Here's the next part. By the way, is it just me, or have they been using Inoue Kazuhiko-san to voice random bit parts in addition to Kakashi? There was one moment in particular where I was like, holly cow… what's Nyanko-sensei doing in an Uchiha hideout? It was very disconcerting… But anyway, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I have no rights to Naruto. Apologies to the real owners for stealing their characters and making them do strange things.
…..
Two Requests:
Chapter 3: Every Man's Dream
For the first time in his life, Iruka was struggling not to hate someone for no good reason. Usually, he was too prone to like and trust people who didn't deserve it. Case in point, Mizuki. This time, though, he'd developed a thorough dislike for the ink merchant's daughter almost the instant he met her. Well, to be precise, the instant Kakashi-san met her. And if he was going that far, he might as well admit that the reason he couldn't seem to like her at all, was that Kakashi-san seemed to like her too much.
Kakashi had definitely perked up when they were introduced to the girl. His eye, usually drooping with boredom, had snapped wide open, and Iruka was almost sure he'd seen the edge of a blush peeking out from under Kakashi's mask. On one level, he could completely understand why. The girl had large, dark eyes, framed with long, dark lashes. Her face was flawlessly white, and her features delicate. When she spoke, white teeth flashed between sensuous red lips. Her perfectly black, perfectly straight hair fell in sheets of shining silk around her face and spilled over her back and shoulders to pool on the floor. What was more, even the many layers of her formal court garb couldn't completely conceal a full and very shapely figure, especially when a well timed shrug of the shoulders and bow had allowed them to glimpse the curve of a white breast. Iruka was convinced she'd done it on purpose, though his dislike might have made him somewhat uncharitable.
So yes, he could understand the appeal she seemed to have for Kakashi-san, but he definitely didn't approve. After all, what business did Kakashi-san have being attracted to a woman who was getting married to someone else in two weeks? Or at least, that was the excuse Iruka made to himself for why Kakashi's reaction to the girl was bothering him so much.
"Well then, Iruka-sensei, I'll leave guarding the Ojou-sama to you while I scout out the area."
Iruka snapped back to reality. They had followed the young lady and her retinue of attendants to the wing of the villa that served as her quarters, but Kakashi had stopped on the veranda as the rest of them continued inside. Iruka's spirits rose as Kakashi smiled, gave him a little good-bye wave, and disappeared. The plan had always been for Iruka keep an eye on the young lady directly (mostly to keep her from wandering off somewhere it would be too easy for enemy nin to get at her) while Kakashi would patrol the grounds of the villa and try to head off any attack before it could get anywhere near its mark. It pleased him that, despite his attraction to the girl, Kakashi wasn't going to try to find ways of getting closer to her, or spend more time in her company.
With a cheerful smile, and a renewed resolution to try to like her, Iruka turned to the young lady—only to find her lovely features drawn into a pout and her eyes fixed wistfully at the spot where Kakashi had just been standing.
Iruka fought to keep his smile in place.
…
Iruka was beginning to look rather harassed, Kakashi decided. That is, Iruka was still smiling brightly, still perfectly polite and attentive to his charge, and he hadn't uttered a word of complaint, but the smile was starting to look rather fixed, and Kakashi could detect a strained note in the usual liquid warmth of Iruka's voice. On the whole, it seemed Kakashi could congratulate himself on avoiding spending too much time with the girl. She might be physically attractive, but she must be something of a horror to wear out the endless benevolence of Iruka in less than two weeks.
Actually, he was beginning to get pretty tired of her himself, and he'd only spent about half an hour in her company. The merchant had sent a letter to his prospective son in law with important information regarding the plans for tomorrow's ceremony. One of them was needed to carry the message; to ensure that it wasn't intercepted along the way, as had happened several times before. Kakashi hadn't wanted to leave the bride herself with only Iruka to guard her, and with some reluctance, Iruka had agreed to switch places with Kakashi for awhile. Iruka had left for the daimyo's villa wearing Kakashi's guise, and Kakashi had taken over the role of babysitter. Sure enough, Kakashi had soon sensed the presence of enemy ninja in the garden surrounding the girl's quarters. Apparently, the enemy had fallen for their trick. They'd believed that Kakashi, who had so far succeeded in heading off all incursions before they reached Iruka or the girl, had left the villa, and they had decided to take advantage of his supposed absence to attack.
Kakashi considered his options. He'd been keeping out of sight, so far. If he showed himself, then they would probably withdraw. Unfortunately, showing them that he was still here would also let them know that he hadn't been the one sent out as a messenger. They would probably just shift their objective to intercepting the letter. If they did that, the message might not reach its destination, and something unpleasant might happen to Iruka. Through his several encounters with the enemy nin, he'd been able to make a pretty good estimate of their strength. They were too much for a chuunin to handle, especially if they all attacked at once. Of course, if he waited to show himself until the enemy ninja actually attacked, that would bring the fight dangerously close to the girl, but better to run that risk than have to bring everyone's favorite academy sensei back to Konoha in a body bag.
His train of thought was broken as a pair of arms snaked around him from behind. Warm, moist breath stirred the hair on the back of his neck, and he could feel the full bosom of the bride-to-be pressing against his back. In any other circumstance, he would have been happy to go along with the flow, but at the moment, half of his mind was focused on tracking the shifting presences of the ninja slowly closing in on them, and the other half was busy worrying about what might happen to Iruka if he somehow fucked this up. Right now, the girl was an unwelcome distraction.
After just a moment's pause, he said, "Sorry, but we're in a bit of a sticky situation. I'd appreciate it if you let me concentrate…" His voice was gentle and quiet, but even the spoiled Ojou-sama recognized his request for what it was; a solid rejection of her advances.
"Mou." She unwound her arms from his body, and slid back on her knees until she was kneeling a somewhat more decent distance from him. "I thought you looked like the better catch of the two, but I guess I was wrong. The other one at least makes an effort to entertain me. Where has he gone?"
Kakashi sighed. Poor Iruka. He had a newborn respect for the man. "He's delivering a message… to your fiancé." He hadn't actually thought that would awaken the princess's conscience, and based on the derisive noise she made, it hadn't. Oh well. Not his problem. The important thing was that she'd lost interest in him, and was now leaving him to concentrate on the situation at hand.
The nearest enemy presence was now only a few yards away. He raised his hands and silently executed a series of hand signs. There was a puff of smoke, and when it cleared, Iruka was crouching behind the half open shoji door. Or at least, Kakashi was hoping it would look that way to the approaching ninja. He didn't know how long he could keep up the deception once the attack started, but hopefully, he could take down a few of the enemy before they realized who they were really up against and retreated. Any little bit to improve Iruka's chances of delivering his message and getting back safely.
The foremost enemy ninja moved in a flash from the cover of a nearby azalea and lit on the veranda, crouching just on the other side of the shoji screen from Kakashi. Kakashi leveled a kunai at the point where he thought the enemy nin's shoulder ought to be, and then stabbed straight through the paper panel. As soon as he felt the blade connect, he snatched back his arm and kicked the door out of the way. It broke over the ninja still crouching on the other side and, judging from the strangled yell of pain beneath, the impact drove the kunai deeper into the wound. Lucky. If the right muscles had been sheered, he might not be able to use that arm anymore. Meaning no hand signs. Kakashi whipped out another kunai, and deflected the shuriken some of the ninja's comrades had sent flying in his direction. Apparently, they'd decided that there was nothing more to be gained by hiding. Suddenly, it seemed as if ninja were appearing from every nearby rock, tree, and bush. He took a quick count: ten, including the one trying to extricate himself from the wreckage of the screen at Kakashi's feet.
That one had plucked the kunai from his ruined shoulder, and clenching the hilt tightly in his working hand, was gathering himself to spring at Kakashi. Not bad. That was dedication. But pointless. Kakashi dispatched him with a spinning kick. The flying body collided with one of his comrades, just then leaping forward to attack. No lasting damage to the second ninja, but it gave Kakashi a moment to get his bearings and launch an attack of his own.
There wasn't really much he could do. His most serious constraint was that he couldn't move far from the veranda without giving the enemy nin a clear path to the merchant's daughter. His secondary concern was to avoid using any jutsu that would let the enemy know who he was. Naturally, his trademark sharingan, chidori, and his ninken kuchiose no jutsu were out. Katon jutsu were much more generally used, and might have been OK, but he recognized a few ninja in the pack that he'd skirmished with earlier that week. He'd used several katon jutsu then, too. Probably best to avoid them for now.
He started out with a simple barrage of shuriken to keep the enemies heads down a little longer. He flashed through a set of hand signs, and two mizu bunshin rose out of the little stream that fortunately ran under the young lady's quarters. "Yosh. Ikuzo!" he murmured. He himself sank into a defensive stance on the veranda, and his clones leapt into the fray. But bunshin, even when they have a solid form of their own, don't have much staying power when hit with any kind of serious attack. They managed to do some damage to a few of the weaker ninja, but there were three jounin in the mix. Two he recognized from previous encounters. They were no match for him, but more than a match for a bunshin. There was also a third who didn't recognize. These three quickly dispatched his clones. He clicked his tongue in annoyance and drew five more mizu bunshin from the stream. With a larger number of bunshin grouped tightly around him this time, it was possible for him to slip unobtrusively into their ranks. This time, it was one of the bunshin that stayed to guard the young lady while he sprang into the garden to attack. Hopefully, the enemy would think the only difference between this attack and the last was the number of clones, and wouldn't realize how weak a defense he'd left for the girl.
This time, he succeeded in putting the seven underlings out of commission. Two of his clones had been unable to avoid attacks from the jounin level ninja, so now it was just Kakashi and two more bunshin facing off with them. There was a long pause, and then all three jounin attacked at once. The two bunshin duly vanished. Kakashi managed to knock his own opponent flying over the garden wall with a kick borrowed from Gai, but he was now exposed as the real body. The two remaining jounin immediately charged the final bunshin waiting on the veranda. He wouldn't make it in time, Kakashi realized. He drew in a deep breath, and blew a massive fire ball at their backs. They scattered before it. The ball of flame crashed into Kakashi's mizu bunshin, and the two jutsu disappeared in a cloud of steam. Mostly. Kakashi was on the veranda a moment later stamping out a few stray flames. The two jounin were crouched warily to either side of him.
Finally, the one Kakashi remembered fighting before called loudly. "It's the copy-nin in disguise. Retreat."
There was a flurry of movement, and the garden was suddenly ninja-free.
Well. That was that. The merchant's daughter was safe for the moment, and he'd done all he could to ensure the safety of Iruka and his message by delaying the enemy. It bothered Kakashi that the three jounin had escaped essentially uninjured, but he couldn't go after them and leave his charge unguarded. He had no choice but to leave the rest to Iruka.
Or so he told himself, but Iruka was taking an awfully long time to finish his errand. Kakashi had estimated that it would take him about four hours round trip to the daimyo's villa, but six hours later, there was still no sign of him. Kakashi was beginning to get seriously worried. The merchant's daughter had tried to get him to talk to her several times after he'd routed the enemy ninja, but was met with such profound absence of mind on his part that she was eventually forced to give up. At around hour seven, Kakashi started contemplating dragging the merchant's daughter along with him while he went out to search for Iruka's dead body.
"Kakashi-san?"
He started to go over simulated conversations in his head in which he broke the news of Iruka's death to Naruto.
"Kakashi-san?"
The memory of Iruka's face as he asked him for news of his former student, shining with the brilliance of a pure and affectionate heart, popped into Kakashi's head. If Iruka was dead, who would give the kid the kind of love that Iruka had? Him? Was it his job now? He didn't think he was capable of dishing up that kind of emotion anymore… if he ever had been. But then again, who was? It began to dawn on him just how special Iruka had been, especially in the jaded world of shinobi.
He felt the warmth and gentle pressure of a hand on his shoulder. He looked up, and nearly fell from his perch on the veranda railing. Iruka himself was standing there, frowning slightly, but looking fit as a fiddle.
"Are you alright, Kakashi-san?"
Kakashi blinked. "Eh?"
"I called you twice. You didn't respond."
"Ah. Ah yes. I was busy thinking up ways to tell Naruto that you were dead. Where the heck were you?" Kakashi realized that Ituka's hand was still on his shoulder. He gave it a glance, and it was hastily removed.
"I decided not to take the straight route back." There was a defensive note in Iruka's voice. "I delivered the message as fast as I could, but I thought by that time they'd probably have figured out that I wasn't you. I didn't want to run into them on the way back, so I circled around to the North and came in from a different direction.
Kakashi wasn't sure whether to kiss him for being alive, or kick him for making him worry. He settled for smiling distantly and saying, "Oh. Good plan. So the message got delivered safely, huh."
"Yeah. I just came to tell you that I'm ready to switch. I'll go back to taking care of the merchant's daughter now."
"Ah. She'll be glad."
Iruka looked a little confused at that, but withdrew without asking anything further. As soon as his back was turned, Kakashi locked his eyes—both of them—on the man. He scanned him minutely from head to toe, analyzed his gait as he padded over the matted floor of the lady's quarters, watched the smooth sweep of his hand gestures as he fell into conversation with her, and only when he was satisfied that he really was completely uninjured did he slide off the veranda rail and return to his own work.
…
Kakashi's rounds had taken him almost to the opposite end of the villa grounds when he thought he caught a distant sound, high and sharp, like a scream. He went completely still, listening. The sound came again. It was a scream, in the shrill voice of a woman, and this time he caught the name she was calling.
"IRUKA!"
Kakashi flew.
He arrived back at the merchant's daughter's quarters to find Iruka curled protectively over the girl, a small arsenal of projectile weapons embedded in his back. But that wasn't all. Some sort of viscous fluid was oozing up from between the tatami mats to spread out in a dark puddle in the center of the room. Rising up from this puddle was the head and torso of one of the three enemy jounin.
Kakashi kicked himself mentally. He'd been careless. He'd assumed that all the enemy nin had withdrawn when they realized who they were up against, but apparently this one, the one jounin who he'd never fought before, and whose jutsu were unknown to him, had hidden under the villa and simply waited for him to leave. He shouldn't have assumed. He should have used his sharingan and made absolutely damn sure they were all gone.
"Oi, Ojou-chan," the enemy jounin called out in a harsh rasping voice, "If you don't want your friend to die, you'd better get over here. My next attack will kill him… if he's not already dead."
The girl instantly tried to obey, but found herself unable to move. Iruka, breathing in shallow, painful gasps, but still clinging to consciousness, had tightened his grip on her, and now matter how violently she squirmed, she couldn't break free.
"As if… I'd… let you," he gritted.
The enemy jounin shrugged. "If that's how you want it…" He thrust a hand into the black ooze pooling around his waist and flung it out in a great wave before him. The flying streams of fluid condensed and hardened into a score of kunai as they bore down on Iruka and the girl. Fortunately, Kakashi hadn't been idle. He had remained hidden in the garden, taking stock of the situation. As soon as the enemy began to move, he started a rapid sequence of hand signs. He formed the last sign, concentrated his chakra in his palm, and slammed it into the ground. With a rumble, a crash, and an explosion of splintered wood, a wall of stone burst through the floor in front of Iruka. The flight of kunai struck the wall and clattered harmlessly to the ground. The enemy jounin turned sharply and sent a second wave of the black goo at Kakashi's hiding place, but he had already moved on. He was lifting a now unconscious Iruka off the girl he'd been protecting in so reckless a manner, and laying him carefully down on the ground beside her.
"Don't move from here, understand?" he instructed the girl in low tones, "and if Iruka wakes up, don't let him move either. And don't touch those," he added, as the girl made to pull out one of the kunai studding Iruka's back, "If you take them out, it will just make the bleeding worse." With that, he left the two in the lee of his rock wall and stepped out to correct his mistake.
"Sorry," he told the enemy jounin, "but I'm going to have to finish this quickly."
The enemy nin gave him a lopsided grin. "Oh? Go ahead and try. I don't think you'll find it that easy."
Kakashi's exposed sharingan glinted in the dying light. "You don't seem too worried now, but we'll see how brave you are when we fight face to face."
It seemed to Kakashi that the enemy nin's shape wavered for a moment. His expression lost some of its easy confidence. Kakashi slipped a scroll out of his pocket and began making hand signs over it.
"Ninpo; kuchiose no jutsu." Suddenly, from beneath the floor there came the muffled barking and baying of dogs, followed by one human shout. The figure of the enemy nin dissolved back into the puddle of black goo. Kakashi rose to his feet and walked to the spot where the barking was loudest. "Your real body is below here, huh," he said conversationally. He gripped his wrist and gathered chakra in his hand until the air began to crackle and screech with power. "Raikiri," he said almost lazily, and thrust his hand through the floor and into the body below. He let the chakra diffuse, and peered through the hole he'd made. The true body of the enemy jounin lay in the space under the floor, a gaping, bloody hole in his back, around where his heart should have been. A circle of dogs sat around him, looking up at Kakashi. He reached through the hole in the floor and felt along the side of the ninja's neck. He couldn't find a pulse. "Sorry," he murmured, standing up again. "But you left me with no time to be merciful." He dismissed his summoned pack of ninken and walked back to the wall of stone he had raised. He released the jutsu, hopped over the remaining hole in the floor, and crouched down next to Iruka. He didn't like what he saw. The blood was beginning to seep through even the thickly padded vest. The girl was hovering over Iruka, white faced and clearly very worried. He began to revise his opinion of her a little.
"OK, now you can be helpful," he told her with a calming smiling. "Your attendants seem to have made themselves scarce. Go rustle them up and tell them to bring plenty of bandages and hot water."
"H-hai!" She sprang to her feet, tripped over the hem of one of her many layers of fine kimono, cursed in a very unladylike manner, and was gone.
"O—Kay… Time to get to work." He began to remove the kunai from Iruka's back, trying to work quickly while still taking care not to widen the paths of the wounds. A small pile of blades accumulated at his side. He was just extracting the last few kunai when the merchant's daughter and her attendants returned, toting steaming basins of water and armfuls of bandages.
"Ah. Good timing. I'm going to lift him, so if you could please get this vest off…" Moving slowly and gently, he slid his arms under Iruka's body and lifted him off the ground while the merchant's daughter unbuttoned the shoulder pieces of Iruka's vest, lifted them away, and then unwrapped the remainder from around Iruka's torso. As expected the entire inner layer of the vest, as well as the shirt below, were soaked with blood. The girl blanched, and the muscles in her long, white neck tightened as if she was fighting the urge to vomit, but she stayed steady.
"What next, Kakashi-san," she said in a surprisingly calm voice, as a few drops of blood dripped onto her expensively clad lap.
"Next is the shirt. I think we'd better cut it off." He nodded at the pile of kunai. "Think you can do it?"
She nodded, and silently set about slicing through the blood soaked fabric. It stuck gummily to Iruka's skin. Gently, she pulled the last scraps away, and Kakashi lowered Iruka back to the ground. He took up a wad of clean cloth from what used to be the front of Iruka's shirt, dipped it in one of the steaming basins, and started to carefully dab at the sticky film of blood coating his back. When he'd cleaned Iruka up as well as he could, he surveyed the damage. It was bad, but not as bad as it could have been. A few of the kunai had penetrated deeply, but the majority had left only shallow wounds that were already clotting. Kakashi folded some of the bandage into pads to press over the wounds still bleeding freely, and once again lifted Iruka. "Alright. Wrap the rest of the bandage around him, tight as you can."
The girl hastened to comply. She managed the lower back just fine, but when they got to the more complicated business of winding the bandage around his upper back and shoulders, Kakashi balanced Iruka over his thighs and took over. He finished the job and carried Iruka over to the futon he'd had the ladies-in-waiting lay out. Iruka was still unconscious and looked a little pale, but his breathing was deep and even, and his pulse was strong.
"Will Iruka be alright?" asked a concerned voice at his shoulder.
Now that he was sure Iruka was out of danger, Kakashi had time to be surprised. He'd taken the girl for a self-centered brat; a pampered Ojou-sama with no consideration for the people around her. She'd begun to show a completely different side of herself, however. Kakashi couldn't imagine that the girl had ever seen a wound worse than a needle prick in the whole course of her life, but she'd pulled herself together and done everything he asked of her, quietly and efficiently. And then, she hadn't hesitated for even a second when the enemy jounin had told her that Iruka would die if she didn't give herself up. Actually, it seemed to Kakashi that, starting from that first anguished scream, she'd had nothing but Iruka's safety in her head.
He turned a sharp eye on her. Could the girl have actually fallen in love with Iruka? Kakashi felt a peculiar and wholly unexpected mix of emotions. Unexpected emotion #1: He felt he understood exactly how she felt about Iruka; not just intellectually, but with the kind of visceral understanding you only get when you feel the same way yourself. Unexpected emotion #2: A kind of proprietary indignation, as if she had reached out to touch something that he'd claimed for himself.
Meaning? He really didn't want to go there. He swept whatever it was under the mental rug, and proceeded as if he had no personal stake in whatever the merchant's daughter might or might not feel for his comrade.
He gave the girl the sort of reassuring smile a doctor gives to worried family members after an operation. "Iruka's strong. He'll be fine."
An expression of deep relief flashed across the girl's face. Then she put back on her mask of bored unconcern. "Ah. Is that so," she said in an off-hand voice, and turned away.
Kakashi raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything. After all, she was supposed to be getting married to someone else tomorrow. She had even more reason than he did to pretend…
Scratch that thought. He didn't have to pretend anything, because he had no feelings for Iruka. Nothing beyond what you might be expected to feel for a fellow Konoha shinobi. Nothing more. Right.
….
Until next time!