Heaviness.

  The first thing Sasuke felt wasn't the fatigue of his own battered body, but the weight of Naruto collapsing onto him after the "Rain of Needles."

  "Naruto?" his voice trembled, sounding pathetic, childish.

  Silence answered.

  The blonde, who a second ago had stood as an indestructible wall, slowly slid down, losing his footing. Sasuke instinctively caught him, preventing him from hitting the ice.

  His hands instantly became sticky and hot. There was too much blood. The black jacket on Naruto's back had turned into a crimson mess, from which dozens of long senbon protruded like porcupine quills.

  Each of these needles had been meant for Sasuke.

  "Hey..." The Uchiha shook him by the shoulder, his voice rising to a scream. "Hey, idiot! Get up! You wanted to be Hokage! So don't just lie there!"

  There was no reaction. The head lolled back lifelessly, eyelids shut. Naruto's breathing, having shifted into the deep Tortoise Trance for emergency regeneration, was so shallow that Sasuke's panicked mind registered it as absent.

  Something cracked inside his head. A dry, brittle sound, like a snapping branch. A psychological barrier collapsed.

  Why?

  The image before his eyes shifted. The ice dome vanished. Instead—the corridor of his childhood home, bathed in moonlight. Blood on the tatami. Itachi.

  "You are weak, Sasuke. You lack hatred."

  "Weak..." the Genin whispered, staring at his partner's pale face. "I was weak again. Again, I let someone die in my place."

  He had trained until his hands bled. Was the best in the Academy. Took pride in his clan's blood.

  And where had it led?

  To his teammate lying in his arms, turned into a sieve. While he was barely scratched and utterly useless.

  The bitterness of loss mixed with a toxic, soul-corroding hatred for his own helplessness. This cocktail hit his brain like a chemical storm. A special chakra, dormant in the Uchiha's optic nerves, reacted to the explosion.

  The world jerked.

  Reality didn't just become brighter. It split into layers.

  Sasuke saw not just colors—he saw flows. The air filled with threads of energy, pulsating, alive. Naruto's blood shone with a fading crimson, while the ice around them radiated a cold blue glow.

  Sasuke blinked. The pain in his eyes was sharp, searing, but... liberating.

  He gently, with frightening calmness, lowered Naruto onto the ice.

  "Stay here for a while," he said quietly.

  His voice had changed. No panic, no childish hysteria. Only absolute cold. Colder than Haku's mirrors.

  Sasuke slowly straightened up.

  His chakra transformed. From a hot, unstable fire, it turned into a dark, viscous substance, heavy as mercury.

  Haku, watching from a mirror, felt a chill penetrate to his bones.

  What happened? This boy's aura... has become ominous.

  Sasuke raised his head.

  In eyes dark as the abyss, crimson lights ignited. Within them, two tomoe slowly rotated.

  The Sharingan had awakened.

  "You bastard," the Uchiha spoke.

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  His gaze wasn't directed at a reflection. He looked through the ice, straight at the source of chakra. At the original.

  Haku flinched. Coincidence?

  Dash to the neighboring mirror. Maximum speed. Imperceptible to Genin perception. The blonde was already an anomaly; it couldn't be that the second one could track him too.

  Sasuke's pupils slid to the side by exactly the degree the opponent's energy flow shifted. He didn't see the body—he saw the trail of chakra lingering in space.

  "I see you."

  Haku gritted his teeth. Bluff!

  Three senbon in hand. Attack. Direct aim, crossfire, speed of sound.

  Sasuke didn't panic. He just... shifted.

  For him, the world broke down into frame-by-frame motion. He saw the inception of intent. How Haku's muscles contracted even before the throw. The trajectory of the needles before they left the enemy's fingers.

  Lean left—a needle whistled through the air millimeters from his ear. Lean forward—the second passed over his head. Roll.

  "What?!" Haku exhaled. His icy calm cracked.

  Sasuke straightened up with a kunai in hand.

  "Is that all?" he asked with frightening indifference. "Your speed is annoying. But now it is useless."

  Realizing he was losing control, Haku went all in. Close combat. Using the inertia of moving between mirrors as a battering ram. He flew out of the ice behind the Uchiha's back.

  Sasuke didn't even turn around fully. He already "saw" it.

  Hand thrown back. Precise, surgical interception of the wrist in mid-air.

  SMACK.

  The harsh sound of flesh hitting flesh.

  Sasuke gripped Haku tightly. Crimson eyes with tomoe stared into the mask slits with absolute, crushing, aristocratic superiority.

  "Now I've caught you," the Uchiha hissed.

  A knee strike to the stomach was brutal. Haku flew backward, crashing into one of the mirrors. The ice webbed with cracks; the mask fractured, revealing part of a pale face.

  Sasuke walked toward him, ready to kill. For the first time in his life, toward someone other than Itachi, he didn't just want to win—he craved to destroy. To grind into dust.

  "You will pay," a whisper that induced goosebumps. Seals for a Fire Technique formed themselves. "Pay for everything."

  At that moment, a sound tore through the air outside.

  Piercing, high-pitched, screeching. Like a thousand birds screaming in death agony, or someone scraping myriad nails against glass.

  CHIDORI!

  The sound penetrated even through the ice dome, reverberating in their ears. A monstrous concentration of electric chakra.

  Haku, lying on the floor, threw his eyes open. Fear of Sasuke vanished, burned away in the flame of absolute terror for another person.

  "Zabuza-sama..."

  He realized the danger of that technique. Understood that Zabuza, exhausted by battle, would hardly dodge. It was death.

  "No..." an exhale.

  A glance at Sasuke, whose chest was already inflated for a Fireball. A glance at the mirror reflecting the outside world.

  The choice of the "Tool" was made instantly.

  Haku vanished.

  Not to attack. He dissolved the mirrors, canceling the technique, drawing the chakra back in to use the last remnants for a dash.

  The ice dome crumbled into glowing dust.

  Sasuke, disoriented by the sudden disappearance of the target and the change of scenery, froze. The flame died in his throat.

  "Where?.."

  He saw a silhouette rushing across the bridge with inhuman speed.

  There, in the mist, Kakashi was already preparing the attack. A hand engulfed in lightning distorted space. Zabuza was immobilized by dogs. Death was a period at the end of the sentence.

  Haku threw himself to intercept, arms spread, to change the outcome to a comma with his own body.

  "Madness..." Sasuke exhaled.

  But there was one more movement.

  A movement that even the Sharingan barely caught because it originated from a "blind spot," from the very ground.

  Naruto Uzumaki.

  He wasn't dead.

  The sound of Raikiri ripped him from his trance faster than a slap. To his sensory perception, this wasn't the chirping of birds. It was the scream of tearing space. Two Jonin fires and Haku's fading spark flying toward the center of the collision.

  No!

  Naruto launched from a prone position. Unconsciously burning part of his cultivation base, redirecting energy structure into instantaneous power. Dangerous. Painful. But it gave an explosion.

  Qi detonated in his legs, turning his body into a projectile.

  Blocking the technique was impossible—guaranteed death.

  He could only change the geometry of the scene.

  Haku was already in front of Zabuza, eyes closed in anticipation of the finale. Kakashi couldn't stop the inertia of the lightning.

  And in that fraction of a second, in the gap between an inhale and an exhale, Naruto slammed into Haku's side.

  A shoulder check of monstrous force. Speed spurred by urgency and Qi.

  Naruto knocked Haku off trajectory like a bowling pin. The boy's body crashed into Zabuza, knocking the swordsman off his feet and tearing him from the grip of the summon dogs.

  All three—a tangle of limbs and pain—flew to the side.

  WHOOSH!

  Kakashi's hand, carrying pure energy of destruction, pierced the air where a heart had beaten a split second ago.

  No flesh. No blood. Only electrified emptiness.

  BOOM!

  Raikiri slammed into the concrete railing. The explosion blasted the stone to dust; blue lightning struck in all directions, blinding observers with the flash of a supernova.

  The light faded. Sudden silence hung over the bridge.

  Kakashi stood frozen in the striking pose, arm elbow-deep in a smoking hole. Heavy breathing, eyes wide in shock. Missed. For the first time.

  A little further away, in a pile of construction debris, lay three figures.

  Zabuza. Haku. Naruto.

  All alive.

  Sasuke stood, arms lowered. The Sharingan slowly rotated, recording the impossible outcome.

  Naruto, covered in blood, still with needles in his back, lay atop the enemies, wheezing heavily.

  He saved them.

  "Idiot..." Sasuke whispered, feeling his legs give way from exhaustion and the adrenaline crash. "Incredible idiot."

  >>> <<<