Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, nor am I at all associated with Kishimoto, Shonen Jump, Viz, or anybody else that has a single thing to do with the manga or the anime. This is rated M for the goddamn cadaver and my morbidity in describing it.

Okay, I know a bunch of you that are actually reading this are most likely waiting for a chapter of the minka story. Well, there's a method to my madness here. Trust me, you kids aren't going to really want the chapter yet. Besides, I'm still going by my "one chapter or one-shot a week" policy here, so just grin and bear with it. I've chosen to make the characters in the search for this story "Rin" and "Pakkun", even though the ninken are more than Pakkun and Rin hardly appears, but this is a "Rin" story even if Kakashi's present more (I really wish they had a third character option!).

The sense of smell in a dog is much more precise than that of a human, indeed in almost any other animal. It's been said before that they "smell in color", which is almost true; they can smell not only very minute amounts, but their ability to differentiate one smell from another is what's especially outstanding. The old wives tales of walking through streams or throwing coffee grounds or such on you to keep a dog from finding your scent are all just legends. Sure, weather conditions could affect their track, but they only confuse the dogs rather than nullify them. As such, wind was by far the best in whirling the scent around and confusing dogs, but wind-type ninja are rare and using it as a tactic only works in the short term.

The best way to keep a well-trained tracking dog from finding you is to get far, far away, traveling far and fast. The scent will then be lost from being too old before they can get close enough for the scent to be fresh again. Or, you can just kill the dog. This sort of tactic is common enough among ninja that ninken packs can be rare and well guarded.

Kakashi's ninken pack is unique in that it's large, healthy, and very well trained. Some tracking dogs might have to be trained for various weather conditions and for different areas and countries where variables such as plant-life might be different, but few have their training as complete as his. He'd taken good care of them, to the point that if there's a tracking mission available in Konoha, the first person listed after the Inuzuka is Hatake Kakashi.

Of course, his dogs still make mistakes; they have particular weaknesses to each other on what sorts of conditions could make them "blind" to a scent. Because of this, he kept good track of the entire pack, since their accuracy peaked when they were able to lead each other to the proper scent. He trusted their noses. He might have trusted their noses better than he trusted his own eyes… and that could even include Obito's eye.

No, scratch that. He did trust their noses more than his eyes. Even his eyes could be susceptible to a genjutsu. Besides that, they couldn't see through everything. And sometimes, and this was a true rarity, Kakashi simply wouldn't—couldn't—believe his own eyes, so he asked them to confirm or disprove what he was seeing before him.

And that was what that incident was, when he sped through the woods looking for a sign of Rin. She had not reported in from her mission, and the second he was given word, Kakashi set forward to give backup to her team. He would have been on the team with her if he had been more stern with her. Maybe if he managed to convince her that his place was by her side and not filling in for her in her clan council seat that was more honorary than functional, he wouldn't be running through the woods in fear that he might be too late.

"I should have been more strict with her!" Kakashi hissed aloud. The words weren't really meant for the dogs, but they heard it and properly ignored it as if they hadn't.

Rin was so close to Kakashi, always with him, always at his apartment, that the dogs all knew her scent. It was nearly as familiar as a scent as Kakashi's, and her scent was so often on Kakashi himself these days that they would almost think of them interchangeably. Not that the scents are at all the same; Rin's was much sweeter than Kakashi's earthy scent, and she frequently wore light fragrances and used special soaps and shampoos. But often one was as much as the other; they both fed them, after all.

As they ran towards her last position, Uhei was the first to find her trail. "I smell Rin this way!" he barked. The other seven found it quickly afterwards, and ran with revitalized speed towards her.

However, as they got closer, the dogs slowed gradually. Bisuke began to slow first, then Akino almost immediately afterwards when he wondered why Bisuke was slowing. Then the rest of the pack understood what the meaning was and came down to a trot.

Kakashi commented on it. "Why are you slowing? We have to get to her as soon as possible! No time to waste!"

It was Pakkun that responded, shaking his head. "We only have time to waste."

The ninja was troubled by that answer and reduced to only walking. "What do you mean by that? Pakkun?"

None of them answered. They didn't need to; they had just reached Rin's corpse.

From the looks of her, she was killed by a kunai to the neck that hit strong enough to sever the spinal column, but she must have been up in the boughs of the trees when she was hit, for her body was at the base of a tall tree, broken from an impact she didn't feel because she was already dead.

How long had she been dead? She was limp; rigor mortis had passed. There didn't seem to be any bruise-like discoloration on the lower points of the body, which wasn't surprising given how much blood was lost from the laceration, so her skin was rather pallid. The blood that had emptied out through her neck had splattered some along the trunk of the tree and made a large puddle below her, but even the deepest part was clotted, and most was bone dry save for what was covered by tree shadows and Rin. It was about eighteen degrees Celsius out here, and she has reached ambient temperature. That alone should tell Kakashi that she'd been dead for at least eighteen hours, to do a rough estimate; the Glaister equation would probably estimate over twenty hours. There were already insects crawling on her and over her open, dead eyes, but they come even during the "fresh" stage of decomposition. Her eyes were starting to bulge with gas formation.

But Kakashi simply wouldn't—couldn't—believe his own eyes. He shook his head violently and screwed his eyes shut so tight it looked like he was causing himself pain. He chanted "No, no, no, no," like a mantra, but the mantra only succeeded to make himself more upset. He shook in a way that one might expect his body to fall apart from its own trauma to the joints.

So they proceeded to explain it to him, because it wouldn't do to let Kakashi kill himself with guilt and denial. Their noses were able to tell that she was dead from the gas buildup formed in cadavers after death, and, considering the weather and seasonal conditions, they were able to tell that she'd been dead for almost two days. The time of death was most likely not long before that she was supposed to report in. So by the time they got word of her absence in Konohagakure, she was already dead.

Not only was she dead, but Kakashi was too late even before he set a foot out to find her. He started out too late.

They explained this slowly to Kakashi. He didn't appear to want to hear, but he was a realistic sort of man in the end, as whimsical as he could seem sometimes. He believed them. He even thanked them for being there, because he was sure he wouldn't have believed it without them, even as he dragged her body back to Konoha himself.

And Pakkun was right about there being only time to waste, now. Kakashi took his time in grieving and preparing Rin. He didn't want any further damage to come to her while he took her back to Konoha, and he wanted her ready to be properly cremated. It was nearly noon before he started back with her, and he went at a leisurely pace.

Nothing to hurry for, nothing to hurry for. We only have time to waste.

.-.-.

It had been four years since that time. A year after Rin's death, he accepted his first genin team. Now, his students were training alone with the Sannin… or, at least, Sakura and Naruto were; Sasuke was allied with Orochimaru, promised to be Orochimaru's next body. Sakura was the only one still in Konoha, and still Kakashi saw her sparsely. He began to understand that they were no longer his students, but fellow ninja, brothers on the battlefield.

He still did missions, of course, and he wasn't going to stand still while everyone else was training. Kakashi grew stronger these past couple of years as well, and no longer being held by a genin team all the time meant that he was taking those higher-rank missions with higher frequency anymore. That generally meant a better chunk of change for him at the end of the day, too. Even though it was boring without his students around, he was doing well.

A mission was going on right now, and the ninken were out, doing their tracking as Kakashi had ordered. It was spring, and the air was fragrant—slightly distracting. But all eight were out and working together, so they were able to discern smells properly and not get too confused. Still, however, Guruko strayed from the path. It was nearly half-an-hour before any of the others noticed.

When they did, the other seven were reluctant to backtrack, in fear of losing the trail. They tentatively went forward until Kakashi spoke up.

"Shiba, Pakkun. Go back and meet up with Guruko, figure out what's drawing him off. The rest of us will continue on this trail. Guruko might have simply found a different trail for the same scent, so you might not have to worry about regrouping with the rest of us."

"Uhn!" They responded and set back towards Guruko, Pakkun riding on Shiba's head. They were getting away from the trail they were on as they approached, and they weren't finding any new trail. Even as they found him, they didn't know why he had strayed.

Guruko looked up from where he was sniffing to the other dogs as they came out of the brush towards him. He made a slight whine, his hitai-ate a little set back on his forehead. "Guys…"

"Why did you stray from the path?" Pakkun growled irritably. "I don't smell the scent of the ninja we're supposed to be tracking through here at all. We are on a mission, you know!"

Guruko sniffed and shook his head. "Don't you smell that?"

"There isn't anything special here," Shiba growled irritably.

"No! No, listen! Try smelling over here!" He indicated towards a tree, near a weed with a freshly broken stalk. They couldn't help but smell what he was smelling, now. It was very peculiar, even among all these springtime smells. Sweet, with some special shampoo and a light fragrance above that… very particular.

"That's… that's Rin's scent, isn't it?" Pakkun gasped in disbelief.

Guruko nodded. "Yes, it is."

"Impossible!" Shiba said, "She died, what, four years ago? This scent is fresh! It couldn't be her! We smelled her decomposition ourselves!"

"It does smell exactly like Rin," Pakkun responded. "I remember her scent vividly. No way I'd forget the scent of someone who fed us so many times."

"But there is absolutely no way to reproduce the scent of death like that when we found her corpse… is there?"

Guruko made a whine and continued towards the scent. The other two felt they had no choice but to follow. After all, they had to figure out what was happening here. They couldn't just leave the smell of someone that they knew was long dead, especially considering how important that person was. Important to them, and important to Kakashi. Oh, maybe she was important to Konoha, but that was a secondary importance as far as they were concerned.

As they searched, dusk approached, and it was getting cooler, harder to see. They had no trouble keeping on track, and in fact, the trail seemed to have been getting better. As they went forward, they had completely forgotten the mission that Kakashi had brought them out for. They were on a personal mission, now, and it trumped in their minds. They got closer and closer, the scent seemed fresher and fresher. Soon they would see the source giving off Rin's scent. The source was moving about; they could tell as they tracked it. Now, as the distance closed, they could hear the noise of someone leaping from bough to bough. Now, they could almost see a silhouette in the branches, quickly shifting from place to place, so fast only those with training could have their eyes even keep up.

A great gust appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly the whole world was a tornado to the three ninken. How long did they whirl, carried by the wind into the sky? They couldn't see around them; it was just a blur of grass and leaves. It kept spinning longer, and longer, and longer. They came to their senses at the same time with Kakashi standing over them, the other five of the pack surrounding. It was now night.

Kakashi sighed and rubbed his head. "What have you guys been up to? I was worried, you know. We had time to finish up and look for you, you took so long. Why are you all the way out here?"

The three stood up from where they were laying unsteadily, absolutely confused and only partially aware of their surroundings. Pakkun was the first to have any mind to speak. "We were following a suspicious scent."

"Hn? What sort of scent?"

"It was—" Pakkun stopped himself. "—a strange squirrel. It was a strange squirrel that isn't usually in this area. We wanted to catch it."

The other two looked at him questioningly while Kakashi sighed, "Is that all? You were chasing squirrels? And here I thought you might have found another foreign ninja. I thought you guys were under some weird genjutsu since your chakra flows were strange. I was about to release it when you woke up."

Genjutsu?

"Yeah, it was a squirrel. It was really fast, though, so we couldn't catch it. Maybe it's a special squirrel bread to infiltrate places with explosive tags on their backs?"

"Hn. Maybe the three of you just need more exercise," Kakashi responded with a bored tone and turned. "Come on. We're going back to report."

A genjutsu? Genjutsu can affect all senses, right? Can they affect all animals? Hmm, yeah they'd have to, wouldn't they? Otherwise the Inuzuka would have been the Uchiha clan's worst enemy. Well, maybe they were enemies. Did the Uchiha ever really get along with any clan? But anyway, how good was Rin at genjutsu? She was pretty smart, very good at resisting them even while she was under one. And not all genjutsu are nullified by the Sharingan.

Kakashi didn't want to believe it when Rin died; the very idea seemed impossible to him. His mind was battling his senses, so he trusted the dogs with their keen noses to tell him that he was facing the corpse of Rin Then he believed it, because dogs always, always believe their noses above nearly everything else. How often could they be wrong? All eight of them?

Hmm… genjutsu, huh…

Ninken – Ninja dog/nin-dog.
Hope you guys liked that one-shot. Oh, and by the way, I already finished next week's update. Ahh, I might as well tell you guys. It's the last chapter of the minka story. See you next week!