Chapter Ten: Time Enough
As the others continued to stare at him, Kakashi walked over to Sakura, picked her up, and handed her to the police chief, whispering comfortingly in Japanese, "Don't worry, Sakura, these people here are going to take you to your mother."" She nodded, answering tearfully, "H-hai, arigato." Kakashi ruffled her hair fondly, turning to leave. Suddenly she cried out, "Wait! Don't go yet!" Kakashi stopped in suprise. "W-will I ever see you again?"
Kakashi berated himself for getting involved with another child. It tended to play havoc with his emotions. "No, probably not," the nin replied apologetically.
Pakkun trotted up to Kakashi. "How ironic that her name is Sakura," he commented before disappearing with a quiet poof. "You're telling me," Kakashi muttered to the empty air. Striding over to where Itachi lay, he quickly placed seals on the nin's chakra to prevent his escape. As Kakashi was about to take off with Itachi, his own body stiffened and refused to move. Exhaustion from the long fight had finally kicked in. "Shoot," he muttered as he collapsed facefirst onto the pavement.
-----
Kakashi awoke to find himself lying in a chair in the waiting room of the police station, his hands cuffed. Effortlessly controlling his chakra, Kakashi broke free of the weakened metal. Just then the police chief approached Kakashi.
"After seeing you fight I doubted those handcuffs would keep you down for long, but it helped reassure some of the more skeptical people who wanted to throw you back into a cell immediately. Eventually they agreed to keep you here for questioning instead. Your friend is already behind bars. When we searched him, he sure had a lot of stuff on him." The cheif motioned toward a box filled with shuriken, kunai, and other assorted weapons. Kakashi silently congratulated them on making a smart move for once.
While they walked, the man explained that the mother of the girl, Sakura, had only been arrested because she was the last one left in the building while the flames began to appear, but now they realized that the woman had merely been trapped inside a locked room. Since she forgot her keys, she had been unable to escape.
Kakashi listened attentively to the chief's explanation, expressing his gratitude for their assistance in reuniting the girl with her parents. His eye passed over a clock on someone's desk, the blood draining from his face as he realized what time it was. He had five minutes to get to the gateway or be stuck here forever!
---
The cheif noticed Kakashi's alarm and asked him if something was wrong. Recovering his composure, Kakashi protested, "No, I'm fine. It's just that I realized I need to be somewhere very shortly, and I'll have to take Itachi with me." Quickly stifling the cheif's objections, Kakashi continued, "And then we'll be gone for good."
Slowly the cheif nodded his assent. "Alright, I'll see what I can do about having him released temporarily."
Kakashi stopped him. "Unfortunately there's no time for that. If I make it look as if I broke him out, you can pin the blame on me. Since I won't be here any longer you don't have to worry about prosecuting an innocent man. Case closed, as they say."
The cheif grinned. "You must have a alot of experience at this sort of thing."
"A lot," Kakashi agreed, smiling as well. The man really had no idea how much experience. Come to think of it, neither did most of the people from his village.
Locating Itachi with a furtive glance from the Sharingan, the silver-haired nin sped off in that direction, leaving the stunned police cheif behind.
---
Kakashi dismissed the guards and went into Itachi's cell. "Time to go, Itachi. We don't belong here, so I'm taking you somewhere else," he stated in Japanese. Itachi look at at him, face emotionless, his eyes strangely dark without the Sharingan. "I take it you mean back to our world."
"Quite possibly, but I doubt it. Otherwise, why would someone go through the trouble of opening the gate that brought me here?" Kakashi replied. "Unless you want to stay here permenantly, you should cooperate a little - there's not much time left before it reopens."
It stung his pride, but Itachi eventually resigned himself to doing as the silver-haired nin said. He was still a little weak from resisting Kakashi earlier. A Mangekyou Sharingan is not a thing to be taken lightly.
---
Activating the exploding tag on the cell door, Kakashi unceremoniously threw Itachi over his shoulder and raced through the hole in the wall to the street outside. Kakashi sped down the streets, pushing himself to go still faster. He only had a minute left!
---
The white-haired nin finally entered the final street just as the gate's portal began to appear. Suddenly his body froze and he lost his grip on Itachi. "Not now!"
The Uchiha may have been willing to leave that world, but that didn't mean he was willing to let Kakashi live. With his body paralyzed from the afteraffects of using the Sharingan, Kakashi was unable to defend himself.
Unexpectedly another portal opened, and a teenage girl in a dark blue robe stepped out of its swirling darkness. After glancing at the injured nin, she faced Itachi and held out her hand, shooting out a stream of black energy that wound itself around the Akatsuki member. She smiled slightly as she saw the astonished expressions on both nins' faces. "Glad to help," she said in English. Just then Kakashi realized howvery grateful he was that he had taught himself how to speak that language.
Just then someone else appeared, and another, and three more, until six people (plus Itachi) stood in the middle of the streets of New York. Well, five people stood. Kakashi kind of laid there on the ground.
---
"Time to go," the teenager announced softly. Kakashi smiled under his mask as he struggled to his feet. "Hai." T
he small group of heroes climbed through the portal, onto a new and different wourld of adventures yet to come.
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Shelby sighed as she worked. Jeff looked over at her. "Whatever happened to your ninja friend and Kasitcha-"
"Itachi," Shelby corrected automatically. "He left."
Jeff was suprised. "Oh. He went back to Japan then?"
Distractedly she replied, "Yes, Japan, of course..." Shelby sat staring out the window, wondering how the silver-haired shinobi was doing.
-----
Falling to the ground awkwardly, the nin carefully got to his knees. Someone approached the little group. He was a dark-haired boy, strongly reminding Kakashi of Sasuke, and was dressed in a blue and white outfit. When he reached the group, Kakashi could see a strange winged creature flitting around the boy's shoulder.
"My name is Alviss. Welcome to MAR."
Kakashi's story will continue in book seven.
Next time: the story of Raven from "Teen Titans."