Lest you fade here all alone

Chapter 11

Shisui was hiding.

When Jiraiya came to him asking how he could find Rei Uzumaki for the first time, he felt amused. When the man kept pestering him, he got annoyed fairly quickly. The damn coot even offered porn as a reward. His personally written porn with autograph! Who the hell would want something like that?!

Shisui didn't feel amused anymore, not in the slightest. And Jiraiya was supposed to be one of the legendary Sannins? He completely ruined his own image!

All ninjas at the top of the food chain were plain wackos. Now the young jounin truly believed in the veracity of this statement.

Once the Toad Sage finally left him alone, the head of the Nara clan sneaked up on him in the market. Surprisingly, the man also asked how he could find Rei Uzumaki. When he answered that he didn't know, Nara stared at Shisui, face blank but eyes as sharp as any kunai, seemingly able to see through the Uchiha's soul and disassemble his mind and thoughts as if they were mere child toys. He felt justifiably intimidated.

The Hokage called for his presence then, politely ordering to tell Rei Uzumaki that he wanted to speak with him.

And if that was not enough, Anko Mitarashi broke into his apartment this morning.

Through his bathroom window.

While Shisui was taking a shower!

The way that crazy snake lady had sized his naked form up and cocked her eyebrow, a corner of her lips doing that thing it did when she found something funny, really ticked him off. Her unreasonable demand to reveal a method of contacting Rei Uzumaki was the last straw and he almost chucked Rei's kunai to her face.

They might have become friends, but Shisui didn't remember becoming the blond Uzumaki's secretary, dammit!

A random thought that Nara, Jiraiya or some other dude (like a certain youthful individual in a green jumpsuit; he shuddered at the image his imagination had conjured) could be the next one to fall through his bathroom window terrified Shisui to the deepest level. He immediately fled to one of the few Uchiha clan's private training grounds after that, choosing rather hone his Shurikenjutsu than to deal with this newly budding trauma.

Shisui always strived to be a good ninja, the best he could be. He still considered himself one of the many, nothing special. He minded his own business, tried to prevent his clan from rebelling to keep his village safe and assure Itachi's, his little brother in all but blood, happiness. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?

So when and how did his life turn this hectic? Oh, right. When a mummy bastard decided to steal his eyes and kill him. And that was the moment Rei Uzumaki popped into his life—

"Yo, Shisui!"

—out of seemingly nowhere.

An unexpected voice from behind at the critical moment of throwing the kunai startled Shisui. The flinch was small, just a tiny quiver of his hand, but such an abrupt arrival of another person still blindsided him. The perfectly aimed blade veered away from the dead center of a target and hit its edge instead.

"Wow. Your aim sucks."

Shisui spun on his heel, launching the second kunai at the speaker with deadly accuracy.

With casual ease, Rei snatched the weapon directed at his forehead out of the air. "That was mildly—" He dodged a slash of the tanto, moving out of the younger ninja's reach in an instant, and finished the sentence, "—dangerous?" with a raised eyebrow.

Shisui said nothing as the shiny new headband on the blond's head drew his attention. Sure, he had heard Rei's plans on rebuilding Uzushio. Heck, he had seen the process himself during that one random abduction from the ANBU detention center. But this was the first time he realized the determination behind that goal. Rebuilding a ruined village, such a great and admirable ordeal. The teen sincerely wished his friend success.

Noticing the Uchiha's gaze on his new headpiece, Rei beamed. "What do you think?" He turned around to show the embroidery on the back of his orange haori. "Cool right? Now I look like the real leader of Uzushio!"

Shisui almost laughed at the genuine giddiness and unmistakable boasting in the other man's voice. Rei could be incredibly frivolous at times. Instead, he smothered his mirth and asked calmly, "You had a haircut?" A petulant glare he received in return made him grin. So worth it. "By the way," and here the teen couldn't help a miffed undertone slipping in as he spoke, "the Hokage, Jiraiya, Shikaku Nara, and Anko Mitarashi were looking for you."

The Uzumaki blinked. "I understand the first three," he said slowly, clearly confused. "But Anko too? How does she even know about me?"

"I'm not sure what exactly she wants." The fact that Rei apparently knew who Anko was didn't even surprise Shisui anymore. "And she knows because all jounins, ANBU, and Police were informed about your occasional presence around the Jinchuuriki and the village and received orders not to engage unless they deem your actions a threat to Konoha or its citizens."

Carelessly twirling the kunai that Shisui had thrown at him earlier around his finger, Rei mulled over new information. Ultimately a thoughtful, "Huh," left his mouth before one corner of it quirked up. "Sarutobi finally made a decision. Good to hear."

With the message passed, Shisui proceeded with his spontaneous stress relief plan. Wordlessly, he made the Seal of Confrontation.

"Oh? Want me to play with you?" Rei slipped his finger out of the hook of the spinning kunai and caught it in a reverse grip. Meanwhile, his other hand formed the seal in a counterpoint of his opponent's as a sign of acceptance of this friendly spar. "Then show me what you've got, Uchiha."

It sounded like a sly little dare. A savage grin on the blond's face, however, didn't fit with his relatively innocent tone. As if a beast that had been dormant inside had just opened its eyes and bared its teeth, ready for a thrilling hunt.

A terrible chill ran down Shisui's spine. Black bled to red as his Sharingan spun to life and he consciously had to stop himself from letting it morph straight into the Mangekyou.

Rei was strong, beyond anyone or anything the young jounin had ever encountered. Dangerous too, he knew, instinctive and bone-deep. Unbelievably so. At the same time, it felt as if the man wasn't even there, just a mirage without the tiniest flicker of chakra, yet it was like sitting in the spacious dark cave: you couldn't see the walls, but the air tasted of an unimaginably large presence.

Adrenaline pumped through Shisui's veins at the prospect of testing himself against such a person. His heart fluttered, every fiber of his being vibrating in anticipation. All the mundane worries of his life got muted, pushed aside, and all there was to know about was this moment. No worrying about the past, no anxiety about the future.

A time came to a halt as the two opponents stared each other down with Rei seemingly content on waiting for the Uchiha to make the first move.

Taking all the details and assessing possible battle plans in a mere fraction of a second, Shisui finally made a move. Shurikens whizzed towards the blond, a few kunai following suit.

Rei deflected half of the shuriken and avoided the rest, his eyes flicking suspiciously at the kunai that went past him in a weird angle, intended to hit the target yet simultaneously missing it by a hair's breadth.

Shisui jerked his hand back the moment those kunai embedded into the ground. Ninja wire screeched as it wrapped itself around the blond. A poof and it sliced through a log that appeared in the man's place.

Shisui brought the wire to his left, parrying a slash from Rei, and immediately counterattacked. They traded several blows, blades clashing with a sharp ding. The teen flipped out of the way, sheathing his tanto mid-move in order to blaze through the handseals. Chakra swirled in his stomach, rising up, burning his throat. The moment it became almost unbearable, he took a deep breath and then released a torrent of roaring fire.

Shisui anticipated the Uzumaki to move out of the way and already calculated all possible escape routes.

The man didn't flee though. He lifted the arm with the kunai closer to his opposite shoulder, successfully hiding one-hand seals he formed behind it from the line of sight of Shisui's Sharingan. Then he brought the kunai diagonally in one swift motion, unleashing a crescent compressed wind projectile that cleaved the giant fireball in half. It didn't stop there and plowed straight towards the Uchiha.

In the end, Shisui was the one who had to duck out of the way. The moment he looked back at Rei, his eyes widened. Two smaller fireballs, the remnants of his own jutsu, swirled around the blond's body, carried by the latter's controlled air currents, and got propelled directly back at Shisui with double their initial speed.

The Uchiha vanished in a swirl of chakra, using shunshin to land in the tree at the edge of the training ground, his mind buzzing. Hijacking his opponent's jutsu and using it against their caster? Brilliant maneuver and the one he had never seen done in such manner.

The branch Shisui took a perch on dipped ever so slightly and the flat side of the kunai patted his cheek. The teen stiffened for just an instant before kicking his leg backward.

Rei grabbed the Uchiha's leg by his ankle. He was forced to release it immediately in order to dodge another slash of the tanto aimed at his own legs.

Shisui dropped from the air to a crouched position. In a blink of an eye, he blasted off the ground and back into the tree.

Empty.

The jounin held his breath, every muscle frozen tense and ready, and scanned the surroundings. Nothing. He rearranged his fingers on the handle of his weapon, feeling his palm getting sweaty.

Where the heck was Rei? And how should he go about finding an opponent that had no perceptible presence? Like fighting a ghost.

The forest was silent. The birds that should have chirped happily all around where nowhere to be found. Besides an occasional gust of wind rustling the leaves, everything stood still.

The skin on the back of Shisui's neck crawled with the sensation of being watched. It set every instinct he had on edge.

This was a hunting game and he was a prey.

Not something he had wished to experience, ever.

The teen turned left when he caught a flash of orange at the corner of his eye. He barely had time to cross his arms to block a punch. The sheer force behind that blow almost sent the young ninja flying, his chakra sticking his feet to the surface of the branch the only thing keeping him on it.

Rei disappeared like the wind between numerous leaves.

Just as Shisui felt the numbness in his limbs receding, the blond was on him again, choosing an ambush from the opposite side. The Uchiha didn't trust his own bones to take another of his punches, so he dodged it by jumping back.

Rei didn't retreat this time. With kunai in hand, he closed on for another taijutsu battle. Shisui was quick to respond, their strikes, parries, and dodges a blur of motion.

Soon, the blond's lips quirked upwards into a wicked little smirk and then he was gone in a flash again.

Rei was lightning fast, unfathomably powerful, and obviously had years of experience on the young Uchiha, but the latter wasn't a pushover or a quitter. He was not about to miss this great opportunity to improve himself.

His neck prickled again.

As good a time as any to change tactics.

Taking a breath, Shisui built up the necessary chakra. It spread across the muscles of his legs, scraping his bones, and all the way to his ankles, the soles and tips of his toes. Eyes wide and mind alert, he leaped forward.

A bit over an hour later, Shisui allowed himself to fall into an exhausted sprawl in the middle of the training ground, blades of grass tickling his skin. He lost count of how many times he would have died during this spar if this was a real fight. The Uzumaki simply overwhelmed him every single time.

Shisui ached all over and his limbs were slightly trembling from such an intense workout. It had been ages since he pushed his body and his mind this far. A pleasant feeling of satisfaction pooled inside the depth of his gut and a content sigh left his lungs.

He would have probably dozed off if not for the feather-light footfalls that stopped a few feet from his head. Opening his eyes, black again, Shisui wasn't surprised to meet Rei's inquisitive blue ones. What irked him, however, was that the bastard looked as cool and unruffled as ever, standing there serenely without even sweating.

"I give up," the teen croaked, mustering the smidgen of strength still left in him to lift his arm up and offer the Seal of Reconciliation.

Rei's expression shifted, softened as he locked his fingers with the younger ninja. After that, he passed the kunai into Shisui's hand.

The Uchiha stared at it dumbly. Was this… Was this the first kunai he threw before their spar, the one Rei had caught? He used only this one tiny thing in their spar all this time?!

Shisui felt like screaming. Like throwing a damn tantrum to show the world how unfair it was! There should be a limit on how ridiculously strong a human could be!

"Aww, are you pouting?" the said human teased, a smirk dancing on his face.

Shisui definitely—definitely!—was not pouting. He was not a kid. He was also an Uchiha and Uchihas did not pout, period. He was way too classy to pout in general!

Except, at this very moment, he wasn't and he kinda did.

"Hn."

There. An appropriate, perfectly Uchiha-like response. His clan would be proud.

The man possessed this baffling ability to make him feel like a kid. Not an entirely unwelcome sentiment, he had to admit to himself. It was liberating to behave like a teenager he was supposed to be rather than a hardened jounin with the weight of his clan's survival on his shoulders.

Rei looked like he couldn't decide whether to laugh at his friend's brief flare of childish defiance or give only a helpless smile. "You did very well, trust me," he assured, settling on the second option. "No wonder I've heard so much about your speed. Though your reaction on your right seems a bit slower than on your left. It's easier to sneak an attack on you from that side. You should take note of it."

It had been years since the last time someone used that kind of tone on Shisui. Kind and patient, like a sensei imparting knowledge to his pupil. "Alright." It wasn't an unpleasant feeling either. "Thanks, Rei."

"How bad is your eyesight by now, Shisui?"

The teen's brow furrowed. "It's fine," he grumbled, a tad bit too fast. There was also an edge in his voice that he didn't quite mean to put there.

Shisui was painfully aware of the fact that Kotoamatsukami put an immense strain on his eyes. More so than the other Mangekyou Sharingan manifestations. His right eye seemed to be worse than his left one, Rei's observation only proved it. The prospect of becoming a blind Uchiha terrified him, but if that was a cost he had to pay in order to protect his loved ones, he would do it gladly.

Shisui pushed himself up into a sitting position and turned around so that he could see Rei. "Your ability to hide your presence is much more interesting," he said, feeling petty for a change. A ninja would never reveal his secrets, so Rei's silence would balance their positions in reluctance to share.

The blond watched him, head tilted slightly to the side as he examined the teen's features. The silence stretched on, but it never seemed to cross into an uncomfortable zone.

"Natural energy."

Shisui perked up, curious and a bit surprised that Rei actually decided to reveal it.

"It's the energy that exists all around us. In the ground we step on, in the grass we choose to sit, in the trees surrounding us, in the rivers, in the sky, in the smallest critter and the biggest mammal. We breathe it in and breathe it out. It's always here. You're born in it, you live in it, and eventually, you're going to die in it."

Rei spoke like a scholar, Shisui mused, or like a wise man so much older than his physical age.

"I can manipulate this natural energy, so I use it to cloak myself. That's why you can't sense me. I'm just a part of the background, a white noise, a natural constant that is always around you and inside you," the man continued his explanation. "I can stroll through Konoha without anyone detecting me because if they aren't actively aware of my presence in the vicinity, I'm nothing to them. So below their notice level that their brains simply don't register my existence even if their eyes do."

That, honestly, sounded really awesome and extremely dangerous. "Are you talking about the Senjutsu?"

"Sages learn to draw natural energy inside their bodies and blend it with their own chakra. This is different. I can manipulate it outside my body." The blond took a moment to consider. "Although, a person in Sage Mode should be able to sense the abnormality in natural energy's flow, hence able to track my position."

"Is it a bloodline limit?"

Blue eyes studied the Uchiha for a moment, then flickered away. "No, it's…" The set of Rei's mouth shifted to something faintly wry. "An unexpected aftereffect of something that happened to me a long time ago." After a short pause, he added, "This is also why people usually feel at ease in my presence unless I wish otherwise. Just adds to my natural charms!"

Shisui snorted at Rei's mischievous grin that appeared with his last words. It reminded him of their first meeting, the night this man saved his life. At that time, he would have never believed that they would become friends.

Rei abruptly looked to the side and Shisui instinctively followed his line of sight.

A moment later, Itachi emerged from the forest, jumping down to stand next to his fellow Uchiha. The boy performed a quick up-down scan of his friend, taking note of his disheveled appearance, with some dirt smudging his clothes and a few rips here and there. His brow slightly creased and lips thinned into a hard line.

Shisui couldn't help but smile warmly when Itachi fixed Rei with a suspicious glare on his behalf. "We just finished our spar, Itachi," he placated the younger ninja, extending his arm in a mute request to help him up. Itachi complied without moving his eyes from the blond.

Rei stared back at the boy, equally intense, and, dared Shisui to say, with something akin to sadness swirling in his gaze. "I hope your eyes will never evolve into the Mangekyou Sharingan," he finally uttered, quiet and somber. "You're better off without it."

Itachi tensed, eyes narrowing. A clear sign of his raised hackles.

"I actually agree," Shisui blurted out. He ignored the somewhat betrayed look his adoptive little brother threw at him. Even if the reason for Rei to voice it out of the blue eluded him, the conditions to awaken Mangekyou simply weren't something he wished Itachi to go through, regardless of the spike in power it offered. "Itachi, this is Rei Uzumaki, the man I told you about."

"Ah, the Golden Ghost," the boy said as if that made any sense. He tipped his head in polite greeting if still a bit stiffly. "Nice to meet you, Uzumaki-san."

"Nice to meet you too," Rei replied. "But what's this about the Golden Ghost?"

Itachi blinked. "You don't know?" he inquired as he slipped his hand into his weapon pouch and pulled out a small book. "I came to find you to show you this, Shisui."

The older Uchiha took the item. "Iwa's Bingo Book?"

"The last page."

Rei sidled up to Shisui to peek at it as the teen flipped to an indicated page.

"Are you kidding me?!" the blond exclaimed as he swept through the written content. "What's up with that miserable amount? Can you even call it a bounty?!"

Shisui shook his head with a smile. Leave it to this guy to be worried about the price on his head over the fact that he had a price on his head. "What did you do in Iwa?" he asked, genuinely intrigued.

"Nothing special." Rei shrugged. "I broke into their high-security area while searching for things they might have stolen from Uzushio."

"They must be really good to be able to catch you," Shisui observed. He didn't know what was more impressive—the Uzumaki breaking into the high-security area or the fact that he managed to escape unscathed.

"Eh, they're not that good… Not better than Kumo or Kiri," the man muttered. "I kinda found something interesting to read and lost track of time."

Two Uchihas gawked at him like he grew a second head.

"Whoa, wait…" Shisui held up his hand in a universal 'stop right there' sign. "Are you saying that you'd just hung around Iwa's high-security area, reading, and they chanced upon you in the morning?"

"Er, yeah?" At least Rei had the decency to appear sheepish before he hurried to defend himself. "It was a very good read! Something I didn't yet know about Uzushio traditions!"

Shisui burst out laughing.

"How do they know your name?" Itachi wondered.

That was a good question, the older Uchiha wanted to know too. It stood to reason that no one would be brazen enough to introduce themselves in that kind of incriminating situation.

"I told them."

Or not.

"What? They asked who I was!"

Evidently, the reason did not stand with Rei Uzumaki.

"Still," the blond glowered at the page as if wanting to incinerate an offending string of numbers. "I like the moniker, but the bounty is just too miserable. Should I place a seal on Oonoki's butt for him to stop underestimating m—" Rei abruptly cut himself off, touched his chin and let out a thoughtful 'hmm'.

Shisui sent a silent prayer for the Tsuchikage's butt. Not a thing he had ever imagined doing, but… Well, he was a person with sympathy. Having Rei Uzumaki after your ass didn't sound fun or healthy for your sanity. He was a wild card, unpredictable to the extreme, and could drive someone up the wall as easily as he could kill them.

Itachi's adamant gaze burned 'Are you sure this person can help us?' letter by letter into the side of Shisui's skull. He looked at the younger Uchiha, conveying 'Everything will be fine,' with a single glance.

Rei straightened, sharp and sudden, alarming two young ninjas. Cerulean eyes darkened with unspoken rage and on the next blink he was already gone.

Shisui had been on the receiving end of that vanishing act, but to see Rei there, solidly and definitely present in one moment and gone the next, was unnerving no matter how many times he had witnessed it. No wonder Itachi flinched when usually the kid would take in even the most bizarre things with no outward reaction.

Something or someone made Rei angry.

Shisui racked his brain to recall what laid in the direction the blond's attention seemed to snap before he teleported away. As far as he knew, nothing significant. A few rural villages lost in the endless sea of trees that stretched across the great expanse of the Fire Country all the way to the border with the River Country and the Wind Country looming just beyond it.

A/N

This was my second time writing a longer and more detailed fight (spar) scene in Naruto fic. Oof. I hope it was at least somewhat decent!