Written: 11/16/23
Word Count: 2,119
The man took the blue chair with wide eyes. I turned away, stumbling down the shadowed block, hoping the mess with Itachi was over. Perhaps there had been even more birds, but Kakashi had defeated Itachi, and the rest of them had disappeared.
As I got closer, I had to remind myself I wasn't dreaming. There was Kakashi, his hair askew, a slight burning smell lingering in the air. And there was Itachi, firing off jutsu after jutsu, each one more deadly than the last.
And there was Kirishima, his quirk fully activated, standing between Itachi and Kakashi.
I stopped at a nearby oak tree, where I gathered my strength and realigned my focus. I had nearly walked back into an ongoing battle. I needed to stop and remember what I was doing. Leaning on the rough bark, I felt a sharp spike of heat as my arm came into contact with the tree. Even with my sweatshirt between me and the unforgiving surface, I already knew I was pressed up against an open wound. God. What a mess.
Kakashi and Itachi wove hand sign after hand sign, the scene eerily similar to Kakashi's fight against Hanzo the Salamander. But this time, instead of water jutsu being spread back and forth, it was fire and lightning. Kirishima blocked them all, the illusions bouncing harmlessly off his armored body. But soon, even the lightning striking his untouchable form began to smoke, blacken.
Kirishima was only going to get hurt if he stayed between them like that.
With a grand, sweeping gesture, Itachi's eyes blazed an ungodly red, realigning their magatama shapes into something like a wheel. Horror shuddered through me as he activated his mangekyou.
"Look away! Look away!" I yelled, but it was as if a waterfall stood between me and the battle in front of me. I clung to the tree as I felt my knees give out, watching in knowing horror of what was about to happen.
Itachi was made of nothing but shadows hidden beneath his high-rising cloak. His eyes were only so vibrant because they were special. I couldn't make out if he was in control of his movements or if he was stuck in the same trap as Rengoku.
"Kirishima!" A loud call filtered through my ears. Tingling recognition located Sam, standing just barely visible from my vantage point by my door. "Shut your eyes!"
Kakashi shoved Kirishima out of the way, his hand lit up with electric blue. It outlined his body, this fearsome flashlight.
Chidori.
He was about to use chidori.
I found my strength just as Kakashi struck, running flat out on the blacktop, headed straight for where Itachi stood beneath the lone streetlight like a stain of darkness. Itachi took it, his chin tipping up in a direct confrontation. As I moved closer to the scene, I was finally able to see Itachi's face.
The lack of emotion, lack of light, made him look almost like a puppet with no feeling. This Itachi was just as out of control as Rengoku, but while Rengoku had fought against its pull, Itachi just bore it. My heart creaked, a knife digging in as yet more indignity was thrust upon this man. This man, who bore no ill will, yet carried it all.
Kakashi wove in close, the electric blue blade forming a sharp triangle that roiled with violent currents. In a final leap, Kakashi came perilously close to the mangekyou that could put him straight in the hospital.
"You're finished," Kakashi warned, his hand splitting cleanly through Itachi's chest.
I once again had to remind myself I wasn't dreaming—I wasn't having a nightmare—as Itachi stared into the face of his old Anbu captain, the two youngest prodigies of their time. Nothing but miscommunications and missed chances stood between them, souring all that had come before. All the trust, all the hope.
All the future possibilities.
My vision became murky as tears leaked from my eyes. Why hadn't Itachi used his Tsukuyomi? It would have been a surefire way to victory. Had something...rebelled in him? Or had his puppet master not known how to use it, or even that it existed?
Once again, we were faced with a being from a different world, and once again, we were left with nothing but more questions. Questions and the untamed emotions boiling underneath the surface for confronting all of these well-loved characters.
Just like Rengoku, Itachi turned into a lava lamp of lines, energy, light. The man's body became something like cracked earth, spilling lava forth from deep within his center. But he was also a stable container for the lava, so it didn't spill a drop. The blaze just grew brighter and brighter. Kakashi didn't move an inch, but I couldn't tell if it was because it didn't hurt or because he wanted to make sure Itachi couldn't pull any more tricks.
Itachi's face seemed to clear. One dazzlingly-bright hand rested, just briefly, on his marked headband. He met Kakashi's eyes, dipping his head in something of an acknowledgment, then began to ascend into the sky.
I walked across the street, knowing there weren't any cars nearby, as Itachi disappeared into another dark purple vortex sitting like a swollen bruise in the air. I couldn't tell how far away it was, nor what it was made of. None of it made sense. None of it.
As soon as the jonin disappeared, and the discoloration of the orange vibrancy left the dark night, all was quiet. All was still.
"Kiri? Did he get you?" Sam's panicked voice took center stage. Leaving Kakashi to stare up into the sky with his back turned to us, I hurried over to Kirishima.
"Are his eyes closed? Is he conscious?" I began firing off questions.
Sam, her glasses smudged with wetness, wearing pink flannel pajamas, startled at my voice. She hunched over Kirishima, one hand on his still-hardened shoulder as the teen fell to one knee. With one look at me, her big brown eyes nearly popped from her skull.
"Gracie! Oh my god, what happened to you?"
Grimacing at the confirmation that I looked just as bad as I feared, I waved her concern away. "Never mind that. They're only small flesh wounds..." I hope.
Kneeling on the ground, I peered into Kirishima's face. His eyes were open, their studded form eerie in real life. The quirks in My Hero Academia were not all glamor and glitz. Many of them, even animated as cartoons, were still a bit...raw. A bit awkward. Faced with those eyes, hardened until they looked like solidified jelly, I tried my best not to shy away and make the poor boy uncomfortable. It wasn't his fault I wasn't used to being around such things. It was more my issue than his, so I dared not let my discomfort show.
"Are you okay?" I asked, my voice turning low and soothing. "Let's get you inside. Sam, can you help him inside and on my couch? I would feel better if you guys stayed with us tonight. We don't know what more could happen."
Sam's age showed in her deer-in-headlights stare. She nodded, blinking several times before her body finally reacted. Her small form nudged up against Kirishima's, who slowly seemed to come back to himself, returning from whatever daze he'd been in.
"Oh, thank goodness," Sam nearly sobbed, clutching his hardened forearm with both of her plaid-covered arms. They wobbled towards my door. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah..." Kirishima said, the husk in his voice similar to his English voice actor's...but different. More nasally. More like a child's voice, not the deep husk of a drawling adult pretending to be a teenager. "I was in this place...there was, like, blood on the ground. Like a pool of blood. Even the sky was red."
"Oh my god," Sam repeated. "Oh my god. What did he do to you? It's okay. It'll all be okay."
"No, he—he didn't do anything," Kirishima responded, his words slow and tinged in confusion. The two trundled up to my door, but he glanced back at me, still kneeling on the ground. His eyes were wide, those red brows raised as far up on his forehead as they could get. "He said that...kids should sit out of fights between adults. Man. Did you know that guy, Mister Kakashi?"
I turned to look at where Kakashi had been standing just moments ago, looking up into the sky, but with a brief spike of panic, I finally noticed he'd moved. Tilting my head all around, my body spun like a child's spinning top. My shoulder ricocheted into something hard, a painful jolt resounding up my arm. Kakashi had silently knelt down next to me, and I hadn't even noticed.
"Don't worry about it, Eijiro," Kakashi said, his voice tightly controlled. "The first aid kit's in the kitchen. I'll be inside in a moment to make you some soothing tea."
Kirishima stalled on my door's stoop, his shoulders deflating a bit further into Sam's side.
Kakashi cleared his throat. "You did well tonight...kid."
Just like that, the sunflower was back in full bloom. With a giant smile, Kirishima let Sam lead him into my apartment, where a faint chorus of awakened mewls alerted me to Sable and Hintar's unfortunate timing.
I shifted from kneeling to sitting on my knees, glancing over Kakashi's form. His rumpled hair was the least of his problems. Burns along his arms and cheekbones showed the truth. Itachi hadn't gone easy on his old captain.
Before I could be stupid enough to reach out and touch the man again, I asked, "Are you alright? That was a sweet thing you did for Kirishima, by the way. I'm not sure what happened here, but he's the type who needs a bit more open praise. He's not quite at the stage where he can easily believe in himself, yet. I'm sure it meant a lot to him that someone as strong as you told him he'd done well."
Kakashi wasn't listening. He stared at my neck, his eyes wandering to my shoulders, arms, torso. My face heated up, just like always, as my gaze followed his. I finally noticed my sweatshirt sleeves ripped, the holes poked through with blood. Not only my temple and cheeks—those damn birds must have really gotten a lot more hits in than I'd thought.
"I'm okay," I said, awkwardly, trying to straighten the sweatshirt so that the blood was covered up. Kakashi didn't say anything, and with that ever-present mask on his face, he was an impenetrable fortress. I had half a mind to be worried that he was now under the same blank-faced control Itachi had been, but I tossed it away as Kakashi offered me a hand.
"Excuse me?" A male voice entered the dark space. Panicking, I quickly fixed the hood back over Kakashi's head, though if anyone was as close as that voice sounded, my actions were all for naught.
Turning around, I saw my neighbor with the folding chair. I wondered if anyone had warned the terrified group at the gas station that the crows were gone, and it was safe now. I didn't want to be the one to do it, but what was the alternative? Leave a gaggle of terrified people standing under Mobil's canopy all night?
The man still held his blue chair like a lifeline. Or a beloved stuffed toy. He was young, with trendy glasses, half a beard, and freckles smattered over his nose. A vaguely attractive man, probably in his late 20s or early 30s, with the social skills of a fragile moth. One gust of wind was all it took to blow him away.
"Your girlfriend is my hero," he said, his eyes alighting on Kakashi's hands, one intermixed with mine and another braced around my shoulder. "You're so lucky. I can't even imagine having a badass for a girlfriend."
My brows rose nearly off my head. It almost felt like they caught the wind and set sail, never to return. Aya. That cut on my temple really stung when I moved my face like that.
Then, my neighbor walked stiffly away, back to his apartment. He didn't even glance back.
"Did you just get hit on, Gracie?" Sam called from my apartment's entrance, and I scoffed so hard it hurt my throat.
"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked Kakashi, who was still silent. It's not like he was known for talking a lot, but I'd come to expect a more open attitude from him.
Kakashi said nothing. He just tightened his hand around mine as he led me back home into the apartment we shared.