Awakened Sora

The whole aura about Sora seemed to have changed in an instant.

Her personality seemed to have changed and a strange resolution was being formed in Sora's mind having experienced the terror brought about by the masked man and his words.

' He is... lying! That's right! This is all just a test! A test! Running away didn't work. So Ray will surely appear as soon as I kill this guy. I need to kill him! Yes, I need to kill him! '

Just as the attack was about to reach her, everything seemed to have paused. The cold winds near seemed to have abruptly died. The rustling leaves seemed to have been glued in its place. And the masked man that lunged at her, seemed to be frozen in mid-air. There was a shocked expression visible in his demonic red eye that neither waned nor waxed.

In this eerie frozen frame, only the eyes and thoughts of Sora were in motion.

' To kill him, I need to stop him from phasing in and out. I need to lock him in place! A single moment! That's all I need! Then Ray will be back. '

She expertly took out her kunai and approached the masked man. Her black eyes , now evolved into demonic red eyes. A Sharingan with two tomoe!

It seemed that the reason why the masked man was locked in place was related to her Sharingan. And the tomoe of her Sharingan had been rotating non-stop at a continuous speed, ever since the movement of the masked man was halted.

Her movements and actions seemed to be of those of an expert nin, much unlike her usual self, which was in the top tier among her peers. There was a sinister smile on her face that had a menacing expression. Ger eyes seemed to have lost their warmth as it was displaying cruel intentions in an effort to recover it's only flame of hope. The hope that Ray is okay!

Sora on reaching the masked man, didn't speak as she prepared to plunge the kunai through his visible eye. Even though she didn't speak, she had a mocking expression in line with her thoughts:

' You were able to kill Ray! Then let me just verify that! Now try to phase out as best as you can, pathetic worm! '

A few inches away from being pierced, his eyes had a sudden change, one of the three tomoe of his Sharingan disappeared and his now two tomoe Sharingan started rotating with increasing speed.

At the same instant the eeriness of the current scenario drastically went down as if the eerie factors were switched off. Everything was once again set in motion and the robe and mask of the masked man disintegrated. What was left behind of the masked man was Uchiha Rayzen in his standard attire.

Before the kunai could peirce his eye, it stopped in its tracks, as if the user of the weapon had realised who he was.

It seemed that a switch went off in Sora's mind on seeing Rayzen. The kunai fell from her hands and she seemed to be thoroughly exhausted, both mentally and physically. She smiled on seeing Rayzen and just as she called out his name, she had shut down:

" Ray-ray - "

Rayzen diagnosed her and found that she just fainted from chakra exhaustion as the instincts of her body kicked in to prevent her from dying.

He carried her on his back as he whispered with a rueful grin :

" Stupid little sister ! "

He then vanished, leaving the dark forest as it was.

....

Ever since Rayzen got back on track after murdering the two Root nins, he had secluded himself to training and learning, with his goals unknown to all except himself. Obviously, such a commitment demanded him to have much less interactions with his friends and sisters than he already had.

While he still sent his shadow clones to check upon his friends, it was less frequent. His spars with Haruka became rare occurrences as he too was invested in training with Minori accompanying him. The only person that he paid particular attention to was Shiroka, whom he forced to endure his training. The reason for this was known only to the both of them.

Obviously this made Mikoto, Toshiko and Sora unhappy. So they decided to undergo extreme training with him, so that they could spend some time with him. Rayzen was not averse to this and he genuinely helped them in their training.

It got to the point where Rayzen decided to use his rising prowess in genjutsu on the three to awaken their Sharingan.

He first tried it on Mikoto and it failed spectacularly as it only managed to give her a minor trauma which she took some days to recover from. And learning from Mikoto's experience, he tweaked his genjutsu, and used it on Toshiko. This time the genjutsu was completely reliant on Toshiko's thoughts and he just handled the part of how to traumatize her enough to awaken her Sharingan.

This time he succeeded and Toshiko awakened a two tomoe Sharingan. But the success came at a cost. A friction formed between Mikoto and Toshiko as the two turned from best friends to rivals. The rivalry between was a bit toxic, such that it often required Rayzen to make them reach a compromise and not fight ugly.

Having his efforts backfired on Toshiko and her not sharing her experience with the genjutsu and of her Sharingan's prowess, he was forced to spent much effort on improving his genjutsu such that he won't damage his little Sora in any way.

But still afraid to scar Sora, he abandoned his intentions of forcing Sora to awaken Sharing and just spent more effort in training her, particularly in battle tactics. With the experience he made his own from the memories of Nekko, he was able to become an excellent guide for her, much better than her father, Takeshi.

In order to drill the instantaneous decision making in battles and to avoid danger, he had to let her experience something real. Hence he had to turn to using genjutsu.

And so Rayzen decided to subtly put her in a genjutsu under the guise of training. This time, he was hands on with every little aspect of the genjutsu. Although the chances of her awakening the Sharingan was nil, he was comforted by the chances of her not suffering emotional damage.

But fate often laughs at the plans of man!