Kisame rolled Samehada through his hands, testing the resistance of the elastic chakra still clinging to the weapon's heavy wrapping. The bandages shifted, parting just enough for the coarse, jagged scales underneath to scrape against the invisible strand. Kenji felt a sharp pull on his chakra reserves and severed the connection before Samehada could feed any further.
Kisame noticed the slack. "Found something my sword likes."
"Your sword has terrible taste," Kenji said.
Kisame laughed and swung.
He stopped making wide, sweeping arcs. He shortened his grip, using Samehada's massive bulk to crowd Kenji's space and shut down his angles of escape. Kenji caught the movement in Kisame's shoulders before Samehada properly came down and shifted early, already slipping toward the outside of the strike. Kisame saw him move and changed the attack halfway through, dropping his weight and driving his shoulder forward instead.
The hit caught Kenji square across the chest and hurled him backward through a thick patch of brush. He rolled across the dirt before finally stopping, then sat up and pulled several crushed leaves from his jacket.
"You cheated."
Kisame looked genuinely amused. "In a fight?"
"Very disappointing."
Near the edge of the clearing, Kakashi tracked the exchange without relaxing his stance.
"Are you planning to join him?" Kakashi asked quietly, although his attention never fully left Itachi.
"Not yet."
Kakashi's eye narrowed slightly. Itachi had barely moved since the fight began, but his Sharingan remained active. When Kenji moved early against Kisame's feint, Itachi's gaze followed him, then briefly dropped toward one of the marked kunai half-submerged near the edge of the clearing.
By the time Kakashi looked back at him, Itachi was watching Samehada instead.
Kisame landed several paces away and let Samehada settle against his shoulder. His eyes moved across the clearing, passing over the marked kunai stuck in roots, dirt, and broken stone.
"You've made quite a mess."
Kenji glanced around. "You're responsible for most of it."
Kisame grinned and brought his hands together. Water erupted from his mouth in a massive surge, rapidly flooding the rocky depression of the clearing. The rushing water washed over exposed roots and submerged the uneven stone, forcing Kakashi and the hidden ANBU trackers up into the surrounding trees.
Kenji reached for one of the marks near the opposite side of the clearing and vanished.
His boots hit rushing water instead of solid ground.
The kunai that should have been wedged beside a root was tumbling several meters downstream, dragging his destination with it. Kenji barely had time to register where he'd appeared before Samehada tore through the space beside his shoulder.
He kicked hard off a submerged trunk and threw himself clear.
Kisame laughed from the middle of the flooded clearing.
"That's irritating," Kenji admitted.
"Good."
Kisame drove forward through the water, angling Samehada to cut off Kenji's path toward the remaining trees. With most of the ground markers drifting in the current, the easier escape routes were disappearing quickly.
Kenji went up instead.
His foot struck empty air with a sharp crack, and his body jumped upward as though he'd found an invisible step.
Another kick changed his direction over Kisame's head, followed by a third that carried him sideways just before Samehada swept through the space beneath him.
Kisame paused for half a heartbeat and looked up. "You can fly now?"
Kenji kicked off the air again to keep himself above the water. "Calling it flying is generous."
Kakashi stared from a nearby branch. "You're kicking the air."
"See?" Kenji pointed down at him. "He understands."
Kenji pulled another marked kunai from his pouch and sent it spinning toward the flooded ground. Kisame's eyes immediately followed the blade, Samehada already shifting to cover whichever angle Kenji chose.
Kenji never appeared.
A Shadow Clone flashed in beside the falling marker instead and stepped straight inside Kisame's reach. Samehada slammed into it almost casually, but rather than dodge, the clone grabbed hold of the heavy bandages around the sword.
Kisame's grin faltered.
The clone exploded.
The explosion threw a wall of water across the clearing and shook the surrounding branches. When the spray cleared, Kisame was still standing. The front of his black cloak was scorched, and a thin line of blood ran down his cheek, but he looked nowhere near defeated.
Kisame wiped the blood from his cheek with his thumb and looked up at Kenji with a widening grin. "That one was new."
"I've been practicing bad decisions," Kenji said.
Kisame came through the settling spray before Kenji had much time to enjoy the result, Samehada already swinging hard enough to force him back into close range.
During the next exchange, Hiraishin put Kenji directly behind Kisame for a fraction of a second. Kisame had already begun turning to cover the angle when a blue interface flickered into existence over his broad back.
[Sudden Mission — Legendary Weak Point]
[Land One Thousand Years of Death on Kisame Hoshigaki.]
[Reward: +3,000 SP.]
The timing nearly got Kenji flattened. Samehada was already coming around while he was still processing what the System wanted him to do, forcing him to abandon the opening and teleport away.
Kenji reappeared on a high branch and glared at the blue window.
Of course the System wanted him to finger Kisame in the middle of an S-rank fight.
Kisame gave him no time to complain. Samehada tore through the branch a moment later, forcing Kenji back into the clearing.
A few exchanges later, Hiraishin put Kenji behind Kisame with a clean angle at his ribs. His Armament-coated fist started forward, then hesitated as the mission prompt remained stubbornly at the edge of his vision.
Kisame turned before Kenji made up his mind, and Kenji had to vanish again.
Kakashi's visible eye narrowed.
The next time Kenji passed up an equally obvious strike just to circle behind Kisame, Kakashi finally called out. "What are you doing?"
"Working on something," Kenji answered while ducking beneath Samehada.
"That's not reassuring."
Kisame smashed one of the visible Hiraishin markers embedded in a thick root and followed the strike through, already turning toward Kenji.
Kenji kicked sideways through the air and snapped another strand of elastic chakra onto Kisame's upper arm.
The connection wasn't strong enough to stop the larger man, but Kenji pulled at the exact moment Kisame shifted his weight. His shoulder jerked farther around than intended, and Kisame planted one heel in the water, twisting back hard to recover.
For a brief moment, his back faced the rocks behind him.
Kenji disappeared.
He reappeared from the hidden marker at Kisame's back, already crouched low with both index fingers together.
Kakashi recognized the pose.
"Don't."
Kenji did.
He drove both fingers upward with pinpoint precision. Kisame's entire massive body launched forward. He cleared the flooded water completely, sailing through the air before crashing violently through a dense thicket of bushes and smashing into a jagged rock formation on the edge of the clearing.
For a moment, the only sound in the clearing was the disturbed water sloshing back over the rocks.
Kenji straightened and dusted off his hands.
[Mission Complete.]
[Reward: +3,000 SP.]
[Current Balance: 53,890 SP.]
Kakashi slowly lowered the hand he had brought up to cover his face. "I taught Naruto that as a joke."
"Your legacy lives on," Kenji said.
Nothing moved in the wreckage across the clearing.
Two seconds passed. Then a low chuckle came from Kisame.
It grew louder as he stepped out of the wreckage, brushing broken branches from his cloak. By the time he straightened, he was laughing hard enough to bare every one of his sharp teeth.
The grin that followed looked considerably less friendly.
"I'm going to hit you with the mountain," Kisame promised.
Kenji glanced around the forest. "Which mountain?"
Kakashi closed his eye for a moment. "Kenji."
"What?" Kenji asked, just as Kisame's chakra surged hard enough to churn the water around his legs. He looked back at the swordsman and finally understood what Kakashi meant.
"Oh."
Kakashi dropped from the branch and landed lightly on the water, chakra holding his sandals to the surface. His hand moved closer to his kunai pouch just as Itachi stepped out from beneath the oak.
Kakashi turned with him, angling his body between Itachi and the road back toward Konoha without taking his visible eye off the Uchiha.
Kisame gave Kenji no time to watch either of them.
He burst through the water with enough speed to send spray rolling behind him. Kenji caught the beginning of the first swing and moved early, but Kisame altered the angle halfway through. Samehada scraped across the front of Kenji's jacket as he twisted aside.
The second strike missed him completely and smashed into the rock formation behind him, reducing half of it to broken stone.
Kenji landed farther back beside one of the few hidden marks the flood hadn't carried away. Across the churned water, Kisame straightened with Samehada partly unwrapped, the surface around his legs still trembling under the pressure of his chakra.
Kakashi had come down from the trees now, and Itachi no longer stood beneath the oak. Kenji caught both of them at the edge of his vision before returning his attention to the much larger problem directly in front of him.
He exhaled and rolled his shoulders. "Okay."
Kisame grinned. "Done being annoying?"
Kenji looked at him. "No. I just ran out of the cheap stuff."
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