A Clash in Kamui Space

"You think you can beat me like this?" Obito's voice suddenly dropped, lowered to a volume only the two of them could hear. Yet the danger in it was stronger than any roar. "Kakashi, do you think that just because you came in, you'll be able to leave alive?"

Kakashi did not answer.

He lowered his head and looked at the kunai in his right hand. A blurred character for "Obito" was engraved on its handle. He looked at it for a fraction of a second, then raised his head. The light in his left eye was calm and resolute.

"Obito," he said. "I just want to bring you back."

Those words were like a needle, piercing precisely through the smallest crack in Obito's armor of rage.

Obito's pupils abruptly constricted.

Then his anger burst its banks completely.

"Shut up!"

Obito charged.

He moved so fast that a black afterimage trailed through the gray space. His kunai slashed down diagonally from above, at a vicious angle and with savage force, without the slightest hint of probing—this strike was meant to draw blood, to pierce Kakashi's chest, to nail him to the ground of this void.

Kakashi did not retreat.

His body shifted less than an inch to the right. Obito's kunai grazed past his left shoulder, slicing open the shoulder of his vest and leaving a shallow bloody mark on his skin—the third wound. Yet Kakashi did not even blink.

At the same time, the kunai in his right hand swept upward from below, aimed at Obito's wrist gripping the kunai.

Obito's Sharingan caught the trajectory of the counterattack. At the last moment, he pulled back, retracting his kunai to block Kakashi's. The two kunai collided in the gray space with a crisp, nearly piercing metallic clang.

Sparks burst from