"I'd rather not specify, on the off-chance I need to kill the two of you later. You understand."

That makes sense in a very Emi sort of way.

They update Orochimaru over their connection - a useful thing they'd discovered; they haven't really figured out thoughts yet, but they can share memories fairly easily - and start reformulating their plans to include Emi. Her abilities aren't well known - she hasn't taken many missions outside of ANBU lately, and apparently doesn't use her full abilities even on those missions. Still, she's very evidently one of the most powerful pieces on this board, so.

Emi leads the way towards Danzo, easily dropping his guards, each with a mere glance and then a flash of her knife. She just shrugs when Rian scowls at her over the killing. Not her problem if Rian decided to keep her scrupples. She hears an explosion in the distance at one point; must be Orochimaru's half of whatever their plan is.

She ignores it.

Finally they close on Danzo, and Emi watches Rian casually signal four of her guards to fan out. 

"Danzo," she says, simply, watching the old man with sharingan eyes.

"So you've both become traitors, then." He stands, and reaches to undo the clasps holding the bandages in place on his arm.

Emi doesn't give him the opening - that arm can be on fire now, thank-you-very much.

He's only mostly able to dodge her Amaterasu.

That is certainly a new ability.

Rian takes advantage of Danzo being on fire to press their own attack, dancing around Emi's flames and Kimimaro's bone projectiles. They do some damage, but not as much as they'd like, and Danzo is, eventually, able to get the bandages off his arm, revealing stolen eyes embedded in whorls in the woody surface.

They'd already known about the arm, but seeing it as Rian is different. They are so leaving him down the deepest, darkest hole in existence. They will, in fact, invent a new level of deep, dark hole to leave him down.

"I couldn't have asked for more," Danzo says once he manages to get some distance. "Now I can add all four of your sharingan to my collection."

"I think that arm belongs to me," Rian responds. "I made it, after all." Sort of. Ish.

Danzo darts towards her, almost as fast as her sharingan can perceive - 

And is caught by an enormous dark blue, gently flaming hand. 

"I would suggest not attacking my sister," Emi says, before squeezing. She can't hold the Susanoo for long, but she likely doesn't need to. 

Her attack's rapid enough that Danzo doesn't get out any words, and his body collapses in her projection's fist.

She almost dismisses it, then whirls and blocks a kunai that had been driving for her back - from Danzo.

"So," she says, almost calmly, "You have the Izanagi." She throws aside his next blow, lets Susanoo fade, swiftly counts the visible sharingan, presses her own attack - "Rian, watch out, he can negate damage, even death, at least ten times - as many as he has sharingan."

"Got it."

She and Kimimaro manage to score the next kill, Danzo sandwiched between them.

Then - 

Emi can almost feel it, strange thoughts creeping over hers. It's an oddly familiar sensation...

Shisui, she remembers. Shisui's Kotoamatsukami, his ultimate genjutsu that Emi had once goaded him into using, so she'd know what it felt like - 

That bastard has Shisui's eye.

Fuck, but she's probably going to go blind from this - 

Amaterasu, Susanoo to protect herself, darkened to block out Danzo's line-of-sight - another Amaterasu, based on where she loosely senses him to be - she needs to move faster, kill him before he can subvert her -

Rian, luckily, picks up on their sister's desperation. 

They summon the Kazekage during the lull. Controlling him's difficult, he absolutely loathes them, but they'd practiced with his abilities, and they're able to score another kill with the Kazekage's body, then Rian realizes they can almost feel where Danzo's about to appear - 

Their sword slides through him mere seconds after he rematerializes.

He's died six times.

Danzo launches into a flurry of attacks, retreats long enough to summon - the baku starts sucking in wind, Emi can feel it snatching at the edges of her chakra - 

It can have a fireball down its snout, and Danzo can have a Susanoo-knife through his chest.

And that makes seven.

Danzo gets close enough to Rian to be a threat - they substitute with a Rian-shaped mass of snakes, who release poison gas into the air upon being cut. It's enough to slow Danzo down, and the Kazekage scores the eighth kill with a burst of golden sand.

Emi stumbles, grabs her head - almost blindly lashes out, feels her projection's sword connect with something, and no one scolds her so was probably Danzo. 

She - why is she fighting Danzo - wasn't she loyal to him?

(Fuck. She summons her crows, and among them is Yumi, the crow she implanted Shisui's eye into - she has to work fast, but protect Rian isn't that hard a command to program into the eye. Yumi is instructed to wait for the barrier to go down, then trigger the genjutsu on her. Hopefully Kotoamatsukami will be able to undo itself.)

"He's - altering my mind - " she gasps out, then falls to her knees. She will not kill her sister, she won't - 

(She sure fucking hopes Rian has been holding back against Danzo).

They had been, somewhat - their chakra control's still shaky, so they'd been heavily favoring their sword and speed, rather than relying on ninjutsu.

That's about to change.

They throw themselves into one corner of the enclosure - Emi's Susanoo's still up, hopefully that's enough -

The Great Fire Annihilation, the most powerful fire technique Orochimaru knew, blasts from their mouth after a single handseal. Danzo turns to ash - ten - reforms - eleven - and they have to drop the technique, gasping. Emi's Susanoo is hunkered down, attacking no one yet.

Rian falls to their knees. Sixty-one seconds, they think, almost hysterically. Orochimaru had never managed to hold the fire that long. An eternity, in a shinobi battle. They're light-headed, low on chakra and air alike.

The Kazekage finishes off Danzo, and he doesn't reform. 

Emi screams and attacks Rian - a wave of bone appears before her - she blasts Kimimaro, turning him to ash, but he's already reforming, and the Kazekage's golden sand slams against her shield -

Sixty seconds - they survive. Mostly. With only some injuries.

The last second ticks by, and Danzo remains dead. 

"Drop the barrier!" they yell at the Four. Maybe they can retreat, maybe the other guards will be enough to turn the tide against their sister -

Yumi swerves in front of her, forcing eye contact -

And she collapses. She only barely notices her sister calling off her attackers as her thoughts pile onto one another, screaming in her head. 

She can't conceive of how she could both kill and protect Rian.

She -

'Fuck. This. Shit.'

Deep breath. She wonders if Rian felt at all like this, while she was resonating, contradictory thoughts crowding each other out.

Warily: "Are you going to keep attacking?"

She shakes her head. "No. I don't think so. I planted a trigger to undo it after he died, but... It's mostly worked."

"Good enough for me." 

And they dismiss the Kazekage, then gesture to their guards to follow. "C'mon, let's get back to the hideout. We'll be able to recover there." Grimace. "And I need healing."

"...You might have to carry me."

Now that the battle adrenaline is fading, she's noticing exactly how low her chakra is. And she can mostly see through her sharingan, but without it the world's a blur of light and dark.

"I think I overdid it."

They're pretty close to needing to be carried, themselves.

They're damn lucky Emi found them, that would've been a bear of a fight without her help. Even if she did spend a minute trying to kill Rian afterwards.

They instruct Kimimaro to carry Emi if needed, then summon Chihiro, a truly tiny calico cat and, fortunately, a sensor. They'd almost never summoned her as old Rian, what with Mariko on their team, but Chihiro's been updated on the situation with Rian's resonance, and has accepted the new person as her summoner.

Chihiro carefully leads them around the patrols towards the woods outside Konoha.

Where Orochimaru and their guards - much reduced, only two are left - meet them. Orochimaru's arms hang uselessly before them.

Neither body needs to ask the other what happened; each other's memories slot neatly into place.

Orochimaru nods at Emi, then leads the way back to the hideout in a grouchy silence.

Their Sand 'allies' figure out fairly quickly what happened with the Kazekage. They cut those ties, relocate to a new hideout just to be on the safe side, start modifying Rian to be tougher, harder to kill, and train like mad. Rian's still themselves (and in a way that's a relief; in another way it's incredibly frustrating), still not a good reader, still a slow learner - but they have the sharingan, and they can bounce memories of studying over to Orochimaru, who can then bounce back their understanding of the material. 

Then one day -

"Sir! There's a disturbance at the border!" a guard reports, coming into Rian's study. They're the more easily interruptible of the two - apparently 'gets off track when disturbed' is also hard-wired to the body - so Rian's become the default body to interact with the Sound forces, especially since they lack Orochimaru's history.

"Any details?" they ask, standing.

"Not many. Might be Konoha."

They nod, summon Chihiro, and head for the border.

When they're close, the cat chirps, and says, "It's our team. Mariko, Sakura, and Sesshi."

Rian stops and blinks, then scowls. "I'm not going back..." they mutter to themselves, then shake their head. "Come on, let's see what they want."

Mariko's in the lead when they come into sight. The team stops when Rian appears before them, and Mariko shouts out, "Rian! I've been looking for you!"

Sigh. "What do you want, Mariko?"

"Come back to Konoha with us."