Chapter 14: Bad News

Something bad was in the air tonight. It was faint, carried only on the barest edge of the midnight breezes, but it was there.

He could smell it, and he didn't like it one bit.

Unable to fall asleep, the dachshund finally had to admit defeat and get up completely. He wrinkled his nose, giving a quiet sneeze at the persistent bad-smell, and glanced toward the window. It was dark, likely still a few hours before dawn.

Three of the other stray dogs that had taken to following him were curled up on their own piles of newspaper or salvaged cushions, undisturbed by whatever sense was bothering him.

Miho, however, was glaring out into the night with suspicion. She had her ears folded back, clearly unsettled by something.

So it wasn't just him, then.

"Anything new?" he asked in a whisper, trotting over to join her by the glassless window frame.

The larger dog shook her head. "Not that I can see," she replied. It was clear by her tone that this frustrated her. "Shouldn't you be asleep, Boss?"

Ignoring her concerned question, he instead said, "I'm smelling the same thing you are." He put his paws up on the wall so he could actually look out.

Miho followed his gaze, recognized what house lay in that direction, then smiled. "Hoh, look at you. Worried for your human?"

He determinedly looked the other way.

This was evidently enough proof for Miho, as the fluffy dog nodded to herself. "Me too."

"I'm not—" he started to protest, but gave up halfway. Because he was worried. "You know what?— Yeah. I think I'm gonna go for a walk."

She cocked her head to the side, surprised. "Oh. I guess… Just stay safe, Boss."

He jumped the rest of the way up onto the windowsill, gave her a quick nod of acknowledgement, checked briefly over what was left of his pack again, then dropped down outside. Landing in a patch of dead grass that prickled at his paws, he set off down the street.

It was a quick trip to the human's house, just one block over. He walked up to the back door, the one connected the room that smelled like fire and metal. Just like the past few days, there was a plate decorated with small shuriken—the same plate from that first night—and on it were a few slices of ham.

He sniffed at the air, and was relieved to smell only ham: the bad-smell was even more faint than it had been when he first noticed it.

With a few chakra-assisted jumps, the dachshund landed on the roof and walked around to the front of the house. Careful not to slip into the gutter, he nevertheless got as close to the edge as he could. Then he went still, listening closely for signs that the human was inside.

Calm, long breaths of someone deeply asleep: the blond man was safe.

He let himself relax slightly.

Now he just had to find the source of that unsettling smell, and make sure it wasn't a threat to his pack… or his human. His.

Jumping back down to street level, he followed his nose back the way he came. It was a little unsettling to find himself heading closer to where his pack was sleeping, though, if he had to guess, it would be a few blocks past them. Thankfully.

He couldn't help but remember the animals who had gone missing. It seemed every district had had at least one stray simply vanish overnight. That old tabby-cat, Tora, hadn't ever turned back up. Neither had any of the four gone from his own pack.

None of the missing strays had ever returned.

A shadow passed overhead, and he tensed. He caught a glimpse of a white mask before the figure landed on the side of the wall. The shinobi clung there for a heartbeat, then slid gracefully to the ground.

The figure turned, and the red painted koi stood out clearly against the white mask. He knew this ANBU: she was one of the two running surveillance on his human.

He dropped his defensive stance with a sigh, then continued on walking. "I suppose you smell it too?"

She fell into step beside him, but, given that she was actually walking faster than him, she clearly didn't need him leading the way. Which was answer enough, really.

"Fantastic," he murmured under his breath, picking up his pace to match hers. "I was still kind of hoping that I was just imagining things."

They didn't have much farther to go, and they found that the trail stopped outside of a run-down house that was missing its front door. The ANBU flicked her hands through a few gestures and, although he hadn't needed to recognize shinobi sign language for years now, he recognized that they meant 'no enemy nearby'.

But the bad-smell was still there.

Another few hand signs that he was decently sure said she would approach from above, and then she vanished in a flit of shunshin.

He took the less exciting route of simply walking through the front door. Or at least, through where there should have been a door. A small diamond carved into the frame caught his eye for a moment, but, after checking that it wasn't some kind of fuinjutsu trap, he simply ignored it.

The house felt profoundly empty. As he cautiously sniffed around on the first floor, he found… nothing. He could tell that somebody had been living there—the bottom of the sink was damp and there were signs of a recent fire on the back porch—but beyond that was a terrifying blank.

He couldn't smell anything. It was all just dirt and water and ash. Even the persistent bad-smell seemed unnaturally muted once he got inside. There was nothing to indicate who had lived here, what they were like, or where they were now.

The ANBU came down the stairs, steps silent. A gesture asked if he had found anything, and he shook his head.

It seemed like she had expected that answer. "Upstairs," she said, after briefly walking through the rooms to double check his report. "A child's been killed, and I'm certain that another's gone missing."

"And the attacker?"

She shook her head. "Gone. But they didn't have time to clean up completely before we got here."

The dachshund felt his blood run cold as his thoughts turned immediately to his pack… to his human. At least Miho was keeping an eye on the other strays. The human—Axel didn't have that defense. And while it was doubtful that he was in any real danger, given the police force would be swarming here soon enough, the possibility made the small dog want to turn tail and run back just to be sure.

For some reason, he got the feeling that the ANBU understood that urge.

But while she had to report this to the Hokage, he, luckily, had no such responsibility.

=X=X=X=

Axel was awake significantly earlier than usual.

Not particularly sure why he had woken up, he looked around his quiet darkened bedroom with a sleepily accusatory stare. Everything looked to be in order—nothing he could easily blame for his current wakefulness, at least—so he rolled over to try and get at least a little more sleep.

Then he rolled over again, seemingly unable to find a comfortable position.

Staring up at the ceiling got boring quickly, but unfortunately it wasn't boring enough to put him back to sleep. Same with staring at the walls or floor or desk or shoving his face into his pillow so that he wouldn't be staring at anything at all.

Groaning in annoyance, Axel decided that he might as well get up and face the day. Even if, since the sun was yet to rise, he didn't really consider the day as having started. Not bothering to get changed out of his pajamas, he headed downstairs with half-awake plans of making toast or something.

The kitchen light was already on, so, surprisingly enough, it would seem that he wasn't the only one up unusually early.

"Guten Morgen, Morimoto," he yawned, to sleepy to bother with Japanese at the moment.

The older man, quite used to this by now, simply offered, "Tea?"

Axel shook his head, already filling up a glass with water, and watched as Morimoto still poured two cups of tea. For a moment he wasn't sure why, and then he had his second surprise of the morning: one of those cups of tea was clearly for the ninja seated at the kitchen table.

"Minato?" Axel asked, confused to see his friend visiting before the sun had even had time to rise. "Was ist— uh, What's going on?"

The blond ninja tried for a smile, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. "Good morning. I hope I didn't wake you."

"No, not that I know."

"That's good."

Based on the serious expression the usually-smiling Minato was wearing, whatever it was that had brought him here so early… it probably wasn't good news.

It wasn't.

"There—" Minato had to stop, staring down into his teacup as he considered what to say. "A child was found dead. Just a few blocks south from here."

For a moment, Axel thought he had misheard. Or that maybe he didn't know the right words to understand it correctly.

His mind replayed the sentence.

Axel sat down his glass of water, not quite trusting himself not to drop it. Voice hushed, he couldn't help but numbly ask, "What?"

Some of the tension seemed to bleed out of Minato's shoulders, though that was followed by an almost guilty glance to the side. He had been worried that his friend might have been involved somehow.

"The boy was killed sometime last night," Morimoto answered for him, likely having been told some of this already.

That word hit like a physical blow.

"Killed?"

Over the next few minutes, Minato summed up what he knew of the situation. Most of it, anyway, as some of it naturally needed to remain confidential. But he did mention that, as horrible as it was to consider, this might not be an isolated case.

Axel listened silently, trying to wrap his head around this most drastic of differences between his old world and this one. München wasn't a particularly violent city—Germany, overall, was considered to be a pretty safe country to live in.

But in this world… violence might as well be a part of life.

Minato was sad, sure. Angry that something like that had happened in his village, definitely.

But he wasn't surprised.

Even Morimoto just seemed… resigned.

Axel closed his eyes for a moment, letting the realization settle, then he decided something.

"I'll be back," he said. "It is too early, and I need be more awake for this."

Not waiting to see how that statement was received, he just turned and walked out of the kitchen. He hoped that he'd feel more ready to face this whole situation after he wasn't dressed in pajamas anymore.

Once back in his bedroom, he fished out some actual clothes from the closet. And they were his clothes: the t-shirt and pants he had packed away in his carry-on luggage. It was comforting to still have a few bits and pieces of the world he had lost.

His laptop caught his eye for a moment. It was on his desk exactly where he had left it, sitting quietly beside its solar charger. He hadn't so much as touched it since he had set it there a month ago.

A thought struck.

Maybe his sister had mentioned something relevant to whatever had happened, hidden among all the random anime trivia she sent him. Adri had always been into theorizing beyond the scope of a show. He probably had email chains and chat logs miles long, saved away to the computer automatically. Now that was all he had left of her.

He hoped she was doing alright.

And he wondered, briefly, how this entire situation looked from her perspective.

Maybe he had just been erased from his reality, as if he had never existed in the first place. Maybe he really had simply vanished. Taken away by some fluke of dimensional alignment. Gone missing.

Or maybe he really had died in that crash, and all of this was just his imagination going wild in his final moments.

Not that that mattered, since it all felt real enough to him.

Axel—who realized that he had been staring at his closed laptop for an embarrassingly long time—was pulled from his thoughts by a slight noise.

He glanced around the room, not sure what he had heard, and then another rasping scrape came from the direction of the window. Persistent, almost manic, the sound came again: scratching and scratching and scratching.

Cautious, Axel slowly approached the window. The sound was coming from above, and it had become an almost constant grating. He hesitated for a moment, before carefully sliding the window open.

The sound stopped instantly.

Leaning out the window, he tried to get a look up on top of the roof.

There was something sticking out of the gutter: long and black and thin.

It looked a bit… like a tail?

Yes, it was definitely a dog's tail. Which, presumably, meant there was a whole dog up there. In the gutter. On the roof. Somehow.

In fact, he was pretty sure he knew this particular dog.

A familiar nose peeked up over the side of the gutter.

He watched for a moment, still processing the fact that the dachshund had ended up on the roof for some reason and trying not to let out a relieved laugh. The nose dipped back out of sight, and a moment later the sound came back as the dog pawed at the inside of the gutter.

"…Are you stuck?" Axel asked.

The sound stopped and the tail gave a nervous wag, which he took to be confirmation.

Of course this didn't answer the bigger question of why the dachshund was on his roof—not to mention how he had gotten up there in the first place—but Axel decided he didn't really need to know. He considered a few different ways of trying to get the poor dog unstuck, and decided that the easiest one was probably the best.

"I'll go get Minato."

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Finals have finally (heh) finished! Thank goodness, I basically had to write this entire chapter today because I was so busy with homework and studying. Now that it's summer, I should have enough time to make the chapters longer. So there's that to look forward too!

The crime comes to light, and likely much sooner than it happened in the original show.
What repercussions could this bring about farther down the line?

Translations:
"Guten Morgen, Morimoto." = "Good morning, Morimoto."
"Was ist—" = "What is—"

Updates on the 15th of the month.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed! Reviews are always appreciated, and often I will take inspiration from them to help with future chapters or clear up anything that might be pointed out.

SilentProwler: Yep, that's exactly what's going on there!

No one important: Yeah, I definitely agree—four years old is pretty young. But then again, this anime is full of kids who are really way too young to do the things they're doing. I just assume children grow up fast in a ninja village.

See ya on the flipside, everyone!