Title: Bringing up Kakashi
Summary: Things found cheaply always come at a price. Contains mild robot violence.
Notes: Originally written for the KakaIru fest, Summer 2012. Minor changes since that version.
Prompt: Family is not about blood. It's about who is willing to hold your hand when you need it the most. Link to previous version of story and to image prompt.
Disclaimer: Naruto and all affiliated characters belong to Kishimoto Masashi. This story is written without permission and for personal/fan/nonprofit entertainment purposes only.
They were scrabbling around at the bottom of a bin marked 'Irregulars - Cheap' when they found the box that contained the chipset. It was a large box, easily twice as big as any other they'd seen here in Broken Circuit City, the small run-down section of town where electronic seconds could be had for next to nothing.
Iruka had been worried about the wisdom of the spontaneous trip, so soon after the funeral. He had suggested it half-seriously; there had been so little to do today, so little to talk about. He was seriously surprised when Naruto had taken him up on it.
"Dad loves this place," Naruto whispered as they approached the entrance of the shop, grubby from the close proximity to the industrial sector. He stood as close to Iruka as Iruka could remember, pressing against his sleeve. His voice faltered. "Loved."
Iruka nodded, his voice clogged.
But now, Naruto was happily shaking the box, trying to ascertain the number of parts through sound alone. "That's a lot of chips for cheap."
Iruka frowned. "Just because it's cheap doesn't mean it's any good. It just means it will be a lot of work." He asked the cashier if he could see inside.
She jerked a thumb at the faded hand-lettered sign behind her. Do NOT Open Boxes. "Sorry. I don't make the rules."
Iruka sighed. He hated not knowing what he was buying. He took at a second look at Naruto, whose bright face had begun to fall. "Okay," he said. "If we get a good price, then I'll buy it and we can put it together. Maybe it'll turn out to be that computer you wanted."
He was rewarded with a look of pure, celestial joy.
The cashier peered at some penciled notes on the box, ran a finger down a laminated sheet of prices, and offered it to them for basically pocket change. "It's been here forever," she said, chewing her gum carelessly. "I don't think the boss cares, just as long as it moves." She handed them the receipt, hitting it with a "Not Returnable" stamp.
Recently, little in Iruka's life had been returnable, no matter how much he might want it to be.
A year ago, he had been a moderately driven graduate student at Fire Country Polytechnic, working his way through a Ph. D. in engineering. He had plans. In a couple of years, he'd finish his degree, get a job where he'd be allowed to think all day, maybe start a family. Then came the terrible news. His parents were dead, their recently adopted son was now his responsibility.
He had scrambled. He put his degree on hold, moved back to Konoha and into the small house where he had grown up, and found a job at Konoha Technical High School as a substitute teacher for math, science, and metal shop. He needed to work out the mangled details of his parents' financial situation and attempt to gain legal custody of Naruto.
Iruka knew Naruto, of course. But the boy had come into the house as Iruka was leaving and their paths crossed only during holidays. After the funeral, they crept around that small space, virtually strangers.
Only when he began to get notices from Naruto's middle school did Iruka really began to see what was happening. Naruto had started acting up; fighting, sassing teachers, turning in homework late if at all. The final straw was when he was caught spray-painting parts of the large sculpture that served as the school mascot. He was expelled.
Iruka had Naruto transferred to Konoha Tech, Iruka's alma mater. Many of the kids at Tech were bright, but had trouble in a traditional classroom (like Iruka himself). Iruka hoped that Naruto wouldn't be too out of his depth here, given the school's reputation.
It was the way Naruto watched him, though, that made Iruka realize something. It was an odd, anxious look. Like he was waiting for Iruka to make a decision. Iruka knew that look. He had had it himself, when their parents had first fostered him, years ago.
The only time Naruto didn't have that look was when he was watching Iruka tinker in the garage, working through their father's massive collection of tools, electrical equipment, old airmobile parts, and assorted metal junk. Instead, he looked deeply interested. Iruka knew that look, too.
Once they got home, Naruto tore the box open. Inside were several small grey cubes coated with minute lines of rainbow-colored circuitry, some wired to boards, some not.
Iruka groaned. Naruto's reward was his punishment. This chipset was for a robot, not a desktop computer. These looked like bastard second cousins to the chipsets he was familiar with. The cubes should be bigger-probably shouldn't be cubes at all-definitely not configured like they were, and the circuitry a different color. What were they made of? A different alloy? Ceramic? An older generation of chipset? One was definitely memory; it contained stacked die, several levels deep. Another of the boards had a set of wires attached to a small cylinder capped with a dark red lens.
"Is that a camera?" Naruto asked, poking it.
Iruka frowned. "Don't know."
"Aren't you supposed to be an engineer?"
"Not that kind of engineer," Iruka said. "I want to build big things like bridges and power plants. Not robots."
Naruto peered into the red light. Iruka reacted with a quick, light whack to the back of Naruto's head.
"Hey!"
"You don't just go looking into strange lights attached to machines," Iruka warned. "It could be a laser, or something that could damage your eye."
"Hmph."
"First rule of optics."
Naruto snorted. "Okay, engineer."
"Fine," Iruka said. "Stick your eye against it. See if I care." Despite his careless words, he saw Naruto checking out the red lens from a safe distance. Good.
He grabbed the largest board on the chipset, pulled a couple of wires from the back of his computer and attached them to the boards. Then he turned on the computer, listening to the start-up beeps and the whirring of the onboard fan.
A message appeared on the monitor. "Emergency reboot process activated." A smear of color and nonsense characters blurred the screen. A moment later:
I am the KAHA-951 prototype.
Command: _
Iruka frowned at the blinking cursor. He started typing. There was a lot more whirring, but nothing further.
"What're you doing?"
"I tried some code, but it's not responding."
"Can I try?"
"Well..."
But before Iruka could voice his reservations, Naruto had his hands all over the keyboard. It was almost worth it, he thought. Naruto looked really focused, for once. Too bad the kid couldn't type. The best he could do was:
Command: prnt "eat me"
''prnt "eat me" " is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Naruto gave up in disgust.
Iruka had tried FORTRAN, COBOL, C. Nope. He wondered...
Command: cmd
Submitting command to Operating System …
This was exciting. It was way better than any response he had gotten before.
I am the KAHA-951 prototype. [Version 6.11.2354]
Workspace:_
Iruka checked the workspace directory for the command library. Almost all of the directories had yielded an "Access Denied" message. Iruka sighed. Working on these components had only one good thing going for it. Naruto was really, really interested. Iruka began to wonder if the initial diagnosis that had been made for Naruto had been incorrect. Maybe he wasn't as intellectually-challenged as had been suggested. Maybe some part of it had been a lack of something to really grab his attention.
I am the KAHA-951 prototype.
Command: How are you?
I am well. How are you?
Command:
"Hey, Iruka? Big Brother?"
"Yeah?"
"I think it's, like, dinner time?" Naruto sounded hopeful.
Iruka checked the clock above the worktable. "Oh, crap." It was way later than that.
Unnoticed by either of them was the light behind the red lens. Slowly, steadily, it blinked.
Naruto found the old rusted-out remains of an android dog. He brought it home triumphantly.
"I don't think that's the right body," Iruka said, not wanting to crush the kid. No bigger than a pug, it was a silly little thing to bring home.
"Why not?"
"Look at the size. It's nowhere big enough for the chipset."
Naruto pouted. "Can't we just see?"
Iruka sighed. "I'm going to have to put half the set into the abdomen and half in the head and there's no room for sensors or memory - it'll all be exposed wires and pointy corners."
"Wouldn't that be cool?"
"It's not exactly safe," Iruka said.
"Iruka. Big brother~!"
"No."
"I was going to call him Toto!" Naruto tried his last tactic. "You know Mom was allergic to pets!"
Iruka was sympathetic. He really was. Which is why he asked, "Why Toto?"
"He's a dog, duh."
"No." Iruka rubbed a finger over the bridge of his nose, afraid he would spend the rest of the night arguing. Then he remembered. "C'mon."
"What?"
"Let's go out back. Dad might have left something there."
They went to the gardening shed. After some minutes peering through the dim light, Iruka nearly tripped over some loose wires. Then he saw it. A holey old tarp covering something tall in a corner. He yanked it off, revealing an old metal body twisted up on itself. The external carapace was battered and beaten, but was very clearly a humanoid droid.
"Whoa," Naruto said, clearly pleased, apparently blind to the defects of the body.
"Yeah. Dad swore me to secrecy when he brought it home." A funny little smile crossed Iruka's face. He remembered the argument. "You know Mom, she's - she was - a yeller. She was sick of all the junk he already had in the garage." His smile wavered, the corners turning downward.
Naruto nodded. "Yeah. I know. And then he just probably promised never to do it again and got her to laugh." He looked sad, then determined. "This is way better than a dog's body."
Much heaving and puffing later, they hefted the torso onto a kitchen chair. The bottom half, a long-abandoned technology of a two-wheeled balancing stand, was dropped on the floor next to the chair.
"Since he's got a body now, we can name him something," Iruka said. Warningly, he added, "Not Toto. He's not a dog."
"Kakashi," Naruto said, eagerly. "Like the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz."
"Not Tinman? Because that's what he is -"
Naruto shook his head.
"See, we're the wizards, and we've got the brains."
"And..."
"We're giving him the brains. So he'll be smart now."
Iruka couldn't argue with that logic. "Kakashi it is."
It was with great excitement that they finally plugged in the main battery.
Dim little lights all along the body lit up. Moments later, the android said, voice modulators flat and scratchy, "I am the KAHA-951 prototype. How are you?"
Even though the body was old and technologically obsolete, with streaks of rust running down the left side of the mask-like face, and missing any number of accentuators and panels, Iruka was pleased. As he watched Naruto's excited flailings about Kakashi's working state, he thought their parents would be, too.
"Good evening, Iruka."
Iruka looked up from the old grill in the small backyard on which he'd gingerly placed some meat patties.
It was their neighbor, Gai. He waved from over the short fence that divided their two properties. "What're you doing?"
"Trying not to burn dinner," Iruka said, biting his lip. It was too late. The hamburgers were deeply charred on the outside. He broke one open, hoping it was still salvageable. Still very raw-looking in the middle. Damn.
Gai laughed. "That happens to the best of us. What were you thinking about that distracted you? A troublesome student at work? Or something else? A romantic interest, perhaps?"
"Bringing up Kakashi," muttered Iruka. Refurbishing an old robot brain back on the cheap was a lot of work, especially over the past month when they had finally attached Kakashi's bottom half. Naruto's eyes had shone with excitement behind his safety goggles when he was finally allowed to use the soldering iron.
"I'm no roboticist, but If there's anything an old gym rat can do for your android - " Gai began.
"Thanks," Iruka said, feeling a bit buffered up by Gai's well-meant if not very useful suggestion.
"How's the paperwork for Naruto's adoption going?"
"We've got an appointment with the lawyer next month."
"You don't seem very confident. Is there a problem?"
Iruka laughed nervously. "Aside from constant poverty, my inability to cook, and my own failure at life - no, I think it's going to be smooth sailing."
Gai laughed as if Iruka had made a joke worthy of the hall of fame. Iruka didn't think he'd been very funny, but Gai had this way of being pleased with life in general. "You'll be fine. You have the Power of Youth to Drive you forward. How's the thesis going?"
Iruka shifted uneasily. "Okay. I just need a response from my advisor about some figures, and a table of data. I think he's ignoring me."
"Well, Naruto seems to be happier, recently."
"Thanks," Iruka said, not wanting to wallow in his own misery. "How's Asuza?"
"My lovely wife is well, thank you. She's on a business trip right now, so, if you guys wanted to come over for dinner, I think that would Lee would like that. I made too much."
"You sure?" asked Iruka, prodding the lumps of charcoal that were once burgers.
"Absolutely." Gai lifted a gargantuan plate of perfectly grilled chicken. Iruka thought just might be the most delicious thing he'd seen in months. "What else are neighbors for, if not to lend a hand when needed?"
"All right," Iruka nodded, relieved. For the sake of his pride, he added, "I'll ask Naruto if he's okay with that." Naruto was bound to agree. Even if it wasn't for the food. Naruto liked Lee, even if he poked fun at the other boy's exceptional eyebrows.
Naruto had seemed happier recently - but maybe because it was an opportunity to spend time with Iruka, doing something with his hands. Maybe it was the opportunity to teach someone. As far as conditioning an android could be considered 'teaching.'
Even if it wasn't what Iruka had thought 'teaching' an android should be about. He sat on the steps of the basement laundry, having retreated there after nearly stumbling on Naruto carefully pointing out things in an old photo album to Kakashi. (Their mother had been a great one for the old technology.) "Mother," Naruto said. "Father."
"Mother," Kakashi repeated. "Father."
"This is me, Naruto."
"Naruto."
"Check out this picture from when Mom and Dad first fostered me," Naruto chortled. It was the first real laugh Iruka had heard from him in a long time. "My hair was really long then. It looks awesome now." A page turned. "And this is Iruka, big brother."
"Iruka, big brother," Kakashi said.
"He's awesome."
If Iruka had felt a tightness in his throat and a burning in his eyes, there was no one he needed to share that with.
"Kakashi," swore Iruka, bursting into the garage in a fury. "Is that you?"
If blank-faced machinery could look innocent, Kakashi might have been able to achieve credibility.
"Answer me! Is that you?" The first time had been a mere hunch on Iruka's part, as he noticed the jump in usage with a corresponding lag in Kakashi's personal responses, followed by a not-insignificant increase in cost that had coincided too neatly with the android's activation.
"...Yes."
"Didn't I tell you to only do this at night?"
"...Yes."
"Stop it right now! I swear, you're sucking up the whole neighborhood's Internet! It's like some weird sort of blanket over the entire zip code."
"...I am downloading - "
"I don't care if you're downloading the hottest robo porn ever put on magnetic storage! Cut usage until Naruto's done with his homework, okay?"
"...Apologies."
"Immediately."
"...Shutting down."
Iruka returned to his seat in front of the computer. He noted the availability was back up, so he checked his email. What's that - ?! His advisor had finally emailed him back! Joyfully, Iruka opened the otherwise empty missive to find links to an unfamiliar sendspace. He clicked. Holy cow! It looked like the contents of his advisor's entire hard drive, including all of the work he'd done with Iruka and the four other graduate students he'd had since Iruka had started with him.
Iruka re-checked the email. There was something weird about this. His advisor would never send an email without mentioning the great favor he was doing for Iruka, or warning about his return to grad school after his long absence, or the ill-fitness of Iruka's job.
"Did you get the data you needed?" Kakashi asked.
"What?" Iruka asked, dazed.
"I retrieved what I thought would be relevant."
Iruka blinked in astonishment as the pieces fell into place. "Kakashi - you can't just go in there and take stuff - "
"The security was poor. Simple to decode." If Kakashi was capable of scorn, it would have been devastating. "The storage names were illogical, so I used the dates of your enrollment as a guide. I left no trace."
"No!" Iruka exclaimed. What the hell had he brought into the house? "Don't - " he paused. He double-checked. There were all the data he needed. "Don't do this again."
"What're you doing?" Iruka asked, his voice rising to a shout.
Imperturbable, Kakashi pivoted, arms full of clothes. "I am going to the laundry chute."
"Why?" Iruka was red-faced with upset.
"I am cleaning out this room. Naruto tasked me to clean the house."
Iruka went into his parents' bedroom and roughly pushed Kakashi out, the robot's wheels providing little resistance to Iruka's fury. "Nobody comes in here."
"I do not see the need to preserve this space," Kakashi said.
When Iruka had returned to his parents' house, he had moved back into his old bedroom. Naruto had long since made that space his own, but didn't seem to mind when Iruka had joined him. Perhaps it might have made more sense to move into their parents' room. Sense had nothing to do with grief. Iruka couldn't quite manage to empty out that room. Naruto, as far as Iruka could tell, didn't even acknowledge that the door of the room remained closed, day after day.
So what if that meant he was sleeping on one of the twin beds in what was now Naruto's bedroom, his clothes in boxes all over the floor? He did not need judgements from found-in-the-junkpile robots about how he lived.
Flushing angrily, Iruka snatched the clothes from Kakashi and flung them back into the room. With a sense of finality, he slammed the door in Kakashi's face. He said, "Nobody goes in there."
Kakashi repeated, "Nobody goes in there."
"It's just for family. You do know what that means, don't you?"
"Father, mother, Naruto, Iruka, big brother."
Hearing Kakashi say it made Iruka feel infinitely stupid, sad, lost. "Look - Naruto shouldn't be giving you his chores, anyway. Why don't you - uh - " as he was grasping, he saw something moving outside through the window. It was Gai, working over the small patch of green in his backyard with his treasured manual push lawn mower. The contrast between their overgrown, weedy patch against Gai's perfect verdure couldn't be greater. "Let's teach you how to mow the lawn."
It turned out to a good idea. Gai loved the competition of mowing against a robot, said it was better than going to the gym. He also provided some helpful tips. Their lawn started to look pretty great.
The door rang. Naruto opened the door to a tall blonde woman. She was beautiful and oddly ageless; make-up expertly applied around shrewd eyes in the most current fashion, hair done up in a style several decades out of date.
"Where is it?" she asked, abruptly.
"What?"
She looked over Naruto's head, her eyes falling on the android standing at attention in the kitchen. Grimly, she pushed by and walked up to Kakashi. A Rottweiler of man with a scarred face and younger, brown-haired woman carrying a small robot pig followed, apologizing.
Naruto finally shook himself out of his surprise. "Iruka! Big brother!"
Hearing the alarm in Naruto's voice, Iruka rushed up out of the basement. "Naruto! What is it?"
Naruto pointed at Kakashi, with the women in front of him.
"Excuse me -" Iruka began. "Who are you - ?"
The Rottweiler positioned himself between Iruka and Tsunade.
"Sorry," said the younger woman. "I'm Shizune, this is Ibiki Morino, and this is Tsunade -"
Tsunade barked at Kakashi, "Login: Senju1. Password: Capital f, 1, lower r, 3,slash, lower s, upper H, shift 2, lower d, lower o, capital w."
Kakashi said, "Voice match. Prepare biometric."
Tsunade pressed her face against Kakashi's, her left eye against his left eye. The red optic passed a beam of light over her pupil.
Iruka freaked. "What're you doing?! What's Kakashi's eye doing?"
"We're from Konoha Robotics - " began Shizune. "Tsunade is president and head scientist, I'm her assistant, and Ibiki is head of security."
"I'm checking to make sure this is indeed the android KAHA-951, that's been missing for the last few years from Konoha Robotics," Tsunade clipped.
Kakashi said, "Biometric match. Hello, Tsunade. How are you?"
"And it is," she said, with no small amount of satisfaction.
Ibiki eyed Iruka and Naruto. "Question is, how did you get it?"
"Why?" Iruka asked.
"You have to give it back to us," Shizune said.
"Why?" Naruto asked. "It? Kakashi's ours!" Desperately, he turned to Iruka. "They can't take him away! Tell them!"
Ibiki said, "It was taken from Konoha Robotics six years ago. It's considered stolen property."
Eyes wide open, Naruto blurted, "We didn't do it!"
"Of course we didn't do it," Iruka said, bristling at the idea.
"Ownership of stolen property is against the law, once you know it's stolen," Ibiki informed them.
"Can you prove he's stolen? How do I know you just didn't sell him for parts?" Iruka challenged.
Ibiki sighed. "Don't make this hard."
Tsunade was talking to Kakashi, looking him over as she did so. He was responding in his unchanging distant way. Iruka felt irrationally protective. He approached Tsunade, but halted as Ibiki stepped towards him. "Leave Kakashi alone."
"Kakashi?" Tsunade looked intrigued. "Tinman would be more correct..."
"What if we don't want this?" Iruka pressed.
"Yeah!" said Naruto. "Kakashi is ours! He's part of the family!"
"You think we came here not knowing anything about you?" Ibiki scoffed. "I know you're in some custody stuff with your kid brother. If you make this hard, we will make your situation hard. Period."
Naruto stilled, his eyes growing round with fear.
Iruka asked incredulously, "You're threatening me, and my little brother, because we won't let you take away an old droid?"
"This isn't a threat," said Ibiki, matter-of-factly.
"This is not just 'an old droid.' This is also the only witness to the largest case of espionage in robotics history," Tsunade said.
"If it's that big, why haven't I heard of it?" Iruka challenged.
"Company confidentiality," Shizune said. "National security."
Tsunade said, "It's obvious you don't know what you have. Why don't you explain to me how you got it?"
Iruka gave a garbled description of Broken Circuit City, the rusty droid body in the garden shed, the hookup with his computer. "Now, you tell me about Kakashi."
Grimly, Tsunade said, "KAHA-951 is one of the most powerful and advanced androids ever made at Konoha Robotics. Six years ago, it disappeared without a trace. We thought it was gone. Most likely dismantled and destroyed. We don't know who did it, we don't know why. We were almost certain we would never be able to find it again. We knew that if KAHA-951 didn't want to be found, it wouldn't be, but it would never, ever act against the company or any of our people."
"We're going to need it to figure out the mole in Konoha Robotics. We need its memory to find the one who de-commissioned it," Ibiki said.
"After telling us all about how he's impossible to find, then, how did you find us?" Iruka asked.
Ibiki looked pained when Shizune said, "It sent me an email."
Tsunade picked up Kakashi's end actuators - his hand. Iruka felt himself flushing with embarrassment. He knew his work was amateurish, but under Tsunade's inspection, he felt hard put not to be defensive. She asked Kakashi about his degrees of motion and if he could feel the varying levels of pressure her hand was making on his.
He replied largely in the negative.
Tsunade turned to Iruka. She asked, "Do you know how hard it is to create a hand with the touch sensitivity of human nerve endings? Kakashi," she used the name deliberately, "had all of that - almost an infinite range of motion and degrees of freedom. His body was the pinnacle of robotics engineering. And now, he's trapped in a droid body nearly two decades past its useful life, stuck to a wall socket. Is this how you would like your family to be treated?"
Iruka felt guilty. He knew objectively that he shouldn't; Kakashi was just a machine. Still, he wanted the best for Kakashi. If Kakashi was created to be something different than a household droid then he should be off doing that. It had long been obvious to Iruka that mowing the postage stamp-sized lawn of a substitute teacher and a pre-teen delinquent was in no way making full use of Kakashi's potential. Hell, he knew he wasn't making the most of his own potential. His father and mother wouldn't have wanted any of them to be less than they could be. He couldn't allow that to happen to Kakashi. And Naruto... He couldn't let anyone do anything that would hurt Naruto. "Why don't we ask him?" Iruka asked.
Shizune frowned. "You don't ask AI things like that. Oh, sure, KAHA-951 might be the most advanced AI ever built, but - "
"I will go," Kakashi said.
All heads turned to Kakashi. "What?"
They took Kakashi away that day.
"Come back soon," Naruto shouted at Kakashi's disappearing back. "Come back home!"
It took a lot for Iruka to let them do it. It was even worse watching Naruto's face crumple as the van drove away. When asked if he wanted something to eat, a tactic that had never failed before, Naruto shook his head and disappeared into the garage.
Iruka didn't blame him. He didn't feel hungry either. Feeling as though something vital had been sucked out of the air, he went to bed early.
He'd been drifting in and out of sleep in an upset-dream sort of way until he heard something.
"Iruka?" Naruto's voice was a thin thread in the darkness.
"Yh - " Iruka cleared his voice, blinking and shaking his head to try to wake up. "Yeah?"
"Kakashi - " Naruto swallowed, the sound disproportionately loud when compared to his hushed tones. "Kakashi - he's coming back, isn't he? He's ours, right? They can't keep him, can they?"
Iruka was stunned. He didn't know what to say. "I - I don't know." Through the dim street light that slanted in from the window, he saw Naruto sitting up on the bed, still fully dressed. He got up and reached out, grabbing Naruto's hand.
Without any further invitation, Naruto leaped toward Iruka and hugged him tightly.
"I hope so. When he's done with whatever he's doing, I hope he comes back to us." Iruka patted Naruto's back in a way he hoped was soothing.
Naruto's voice was tiny. "I miss him."
Iruka sighed. "I do too."
"Iruka?"
"Yeah?"
"I miss Mom and Dad."
"Me, too."
Iruka shuffled into the kitchen, still muzzy from sleep. Coffee, he thought. Coffee. With great practice, he poured the elixir of the gods into his favorite mug, his eyes barely open. He loved Saturdays. Naruto slept in, he could drink coffee and skim through the internet news as much as he liked. No noise, no students, no grading. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of something small and red.
"Morning, Kakashi," he mumbled. When he realized what he had said, his head snapped toward the direction of the light. It had been months since Kakashi had gone. It couldn't possibly be what Iruka had thought it was.
An eerily perfect humanoid robot, all sleek lines and pale blue, white and navy aramid composite sat at the kitchen table looking at him. It had a beautifully sculpted solid mask of a face, inset with one plain and one red optical. It said, in a mellow baritone, "Hello, Iruka. How are you?"
Iruka's fingers numbly released the mug, his mouth dropping open. He wouldn't have recognized Kakashi if Kakashi hadn't come to him first.
As Iruka watched his mug fall, he saw Kakashi coming towards him, impossibly fast. He hadn't just run towards Iruka, he had moved so quickly Iruka hadn't been able to capture the speed of it - seeing only the split seconds of movement towards him. Only to stop on a dime in front of him, bending downward. A wrist rotated 180 degrees, mechanical fingers slid under the mug, gently cupping upwards, catching all the liquid as it rose. The way he moved wasn't quite human. It was as if Kakashi's re-creators had decided to do better than merely mimic human movement.
"Your coffee," Kakashi said, offering the mug, his arm at an impossible angle.
Iruka goggled.
"Apologies." Kakashi's arm rotated about the elbow and shoulder so his arm looked more like a stationary human arm.
Iruka blurted, "Your voice - they gave you a new voice modulator."
It was in that new, smooth voice that Kakashi replied, "Yes. They say it has the same mean pitch and range as my first."
Iruka accepted his mug, still astonished by Kakashi's reappearance.
The doorbell rang. Iruka held up a hand in Kakashi's direction as he scooted towards the door. "Stay there. We're going to talk about this."
Iruka opened the door to Ibiki Morino, whose jaw looked to be set in concrete.
"Sorry to be bothering you," Ibiki said, not meaning it. "I have some questions for you regarding the KAHA-951."
Iruka opened the door wide. "Come on in. He's right here."
"Seems it's gone missing - what?!"
"So what happened?" asked Tsunade, arms crossed over her chest as she hovered over the tech.
Inoichi said, "I've been a memory specialist for thirty years, and I have never seen anything like this. I was running through its memory..." He pulled a small handheld device out of his pocket and pointed it at the small disc he'd adhered to Kakashi's torso. He gestured to the screen. "See?"
Iruka peeked over Inoichi's shoulder. There were images, all with a time/date stamp in the corner and odd little geometric notations imposed over them. There were snapshots of labs, various people walking in and out of the labs; in one, a tall silver-haired man with a long, somber face, and a second blond man having a conversation. Garbled conversations streamed. Inoichi fast-forwarded the images. There was an old man, pipe in the pocket of his lab coat, gesturing. There were Tsunade and Shizune. Then the images became pixelated and disappeared.
Inoichi struggled for a moment with the device. The first image of himself made Iruka jump, the time/date stamp set for nine months ago. There were more shots of himself and Naruto, of the house, of Gai and Lee, of the lawn mower, with increasing notations over their images, of a different color and density than the rest.
"Where is this all coming from?" Iruka asked. "You said his memory had been wiped."
"We'd been working on this ever since the KAHA-951 came back to us. We found hints to links in cloud memory. It almost didn't matter that its onboard memory was erased, because it backed up everything to this cloud. We just have to put it all together."
"Do you think you could find the saboteur?" Shizune asked.
"Maybe," Inoichi prevaricated. "I traced the first couple of links backwards. There's tons of stuff but the links are all over the place and out of order and some look like they were deliberately distorted. Not surprising that the KAHA-951 would do that as a preventative measure. What's more interesting is that the origin has been reprogrammed." He turned to Iruka. "How'd you do that?"
"I don't even know what that is," Iruka admitted.
"An android's origin is its return point. It's going to go to this place whenever it's finished with a mission, or whenever it's in trouble. And if the origin appears to be in trouble, it will come and rescue the origin." Inoichi shook his head, astonished. "The KAHA-951's origin point is no longer the remembrance wall at Konoha Robotics. It's here."
"How did that happen?"
"I should ask you that. How did you reset something that was supposed to have been hard-wired?"
Iruka was prevented from saying anything further when Naruto burst into the living room. Without any hesitation, he leaped forward and hugged Kakashi's leg. "You came back home!" He turned to Iruka, his face shining. "We're all together again!"
Iruka didn't have the heart to inform him of the new circumstances.
Tsunade shook her head. "This is bad timing for the snot-nose, but we've got to get Kakashi loaded up."
"No," said Kakashi. "I am not leaving. If you take me away, I shall return."
Shaking his head, Inoichi muttered, "Origin problem."
Tsunade sighed, raising a hand to rub her temples.
"It looks like the only option is to keep him here," Iruka ventured.
"How can we allow the KAHA-951 to choose?" Shizune asked. "It's just AI. Tsunade, you've said AI can't have opinions. We're their masters. They follow our commands without question."
"Kakashi's different," Tsunade said.
"That's for sure," Ibiki sighed. "I've never had to trace AI down like this."
"But it's dangerous!" Shizune insisted.
Tsunade looked at Naruto, still wrapped around Kakashi's leg. "I don't think it is, for them."
"The board isn't going to like this," Shizune warned.
Tsunade asked, "Who's going to tell them?"
After a confusing morning, Iruka found himself at the end of a rapid-fire list of Tsunade's commands. In summary, Konoha Robotics was going to build a satellite lab inside the garage and finish Kakashi in there. Not knowing what Kakashi would do should Naruto be taken from Iruka, Tsunade insisted that Konoha Robotics would also fund legal counsel for Naruto's custody hearings. Anything, she declared, to keep Kakashi in one place.
No one dared to object.
Iruka said something to that effect to Shizune. "It's amazing, isn't it? How Tsunade just says things and makes them happen?"
"We all do agree to them," Shizune said, with a sigh. She pulled Tsunade's robotic pig out from under the protection of her overcoat. The pig snuffled and trotted away to its place at Tsunade's side. "We have to. We have pledged ourselves to Konoha, and the betterment of man through robotics. But you - why are you doing this? Allowing us to take over your lives? Allowing the KAHA-951 to dictate what happens in your house? Even after we threatened your brother?"
Iruka shrugged. "Because Kakashi's a little bit like family now. We've got to take him in. Regardless of the consequences. That's what families do."
"KAHA-951 - like family?" The idea seemed to startle her. "It's just a machine. I don't even know why you would name it."
"Maybe it's because of my dad, but I like naming things. Everything has a personality - I've always named my computers and peripherals." Iruka gave a little smile. "After all this, I bet Tsunade wishes that Kakashi had never contacted you."
The joke fell flat at Shizune's thoughtfully negative expression. She shook her head, once, slowly. "You need to ask her that. I think it would have been better if he hadn't. Its rehabilitation has been very expensive. And beyond the cost - the KAHA-951 is useful, but Tsunade is very attached. Perhaps dangerously so. She can't see past that to the potential harm of having it reactivated."
"Attachment isn't dangerous," Iruka said.
She hesitated. "To the KAHA-951, it might be."
Iruka blinked. "Well, he's clearly beyond the developmental phase, so it's not like some component would go bad and burn up the house - "
"No - no," Shizune shook her head. "You need to understand something about the KAHA-951. It was designed to be very different from the average servo-droid. It is incredibly fast. It doesn't need sleep. It doesn't have morals or a sense of fear and the barest sense of self-preservation. It is fully autonomous. It learns."
"Kakashi is still just a machine - "
"Yes. It is a machine, but not just a machine." She folded her own hands together. "It was one of the most advanced ever built. It is a killer, the ultimate weapon in a game of dark deeds. It can incapacitate a government in a matter of weeks. It can control their media - the internet, the satellite, the landlines. It can infiltrate any computing network or facility, physically and electronically, and take it back to the Stone Age." Her dark eyes challenged Iruka. "Because you lived with it, you think you know everything its capable of?"
"Robots are not supposed to be able to harm humans," Iruka objected. "The Three Laws state - "
"No," Shizune said. "It won't. But it can take out systems. It can damage other machines with impunity. And because of that, he can harm humans."
Iruka asked, "Won't he be able to figure that out? I mean, you've said Kakashi's been developed like no other machine, and if his fuzzy logic capability is everything you say, he'll be able to figure out that harming systems harms humans."
"That's part of the mystery of how Sakumo developed the KAHA-951. We don't know if it's capable of making the leap. But theoretically, it can. It can go rogue and break any of the Three Laws because it can logic its way around them. That's what happened with other units with similar logic chips." Shizune wrung her hands, agitated. "Having the KAHA-951 functioning again is a danger to you and everyone around it."
Iruka stood at the door of the bedroom, his eyes casting over the piles of clothes, books and knickknacks from a lifetime of collecting.
"You okay, big brother?" Naruto asked. Then he looked around the room and gulped.
"Yeah," Iruka said, shakily. He hadn't wanted to leave Naruto out of it, but he thought that maybe it was time - it had been nearly two years since their parents had passed.
"Mom would have freaked if she knew her stuff was left like this. She was always hassling me to clean, you know?"
"I know." Iruka looked down at his brother and then reached out to muss his hair.
"Hey!" Naruto protested. Then he grinned. "Dad always did that."
"Yeah. I know. Come on. Let's take care of this. And I'll tell you, and Kakashi," Iruka nodded toward the android, who stood at the ready, "everything I remember about Mom and Dad."
Iruka stood at the door of the garage, watching Tsunade fuss over Kakashi. She stood at a computer station, scrolling through a menu screen, muttering as she kept pointing a wand to a particularly reflective strip across Kakashi's lower torso. She looked up in exasperation, and then seemed to become aware of Iruka's hovering. She gestured him into the room. "What is it?"
A sharp trill emanated from the pocket of Tsunade's lab coat. "Stupid thing," she muttered, pulling a videophone out and staring at the screen with a frown. "I hate it. It goes all the time. Like someone else can't decide when the holiday party should be." Then, with a decided push on the side, shut it off. "Shizune will be annoyed, but who can work with all these interruptions?" She swiveled on her heel. "Now, what was it you wanted to know?"
Iruka steeled himself. Tsunade was a powerful personality and despite the familiarity the last few months brought, it required some fortitude to discuss something she might not want to talk about. "Why did you take Kakashi back? You could have let him stay here. You didn't need to bring him back to the lab. He would most likely have never activated himself or done anyone harm. It was pretty obvious we didn't know what we were doing."
She looked at him measuringly. "Do you know anything about Konoha Robotics?"
Iruka shook his head. Aside from the common knowledge of it being the most important robotics and electronics firm on this side of the planet, the company was covered with the cloak of the confidentiality of national security.
"My grandfather started the company. My uncle was the second president. I owe it to them, and to all the developers that came before me, Minato, Sakumo, Hiruzen, to understand why Kakashi lasted, out of all his generation. I'm the only one left, besides Jiraiya - "
Iruka's eyebrows drew together. "Jiraiya? He's a civil engineer. He wrote the textbook on building structure with carbonite - "
"Yes. That's him." Tsunade looked briefly amused. "Jiraiya is most definitely interested in many things. But robotics didn't hold his interest long enough."
"Who is Sakumo?" interrupted Iruka, knowing he had heard the name before, most definitely, but never understanding the context in which it was brought up.
"Kakashi's creator, his father. All of his base programming, his hard wiring, was Sakumo's idea. Kakashi was the only prototype Sakumo built."
"You said there were others in Kakashi's generation."
"RIN-96, and the OB-1TO. Created by other engineers. They failed, malfunctioned completely and were forcibly decommissioned by Kakashi. Sakumo had a small hand in those robots, but Kakashi belonged to Sakumo completely. No other programmer or roboticist was allowed to work on Kakashi. And the mystery of why Kakashi continues to exist belongs - belonged - " she corrected herself hurriedly, "to Sakumo."
"Is that why you're doing this? What about his notes? There should always be documentation?" Iruka asked, fascinated.
Regretfully, she sighed. "He destroyed all his files. All his work was erased, or put into an industrial incinerator. Kakashi hadn't been fully formed and the ridicule about his work was too much for him. Sakumo wanted to create the holy grail of robotics; a machine with human-like sensory perception, a sense of self, with a sense of purpose, able to discern morality in missions and make choices like a human." A wry look flitted across her face. "The perfect machine."
"What happened to him?"
Tsunade looked immensely weary. Iruka realized, right then, under the cosmetics, the plastic surgery, the imperiousness, just how old she must be. The sherry-colored eyes were shadowed and grim with age and tragedy. "He killed himself. He couldn't take the ridicule when his goals were ultimately revealed. A moral machine - who would believe it was possible?"
The door opened to reveal Shizune, her coat bulky from carrying Tonton. Tsunade greeted her distractedly, her mind obviously on the past. Shizune asked, softly, why Tsunade hadn't answered her phone; any number of people were looking for her.
Tsunade snorted. "Let them solve their own problems for a couple of hours, Shizune. I've got work to do here."
Shizune backed down. "I'll leave you here, then," she said.
"You okay?" Iruka asked her, following her out to the kitchen, where Naruto was finishing off his third dessert.
"I'm fine," she said, her voice a bit high-pitched.
"I'm sorry about that," Iruka apologized. "I think it's my fault that Tsunade was like that. I asked her about Sakumo."
"It's all right," Shizune said, going around the table. "I should probably apologize to you. I'm sorry, Iruka, Naruto."
"Hey!" yelled Naruto.
Iruka blinked and realized that Shizune had grabbed Naruto's arm.
"Let Naruto go!" cried Iruka, tense. "What are you doing?"
"Get me the android," Shizune demanded, eyes overbright. She turned her head and yelled for her boss.
"What are you doing?" Tsunade demanded, bursting through the garage door.
"I have to protect you and Konoha Robotics. The interest in the KAHA-951 - a project that should have been closed years ago isn't right. It's immoral!"
Naruto shouted, "Kakashi would never hurt anyone!"
Shizune countered, "He will! Given enough time, he will."
Tsunade scowled. "After all these years. The betrayal. How could you?"
"I wasn't the only one! There were board members who agreed," Shizune argued. "I was protecting you! There was no reason to create another android for warfare. What was the point in going back to recreate it?"
"Kakashi!" screamed Naruto.
Kakashi seemingly flowed into the room to stand within a few arms-breadth of Shizune. "Let Naruto go," he said.
She flung open her coat, revealing large bulky shapes wrapped about her middle. That wasn't the robotic pig she was always carrying around. A bomb?
No. Batteries, Iruka's mind corrected, noting the connections and the wires. Big, deep cycle batteries attached to a transformer. Something big and grey dropped into her hand from up in her sleeve. Iruka gaped at it when he realized what it was. A high-powered electro-shock gun.
"Come here, KAHA-951," she ordered.
"No!" Naruto yelled, pulling hard to get away from her. She held on, barely, against the boy's aggressive movements.
"Why?" asked Tsunade.
"Ever since the KAHA-951 contacted Konoha Robotics, I watched you, I tried to persuade you to abandon the project. But you wouldn't listen. This is the only way. You resurrected a weapon, a weapon that was safely gone. It's too dangerous to let it continue. It can't bring anything good to this world - only more war."
"If you did this - how - how did Kakashi end up in parts?" Iruka asked.
Shizune looked panicked. "They said they would finish the job. I didn't know they'd just sell the parts. If I had known, I wouldn't have - "
Her grip slackened just enough for Naruto to twist away. Iruka pulled him out of Shizune's range.
"Stop it, Shizune," Tsunade demanded. "Drop the gun."
Shizune cried out in a fit of frustration. Then a crafty look crossed her face. "KAHA-951, if you don't come here, I will do damage to myself," she said, deliberately.
"I cannot allow harm to come to anyone. Not even you. Not even if it is self-inflicted," Kakashi said. "Let the gun go."
"No," Shizune said. She raised the gun, pointing the tips at her own neck.
Kakashi was like a streak of light as he ran toward Shizune, so fast Iruka could only see where he had been, not where he was. "No! Kakashi!" Iruka cried.
When Iruka's eyes finally caught up with Kakashi, he could see Kakashi extending his hand with old-fashioned courtesy toward Shizune. Naruto jerked against Iruka's arms, crying out.
Shizune hit Kakashi's midsection a flash of white electricity arcing between the tips of the electrodes. There was so much energy in that gun, it was like a small power plant inside the house. Iruka squinted against the intense light. The smell of burned plastic and overheated metal filled the small house.
Tsunade made terrible gasping noises.
"Noooo!" screamed Naruto. "You can't!" He made to fling himself at Shizune. Iruka held him, fearful of the current that was running through Kakashi now.
Kakashi, somehow, whether it was through forward momentum or one final push, toppled over onto Shizune. The gun dropped to the ground. Shizune fell over and hit her head on the floor, knocked out.
With great speed and a noticeable carelessness to her own personal safety, Tsunade opened up Kakashi's rear central body panel. Scorch marks lay all over his interior and on the chipset.
"It's not fair," sobbed Naruto, kneeling beside Kakashi's body. "She knew Kakashi couldn't stop her from hurting him. It's just not fair. He did nothing wrong. Why couldn't you let him be? We were happy. Why couldn't you leave us alone?"
Tsunade sighed, looking at the mess of Kakashi's interior. "Well, whatever else Shizune's aims were, she did achieve something. Much of Kakashi's central chipset and his war-capacity look burned beyond saving. The new body had provided some insulation, but not enough to save everything."
"Why didn't Kakashi pick up on Shizune as a source of danger?" Iruka asked.
Heavily, Tsunade said, "That's Minato's fault. He probably thought betrayal by one of Konoha's own was impossible. He had created a section of 'blocked off' IPs and identities, most of which was sourced in Konoha. Unless Kakashi were willing to hack himself, at great potential damage, he couldn't do it."
"Do you think Kakashi knew about Shizune?" Iruka asked.
Tsunade slowly nodded.
He voiced the suspicion deep inside him. "Do you think he engineered this whole thing to bring her out?"
"I think," she said, parceling out her words, "he knew that Naruto would be in danger if he didn't return to Konoha Robotics. He came back here, to his origin, because he felt he was in danger. He did what he did to protect the rest of us. What else he might have determined and did because of that, I can't speculate."
Tsunade contacted Ibiki, only realizing after she had gotten off the videophone how many messages were from Inoichi.
Inoichi said, excitedly, "Did Shizune find you?"
"In a way," Tsunade said, ironically.
"I'm closing in on the footage of the saboteur. I told Shizune to tell you when she saw you tonight."
Ibiki arrived, swiftly and quietly. Tsunade had a moment to speak with him before he took the still unconscious Shizune away. Iruka caught something about getting information about various board members and accomplices.
Through Inoichi, they were able to trace the data backwards and find the exact moment of Kakashi's original disappearance. There were images of Shizune in front of Kakashi, holding part of an acetylene torch. She ordered, "Come with me." The time/date stamp was set at the exact moment of Kakashi's disappearance.
There were thousands and thousands of other moments; of Iruka and Naruto, singly and together. Again, Iruka noticed the squares and rectangles around them were different than the randomized geometric shapes given to other people. Iruka realized those squares and rectangles were most like the frames of the pictures of their parents that lay about the house.
"Tsunade, I've got a request," Iruka said, nervously. This was the first time he'd been in the Konoha Robotics building, and it had been a real eye-opener. As for the staff, once they had realized who this ordinary-looking person was, people had come out in droves to watch him make his way through the labs, accompanied by no less than the president and the head of security.
"Naruto says hello." Wryly, Iruka thanked Ibiki for all the surveillance he had made over the months Konoha Robotics had been in residence. That, along with large portions of Kakashi's memory, had been handed over to the judge. The judge, commenting on the enviable amount of records, was very pleased with the family dynamic and had easily granted Iruka full custody of Naruto.
Ibiki accepted the thanks with a nod. Iruka couldn't tell if Ibiki was being sarcastic or not.
"Well? Spit it out. I haven't got all day," Tsunade groused, ignoring the bright and shiny emblems of her power scattered carelessly around her impressively vast office. "I can't believe you made an appointment to see me. You could have just called."
After a moment's hesitation, Iruka blurted, "I want to finish my degree. Here, at Konoha Robotics. But I need you to sign off on it. I want to work on Kakashi for my Ph. D."
"Changing your field from civil to robotics? That's going to take some time," Tsunade said, a hint of a smile on her face.
"My new advisor said I could take as much time as I needed. He thinks that reconstructing Kakashi could take a while."
"Who could possibly advise you on Kakashi, and still have clearance for Konoha Robotics?" Tsunade scoffed.
Iruka smiled. "Jiraiya."
Notes:
Author's Notes: I'd been a fan of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot stories for a long time, and especially of Susan Calvin. Thanks to J and A for being awesome betas.
Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.