Forging bravely ahead in the story; our intrepid heroes theorize about the unexpected arrival.
Chapter Two: The Aftermath
Hatake Kakashi could not help but notice that, even after the smoke, the confusion, and the protestations, the paperwork that the young academy teacher had kindly taken from Shizune upon entering the room was still clutched tightly and unconsciously in one hand.
If Iruka-san's hands sweated anything like what Kakashi's did, he wouldn't place bets on the legibility of the documents at this point.
Heads whipped toward the woman-female Iruka, Kakashi reminded himself-in shock. Seeing the familiar features on a woman's face was odd. Male-Iruka was a handsome man, Kakashi knew, but some might say his face bordered on the pretty instead of the masculine. This female Iruka, instead of being lovely in the female sense, might more appropriately be called a handsome woman instead of a pretty one.
Kakashi had to forcibly call upon his training to keep an entirely inappropriate chuckle from escaping his masked lips.
"You both can't be Umino Iruka," Tsunade-sama said in what Kakashi had privately dubbed her control voice. "I will give you three seconds to dispel this jutsu or whatever it is before you will be attacked."
"Hokage-sama, wait!" Both the male and female Iruka yelled. They turned toward each other, looking surprised. Kakashi couldn't blame them. Hearing such similar voices designated only by gender was a bit of a mind-fuck.
The male Iruka (the real one, Kakashi reminded himself, until further notice) gestured politely to the female Iruka in an oddly chivalrous gesture. Kakashi couldn't prevent the slightly hysterical grin from curving his mouth, but he was more grateful than ever to the mask he wore for concealing it. Despite his amusement, he prepared to attack. Something here was clearly not right.
"I am your loyal jounin, Hokage-sama," the female Iruka proclaimed, hands moving slowly and in plain sight. Before their eyes, she disarmed herself of her weapons pouch, several kunai, some senbon, and several pouches of exploding tags. Kakashi, while watching her carefully for any sign of attack, also noted and attempted to remember the various locations where she had stashed her equipment. Whoever she proclaimed to be, she clearly had several unique places of concealment he hadn't considered before.
Having completed the disarming process, the female Iruka fell to her knees and gave the bow one only afforded the emperor. Kakashi winced, and saw Naruto and Sasuke do the same out of the corner of his eye. While a supreme gesture of respect, this position left the person entirely open to several forms of fatal attack, without any actual defense.
She spoke from that position, voice muffled but sounding sincere. "Hokage-sama, I cannot account for the current goings-on, but I would never attack you upon pain of death."
Kakashi winced. He had heard the male Iruka (chuunin Iruka, he noted) speak formally to the Hokage before in public, and it had sounded exactly like this.
Chuunin Iruka then set the papers down and cautiously made his way over to where the Hokage, Kakashi, and his former students stood. He faced his female counterpart with confusion and, Kakashi was surprised to note, a faint bit of amusement. "Naruto, I hope your jutsu didn't do this when you tested it earlier," he said wryly.
The female Iruka looked up from her prostration. "Jutsu? I'm under a jutsu?"
"Er, yeah, Iruka-er, Umino-san," Naruto said, looking more confused by the second.
"So formal, Naruto-kun?" The lady jounin (now Umino-san) said in confusion. She then seemed to take a closer look at the blond. "Naruto-kun...you look so different."
"How would you know what I looked like before?" Naruto snapped, holding his kunai out and ready.
It was now Umino-san's turn to look confused. "I taught you at the academy and you don't remember your own sensei?" She asked in disbelief.
"You didn't teach me!" Naruto growled. "Iruka-sensei did!"
"But I AM Iruka!" Umino-san cried. "Please, you must believe me!"
"That jutsu," Sasuke said, apropos of nothing.
Four sets of eyes (and one grey) turned to look at the black-haired Uchiha.
"I'll cast the truth jutsu this time," he clarified, for the benefit of those listening. "I don't think the moron here messed up-"
"Oi!" The blond in question interrupted indignantly.
"-but we can at least eliminate the possibility," Sasuke finished.
"Realize, lady jounin, we are not asking your permission for this," Tsunade said ominously. "You will not fight us, or we will kill you. Do you understand?"
"I understand, Hokage-sama," Umino-san said shakily, pushing herself up to sit upon her feet. Mentally, Kakashi approved. If she sat like that, it would make it extremely difficult to leap and do things quickly, due both to her own weight pinning her down and the cutting off of blood flow to her feet. Another show of trust and goodwill from this mysterious person.
Seals and invocations were spoken, and like the time when Kakashi had allowed the jutsu to be cast upon him, there was a soft green glow that settled gently around the jounin's body and sank in. It would tickle oddly a bit at first, Kakashi knew, but then the feeling would disappear.
The woman (Umino-san for now, Kakashi supposed), twitched a bit when the glow touched her, which made for an uneasy moment where several people tensed to attack and held themselves forcibly back, but then she relaxed.
"Ask her any question, Tsunade-sama," Sasuke said. "The only way she can avoid answering truthfully now is if she doesn't speak, and you can limit that by what you ask."
Tsunade-sama nodded and gently stepped away from her loyal band of shinobi. She eyed the sitting jounin thoughtfully for a moment before speaking. "What is your name and rank?"
Umino-san looked up hopefully. "I am Umino Iruka, a jounin of Konoha."
Everyone in the room blinked. She hadn't been lying or she couldn't have spoken.
"What is your occupation?" Tsunade-sama had recovered from her surprise marginally faster than Kakashi had.
"I teach at the academy, Hokage-sama."
Another pause.
"Where did you come from?"
Kakashi approved even as he cringed a little awaiting the answer.
Umino-san on the floor looked oddly at the male chuunin-Iruka standing silently and protectively near his former students, then answered. "I was grading papers when I was suddenly transported here, Hokage-sama. I was in my home at the time, sitting at the kitchen table."
These were verifiable habits she was giving them. Actual pieces of her life. Kakashi was beginning to think some very strange things.
"And you taught Naruto at the academy?"
"I certainly did, Hokage-sama," Umino-san affirmed. She cast another puzzled glance toward Naruto. "I haven't seen him for a while. He looks very different. For that matter, so does Sasuke-kun." She gave a proud smile, so like the one Kakashi had seen the male Iruka give Naruto and Sasuke earlier that he had to shake off the chills. "You two have grown up so well, and I am so very happy to have been your teacher."
Tsunade was frowning visibly now. Doubtless she knew, as Kakashi knew, that while a person could theoretically stop talking to thwart the jutsu and cause the interrogator to resort to techniques of a more violent and questionable nature, nothing stopped the person from talking. Even more frightening, the jutsu blocked lies from even being able to form in the brain, so if the person did speak, every word was truth.
This female Iruka had not lied once. Was not even capable of attempting to lie once. Even doubting the fact that she was not who she said she was was impossible due to the jutsu in question. The only real question now was the actuality of situation and how two different people named Umino Iruka could look enough like each other to be twins, have the same job, know the same people, and yet not know of the other.
"You are indeed a loyal shinobi of Konoha," Tsunade said shakily as Kakashi wrapped his mind around the possibility. "Your appearance has, er, Umino-san, caused some confusion, and I apologize for the awkwardness."
"I understand completely, Hokage-sama," Umino-san said, not getting up. Kakashi sensed it was on purpose, a way to allow the Hokage to trust her. "It is indeed confusing to see, well, me standing there." She slowly and carefully gestured toward the male Iruka, who had stared silently through all the questioning.
"I can't say I quite comprehend how she appeared, Hokage-sama," Iruka-san said hesitantly. "It doesn't look like a henge, or a clone, or anything, and we were all dispelling jutsu earlier when the smoke appeared."
"He's right," Naruto said. "Anything created would have disappeared..."
"So how did this, er, Umino-san appear?" Sasuke finished.
Apparently that hesitation with how to name the female jounin in question was not limited to the Hokage, Kakashi noted silently. He decided to voice his opinion.
"Excuse me, Hokage-sama," he interjected politely. "But what if she is and isn't our Iruka-sensei, all at the same time?"
"What?" The male and female Iruka said sharply and in unison. Every person in the room jerked a little at the stereo effect.
"Explain, Kakashi," Tsunade ordered. "The jutsu may have worked, but we are now operating with more questions than answers."
Kakashi stepped closer to the female jounin (Umino-san, dammit) in a show of trust, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "It's simple, probably," he drawled. "Naruto probably messed up the jutsu and summoned her."
"Kakashi-sensei, I didn't do that!" Naruto bellowed. "You saw that I didn't mess up the seals!"
"Maybe you didn't, but what about the invocation?" Kakashi replied calmly, not rising to the provocation. "If even one word or one syllable was off, that would change the entire meaning of the seals and the rest."
Kakashi looked down at Umino-san, a woman who taught at the academy, like their Iruka-sensei...but of a different rank, a different gender. Perhaps even a different life. He finally voiced the niggling suspicion he had since she had answered the question about her name. "What if you summoned her from another world, one like this one? You have enough chakra, and you already have summons."
Umino-san looked perplexed, and Iruka-san looked like he suspected the jounin of taking drugs. Kakashi decided to bring up his final point quickly. "You must have plucked her from her world, and brought her here, into a situation like hers enough to be familiar, but different in minute particulars. Like rank-"
"And gender, clearly," Iruka-san muttered, staring at his female counterpart in confused fascination.
"Exactly," Kakashi concluded. "Whatever we decide in the future, we at least can figure that she's real. I think the main question now would be how to send her back."
A small silence.
"With all due respect, Kakashi-san," Iruka-san (the male one, Kakashi reminded himself; he wondered if it was going to continue being so difficult to differentiate between the two) said, "Naruto could not have possibly used enough chakra to pull someone out of an entirely different world."
The female Iruka nodded in agreement. "My counterpart is probably correct," she added, as extra insult to injury. Dammit, the jounin had been proud of his theory...
"I sure wasn't, Kakashi-sensei," the aforementioned chakra-rich blond chimed in. "But whatever the hell happened-"
"Language, Naruto!" Stereo voices roared.
"Gack! Sorry, sensei!" Naruto squeaked, then looked supremely confused as to which sensei in particular he should direct his apology.
He forged on anyway. "Maybe we had better treat that idea as fact until someone tells us otherwise."
"Then do so," said Tsunade-sama irritably. "Shizune will see you all out, including you, lady jounin. You are to say within sight of the male Iruka and Kakashi-san until further notice. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Hokage-sama," Umino-san said softly. "I will."
In a much shorter amount of time than it had taken to get in, Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, and the two Iruka-sensei stood at the foot of Hokage Tower, looking out into the bright sunlight in strained silence.
Naruto, predictably enough, broke the awkwardness first. "So, who's feeling like having some dinner?"
Thank God for Naruto. Intelligent enough to know when an ice-breaker is needed, and blithe enough to make it sound like the most commonplace idea in the world. Please, review and tell me what you think!