The masked female ninja backed away and threw five shurikens at the clone, who responded by swatting the shurikens away in a casual fashion. The shurikens then flew back to the clone like boomerangs, attacking from different angles. The clone was forced to retreat into the air, meeting a torrent of water rushing to his side. The clone's body was then pulled to a nearby tree to avoid the attack.

"Tch!" The female masked ninja cursed out loud. "This much is expected from Kakashi, even if it is his clone we are fighting. He even used chakra threads to pull himself from my sneak attack," commented the male masked ninja.

The female masked ninja threw multiple shurikens with chakra threads connected to them. The clone weaved hand signs with lightning speed, and an earth wall formed in front to render the attacks of the masked female ninja useless. The masked male ninja flooded the floor with water to weaken the wall as he jumped at the clone and engaged it in hand-to-hand combat.

The female masked ninja ran towards Gilgamesh quickly, taking advantage of the distraction. The clone saw this, kicked its opponent out of the way, and ran to the small flooded area a few meters before Gilgamesh to save him. The female masked ninja smiled behind her mask and weaved a hand sign for a lightning release toward the small flooded area, destroying the clone in the process. But not before the clone threw an exploding kunai at her heels that exploded into white smoke.

"The bastard almost got my leg!" she shouted as she dodged the flying exploding kunai.

"No, what that bastard did was alert any ninja within the premises of our presence here with that exploding kunai! Even as a clone, it still outsmarted us, dammit!" The male masked ninja complained as he hit the tree next to him.

"Whatever, I'll grab him and go. Besides, we have a lot of underground shortcuts we can follow. We can't fail Lord Danzo again," the female masked ninja remarked, and her partner nodded. They body-flickered next to Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh was still fully concentrating on harmonizing his two energy sources in a lotus position, so he couldn’t even understand what was happening outside. Picking the boy up and gagging him wouldn't be a problem for the duo as they approached him.

Suddenly, a blur was moving at insane speeds through the forest. The duo were highly trained ninjas, so they couldn’t miss that and turned around quickly in a guarded stance.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Your eyes see nothing," a calm voice said behind them.

The duo backed off and turned around to see their new attacker. If they had known who this person was and what they were capable of, they would have abandoned the mission altogether and retreated or simply committed suicide. But it was too late. In the dark forest, a pair of glowing red eyes looked at them like the ants they were as the duo collapsed from an optical illusion.

The owner of the pair of red eyes turned to the blonde boy, whose chakra seemed out of control but was beginning to reduce until only a faint trace of it could be detected and seen alongside a golden energy that appeared mixed with it. The stranger was shocked again to discover that even his eyes couldn’t see his energy channels again.

"Interesting," the stranger said as he deactivated his red eyes, and they soon turned black immediately.

Two figures soon after landed in front of the stranger and observed what had just transpired and saw that Gilgamesh was soon fast asleep.

"Itachi, you’ve come to the rescue once again!" The Third proclaimed proudly.

"Who is this kid?" Itachi asked without taking his gaze off the blonde.

"So you’ve noticed, eh?" The Third said as he scratched his goatee.

"Greetings senpai," Itachi bowed a little at the sight of Kakashi.

"Oh ho, you can greet Kakashi but not me?" The Third remarked.

"Forgive me, I was engrossed with this boy," Itachi explained.

"Ah, whatever. Kakashi take these two away," The Third ordered Kakashi.

"Why don’t I call those less busy Anbu watching on the trees?" Kakashi asked lazily as he pointed behind him.

"Curse you, Kakashi! Our shift was almost over!" An Anbu ninja cursed in his mind as he could only sigh and appear with his partner and take the assailants away.

"Alright, great job. Since you’ve been away on missions, follow me, and I'll brief you on the boy," The Third said as he and Itachi left Kakashi and Gilgamesh alone in the forest.

"You can stop pretending to be asleep now," Kakashi said as he walked closer to Gilgamesh.

"But I am so tired," Gilgamesh yawned and stretched his arms.

"Hmm, the leaf seems very intact and hot. For some reason, it's still flexible but it can't break. Since you are different from most, I don’t think I should judge you like most too," Kakashi concluded and stored the leaf in his pocket.

Kakashi then squatted with his back facing Gilgamesh.

"Alright, get on," Kakashi said.

"Thanks," Gilgamesh replied and quickly got on his back.

Kakashi began to run from tree branch to tree branch until he started running on walls of buildings and on top of them. The cool night breeze swept Gilgamesh’s golden mane as he marveled at the way Kakashi maneuvered through the streets of Konoha unnoticed.

"How did your clone fight for so long against two people at that?" Gilgamesh asked a question he had been wanting to ask.

"They must be weak for them to be struggling against my clone," Kakashi remarked.

"Does that mean your clone is weak?" Gilgamesh asked with a yawn.

"No, when you use the clone technique, you split your chakra a bit. So the more clones you create, the less effective they become. But one clone can last longer than you creating five of them," Kakashi explained to keep things simple with the young prodigy.

"Oh and one of them just suddenly spat a lot of water from his mouth, is that a medical condition or…." Gilgamesh suddenly dozed off on Kakashi’s back while Kakashi dove high into the sky.

"Goodnight, Gilgamesh."

NEXT CHAPTER: ITACHI AND THE THIRD.