Forget what he said about them being cute. They were not cute. Anything that could ask so many questions was absolutely not cute.
It had started the next morning shortly after the two had been served their specialized breakfast. 'What was he reading? Could he read it to them? What is a shinobi? Why do they do that? What's an ANBU? Why?'
Ugh.
His one saving grace was that they slept a lot. In fact, if they weren't eating or talking they were sleeping. Which was good for them, even he had to admit they were getting better faster. Only a few days and the boy had already had his neck brace removed and Mikeira had the bandages removed from her knee.
Keeping them in bed? A whole job in itself. For being so underweight, they had seemingly limitless energy. This was something that drove their sweet nurse up the wall. Escu did her best, and the children adored her. It wasn't hard to get medicine into them. They're careful and obedient. But they're also restless and eager to do anything but sit around.
Escu had asked, once, if Kakashi thought it would be a good idea to take them to the nursery where other children were held and a playroom was available. But what if there was an attack? What if the one time they let the children out of their immediate sight was the time Orochimaru snatched them, not caring about collateral damage.
In the end, it was safer for the kids and the other patients if they stayed in one place until things were over.
What was sad was seeing them trying to include Hirari in their limited activities. They would struggle to climb into the provided chairs or onto her bed and pat her hand, pet her hair, and talk to her as if she could hear them.
Sometimes they cried, but would only accept comfort from each other.
This particular day would be special. Inoichi Yamanaka would be coming to perform a jutsu which would hopefully extract memories that could lead to Orochimaru's location.
At least that was the plan.
That's not how it went.
When Inoichi arrived he spent a few minutes talking with Kakashi about the details of the case, and a few minutes gushing over the children to get them to warm up to him. Which they did, they warmed up to anybody who would pay attention to them.
Inoichi performed his mind reading jutsu with the full trust of the children whose head he cradled in his hands. He spent enough time probing the mind of Mikeira that Maaku began to get nervous and Kakashi had to holg the little boy in his arms to calm him.
Inoichi was in a much darker mood when he retreated from Mikeira's mind and he didn't speak for a long while. He performed the jutsu on Maaku and Hirari before he motioned for Kakashi to follow him into the hallway.
"I didn't find anything pertaining to his whereabouts." Inoichi sighed "They only have a few days' worth of memories to go through, and when I started digging…well it's best to leave those memories behind them. They were definitely experimented on, and from what I can tell, Maaku was part of Mikeira at one time, some part of her subconscious given human form."
"So he's not human?" Kakashi asked.
"Oh he's human all right. He's just going to have a stronger connection with Mikeira than, say Hirari will. Hirari it seems, Orochimaru was trying to clone Mikeira's kekkei genkai into her, to transfer it somehow."
"She has a kekkei genkai?" Kakashi asked, surprised, "Do you know which clan?"
Inoichi shook his head, "I can't tell what it is at this time, but the seeds are there. When her abilities begin to show we may be able to identify her heritage. Anyway, as to a location, the memories they have of this cave are shaky at best. There are thousands of caves in the region I'm thinking of and it would take months to search them all."
The two men stood in silence for a moment. "You know, my daughter is nearly their age…" Inoichi shook his head, "Orochimaru is a monster."
The nightmares started that night.