Naruto's Uchiha girlfriend is too Tsundere Chapter 528 - 529: Monsters

"Kushina-shishou's experintal cooking..."

Kakashi's voice carried the particular weariness of soone recalling a mory that was more painful than funny.

"Her regular cooking is excellent -- everything she makes normally is genuinely delicious. But the mont she starts developing sothing new, it has a very reliable tendency to produce sothing that is... extrely difficult to get down."

He shook his head. "That last dish she made -- the salted mackerel and kelp health concoction -- even you could only manage one bite before you went green, sensei."

He turned to Yamato with the air of soone seeking moral support.

"Isn't that right, Yamato? It's really a sha. Zacian is doing sword training, which is serious physical work -- and all the while stuck eating Kushina-shishou's, well... less approachable culinary experints."

Yamato blinked. "Wait, eating difficult food the whole ti?" He thought about it for a mont, and his expression shifted from puzzled to sympathetic. "That does sound rough."

"In that case --"

Kakashi moved in for the point he had clearly been building toward all along. "When we get back, I'll need you to take care of Zacian's als. Looking after our juniors is part of the job, after all." A beat. "She really loves ran, by the way."

"What? ?!" Yamato's eyes went wide, his face filling with disbelief. "Kakashi-senpai, that is completely underhanded! Why is it ?!"

His voice was full of protest, full of grievance, full of the thoroughly justified frustration of soone who has just realized they have been maneuvered.

"Oh, and Rin."

Kakashi ignored Yamato's objections entirely and turned instead toward Rin. "Could I ask you to put together so ointnt when we get back?"

Rin looked up, a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. "Ointnt?"

"Yes." Kakashi nodded. "Sensei has been drilling Zacian hard on link techniques, and Zacian spends a long ti on sword training every day. It would be a problem if she got injured."

"After all, if her wrists are injured, she won't be able to train."

Rin's eyes widened faintly. Then a warm, understanding smile settled across her face. "Ointnt? Leave it to ."

She nodded, and her voice held genuine eagerness to help. "That's true -- if the wrists are injured you can't form hand seals, which ans even the most basic jutsu are out of reach. I'll prepare a generous supply. More than enough."

Kakashi gave a nod.

Then he looked sidelong at Yamato, who was still radiating indignation beside him.

The next instant -- Kakashi moved.

His body surged toward Rin before she could react -- before the gentle smile on her face had even begun to fade -- and he had her pinned. One arm locked hard around her shoulder. The other hand had already drawn a kunai, the blade resting steady and cold against the pale curve of her neck.

"Senpai --!"

Yamato's shout had barely left his mouth before -- a flash of gold tore through the space between them.

Minato materialized in front of Yamato in an instant. One kick drove straight into his chest. Yamato was launched backward through the air and slamd into the nearest tree.

A Flying Thunder God kunai was already pressed to his throat.

Minato stood there, and the face that was always so warm and open was now utterly still, carrying nothing but cold, cutting clarity.

"How... how did you..."

The one being held in place -- the one wearing Yamato's face -- forced out the words with difficulty. "How did you know..."

The pretense was done.

Whatever had been in those eyes that approximated Yamato's tired, good-natured expression was gone. What looked back now was sothing colder. Sothing that did not belong to a human face.

"Because Zacian is a dog."

Minato's voice was without warmth.

"He doesn't like ran. And he cannot hold a sword with his hands."

"Talk."

Kakashi's voice cut across from the other side, tight with suppressed fury. His arm held its lock without any give. The kunai didn't shift a milliter from that white throat. The one eye visible above his mask was burning.

"Who are you. Where are the real Rin and Yamato."

"Zacian... that's the na of a dog?!"

The thing wearing Yamato's face let out a snarl of pure humiliated rage, the sound of sothing that has realized it has been played.

"You set a trap for us, you --"

Before the words were done, its body began to convulse.

The surface wearing Yamato's skin peeled away like lting wax, exposing what lay beneath -- pale, drained of color, with hollow eyes and a face that was distorted into sothing that nonetheless radiated its own strange, wrongful vitality.

White Zetsu.

At the sa mont, the figure Kakashi had pinned shed its own imitation. The face that had looked like Rin's dissolved away, leaving behind an identical pallor, an identical vacancy.

Two White Zetsu.

Kakashi and Minato both frowned hard. They had never seen creatures like these before.

"What are you."

There was sothing in Kakashi's voice that he would not have admitted to out loud -- a trace of genuine relief at the cold edge of retrospect. Because if not for that butterfly -- the butterfly that might have been Obito -- he might not have caught it in ti. The replacents had been nearly perfect.

"Does it matter if I answer that?"

The one Minato was holding let out a contemptuous sound, sothing like a cold laugh. "You've caught us, fine. But our purpose here was only to delay you."

The words had barely landed before both Kakashi and Minato snapped their heads up simultaneously.

They felt it.

From every direction at once. From the depths of the trees, from below the ground -- an enormous wall of chakra was closing in. Dense, uncountable.

A thousand signatures at minimum.

"Damn it --"

Kakashi's arm drove in.

A wet sound. The kunai cut through, and the White Zetsu's head ca away clean.

Across the clearing, Minato moved at the sa instant. The Flying Thunder God kunai turned in his grip, and the second head hit the ground.

The two headless bodies swayed for a mont.

Then they grew into trees.

"Well." Minato's voice was low and precise. He looked at Kakashi, and his face, normally so readable, held only the sa cold stillness. "This is a serious problem. We need to move fast. We have to get Rin and Yamato out."

The mont those words were spoken, the golden chakra burst from Minato's body.

It ford a sheath around him -- a flowing, radiant coat of chakra, turning the night air bright.

Gold light swept across the trees. Gold light swept across the shapes of white creatures pressing inward from every direction. Gold light swept across Minato's face.

Yin Nine-Tails Chakra Mode.

The other half of his soul -- sealed away in the Reaper Death Seal, freed only when Naruto brought him back -- had lived within him since his resurrection. The power of that second half was rising now, fully and without reservation, rging seamlessly with his own.

Minato wasn't holding anything back.

Kakashi gave a single sharp nod in response.

His gaze swept across the advancing white tide, then lifted to the butterfly still darting wildly overhead. The small creature was circling him again and again, frantic and relentless.

Kakashi felt sothing constrict in his chest.

The one more urgent than him right now was this butterfly. The one more worried about Rin was this butterfly. The one more desperate to go and find her was this butterfly.

Because it might be Obito.

Kakashi drew a slow breath, raised his hand, and reached up to lift the headband that had always covered his left eye.

The eye beneath it ca into the light.

Then both of his eyes began to shift.

Crimson gathered in both pupils at once. Three tomoe surfaced, spun, and accelerated into each other -- and resolved into two distinct yet equally strange patterns blooming open like dark flowers.

Mangekyo Sharingan.

The power of Double Kamui was rising.