Sasuke's body stiffened where he stood, as if his blood had frozen in that instant. He stared fixedly at the strange pattern in Kakashi Hatake's left eye—a slowly rotating design made of three curved blades. It was a form beyond the three-tomoe Sharingan, filled with an ominous and oppressive presence.
"Why... why can you...?" Sasuke's voice was dry. "You clearly don't have Uchiha blood."
The three-bladed shuriken pattern in Kakashi's left eye spun a few times before becoming unstable. At last, it slowly faded, reverting to the ordinary three-tomoe form. He quickly closed his eye, and when he opened it again, it had returned to an ordinary black pupil. He reached up and pulled his forehead protector back down, covering the eye that carried endless secrets and pain.
After making that motion, his body swayed slightly, and his face turned somewhat pale. Merely maintaining that form for a moment had consumed a tremendous amount of his energy, and deep exhaustion washed over him.
"You saw it, didn't you? What you asked is also something I've always wanted to ask." Kakashi's voice was low, carrying a trace of exhaustion he could not hide. "And activating that state takes far too much out of me."
Sasuke finally recovered his ability to think from the immense shock. He stepped forward, his questioning tone mixed with urgency and a tremor he himself had not noticed.
"Isn't the condition for activating it killing the person closest to you?" He glared at Kakashi. "Who... did you kill?"
Kakashi did not answer immediately. He turned and looked toward the Memorial Stone. The afterglow of the setting sun coated the cold stone in warm hues as he looked at two names whose lettering had nearly been worn smooth by time—Obito Uchiha and Rin.
"Many years ago, during the