Spoiler:

The events of that fateful night had kept Kashi cooped up in his room for weeks as Buma's manor continued its track to recovery without any further interruptions. Though Buma had decided it best to leave the kid alone himself until he could recover from the trauma, one the few remaining samurai slid him food and water every mealtime; each time he had done so, the man had a short conversation with Kashi. At first, the samurai had tried pleading with the boy, informing him that the girl that they had detained was not telling them any information and that they needed his help, but Kashi was in no mood to provide any assistance or even come face to face with the girl, who had broken his trust in an inexplicable manner. Yet, even with that in consideration, he had jumped in to protect her, a criminal, from being killed in cold blood, even when he'd done the same to other criminals in the past. The pledge he had made that night felt inadequate in the face of what he had already done and could never take back. He spent his days staring into the ceiling with his hawk by his side, the blinds closed, though he knew he would have to come out eventually and face the world.

"I want you to know," he suddenly heard Buma's voice boom from behind the door one unimposing night, "There is a mass slaughter going on in a nearby town as we speak. I have to defend the lands of the manor from any invasion, and we don't nearly have enough manpower in our samurai units to send them out. You are the only one who can stop this." The sense of urgency in Buma's words knocked reality back into Kashi's head; he was needed immediately, and there was no time to sit and mope. He jumped out from bed and took the sword out from the drawer that he had kept it in, wiping off the dust of weeks before sheathing it; Hawky flew onto his shoulder, ready to face whatever challenge they had in front of them. He opened up the door to see a similar look of alertness on Buma's face as he informed him of the position of this village and directions. Time was of the essence; each second could waste a human life.

He ran at high speed with his hawk on his shoulder to reach the village, only to see the black hair he knew too well surrounded by bodies strewn all over the ground. Zuko pulled his blade out of the final corpse as it fell to the ground, turning around as Kashi and his hawk looked a little lower to the ground than usual to avoid any direct eye contact as Buma had warned that fateful night. Yet, even without looking into his eyes, he could make out what seemed to be a tear on Zuko's right cheek.

"You're crying."

WC: 505

"Tch!" Zuko spat, "It's you. I thought I'd reduced you to a pool of tears. Seems I came close." Kashi said no words to try and amend this accusation; after all, he had just gone weeks without leaving his room. Instead, he handed Hawky one end of the spool of wire that he had attached to him, which Hawky grasped with one of his feet as he flew in the air. Kashi knew that the only way to beat this guy was with a connected team. Lone attacks weren't going to solve anything.

Kashi's opponent drew his blade and so did Kashi as he and his hawk ran to each of his sides, each ready for an attack when the moment was right, each heeding Buma's advice and not looking directly into his blood red eyes.

"No matter how much shit you fling at me," Zuko muttered, "It's just shit. I don't care about your numbers. I can beat any number of you with my Sharingan."

"Well," Kashi responded, "I sure wouldn't want a two ton pile of shit to be flung onto my head, Sharingan or not." It was the first lighthearted thing he'd said in weeks; ever since the incident, he'd been in no mood for giggles, but, now, even he couldn't resist a smirk.

"Just die already!" his opponent screamed as he faced him and weaved a string of hand seals that seemed familiar from his last fight. More important to Kashi was that Zuko's back was turned to Hawky; this was all he needed for his team strategy to work.

Kashi sharply tugged on his end of the wire, signalling an opening for Hawky, before a giant wall of flames erupted from Zuko's mouth, incinerating all in its path, including whatever wire it consumed. However, the wire had already served its purpose: it had given a silent communication to Hawky to begin his offensive. As the wall of flames came closer and closer to Kashi, he sheathed his sword and formed the snake seal just in case he would need to create a barrier, but he wouldn't need to; Hawky drilled into Zuko's back with his beak just in the nick of time due to the cue that Kashi had given the bird, knocking their opponent to the ground and preventing the advance of the wall of flames as they were streaming from his mouth that now hit the rocky floor.

Kashi took out his blade as he and his hawk charged towards their opponent from both sides, ready to attack as a group. The situation only seemed to infuriate Zuko, whose bloodshot eyes traced their way to the hawk, who he shot a gigantic flaming bullet of oil at, much bigger than any that Kashi could concoct himself. How the hawk would handle this giant bullet of flame was yet to be seen.

WC: 998

In response, the hawk conjured up a small but concentrated ball of air in his throat, releasing it and allowing it to expand at an alarming rate into a giant ball of shredding wind that absolutely devoured the flaming bullet, heading straight for Zuko. The giant ball consumed Zuko in a giant ball of shredding wind as Kashizudoto stopped in his tracks so as not to get caught in the sheer destruction himself, as the wind ball even tore through some earth, a little mud and blood splattering on Kashi's cheek. He flinched a bit as a drop of his opponent's blood rolled off his own cheek and down to the ground as if it were his own. This battle seemed so one-sided now, so different from the last time when Zuko and his Sharingan were demolishing Kashi. He could only think of his experience that fateful night in Lord Buma's manor. A drive.

Yet almost as soon as the ball had started tearing through Zuko, a stream of flames resembling a dragon poured out of his mouth and devoured the ball of wind. He was in no winning position, with bloody cuts all over him, yet he was still standing and still a huge threat. Little did Kashi know about the true extent of Zuko's Sharingan. The fiery dragon coiled around Zuko, as if to protect a master. Hawky and Kashi stayed suspended in their respective areas, ready to assume the defensive. Soon, the dragon sped towards Hawky, who quickly channeled chakra to his wings to block the attack. The head of the dragon rammed against Hawky's feathers, a struggle of willpowers.

"Come on Hawky!" Kashi yelled from the background, causing Hawky to strengthen his own stance in the air. Pain registered on the bird's face as it was pushed back a few inches in the air; the dragon flame's power was unquestionable, and it seemed the will of the enemy controlling it was strong.

"Be quiet!" Zuko yelled at Kashi with a reddened face obvious even in the moonlight, "That's it! Amaterasu!" Kashi had heard the word before that fateful night. The black flames that he had seen earlier registered in his mind a split second before he saw a flicker of the real thing coming at him. It was too late; he felt a devilish burning sensation suddenly as the black flames caught on his torso.

"AAHHHHHHHHHH!!!" he screamed as he watched the black flames unrelentingly burn him, slowly. He stopped, dropped, and rolled, just as they'd told him to do in the ninja academy. He did it just as the procedure told; all he had to do was deprive the flames of the air which they thrived off of, or so he thought. Zuko watched sharply and knowingly as Kashi's efforts resulted in nothing. By this time, Zuko had given up in his struggle with Hawky, dispelling the dragon, so the hawk landed next to his owner, panicking similarly.

He continued panicking, rolling around and screaming like a maniac, flailing around as he realized he could do nothing to stop the flames. His hawk meanwhile began flying around in circles, screeching in horror at the sight of his master burning in black. Yet in a split second he stopped and sharpened his gaze onto a little pebble. He took a deep breath in and out, realizing that he had enough time to find a source of water in the village. The hawk, seeing his master getting calmer, also took on a sense of more tranquility. Meanwhile, Zuko was nowhere to be seen.

A well in the distance. Perfect. He pointed in the direction of the well and then ran over to it, jumping straight in. Yet, even through the water, the black flames burned, the black flames burned. As blood stained the pool of water red, he climbed out and touched his knees to the ground. He could think no more.

"Hawky," he spoke, each breath getting slower and slower, "I have a last message. Please bring it to Buma. I don't think I'll make it that far." The hawk screeched at this notion, not willing to give up on his master's life, thus beginning to fly in circles again as if it would magically solve the crisis at hand.

"Just land so I can write this last message please..." he muttered as he held out his hand. Yet suddenly he felt a shadow descend upon him and his hawk, as he spotted Zuko standing upon a tall rooftop. Their eyes met for the second time ever as Kashi felt and saw the terrifying black flames disperse. As Zuko flickered off into the distance, Kashi could tell that this was his doing. All he could do was fall at his feet, terrified of the sheer power he had just felt and witnessed, though he was glad that all he got was some burns and not any permanent damage. Why someone like Zuko had saved his opponent from certain death was beyond Kashi's comprehension, but he determined to find out why.

Hawky Chakra:

WC: 1856

He rose himself to his feet, his head hanging down. He couldn't have imagined that kind of power, the fear that struck his heart. He couldn't even begin to understand why his enemy had saved him from ostensibly burning to death. His hawk screeched in excitement and landed on his shoulder, pecking around on his burnt body to feel the full extent of the damage. He wasn't too concerned about the actual damage, as he was sure the people at Buma's manor could patch him up; he was instead frightened by the sheer power of what he was just burned by, the feeling of desperation, the undeveloped thought that his young life might just lose its last petals.

He strolled through the unburied graveyard, trying hard to ignore the bloody corpses strewn across the village. He couldn't ever possibly understand senseless slaughter, nor could he ever possibly forget it. He could only possibly feel disgust, feel sadness, feel pity. Yet he somehow couldn't work up the will to hate the killer, to want to kill the killer as he had been perfectly fine doing before that fateful night. He couldn't think of killing without remembering that night, a split second away from losing someone he valued just because another thought of them as a burden.

"He got away," Kashi reported to Lord Buma as he would for any standard mission just as he had been trained to in the Academy, then reciting the details, "No survivors."

"Don't fret, what's passed has passed," Lord Buma spoke, waiving the boy's concern with his own nonchalance, "Was it him?" Kashi nodded.

"I see," Buma responded, taking a swig of sake, "That can be something we'll question the prisoner on, which brings us to another point. All efforts have failed to extract any information from the prisoner. We understand you have some sort of personal connection with her. Will you assist us in interrogation?" Kashi bit his lip; he still didn't even have the courage to face her, yet the deaths of so many gave him a kind of urgency that made it impossible for him to reasonably refuse.

Kashi scraped his teeth across his lip before opening, "Fine." He still didn't feel he could stomach it, but he had no choice now that the word had already come out of his mouth.

"Nice," Buma announced, standing up and slapping Kashi on the back, "First, get some sleep kid. Tomorrow will be a long day." He was sent straight to bed; for once, he felt like a normal kid, being shepherded off to sleep.

After nine hours of tossing and turning in bed in a foolish attempt to fall asleep after the trauma he'd been through that night and the other violent night not too long ago, he finally got out of bed as if he had just slept.

Escorted to the prison cell by samurai, paying close attention to detail, he reached the cell of the prisoner, who looked into his eyes with the desperation of a lost sheep that couldn't find its herd. Indeed, in a way, she never even knew her herd. And indeed, in a way, Kashi had broken from his herd willfully. And indeed, as Kashi would find later on, Zuko had killed his herd unwillingly.

"Why?" he asked point blank. She knew what he was asking about, but she simply looked into his eyes with the same desperate look.

"Buma asked us to leave you alone," said one of the samurai escorting him. Kashi nodded, and the two samurai climbed up the dungeon stairs.

"I'll ask again, he clarified before repeating, "Why?" Her desperate stare into his eyes broke into gazing at the stone floor, and soon, the gaze turned to tears. A waterfall streamed out of her eyes, crashing to the ground to which she was gazing, flooding her jail cell and inundating the steel bars.

WC: 2521

[Exit]

A-rank Mission: 2500/2500