It's time to tear the mask from my face as part of the big reveal! Armed Ant was Eldr-fire, and this was my story for the Underneath the Underneath Anonymous KakaSaku challenge! Besides anonymity, the only requirements were that the entry start with "It started with a bang" and end with "It ended with a cigarette." Of course I didn't get the inspiration until three days before the deadline, but even though it was rushed it was fun. This is presented with some minor edits. Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest!
Up in Smoke
It started with a bang.
Kakashi paused in his brisk walk, frowning severely. Had that come from…?
He squinted down the grimy road, his eye locking on a particular brick building. Haphazardly nailed planks of wood blocked one of the windows, and between their cracks he could see…
Smoke.
Shit.
He broke into a run, his boots clacking loudly on the cobblestone street. Boarded up shops and derelict buildings blurred past him in the smoggy haze as he ran. He rounded a sharp corner into a shadowy alleyway, hopping over a rolling garbage can to avoid tripping.
A brittle black fire escape clung to the dark brick wall. Kakashi grabbed hold of the rail and ran up the tinny steps. A yowling cat serenaded his ascent. He did not stop until he had reached the top, at which point he sent a little burst of chakra to his hands to pull himself up to the roof.
A blustering wind bit at his exposed skin; he adjusted his tattered black scarf to shield more of his face before dropping to his knees. Again he sent chakra to his fingers, this time to manipulate the lock on the trapdoor. It shifted into place with a mechanical click that was swallowed by the howling gale. Kakashi prized up the metal plate; a flood of light fell onto his figure, drawing him into the apartment as he lowered himself down.
He landed with an oomph on the wooden floorboards, which groaned in welcome.
His eye watered. Smoke was everywhere, obscuring his view of the apartment. Somewhere he could hear a mechanical whizzing noise. He tried to squint through the smoke, but there was no sign of the pink-haired culprit.
"Sakura?" he called hoarsely. He could feel a hideous cough rattling in his chest. It erupted forcefully, forcing him to hack unpleasantly into the unraveling threads of his scarf. "Sakura?"
A low moan answered him; feverishly he fell onto all fours and crawled towards the source. Even at this low altitude the smoke still filtered through his scarf and into his lungs. A light was on but the smoke only played with it, distorting everything into a fuzzy screen of gray and yellow. He felt around like a blind man, groping at anything that crossed his path until he felt something soft.
"Sakura…" He padded around until he found her shoulder, bringing her up into a sitting position against the wall behind them. The smoke was starting to dissipate.
His gloved hand found her face, stroking her cheeks. They were filthy. "Sakura! Can you hear me? Are you okay?"
She said nothing. Idiot, he thought angrily. He had told her never to work on the machine alone, hadn't he?
But then a cough sputtered miraculously from her mouth, and she curled forward, screwing her eyes shut against the smoke. "Ka-kakashi?" she coughed.
"Yes," he said. The smoke had mostly faded, as nothing was actually on fire. Now he could see that Sakura's face was covered in soot, and her pink hair was standing on end. If he hadn't been so worried, he would have been tempted to laugh.
She let out a final, shuddering cough before cracking open an eye to meet his. Sheepish aquamarine met exasperated charcoal. "Sorry," she said, wincing as if expecting a blow. "I was just…"
"Tinkering," Kakashi finished grimly. It was the usual excuse. He cupped her chin in his hand; the soot rubbed onto his naked fingertips. "Didn't I tell you not to…?"
"I know, I know." She looked very put-out. Kakashi squeezed her chin, pushing her lips against each other comically. Her cheeks bulged out as she glared. He toggled back and forth until she rolled her eyes and pulled away.
She began to rise, offering a hand to pull him up as well. A flurry of dust accompanied them into standing position. Kakashi watched Sakura's pitiful attempt to brush herself off before taking it upon himself to do it for her.
She stared thoughtfully at the dingy brick wall as he brushed off her backside. "Weird coincidence that you got here just now," she mused. "Kinda spooky."
"It wasn't a coincidence," he told her, smoothing his hands down her sides with the pretense of brushing away more soot. "I could hear the bang from two blocks away."
She let out an indignant yelp as his hand wandered too far south, slapping it away and turning to face him. "Really?" she asked apologetically. "I'm sorry…"
"It's not important." He strode past her to the table in the middle of the room. Atop it sat a peculiar device. To an outsider it would have seemed like a random heap of metal and cogs, but the seemingly arbitrary construction was actually being painstakingly perfected. Precarious joints were strengthened by chakra bonds, but it was a temperamental machine, and Sakura seemed to have pushed it too far. Smoke was still trickling feebly from a bronze pipe that jutted out at a forty-five degree angle.
Sakura came up behind him to slip the coat from his shoulders. Beneath he wore a white button-down shirt, black pants and suspenders that drew smart stripes along his torso and back. He leaned forward, his clothed knuckles tightening as he gripped the edge of the table. The black scarf was pooled around his neck.
"What exactly did you do to it?" he asked her as she hung up his coat. His voice was more bemused than angry, but she still hung her head as she joined him at the table.
"I was trying to meddle with the frequency again."
She looked up at him, but he didn't return her glance; he was gazing intently at a pair of jammed gears. He pointed at the offending part. "Is that where you were…?"
"Yeah." She dropped her elbows dejectedly to the table, resting her chin in her palms. "I really screwed it up, huh?"
He shrugged. "Nothing I can't fix," he said. Then he paused and turned to her with a crinkling of the eye. "Er, that is to say… nothing we can't fix."
She looked away with a snort.
Frowning, he put a comforting arm on her shoulder. "Don't worry about it," he said bracingly. "I'm serious. This is only a minor setback. But… what exactly did you do?" He wasn't trying to be mean, but nothing had ever exploded.
With a huff, she pointed at the jammed gears. "I was feeding chakra into them," she explained reluctantly. She spoke with the tone of someone constantly on the verge of slapping a disclaimer in the middle of her sentence. "I was doing it just how you showed me — and you did say that I can do that better than you because of my chakra control — but I guess I got a little too… enthusiastic."
He nodded in understanding. That was easy to do; he himself was guilty of getting a little too excited when things were going well. It took time to condition himself to the expectation of failure.
"Okay," he said quietly, and he kissed her sooty pink head.
A gas lamp sputtered unhappily beside him, casting his features into shadowy relief. His silhouette mimicked him haughtily on the brick wall, fastidiously carving out his strong features. The light flickered uncertainly over his work; he had to use his crimson eye to see properly.
Kakashi bent over the table, his hands flying as he fiddled with the machine. He would never admit it to Sakura, but she had jammed it well. Two important cogs were wedged against each other in a grinding impasse; it looked like he might have to resort to brute force to separate them.
He dabbed at the jammed gears with an oil-soaked cloth, hoping to coax them apart diplomatically. His efforts seemed futile, though. The niche was too tight to force in the clumsy cloth.
Irritably he sighed. He leaned back in the chair, forcing his shoulders back out of their hunch with a series of cracks. What a frustrating business. He let the Sharingan fall shut in a hope for some reprieve from his pounding headache.
A door creaked open and the floorboards whined with footsteps. He didn't bother to look around; he knew it was Sakura.
She stopped behind his chair, her hands falling lightly to his shoulders. Her thumbs eased his collar out of the way, giving her access to his bare neck. He let out a small hiss as she pressed down into the knots there.
"It's late," she whispered for no reason save the darkness. "You should come to bed."
There was guilt in her voice, but despite his frustration with what she had done to the machine, he could not bring himself to blame her for it. It wasn't the first mistake either of them had made, especially not when it came to this rotten machine.
But not rotten, he had to remind himself. This ugly pile of scrap metal was their only hope.
He closed his other eye as she massaged his neck. A mechanical hum underscored the otherwise thick silence. All of the windows were boarded up in their tiny hole of an apartment, isolating them in their own pocket of rebellion.
Sakura pressed her lips to his silver hair in a gentle kiss. Her fingers continued to work at his neck and shoulders as she kissed him again, trailing a line of kisses down to the ticklish shell of his ear.
"Mm," he mumbled incoherently, half annoyed and half pleased. "I'm working, you know."
Her hand found the top button of his shirt, slipping it out of its slit with expert speed and then snaking down his chest. He groaned appreciatively in spite of himself, sighing heavily as he let his head fall back against her chest.
She pulled her head away from his to look down at him. His mismatched eyes crossed as he looked up at her mischievously.
"Sakura?" he asked, sounding like a little boy anticipating his treat.
A pink eyebrow arched in response. He took it as encouragement and continued, "It's a pity that we couldn't take Icha Icha with us, you know."
She pursed her lips. He was smiling, but it still wasn't nice to be reminded of the things they'd left behind. "Not really," she said, her hands resuming their massage. "It deserved to burn."
She expected him to pout, but his grin only widened.
"You used to like them," he insisted. "Don't you remember when we would act out page ninety—"
"No," she lied stubbornly. Of course she remembered — pages ninety to ninety-four had been particularly creative — but she preferred not to indulge him.
"That's a pity," he hummed, still looking up at her, eyes crossed from the awkward angle. He winked at her with the Sharingan. "I can refresh your memory, though…"
"Well…" She worked absently at the next button down, loosening it to let his shirt part farther down his chest. "That depends."
He waited with bated breath.
"Are we talking about Icha Icha Paradise or Icha Icha Tactics?"
Kakashi pretended to scoff. "Paradise, of course," he said. "Page ninety-two of Tactics just has some boring political intrigue. Page ninety-two of Paradise, on the other hand, has the…"
"I remember," she said wryly. "But I'm not sure I want to go that far in such a dingy place as this… it's so icky."
He laughed, and her fingers traced the vibrations along his chest.
"The bed's not so bad," he said fairly. She shook her head at him, saying nothing. After a thoughtful silence, he added, "But if you would rather not, we can take a more conservative approach, say… page thirty-four?"
"I don't know, we're pretty tired…"
"At least give me a page eleven of Violence."
She sighed. "Fine," she conceded. "But! My condition is that you have to stop requesting triple digits, period. We just can't risk doing those sorts of things in public places."
"I know, I know," he said. He was well aware of her policy on anything past page one hundred. "Besides, there was only one time I really tried a page one-twelve."
Chuckling, she patted him on the shoulders. "Come on," she said, stepping away from the chair so he could pull out. "Page eleven of Violence it is."
He followed her gladly to the bedroom. The machine sat alone on the table, where the lamplight danced across its tarnished pieces.
Snow pirouetted loftily in the swaying breeze, landing on outstretched tongues as wet pinpricks. That is, landing seemingly on every tongue but Sakura's.
"Urgh!" she seethed, retracting her tongue into the warmth of her mouth. "I'm terrible at catching snowflakes."
"That's the terrible thing about snowflakes," Kakashi ruminated, scratching idly at his face. He tugged up his scarf to sit snugly on the bridge of his nose. "They come to everyone but you."
He turned his gaze to the streets below them. From on top of their brick building they could see stretches of winding stone roads, cobbled together from mismatched bricks that stuck out in places. The cities of Iron Country were full of roads like these. It was a very different country from the more traditional Fire; to fit in, Kakashi and Sakura had had to purchase the most bizarre clothes. (Sakura would never stop teasing him about the top hat that never fit over his hair.)
Sakura cast an absent glance towards the empty streets. As usual, there was nothing of interest there: only smog and brick. Instead she turned back to Kakashi, an odd mix of excitement and anxiety in her eyes. "Shall we practice, then?" she proposed.
He nodded gruffly and raised his hands. The fingertips of his gloves had long since worn away; they reminded Sakura of the gloves he used to wear in Konoha, but these didn't have the robust metal protectors of old. They were simply woven of thin black cloth.
"Rat," he said hoarsely, and in unison he and Sakura covered their index and middle fingers with the other hand. "Ox." This time two fingers in the middle came down over the others. "Tiger." Fingers met in a steeple.
Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Bird, Dog, Boar. As Kakashi named each hand seal they formed it, running through the seals in a practiced rhythm. No chakra was channeled to give the seals power; they were merely performing the routine. It had started out as something to do when they were bored with surveillance duty. Then they thought that perhaps they should do it regularly so that they wouldn't forget.
Not that they could ever, ever forget.
After they had cycled through the signs, Sakura yawned into her mitten. Two pink baubles dangled from the wrist. "So boring," she complained.
Kakashi said nothing. He was staring intently at a fixed point on the street below; she surmised that he was probably mulling over how to fix her stupid mistake with that stupid machine.
She had really been trying to help yesterday, she reflected glumly. She had thought that perhaps, with her superb chakra control, she could perfect the frequency they had been trying for months to accomplish… And then their months of hiding out would have come to something, and they could leave this horrible limbo and…
Her lip trembled. Sometimes it just felt so damn hopeless.
"Sakura," he said suddenly, an edge to his voice she hadn't heard in months. "Do you see that down there?"
"Hm?" She peered over the edge, squinting down at the street below. It was difficult to see through the smog of the nearby factories.
"There." Kakashi dared to point at the spot on the road.
She followed his finger, staring unseeingly for a few moments before her mouth rounded in a gasp.
There was only one person she knew with the gall to bare his abs in winter.
"But…" She turned to Kakashi, her rosy face stricken with disbelief. "It can't be…"
"He's got his chakra signature," Kakashi said. His excitement was poorly masked. "His chakra was always strange, since he used ink…"
Emotion leapt in Sakura's heart. She felt giddy. After endless months, even years of waiting, for them to finally see a familiar person…
Before Kakashi could stop her, she impulsively sent chakra surging to her feet and launched herself off the building. The only man in the street paused in his walk to see the bundled up woman careening through the air to land squarely in front of him.
A cloud of powdered snow flurried up at her feet. The man in front of her stepped back cautiously; he wore a balaclava that swathed his face in anonymity, but his identity was still unmistakable.
He was raising his arms to make a jutsu, but before he could act Sakura tore her hat from her head and threw it to the ground, letting her pink hair fall out unhindered.
"Sai," she said softly. "It's Sakura."
He froze. A long minute of silence passed, padded by the falling snow. Finally, he lowered his arms. "Sa…kura?"
She attacked him in a fierce hug. He stumbled backwards a little; Sakura squeezed him tightly, rocking back and forth in her excitement.
Sai patted her awkwardly on the back. "You know I am not good with hugs…"
She kissed the thick cloth covering his cheek. "I can't believe it's you," she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut and grinning against his shoulder.
There was a soft thud as Kakashi landed on the street behind her, walking up to the embracing pair. Leaning to one side with a hand in his pocket, he watched them with a bemused smile. Sakura refused to relinquish Sai, whose black eyes stared out helplessly at Kakashi through the holes in his balaclava.
"Wow," Sai wheezed. His voice was strained from the prolonged hug. "Not only are you uglier than I remembered, but I can't breathe so you must be even fatter."
Suddenly Sai had fallen hard onto the street, Sakura was brandishing her mittened fist above him, and Kakashi was laughing. He crossed over and lent Sai a hand, clapping him on the back once he had gotten to his feet. "Long time no see," he said in a low voice.
Sai nodded, looking at Sakura with bewilderment in his black eyes. "I was not expecting this," he said with his usual bald honesty. Sakura lowered her fist and smiled fondly at him.
"Come on," she beckoned. "Let's go somewhere warmer."
Instead of going through the roof, the three of them walked together to the front of the apartment building. Kakashi wrenched open the thick metal door, holding it open as Sakura and Sai retreated into the dark hall. It shut with a loud thud, leaving them in a muffled, wooden hall.
"This way," Sakura directed, and she led the way up the stairs. They were steep and wooden, creaking with every step of their dripping boots. Sakura kept glancing over her shoulder as if to check that Sai were really there.
As they marched up the stairs, Kakashi glanced out the grubby windows that passed them by. Thick smog hung in the air of the city, but few people were out as it was some national holiday. He could just make out the narrow smokestacks cutting through the gloomy sky. This country of iron and smoke was so different from his home.
They finally reached the top floor. Kakashi stepped to the forefront of their trio, reaching a hand into the interior of his coat to fish the key from a concealed pocket. His hands trembled as he turned it in the lock.
Sakura ushered Sai into the apartment and went immediately to the sink, turning the hot water knob at full blast. "I can't believe you were walking out in the snow with your stomach exposed like that," she said, grabbing a cloth to hold under the water once it warmed up. Her tone was scolding, but she was beaming.
Sai, however, paid her no mind. His attention was immediately drawn to the table that took up most of the space… or rather, the machine on top of it.
"What is that?" he asked, pointing unnecessarily at the contraption.
Kakashi and Sakura exchanged looks. Then Kakashi cleared his throat and said, "Well, it's a pretty long story… You might want to sit down."
Sai obliged, pulling up the chair at the table itself. He pulled the balaclava from his face, rumpling his jet-black hair. He didn't seem to mind, though, focusing intently on Kakashi.
The Copy Ninja leaned back against a cluttered countertop, eyeing the machine thoughtfully. "It's a communication device," he said. "It's very experimental, though, so we haven't been able to manage much communication yet."
Sai turned to appraise the machine curiously. "Communication?"
"Yes." He glanced over at Sakura, who was holding the washcloth beneath the faucet. The water was beginning to steam. "Ideally, it's meant to send out a chakra signal specifically to Konoha shinobi. Every shinobi has their unique signature, as you know, but their genetics play a role in it… So broadly speaking, there are certain patterns in the signature that are regionally specific. In theory, all Konoha ninja will have somewhat similar chakra."
Sakura crossed the room quickly, handing the hot washcloth to Sai. "For your stomach," she explained. He took the cloth and held it to his abdominals; the water dripped down his white skin.
"So what does this machine do?" Sai asked as Sakura settled herself on the floor.
Kakashi sighed. "Well, the idea is that we can attune this machine to that particular Konoha frequency of chakra and send a… message to everyone with it. Nothing like words, but more of…" He scratched his neck self-consciously. "It's difficult to explain, but if we got the machine to work, what we would do is send a certain frequency of chakra through it that would reach anyone who had those patterns in their chakra— and we would send the frequency of that particular Konoha pattern."
Sai swished the wet cloth around on his belly. "What would happen when people receive this… communication?" he asked.
Kakashi laughed shakily. "Well, seeing as it's never worked yet, we don't know for sure," he admitted. His ears were red from a combination of the cold and anxiety. "But we think that we'd be able to make it clear just by sending this 'message' that there are still other Konoha refugees out there… That there are people who haven't given up."
Sai nodded thoughtfully. Sakura was quiet on the floor, her eyes boring sightlessly into the wooden boards. "I see… But how did you find out about this chakra pattern and communication?"
Kakashi gave his scarred eyelid a rueful tap. "When things were… looking bad, I memorized as many of the secret scrolls as I could. Rifling through the knowledge I memorized revealed this little gem… But this is ancient jutsu we're talking about. We have no idea how well it could work, or if it could even work… The closest we've got is sending each other flashes of our own chakra signatures."
"It definitely works when we do that," Sakura chimed in. "Like when Kakashi has it attuned to his chakra frequency, and he sends it out to my frequency, I get a flash of… just him." She could not find a more eloquent way to put it.
Sai nodded in solemn comprehension. Quietly, he said, "I wish that I could say that the time I have spent on the run has been so fruitful. I have never encountered any Konoha refugees coming up with something as concrete at this…"
Kakashi smiled sadly at their metal heap of hope. "It's the best we've got," he said, and he sounded like he was a hundred years old.
Outside, a man used chakra like suction cups to crawl back down the building. The fire escape would have been too noisy. Instead he landed with catlike silence into the dingy alleyway and proceeded swiftly towards the road.
He did not break in his pace as he wound through streets slick with snow. Twilight tinged the smoky skies pink. Steep shadows were cast by his thin form, jumping along the cobblestones in a wicked dance of light.
Reaching his destination, he ducked into another alleyway. A dog barked threateningly at his presence but he ignored it, hopping nimbly onto a chipped concrete doorstep. He did not knock, but entered with a confident swing of the door.
The room was empty and dimly lit. He turned sharply to the right, his wet boots squeaking on the floorboards. A door stood ajar, seeming to drop off into darkness. Knowing the path, he did not turn on a light as he descended the shrouded stairs.
In the dank of the basement he felt out the table stationed in the middle of the floor. A chair scraped against the concrete as he pulled it towards the table.
He brought his hands together and uttered a throaty jutsu. Suddenly, a light came to life in the center of the table. It emanated from a dusty crystal ball that sat on a stand draped in velvet.
The man rapped on the glass with the knuckles. "Tsuchikage-sama."
The blurry swirl of smoke inside the ball began to gain focus, smoothing out into an image of a gnarled old man. His bulbous nose was blown up ludicrously by the angle of the curved glass.
"Shinobu," he said, acknowledging the man with a nod. "I say, these old balls of Sarutobi's have really come in handy, eh? The crystal ones, I mean." He chortled at his own crude joke.
"Tsuchikage-sama," the man called Shinobu repeated. The light from the crystal ball etched out his harsh features. "I have found something that will be of great interest to you."
The Tsuchikage's eyes widened in excitement. "Yes?"
Shinobu cleared his throat. "The former Konoha shinobi I had been trailing, the one called Sai… I came to this city to head him off, as our intelligence indicated he might be coming this way. As predicted, he entered the city today."
"Sai…" The Tsuchikage frowned, trying to remember. "Ah, the one who we thought might be communicating with that old fool Danzou?"
Shinobu nodded. "We have heard rumor that Danzou is in Iron Country, so we thought that perhaps Sai was coming here to rendezvous with him," he reminded his superior. "But what I found is much more interesting than Danzou."
Two bushy white eyebrows flew up in skepticism. "More interesting than Danzou?" he repeated. "I'd love to hear this."
"Well, it is uncertain if Danzou is even alive," Shinobu hedged, "but at any rate, I have confirmed the existence of two high-profile former Konoha shinobi in this city."
The Tsuchikage smacked his lips eagerly. "Well, don't hold me in suspense, Shinobu. Who are they?"
"Haruno Sakura and Hatake Kakashi."
The old man blinked in surprise, gaping for a moment, before letting out a hoot of laughter. "I don't believe it!" he crowed. "The Princess's apprentice and the Mirror Ninja himself! Oooh, I've wanted to get my hands on him for a long time." He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically; it sounded like sandpaper. "Well, what are two fine Konoha shinobi like them doing holed up together in a dump like this?"
Shinobu answered, "That is the part that is even more interesting, Tsuchikage-sama. I have learned of a… contraption…"
He explained everything that he had overheard. With each detail the Tsuchikage's crooked grin grew ever wider until he was sneering toothily into the crystal ball.
"Oh, this is excellent," he said. "Truly excellent. And I suspect that anyone who answered this call would get up and leave… even if they were living in our occupied Konoha, hm? Oh, what a way to rat out traitors. What a way."
His eyes were becoming unfocused with his giddiness. "Shinobu, I want to witness this myself!" he said eagerly, a glint of malice in his eye. "We'll have to torture Hatake for answers, of course, about how exactly to manage this Konoha frequency… That way, we can bring all of the existing refugees into the palms of our hands!"
Frowning, Shinobu said, "Sir, I don't mean to be rude, but is it wise for you to leave Iwa for this? If you send back-up from Intelligence, we will be able to capture the Hatake on our own…"
But the Tsuchikage would hear none of this. "I am coming," he said firmly. "These days my advisors all run the place anyway… Whippersnappers. I wish I could stage a coup and have them all killed, but my back is not what it used to be…" He cleared his throat. "Only joking of course," he said, not smiling. "But in all seriousness, that Hatake has been a thorn in my side for some time now. I leave tomorrow."
With a poof, his image had disappeared, and the room fell dark.
Sakura brought a hunk of metal up to her face for inspection. After scrutinizing it sternly for a full minute, she shook her head and tossed it to the side. It landed with a crunch on another piece of metal, piercing it with one of its jagged edges.
Kakashi whistled. "Maybe you should consider not using your monster chakra when handling large sharp objects," he advised, rubbing his forehead with his gloved palm.
Sakura snorted in a most unladylike manner and waltzed over to him. "You know me," she said airily. "Sometimes the brute force just pops right out of me, and I can't control it!" She punched him playfully on the arm.
"Ow," he said, disgruntled. He sat down on a trash can with a hole in the side, rubbing his bicep. Sakura climbed on top of a pile of scrap metal next to him.
The junkyard yawned behind them, bearing broken, rusty fruit. This was their most frequent haunt around the city. No one bothered them here.
Kakashi lifted up a metal pipe, turning it around in his hand before lifting it to his eye. He peered at Sakura through the hole; she stuck out her tongue at him from the other side.
"I can't believe Sai is here," she said, scratching her ear slowly. Her voice was low with wonder. "It's like a dream…"
"It is a dream."
Sakura looked at him with an annoyed wrinkle of her nose. "If you're going to get all philosophical, this really isn't the time—"
She saw his eye crinkle at the other end of the metal pipe still pressed to his face. "I meant that I had a dream that this happened once."
"Really?" Sakura tilted her head to the side.
"Yeah," he said. "Only it was Gai who visited, and he was naked…"
She rolled her eyes. "You're such a goof," she chided, smiling. "But aren't you amazed? What are the chances that he wandered into a city like this where we happened to be doing surveillance from on top of a building. How random!"
Kakashi shrugged, lowering the pipe and tossing it onto a pile of scraps at his feet. "It is weird," he said thoughtfully. "But then, we've been doing surveillance for how long? And with nothing to show for it for such a long time, something was bound to happen eventually…"
His voice trailed off. Sakura watched him as he stared intently at an uninteresting tire lying punctured on the ground. He had his black scarf wrapped tightly around the lower half of his face, and she noticed with a frown of disgust that there was a dirty circle encasing his eye where the pipe had been.
She edged closer to him, half of her bottom now teetering off the edge of her scrap pile. In weather like this it was very slippery, so she had to be mindful of her balance.
"Kakashi?" she said quietly.
"Hm?"
"Thinking about Konoha?"
For a few measured moments, only the snow falling softly around them spoke. Then… "Yeah," grunted Kakashi.
Sakura's mouth scrunched up to one side and her eyebrows turned up in the middle. "Me too," she said. "Seeing Sai again…"
He sighed heavily, tipping his head back to let his eyes roam the sky. The clouds were thick with snow. "I hate this place," he murmured. Sakura's heart clenched tightly for him.
"Me too," she said emphatically.
He was still as a statue, still gazing up helplessly at the clouds. A snowflake landed gently on his eyelash, and he blinked a few times to dislodge it. Sakura giggled, and he turned to her, looking rather cross.
"What's so funny?" he demanded.
Sakura stifled her laughter. "I've never noticed how… full your eyelashes are."
He frowned. "No, really!" she persisted. "They're so defined in your profile!"
Looking distinctly ruffled, he turned away from her. "Nothing wrong with that," he muttered.
"Nope!" She hopped deftly off her scrap pile, landing precariously on the tire he had been contemplating as if it held the secrets of the world. Waving her arms to keep balance, she tilted herself forward on her tiptoes and leaned with her arms on his shoulders; he had to sit up straighter to accommodate her awkward position.
Grinning like a fool, she gave the bridge of his nose a loud kiss. "Nothing wrong with it at all," she whispered playfully, her fingers clenching and unclenching against his shoulders.
His head was pulled back into his neck because of her position, and he smiled down at her; his mouth was covered but she could see it in his contrasting eyes. Some nonsensical platitude left his mouth, but Sakura wasn't listening. She was watching the way his cheekbones were turning pink from the cold.
Perhaps afraid of falling backwards, Kakashi grabbed hold of her. One of his hands was securing her shoulder, and the other found her chin, caressing it fondly.
He fumbled with his scarf until his chapped lips were exposed to the biting cold; almost immediately they sought refuge in a warm kiss. Sakura returned it deeply, her hands interlocking slowly behind his neck.
Stranded in a chilly junkyard, they remained like that for a very long time.
Two nights later, the fierce midnight gusts brought more than snow to the sleepy city in Iron Country. As the wind whipped through the smokestacks, one old man rode the currents, his black coat flapping behind him.
He soared through the sky, a dark blot against the heavy clouds. He may have been old, but his senses were still sharp, and he sent out tendrils of chakra searching for Shinobu's signature.
It called back to him from within a brick building on the streets below. The Tsuchikage shifted his position, streamlining his posture to make a smooth descent. His pouchy nose pointed towards the cobblestones and he flew to the ground.
Landing deftly on a street corner, he straightened up slowly. Stubby fingers thick with veins massaged his aching back. It had been awhile since he had made such a long flight, but he couldn't resist it: The idea that Hatake Kakashi could actually be alive was simply delectable.
He had even dressed especially for the occasion. Wearing anything remotely related to Earth Country could have been a dead giveaway, so he had decided to go incognito. He wore a pinstriped black suited fitted especially for his stout frame, and a tall black top hat hid his ceremonial haircut.
A candle burned defiantly in the streetlamp above him. He squinted up at it. White snow lined the edges of the murky glass. The light hurt his sensitive old eyes, so he tipped down the brim of his hat. It cast a stark shadow over the upper half of his face, but it could not conceal his sinister grin.
No moonlight filtered through the boarded-up windows. Kakashi and Sakura slept soundly in their bed, isolated from all but each other.
Sakura wrinkled her nose against an unpleasant dream, snuggling obliviously closer to Kakashi. He met the gesture with a grunt and a beleaguered snore.
Dead to the world, they did not notice when the first trickle of dust fell from the ceiling. It came from the main room, where the trapdoor was fastened shut against the baleful winds. But the dust did not hit the floor as it fell; instead it slowed until it was suspended in midair, and then it condensed and hardened into a thin sliver. It rose back up to the ceiling, slithering back up through the miniscule cracks in the trapdoor and fitting along the lock. With a pulse of energy, it turned the lock and the door swung open with a creak.
Immediately there was an explosion. Kakashi and Sakura both jolted awake, blinking away sleep impatiently as they searched wildly for the noise.
"What the hell—"
Sakura's hiss was cut off by a second explosion, and Kakashi realized at once what was happening; the exploding tags protecting the apartment were being set off. He leapt out of bed wearing only his fashionable red long underwear. The bedroom door bounded open on its hinges as he pushed it out of the way just in time to see a flurry of black cloth shoot down to the floor.
Sakura barreled past him, her flowery pink nightgown flying around her heels as she pulled her fist back with an angry roar. It went soaring into the black blob in front of them.
There was a sound like stone cracking and the blob fell into a heap of rubble.
"Earth clone," Kakashi muttered— just in time to avoid the blow of another black-clad figure, dodging nimbly out of the way before returning with a punch of his own.
Sakura whipped around to meet the fists of a stout old man, his black coat smoking from where an exploding tag appeared to have singed it. The roof above them was cracked, and it trembled ominously as they traded punches.
The machine on the table rattled as the four people fought along the tight edges of the apartment. Kakashi and his assailant were making their rounds farther and farther away from Sakura and her opponent.
Kakashi's opponent did not seem very skilled. He was incredibly fast, but when he managed to land punches they were light and Kakashi recovered easily. Neither was giving the other much time to exercise anything more than taijutsu.
Rounding the table, the man leapt back several paces, putting enough distance between him and Kakashi to utilize the few seconds it took Kakashi to reach him: From the palms of his hands he released a poof of black powder. Darkness crashed onto their shoulders, plunging the room in black.
It was broken mere seconds later as Kakashi brought a fistful of crackling white chakra rushing towards where his Sharingan saw the man. His opponent ducked out of the way just in time, but Kakashi could see the tails of his coat in the ethereal light of the Raikiri. The jutsu had made contact with the brick wall, and Kakashi dragged it along, bricks clunking to the ground as they fell out, burning. With an almighty battle cry he wrenched his fist from the wall and brought it rearing around to plunge through the other man's chest.
Meanwhile Sakura stumbled blindly in the darkness, trying to anticipate the next blows of the old man. He was wisely keeping his mouth shut, but Sakura could hear his involuntary huffs and grunts as he darted about. She dodged one of his punches but found herself tripping backwards as something grainy wrapped around her ankles.
"Shit!" she hissed. Vainly she tried to fight the whispering grains of dust, but they were hardening around her feet and chaining her in place. The darkness was clearing, and she could see the old man leering above her.
"Konoha brats," he spat, and he opened his mouth as if to say more but was cut off by a kick to the side of the head.
Tension wired her body as Sakura watched him react to the blow. His mouth was slack with shock, and then it was even slacker, and slacker, until it was falling from his face, and his whole body was crumbling into dust—
She sent a shockwave of chakra to her feet and dislodged them from the sandy chains with a shriek of energy. Kakashi was standing panting beside her, looking around the apartment with eyes sharp as a hawk's.
There was no sign of the old man; his clone only lay in pieces on the floor.
"Is that the—"
"Tsuchikage," Kakashi finished. She spared a glance at his haggard form; the jolly red wool of his longjohns seemed absurd, but Sakura supposed she looked no different in her floral print.
She pointed to the body lying inert on the floor where Kakashi had left it. "Is he dead?"
Kakashi nodded once, but he had no chance to answer beyond that: The dust at their feet began to shift, and Kakashi jumped immediately backwards. He landed on the walls, chakra glowing at his bare feet to secure him there, and Sakura followed suit.
"He uses dust," Kakashi explained hurriedly. "His specialty."
"Dust?" Sakura despaired frantically, trying to think of a way to avoid the collecting pile of the stuff as it congealed into some sort of ball. "But it's everywhere!"
"That's why he's Tsuchikage," said Kakashi, grimly and unhelpfully. The ball of condensed dust rose up from the floor and divided into a thousand hardened pellets. Kakashi barely had time to send his hands through a flurry of hand seals before all one thousand of them came pelting towards the two of them like grainy bullets.
Kakashi's quick handiwork made a splattering of hard sand splurge forth from his palms to form a shield around them; they could see the indents of the tiny balls as they hit the shield, and on either side of them they embedded themselves into the brick wall.
"What can we do?" Sakura shouted over the barrage.
Her question was prematurely punctuated by a sudden sound like rain. It ended as soon as it had come, and Sakura's heart pulsed wildly in the silence. The bullets had stopped, trying to wriggle their way out of the walls, and Kakashi let the shield fall.
In the wreckage of the apartment stood Sai, presiding over a large shell of ink that encased the central table.
"The machine," muttered Kakashi beside her.
But there was no time for discussion: The arrival of a third opponent had lured the Tsuchikage out into the open, and he swung down from the trapdoor to send a kick flying at Sai's head. The ex-Root dodged easily, and by that time Sakura had come skating over the layer of sandy dust on the floor to plant a chakra-laden punch into the old man's cheek.
Sai's inky shell retracted into his palm where he redirected it towards the Tsuchikage. It splashed head-on against his body, and the walls behind him were drenched in a splatter of ink.
Spitting the ink from his face, the Tsuchikage dodged the next series of attacks from the Konoha refugees. He was outmatched three to one, but he hadn't become Tsuchikage for nothing, and Kakashi was not sure they could win. The apartment was falling apart around them, bricks flying and ink soaking the walls. And throughout it all the three of them were desperately trying to protect the machine ticking obliviously in the middle of the room.
The old man seemed to have a special interest in Kakashi, treating the others like mere distractions. Sakura was limited in an old building like this, where one of her earth-shattering punches would have destroyed the entire place and all of them with it.
But that didn't stop her from attacking with a wrath that had never burned in her before. Here was the man who had enslaved Konoha, who had burnt their home to ashes.
Suddenly the Tsuchikage's dust twisted like snakes up from the floorboards. Without hesitation they launched towards Kakashi's legs as he ducked out of the way of one of the old man's rock-hard punches. Distracted, he could not stop the grainy bonds from seizing his legs and yanking him to the ground with a hard thump.
"Kakashi!" Sakura screeched, and the Tsuchikage took advantage of her distress to wrap his dusty clutches around her ankles as well, dragging her to the ground.
"Two down!" he crowed, but just as he lumbered enthusiastically towards them, he was stopped by a great slap in the face by a giant hand of ink. The force of the blow rammed him against the wall.
Sai emerged from where he had been hiding behind the table, his chest rising and falling heavily as he panted. He had heard the explosions from where he had been doing reconnaissance down the street, and it was lucky he had come; even with the three of them they could barely handle this crotchety old man.
He turned to the still struggling Kakashi and Sakura. The ropes of sand entwined their legs, tying them to the ground. With frustrated futility they were trying to force themselves up, yet they could barely sit. He could do nothing to free them, but he had bought them some time.
"This technique will keep him paralyzed for a minute," he said breathlessly, "but I can't get you out of those bonds."
Kakashi's eyes desperately roamed the night sky intruding upon them through the broken ceiling. "We have to get out of here," he said. "I'm sure he's after the machine— did you notice how he has been very careful not to destroy it?"
"If we leave he'll just take it for himself then!" Sakura shouted, writhing against her bonds. "We can't leave it here!"
"And we can't take it with us…" Kakashi paused for only a precious moment before snapping his head towards Sai. His neck strained with the movement. "Sai, get me a box of cigarettes! There should be one on the counter over there!"
Sai snatched the worn cardboard container and tossed it over to Kakashi, who raised his arm to catch it from where he lay trapped on the floor. He wasn't much for smoking, but sometimes the stress of their situation drove him to it. Hands trembling from the pain of the dust tightening like a vice on his legs, he tore out one papery roll and one of the dozen matchsticks he kept inside.
He struck the match in one powerful movement. The flame bloomed into life. Sai's inky restraints were starting to recede from the Tsuchikage who was still pinned against the wall.
When Kakashi looked up, the flickering flame illuminated his changed eye: The Sharingan had transformed. "I don't know if this will work," Kakashi said, his voice rushed and strained, "but it's the only chance we've got. We need to blow up the machine, and we need to get out of here— I can try to use the Mangekyou to get us out."
Sakura's face was contorted in pain and worry. "Can you use it on yourself?"
He didn't answer, but held the cigarette out to Sai in a shaking hand. "Throw it on the machine on my count!" he barked, and Sai took the proffered cigarette and match. He put their tips together and the cigarette caught fire, smoldering in his fingers.
"One…" Kakashi choked out — the sand had snaked up his legs and was starting to throttle his torso — "two…"
Sai darted back a few steps, keeping one eye on the Tsuchikage, who was beginning to stir, and the other trained on the machine emitting a few sparks from its place on the table.
"Three."
The lit cigarette left Sai's hand in a toss, and before it landed the man who threw it had disappeared with a great zipping sound as Kakashi's eye rent a hole in the air and sucked the three refugees into it.
Utterly discombobulated, Sakura hurtled through a narrow tube of air. Her lungs screamed, robbed of breath, and streams of water fled the corners of her eyes. She could see nothing.
A high-pitched shrieking whistle heralded her unceremonious deposit onto a rough patch of ground. Her limbs jumbled together as momentum dragged her tumbling forward.
Finally the movement stopped. Silence pressed around her on all sides. Face pressed down into dirt, she waited breathlessly for her senses to return to her.
Something shifted against her, and she forced her pounding head to rise to see what it was. Pale skin shone in the moonlight, and Sai sat up beside her.
Fighting the dizziness, Sakura joined him, her legs still trembling from the ghost of the dusty vice. Her vision swam, but she didn't think this was a place she would recognize. Unfamiliar hills rolled off into the distance, and the sky was clear here instead of pregnant with snow clouds.
The feeling that she was missing something nipped at her rapidly beating heart, and she turned her head from side to side, trying to find it.
Her heart jumped into her throat as she saw a body lying prone on the ground, several feet away from them. Half-tripping, she pushed herself off the grass and ran to him.
"Kakashi!" Her voice cracked as she fell to her knees beside him. It was lucky that he had made it here at all, but what if…
Without hesitation she rolled him onto his back. He was at the very least unconscious; she pressed her head to his chest.
She squeezed her eyes shut as if all the concentration she could muster would sink into his heart like fingers and massage it into beating. It was hard to hear anything over her own heartbeat thudding against her skull.
But then she heard it, and she let out a cry of relief. It was no more than a vulnerable flutter, but it was there. She kissed his chest, the woolly fibers of his long underwear sticking to her wet lips.
Sai looked up into the empty night sky. It expanded above him with dizzying breadth, larger than he could ever tame with logic. He could see no stars, but he was still having trouble seeing anything at all.
Vertigo swept through him and he put a hand on the ground to steady himself. He squinted around in the darkness. Wherever they were, it was far from Iron Country.
But for now, he thought, as he looked at Sakura, whose roaming hands hummed green with chakra over Kakashi's woolen chest, it wasn't important where they were. Right now it only mattered that they were alive.
Hundreds of miles away, a flame flickered as a papery stick of smoke flew through the air. Black ink dripped down the freckled blotch of a nose as an old man blinked the dust out of his eyes. Milliseconds stretched into a graceful arc of smoke as the smoldering end of the cigarette headed towards a junction in between a pipe and a gear.
The machine sat waiting, whirring with the chakra that flew through its joints. It held steady in its final stand, the fulcrum of a building on the verge of destruction.
Then smoking stick landed, and the clunky machine held together by threads of hope and chakra caught fire.
It ended with a cigarette.