Kakashi raked dripping hair out of his face, and studied Ryouma afresh. “Yeah,” he said, after a moment. “I manipulated the rain drops.”

It was a clever little jutsu—a ninjutsu that mimicked genjutsu, but didn’t break under kai. The illusion was all in the way you twisted the water, shaping it to create a chosen image from a thousand reflections. Unlike genjutsu, it didn’t touch the victim’s chakra coils.

The trick was to put in enough chakra that the heat felt real.

Ryouma’s dark eyebrows pulled together. “Not water clones,” he said thoughtfully. “Mirrors? But you had to create the image on the other side..." He glanced sideways. “So did kai actually trigger the next stage, or were you just being an asshole and waiting for one of us to try it before you got your explosion on?”

Kakashi’s mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “That would be mean.”

“‘Cause clearly you’re so worried about making enemies,” Ryouma said. He eased back on his elbows, uncaring of the wet, but stopped with a hiss and sat up again. A slow-spreading red patch at his shoulder suggested why. He nodded at the vice-commander. “Not worried that stunt’ll damage your chances?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Should it?”

“Hell no,” Ryouma said instantly. “You made him look like a fool, sure, and he won't like you for it—but that jutsu was good." He tugged absently at his sleeve, peeling scarlet-drenched threads out of the edge of the open cut. “Did you really need the explosion as a cover, or did you just throw it in for show?”

Well, someone had warmed up.

“I was going to do a water dragon, but someone wanted fireworks,” Kakashi said, glancing sideways before he looked at the field again. A gossamer thread of a girl was breaking shed-sized boulders apart with her firsts. “Any distraction would have worked.”

At least on a captive audience that wasn’t expecting it. On the field, in a real fight, it would have been harder, but you only needed a split-second to get the final blow.

“You should put something on your shoulder,” he added.

“Dirty hands,” Ryouma said, then appeared to realize he already had a hand on his shoulder, and dropped it. “Bleeding'll keep it clean, anyway. I'll wrap it up later.” A sudden white grin split his mud-streaked face. “Nice to know you care.”

“I what?” said Kakashi.

“It’s all right,” Ryouma assured him. “I won’t tell.”

A shockwave of fire brought their attention back to the center field. An Uchiha candidate stood with her head tipped back, blowing a thirty-foot column of flame into the air. On the final exhale, the fire twisted into a phoenix, spread its wings, and blew apart with a ringing scream. The rain hissed into giant clouds of steam.

Dammit.

That one, he would have wanted.