha sat around and stared at him with concern.

  “...What the hell are you all doing?” Atsuo questioned.

  —

  “How long has he been like that?” Okita asked, popping his head into the tent where Dan and several others sat staring at Atsuo.

  “About an hour now. He started drooling about 20 minutes ago. Still no movement when we poke him.” Dan reported, grabbing his chin in a speculative motion.

  “He is alive… right? Hey, let me sit down…” Okita nagged, trying to push his way into the very cramped tent.

  The group had given Atsuo plenty of space, as ordered by his mom. No one had wanted to be the one to light that short fuse. However, after the food had finished cooking, she allowed someone to go fetch Atsuo from his hiding hole. That’s when they discovered his upright comatose state.

  He had remained sitting, unmoving for several hours by that point. No one knew why he had entered such a deep meditation. No amount of talking or interaction seemed to disturb him, and even the act of propping up a bowl of hot food beneath his nose failed to bring forward any reaction. His mother, father, and several dozen adults came to investigate, all apprehensive of trying to wake him up, unsure of his physical well being.

  Of course, everyone looked him up and down with their Sharingan, trying to assess his condition. His Chakra appeared completely benign on the surface, flowing calmly and steadily. However, upon closer inspection, the flow of Chakra itself seemed to repeat a slow pulsing pattern. The pulse began in his stomach, slowly pushing out in a wave to his extremities at nearly the same time, before ebbing back to the center.

  Since no one was capable of seeing his Chakra network to figure out anything more than that, they could only guess at what he was doing. All anyone knew was that flowing Chakra in such a manner for hours on end should take an incredibly high level of focus. By the time several more hours had passed, half of the clan was ready to tie Atsuo to a rope and drag him through the bushes. The concerned adults convinced them otherwise.

  Then without any fanfare or notice otherwise, Atsuo opened his eyes.

  “...What the hell are you all doing?” He asked, looking around with raised eyebrows at the gathered crowd.

  His question was met with several seconds of silence, before everyone spoke at once.

  “What are we doing? What the hell are you doing?!”

  “Don’t scare us like that!”

  “We thought you were braindead… well, more braindead…”

  Looking around and generally ignoring the rustling crowd of young Uchiha, Atsuo noticed one person missing from the huddle.

  “Where’s… Keina?”

  Like a switch, everyone shut up after he spoke. Nobody made eye contact with him, instead opting to glance back and forth between each other.

  “...What?”

  Dan inched forward, putting a hand up to uselessly cover his mouth before whispering.

  “You should, uh, probably stay away from her for a while. She had something of a nervous breakdown sometime after you woke up. So…” Before Dan could finish, Atsuo slowly pushed past him to stand up and out of the tent. All eyes turned to follow him as he stood, expecting him to tumble over at any moment. He did not fall, much to their disappointment.

  “Where is she?”

  “Look, like I said-”

  Atsuo turned to glance at Dan with raised eyebrows. Giving in, Dan sighed with exaggeration.

  “She’s been ‘cleaning’ the weapons storage tent for several hours now. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…”

  Atsuo nodded in thanks, then took off at a humbling shuffle-stagger. All the surrounding Uchiha watched him limp away, wincing each time he slightly stumbled.

  Dan got up a moment later.

  “...I’m just gonna follow him from a distance, to make sure he doesn’t faceplant or something.”

  The others gave him approving nods.

  —

  Keina mindlessly picked up tools, weapons, and scraps of armour in her effort to reconfigure the current box she was leaning over. She brought each item up to eye level, gave it a quick inspection, before placing it in the open crate. When she reached over for the next unsorted item, her hand found nothing. The Uchiha clan was in possession of nearly 50 crates of such goods. She had just gone through the last such box. With a sigh, she plucked the box’s discarded lid, and pushed it back into place, hearing the creak of wood as she forced it down.

  When Atsuo had woken, she rose from the pits of despair to heights unimaginable. Her emotional high had been so great that she suggested lighting the fires to cook a feast, which the clan agreed to. However, several minutes later, she became aware of the headache still pounding just behind her eyes. Her own mental state had blinded her to the pain. As time dragged on, the beating of blood only grew worse. So she ran and hid, trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy before nearly passing out.

  That headache did not fade whatsoever as the hours passed. In her previous experience, it tended to reduce in strength until eventually subsiding completely. For whatever reason, this time was horribly different. The headache grew in strength until spots swam in her vision. After collapsing right by the weapons storage, she used the excuse of sorting the inventory to stay put and out of sight.

  She placed all of her attention on the singular act of not letting the headache consume her. It spread from behind her eyes to her ears, then the top of her skull, before settling as a ball of pure pressure in the back of her head. The process of keeping her hands busy with sorting each crate kept them from prying her own skull open and ripping out whatever was trying to kill her.

  By the time Keina sealed that final crate, she had secured enough control over the headache to only be mildly incapacitated. Her body felt as if it had been electrocuted, which was not a wonderful experience. Her eyes, however, had taken the worst beating. She could barely focus on one thing at a time, the sunlight was actively trying to blind her, and anything that moved too fast wound up looking like a blur.

  All of her senses were so impaired that she could barely even hear the footsteps of anyone walking right up behind her.

  “Keina?”

  She flinched, which was a bad move, as she had been precariously leaning over the now-closed crate. She fell to the ground in a heap.

  “Oh, crap, sorry-”

  Atsuo stumbled forward in a vain attempt to help Keina. Overestimating his own stability, he found himself crashing right on top of her.

  “Shit-”

  “Oof-”

  “Sorry, sorry…”

  “Get off!”

  Keina got her arms beneath her and pushed, sending Atsuo falling away somewhere to her side. She maneuvered herself to a sitting position and tried to glare at the clumsy teen, but the sudden movement left her clutching her head instead. Atsuo managed to roll to his back and propped himself up on his elbows, spewing apologies left and right.

  “Sorry, I- I thought I could… well, I didn’t think you would jump like-’

  By the time Keina got herself under control, Atsuo had ceased his frantic apologising. The two sat apart from each other awkwardly, neither saying anything more. Before Keina could choke out any words, Atsuo squinted in her direction, rubbed his eyes, and blinked several times.

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  “What?” Keina sneered, growing annoyed.

  To Keina’s surprise, Atsuo’s eyes grew red as he activated his Sharingan. Her annoyance instantly switched to intense discomfort. In that split second, she felt a response to those eyes from somewhere deep within her. An uncontrollable reaction to having one’s true self seen.

  Keina’s Sharingan flared awake mere seconds later, and with it she felt a pop in the back of her skull as all of the accumulating pressure over two weeks burst all at once.

  Atsuo’s attention was immediately drawn to her eyes. Two pairs of Sharingan locked, and in that moment, their surroundings faded away to leave only the two Uchiha.

  —

  Atsuo had prepared himself for… well, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know why Keina had not wanted to see him after his initial awakening, but there was no reason he could think of as to why she was not present in the tent to check on him. Perhaps she had simply grown sick of looking at him after cleaning up his body for two weeks. No matter the reason, he wanted to see her. Atsuo had decided to stop being an idiot, and evolve into a huge idiot.

  After rather quietly approaching Keina, he called out without thinking, causing her to fall, firmly putting him in the “Dumb idiot” category. When he moved to offer assistance, he gracefully stumbled directly on top of her, plummeting his status all the way down to “Huge dumb idiot”. After this perfectly executed plan, he then proceeded to awkwardly shuffle around while helplessly pleading, leaving his final score to sit at “Dangerously stupid”.

  Overall, the interaction sat somewhere around his top four most embarrassing moments, so he had that going for him at least.

  However, none of that mattered when he looked directly at Keina. Just as he had seen before entering ‘meditation’ in the tent, strange shapes flit just out of sight in his vision. He attempted to rub the colours from his eyes, squint and blink them away, anything to pierce whatever illusion he was seeing. When all of that failed, he took a chance. Activating his Sharingan, Atsuo was surprised and delighted at the lack of splitting pain this time. Keina’s Chakra came into view, but the flickering shapes did not come any closer to being revealed.

  Then, without warning, he felt his vision shift further, beyond his control or understanding. Suddenly, along with Keina’s body and her Chakra, a third form now overlapped his vision. This third form was split perfectly in two down the middle. One half was a silver colour, almost seeming to glow. The other half was pink. Atsuo had absolutely no clue what he was looking at. At that moment, however, the shapes were beautiful. Before he could form any more opinions, several other things came to his attention.

  While the pink and silver halves shaped themselves exactly to Keina’s body, something else swam just beyond the touch of her skin. It flowed across the surface, rippling and taking shape as a complex interaction of light and dark shades danced between the two inner halves. At the same time, Keina’s eyes shifted to her Sharingan. All of this overloaded Atsuo’s sense of reality, and a feeling of losing control crept up on him.

  Not being able to process everything fast enough, Atsuo’s mouth spoke before checking with his brain.

  “Your eyes.”

  Keina’s Sharingan did not look like a Sharingan. Normally, her eyes held three tomoe, the exact same as himself and the dozens of other Uchiha whose eyes had reached full maturity. The two of them had reached the same stage at roughly the same time several years ago, with Atsuo’s own eyes maturing in response to what happened with Kotetsu and Keina’s in response to her late father. Atsuo, as well as the entire clan, knew that the Sharingan continued to develop well after it reached maturation. By reaching three tomoe, all that meant was that an Uchiha had unlocked the full or “maximum” capabilities of their Sharingan. Everything Atsuo could remember being told about the Sharingan did not include a fourth stage beyond three tomoe.

  Keina no longer had tomoe at all. Instead, a mesmerising strange pattern of deep black now sat against the red irises of her eyes. More than that, her body was partly covered in completely opaque silver armour, covering most of the pink and silver halves. The armour itself was a strange design. The armour was a mix between what Atsuo had seen the adult Uchiha wear, and something he might find a Samurai wearing in a painting.

  Both sat in complete silence.

  Before either could move, the sound of someone crashing to the ground rang out from the direction Atsuo had come from. Both turned their attention partly toward the disturbance, their bodies still angled toward each other. After a tense few seconds of nothing, Dan suddenly crawled out from behind a tent some distance away. Pushing himself to his feet, he brushed the dirt from his pants and glanced up.

  “Uh… I can come back… later?”

  As he spoke, two pairs of Sharingan fell on him. His eyes grew wide at the sight. Slowly getting up as if he were facing off against two raging animals, Dan carefully shuffled backward in a vain attempt to leave. Before he could even make it two steps, Keina abruptly stood and ran.

  Atsuo found himself in hot pursuit, not entirely sure when his legs began making decisions for his head. His mind flashed back to the night he chased Kotetsu, and he really hoped this would not result in the same outcome. Even still, he needed to stop her from… Well, he wasn’t sure. His gut rather simply told him to stop her no matter what.

  Dan watched the two departing Uchiha, hoping he somehow did not make an awkward situation even worse. Something felt off about the two of them. He contemplated joining in the chase, and after a few seconds of deliberation, he took off at a sprint after the two love-stricken teens.

  —

  Eito was awash with jubilation as he sat with his wife, now that she was willing to be near him again. His son had woken up, and seemed to bear no immediate ill effects from his incident. By the time he learned about Atsuo’s bizarre meditative state, he had already downed a bottle of wine and was well into the next. He let the experts handle the situation as it appeared that the boy was fine for the moment. He clapped his hands and loosed a quick prayer to the sage for good luck, then went to rejoin his wife.

  The clan had lit quite a large bonfire in celebration, the roaring flames now receded to a dull bloom and twirling embers. Eito and Fui sat side by side staring into the open fire.

  “He… do you really think he will be alright?” Fui hesitantly asked.

  Eito turned slightly, causing the drink in his hand to dangerously slosh. He threw an arm around his wife.

  “Us Uchiha, we are strong… I know he will get through it. I can-” He hiccuped.

  “-sense these things.”

  Fui turned to look him straight in the eyes.

  “He’s my son too. I know I’m not Uchiha by blood… but I still worry about him. He has already been through so much, and he will go through much more in the future… just like you. That’s what is waiting for him, isn’t it?”

  Eito stayed quiet while Fui laid out her worries. He felt sudden anger for an inexplicable reason. Except it was not inexplicable.

  “Atsuo, he’s-”

  He struggled to find the right word for several seconds. He began to shake with fury, a sudden influx of thoughts flowing through his mind. His drink almost spilled, but a hand took it from his grasp. That action gave him time to think through what he was feeling. Before he could get any words out, Fui spoke first.

  “The rumours of what happens to those who are struck by a Cinder… are they true?”

  Fui was not Shinobi. Not truly, like himself and the other born Uchiha. She didn’t know what Eito had seen on the battlefield, the damage someone could take and live. For all intents and purposes, Shinobi were the living embodiment of durability. None of that mattered in the face of a Cinder and their weapon. Every cut bled endlessly, bruises took too long to vanish, and even the mere act of touching their weapon could damage you.

  Even with everything Eito had seen, he had never heard of anyone surviving from an attack like what Atsuo had taken.

  If he had not been the oldest Uchiha still in the clan, perhaps then he would have more reliable information.

  “Atsuo is not me. I hope he never has to go through what myself and the rest of my people went through.”

  Fui looked at her husband in concern. She knew that he did not include her when talking about his people. She kept the hurt from showing on her face. The two sat in silence for a while, Eito not even trying to reach for his half-empty cup.

  Eito continued to stare into the mesmerising flames, his mind wading into depths that held memories long repressed. He had seen this fire so many times. He had been forced to light that fire, again and again. The one responsible for making him light those fires-

  Shouting and ruckus brought Eito’s attention back to the world. Looking around in confusion, he spotted the source of the disturbance, finding himself even more confused to see Keina making a mad dash through the camp while Atsuo… oh shit.

  Leaping to his feet, Eito charged off to intercept the two. Three, he realised, after seeing Dan keep pace with Atsuo. Making much more headway than his still crippled son, he gained speed on Keina, finding her own speed impressive. Not that it mattered. Within seconds he caught the fleeing girl, moving to grab and twist her arm in an attempt to stop her. He didn’t really know what was going on, but he figured if his son was chasing someone again, there was probably a good reason. He found that keeping a solid grip on the teen was a bit more difficult than expected as she broke his hold and slipped away.

  “Hey-”

  Before he could finish his thought of indignance, Keina turned just enough to look at him.

  And he saw it.

  Sudden irrational anger overtook Eito, and both of his hands shot out to forcefully grab Keina’s arms. She yelped in pain as Eito refused to let go, turning her to face him fully. Keina attempted to shake him loose as he stared into her eyes. He hoped that he had seen wrong. Keina slowed her resistance, her eyes opening wider as Eito’s expression shifted from one of anger to that of despair.

  “Mangekyo…” Eito sounded out, barely even whispering.

  Keina would not have heard the words, but her eyes could read his lips.

  Then without any warning, Eito let go, dropping her to the ground in a heap. He backed away several steps, his eyes not leaving her own. Just then, Atsuo and Dan caught up, Dan having thrown his shoulder under Atsuo’s arm to speed him along. Several other Uchiha, adult and young, gathered around until the group became a crowd. Everyone wanted to know what the commotion was about.

  One by one, the adults looked into Keina’s eyes and recoiled. None of the younger Uchiha reacted the same way, their faces reflecting confusion while the adults glanced around at each other. Eito had not taken his eyes off of her, his face now fallen to pure shock.

  Keina began to push herself to her feet, averting her eyes to her feet. Strangely, even with everyone looking at her, she only felt one set of eyes still watching her, truly seeing her. She looked up and met Atsuo’s eyes, his own Sharingan visible despite the strain he clearly felt. At that moment, Keina had absolutely no idea what was going to happen to her.

  Until Eito slowly stepped up to her, lightly clasped her shoulders with his hands, and spoke a single word.

  “Leave.”

  Surprised, Keina’s head jerked up to meet Eito’s completely emotionless face. A cold chill ran down her spine as she tried to figure out what she had done wrong. Why did she have to leave? Why was no one telling her what was wrong? Even more questions raced through her mind as she tried to comprehend the situation. Around her, the adults had stepped back, pulling many of the younger Uchiha back with them.

  Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Eito spoke again.

  “You need to leave.”

  Keina felt like she couldn’t breathe. Atsuo stepped up to the two of them, trying to push himself between the clan leader and herself. Eito kept his eyes on hers. She could see his silent plea to just do what he said, to not fight this.

  “This is crazy, why does she have to leave? Dad, just… hey, tell me what the hell is going on! Do you hear me? You-”

  Slowly, she lifted her arms, grabbing and lifting Eito’s arms off of her shoulders. He let her. Keina’s gaze yet again dropped to her feet, avoiding any eye contact with Atsuo, who continued to rant and rave. He didn’t notice when she turned and began walking away, until she was already several steps into her stride.

  “-Hey! What the hell? No, don’t go, please, Keina I can fix whatever this i-”

  “No you can’t.” Eito cut off his son’s rambling.

  Turning, Atsuo pointed a finger into Eito’s face.

  “You don’t know that. NONE of you are making ANY sense.”

  He waved his finger, pointing at each and every adult.

  “Why are none of you doing anything to stop this? Why are you letting this happen?!”

  He stopped to look at Dan, who was being held back by his father, Tan.

  “Dan. Help me out here. Everyone is going insane, right? Right?!”

  Dan just stood there, his father’s hand firm on his shoulder. After a moment, he turned from Atsuo’s stare, his own eyes darting to the ground.

  Atsuo scoffed. Turning, he started walking after Keina, until a pile of bricks dropped on his shoulder. He turned to find Eito’s hand. Every attempt to move forward was met with a pull back toward the clan leader, Atsuo’s own strength currently nothing more than that of a weak duckling when compared to his father’s hand.

  Eito leaned down until he was inches from Atsuo’s ear, barely moving his lips when he spoke.

  “Not now.”

  The thing that stopped him from trying to move, more than anything, was the tone.

  Restrained by the immovable hand and feeling his Sharingan fade, Atsuo helplessly watched another person he cared about leave.