The world is painted in lines and edges and dyed with a red watercolor wash. The slightest hint of movement rips across the fragmented lines, disturbing the patterns and calling his attention. The slightest breath of chakra lights the pale red into neon swirls. Nothing escapes his attention.

...And somehow Naruto still manages to surprise him.

Sasuke stabs backwards, destroying the clone that slipped behind him under the cover of sunlight flashing from a thrown kunai, and shakes the blood off his arm.

"Better," he calls across the clearing, letting his mouth curve into the faintest of mocking smiles, "but you're still not good enough."

Naruto seethes, pupils narrowing to vertical slits as the Kyuubi's orange chakra boils to the surface of his skin and settles over him like a coat of flames. Good, Sasuke thinks. He needs to test himself, not play games. They aren't a team. He doesn't need to relearn their patterns. He's just letting Naruto and Sakura come along to take care of Itachi's partner, and to help attract that man's attention.

And then Naruto draws a deep breath and forces the rancid, hate-tinged chakra to subside. "Nice try, bastard, but I kidnapped you from the Sound, not the other way around. This is just a two-on-one exercise and I'm not gonna try to kill you, no matter how much you want to die." He grins, that impossibly wide expression of glee -- which, Sasuke's beginning to realize, is sometimes as much a mask as it is genuine -- and pushes another dozen shadow clones into existence.

Sasuke blanks his face, memorizes the way Naruto's chakra weaves in and around the Kyuubi's during the jutsu, and leaps for the trees. If he can't make Naruto fight all-out, he'll still take what he can get. And somewhere out in the forest, Sakura is waiting, laying traps. Sooner or later he'll trip one of her tell-tales and she'll draw him in.

This is what he lives for. He is an avenger. He is a ninja. He is a weapon.

Six clones die as he dives from a tree, kunai clearing his path. Naruto has gone suspiciously silent, and Sasuke spare a second to wonder when the moron learned strategy. Probably about the same time Sakura learned how to be strong, he decides; they haven't been idle over the past three years.

What nobody ever realizes -- mostly because he doesn't tell them, but also because the Uchiha didn't let just anybody know their secrets -- is that he was always destined to be a weapon. Even before Itachi, he was becoming a weapon. He was becoming justice.

Sakura's tripwire is obvious, but Naruto is close behind and any of the three fastest ways to avoid the wire will force Sasuke to land on hidden pressure plates. He vaults backwards instead, slamming his feet down on Naruto's neck and slicing a bloody furrow down the moron's spine as he falls to the forest floor. Half a breath and Sasuke's already ten meters away; Naruto's shuriken miss him by over a hand's width.

The Hyuuga have eyes to see the impurities of the physical world; they deem it unworthy and remove themselves. The Uchiha were born when one Hyuuga learned to see through lies, and so they pledged to cleanse the world, to bring justice, to make people worthy. This is why his clan served Konoha. This is why his clan plotted to remove the Third Hokage and kill the Kyuubi's host. This is why Itachi killed his clan.

And this is why Sasuke will kill Itachi.

Sakura's fist slams toward his head, and Sasuke leaps to the side, letting her slice past him. The impact rocks a hapless tree, splinters the trunk and sends it crashing to the ground. From his perch on a nearby branch, Sasuke sketches a tiny bow in recognition of her strength.

Sakura blushes as she paints blood down a scroll, summoning a net of wires around his arms, but Sasuke is gone, leaving nothing but a hollow log for Naruto to strike as the moron plunges from above.

Itachi's version of justice is false. Because Itachi thinks the whole world lies. He finds nothing worthy, and he won't care even if he has to destroy everything to cleanse it... and Sasuke doesn't want the world destroyed, not all of it. He won't ever be as strong as his brother, won't ever have the utter purity of the heartless, the indifference of wildfire, but he has true justice on his side. And justice is more than flame.

Fire may rage and consume everything in its path, but fire dies. Fire can be doused. Fire can be smothered. Fire can be starved.

Justice may be slow and justice may falter, but in the end, justice is inexorable.

Wind howls, catching Sasuke off-guard and slamming him to the ground -- Naruto grins, holding the incomplete Rasengan, palm glowing blue, as he yells for Sakura to come and knock Sasuke out.

The moron's still overconfident; Sasuke files that away and narrows his eyes. He's run long enough. It's time to switch roles.

Sasuke wipes his hand along the bleeding gash left from Naruto's earlier attack and presses his palm to the ground, gently. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu," he whispers, a bare trickle of breath over his tongue. "Crescent, Sickle, Scythe, come quietly. Bite -- but no poison."

He's seen Naruto's frogs and he admits they're more useful than they sound, but he prefers his snakes. He can't summon any as large as Manda, Orochimaru's serpent, but even a baby snake has fangs. And even a baby snake knows enough to appear in a silent waft of mist rather than an explosion of smoke.

Crescent's fangs slice into Naruto's calf before the moron realizes she's there. Sasuke gives him credit for holding the winds steady while he leaps, but his distraction gives Scythe the second she needs to drop from a branch and bind his arm to his side. Naruto drops the Rasengan before it can blow off his foot.

Sasuke's torn between mild relief and thwarted curiosity; now he won't learn how long it would take the fox to regenerate a whole limb. But he shakes the thought away and leaps for the trees, leaving Sickle to trip Sakura as she throws, sending her shuriken wild.

His old teammates work well together, better than they ever did while he was still a Leaf-nin, but they're still too emotional. They lose their focus. Their purpose isn't honed to a lethal edge.

Sasuke exhales on a sigh and flames wash over the clearing, sparks feeding on the debris Naruto's winds left strewn in drifts and piles. Using fire jutsu in a forest sounds suicidal -- and for most ninja it is, but not for him. The Uchiha are born of fire and serve the flames, and in return the flames serve them. He mutes the blaze with a thought and slips from his perch, memorizing lines, watching for movement.

There!

Three clones die in puffs of smoke and Sasuke's kunai ricochet off branches to strike two more, one of which yanks the knife from its shoulder and hurls it back. That's the real Naruto, then; Sasuke marks him even as he flips to a new tree, pursued by another two clones.

If Naruto's the frontal assault, the distraction, Sakura's the poisoned needle lying in wait. She's the one he needs to find... and there she is, above and to his right, fingers flying through unfamiliar patterns of seals. Sasuke stores them for later study, even as he flicks a shuriken to break her concentration.

She bursts into smoke.

Shadow clone! Did she learn that herself, or was Naruto's distraction double-layered? Sasuke kicks another clone to pieces and brings his fingers together in the classic dispelling seal; it works on more than just genjutsu, if focused properly.

Something tingles against his mind.

"Kai."

It fades, and he smirks.

"Your trap didn't work, moron," he whispers into Naruto's ear, stabbing at his side with a kunai. Naruto blocks with the side of his hand and twists away, sweeping Sasuke's feet off the branch as he rolls. Sasuke kicks out, redirecting his fall, and leaps for the high ground.

Naruto doesn't look upset. Or rather, he looks too upset -- he's faking, and while he might fool most people, it's hard to fool a Sharingan master who's paying attention.

A triple-layered distraction? From the moron? Sasuke recalculates the odds of direct confrontation, and realizes he still has no idea where Sakura vanished to. He should return to defense; one shinobi can only take out two comparably ranked shinobi with great luck, while it takes much less luck to successfully avoid capture or death for long enough to reach safe ground. There is no safe ground in this exercise, but Sasuke's fairly certain that Naruto, at least, will call a break for dinner rather than pursue Sasuke through the night.

That's pathetic, especially since Naruto is the one with the greatest endurance -- Sasuke is fast and Sakura is strong, and they're both still better at control than Naruto, but Naruto can outlast them effortlessly if he wants to bother... so long as Sasuke can't call on Orochimaru's seal.

The three black marks itch at the thought, and Sasuke suppresses the urge to scratch or to pull chakra through the twisted pattern. He absently hurls a few shuriken at Naruto and vaults overhead, kicking the moron down to where Crescent, Sickle, and Scythe lurk in the shadows. "When he escapes, you can leave," he mutters, knowing the snakes will hear.

He wonders where Sakura is. He wonders what she's planning. He wonders what she works on when she sketches patterns and scribbles notes in the evenings. She won't tell Naruto, no matter how much the moron whines and pesters her, and she's uncannily good at tilting the pages at precisely the right angle to block Sasuke's falsely casual glances.

Sakura isn't just strong -- she's clever. That's a dangerous combination in an opponent.

Sasuke freezes for several seconds, letting the forest settle into stillness around him. He can hear Naruto fighting his snakes, swearing as he crashes through the underbrush. To his right, a stream gurgles and splashes along its journey back toward Zabuza's hideout. He can't hear Sakura.

A silent enemy is the most dangerous.

Crescent, Sickle, and Scythe slide off the material plane, and now Naruto has gone silent as well.

Sasuke scowls. He's in a decent position -- back to a tree, hidden in a thick cluster of leaves -- and it's a fool's game to move around with no idea of the enemy's position. But it's also a fool's game to let them find you. He hesitates, considering.

Itachi would strike out in a new direction, but that man doesn't care who he kills. Sasuke could kill Naruto or Sakura before they realized his intent, before they moved to stop him. It's difficult to suppress lethal reflexes, difficult to remember, in the rush of adrenaline, that he's training with allies, not fighting for his life. And it's tiring to deal with those two. It's confusing. It's distracting. It would be so easy to slip, to let loose the wildfire, to make everything simple again...

No.

Steel glints in the corner of his eye, and Sasuke deflects the shower of senbon aimed at his pressure points. Wind howls upward from his left, and he sprints along the branch, hurling himself into the air.

He isn't Itachi. It's taken him three years to learn that, but Sasuke's finally beginning to see. His soul may be fire -- he's Uchiha -- but fire doesn't understand truth or honor or love. That's where Itachi went wrong -- he forgot that he's also human. He forgot that true justice doesn't bend the world to its ends. Justice serves.

As Sakura's bloodied fist slams into his jaw, Sasuke smiles.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

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