A/N: I... was not planning on this chapter happening. It somehow happened anyway? Assume that the NYC depicted is not any of the ones in Marvel (hence no supers), and that it doesn't have Naruto present as a franchise (hence Kakashi being dismissed as a random weirdo).
o.o.o.o.o
Kakashi feels a chill in the room when Leah enters, something that brushes up his back and leaves him just a little terrified.
She smiles at him. "Hello, Kakashi."
No honorifics.
"You know what this is about," Kakashi says, keeping his voice as even as possible. "Any comments before we begin?"
"This is unnecessary and ultimately going to help no one."
"Noted." Kakashi tries his best to come across as unimpressed. "First question: how did you meet Kushina?"
"Her ghost had some impressive threads of fate, and I wanted to know more."
Kakashi doesn't sigh. This is going to be a long afternoon.
o.o.o.o.o
"We both know I could have broken out at any time, Kakashi."
Leah's waiting for him outside the Hokage tower after Kakashi hands over the reports of the fruitless interroga—he means interview. The interview.
"Leah-san." He nods at her, utterly unsurprised to see her. "I don't suppose you're here for a reason."
"Are you allowed to leave the village tonight? Not permanently, but… for fun. A single night."
Kakashi tries very hard to keep his visible eye from widening. He drawls, instead, saying, "I could, but quite frankly, I don't trust you."
"You need to relax, child. See the sights. Enjoy life." There's a strange sort of smile on her face, and her eyes drift to the side, as if looking at someone else. "So many have died to keep you and your generation intact. Don't throw your life away in penance."
"You know nothing about me." Kakashi keeps his voice cold. "Or those that died for me."
"Oh, I'd say I know some of them better than you ever did," Leah muses. "But how about an exchange? Something to help with those pretty little reports you're always giving your boss about me?"
Kakashi… would like something to hand over to the Hokage. "What are you proposing?"
"If you come with me for the night, I'll let you experience my personal teleportation technique, and show you a place you've never seen before. A place no one from Konoha has seen before." The grin curls. "I promise I'll bring you back unharmed, save for maybe a hangover."
He breathes in. Holds the breath as he thinks. Lets it out slowly. "I would need to inform someone of where I'm going."
"Is that a yes?" Leah asks, head tilted.
Kakashi nods. "If I have permission from Hokage-sama."
"By all means," she says. "Go right ahead."
o.o.o.o.o
Following Leah through her teleportation technique is terrifying. It feels like he stops existing in three dimension for a moment, but rather goes down to two, then one, then fifteen, and then it's all gone.
"Are you alright?"
Kakashi stays bent over for a moment, catching his breath. His eyes are tearing up, and there's saliva pooling in his mouth like a warning that he's about to throw up.
"What," he gasps, "was that?"
"Step one," Leah says. "Getting out. The next step, of course, is getting into somewhere new. I'm going to give you two options for where, of course."
Kakashi looks up as he starts regaining his bearings. "Where… where are we?"
Everything is white. There is no floor, or ceiling, or walls. If there were a floor, there would at least be shadows, but… there is nothing. Just whiteness, as far as the eye can see.
"A place between panels," Leah says. "Though that's largely unimportant. It's a conceptual space that doesn't quite exist the way the rest of reality does. Of course, my old reality has yet to reassert itself anyway, but Loki's done well in keeping me up-to-date on how that's going."
Kakashi has no idea what's going on.
"Option one," Leah says, continuing from earlier, "is that we go to a city with a population of approximately 8 million people, most of whom speak a language you do not know, with a culture you do not recognize, and technology you do not understand. Option two is that we go to a city with a population of approximately 30 million people, most of whom speak a language you do know, with a culture more superficially similar to yours, and technology you also do not understand. Option one is closer to what I identify with, while option two is going to be easier for you to navigate. I can provide a translation method if we go to option one, and it is slightly less intimidating in terms of things like the height of the buildings and such."
Kakashi stares at her.
The most impressive cities that Kakashi has ever seen, or even heard of, have populations that number in the hundred-thousands.
To nonchalantly name cities with populations in the millions is… it's daunting.
"Option one," he says after a moment. It's apparently more likely to lead him to understanding Leah, so he might as well.
"Wonderful," Leah says, and holds out a hand in his direction. She wiggles her fingers once, and raises an eyebrow. "Well? I do need to take us there."
Kakashi braces himself for another gut-wrenching experience, and takes her hand.
"I'll go easy on you this time."
o.o.o.o.o
They land in an empty alleyway. The buildings on either side, Kakashi notes once he gets his bearings, are made of red bricks, and pockmarked with age.
"Feeling better yet?" Leah asks.
Kakashi takes a moment, and then nods. "So, an alley?"
"Didn't want to surprise any civilians by popping up out of nowhere." She waits for him to stand up, and then gestures for him to follow her. "Come along. We're in Queens right now, and I'd like to get us into Manhattan as quickly as possible. Again, we have a few options."
"I'm listening," Kakashi says, and sticks his hands in his pockets. As Leah leaves the alleyway, he follows, taking in as many sights as he can. Leah was right when she said he wouldn't understand anything here; everything looks like it's been written in the writing system that Kumo uses.
"I could get us a taxi, which is one of those yellow vehicles, or we could take the subway, which is an underground train, or we could take the bus, which is an above-ground vehicle used to take large numbers of people from one area to another. We could also take the taxi to the bridge, walk to Roosevelt Island, and then take the Aerial Tram over to Manhattan." Leah lists off.
Kakashi stares at her. "And you would suggest…"
"The Aerial Tram. It provides a very… different sort of view of the city."
"Right."
"No chakra, Kakashi. Pretend you're just another civilian on vacation."
o.o.o.o.o
An hour or so later, Kakashi steps off the tram behind Leah, follows her to a somewhat empty part of the street outside, and then just stares at the ground for a while.
"Kakashi?"
"How."
"I told you it was a large city."
"That wasn't just large, that was… that was Amegakure on steroids!" Kakashi stares at her. "Why are the buildings so big?"
"To house the very large population and all the businesses that come along with it." Leah pulls out a sheaf of paper. "Here's a map, by the way. I got one at the tram."
Kakashi opens it and scans through it. He doesn't understand a word. "Where—"
"Here," Leah says, and points to exactly where they are. Her finger moves elsewhere. "This is where we came from."
"That's…" Kakashi keeps staring at the map. It makes him feel very small. He focuses on a large green rectangle. "Is this a park?"
"Central Park, yes. It's rather famous, in this… region."
"It looks large enough to fit all of Konoha," he whispers.
"Oh, hardly. Your sense of scale isn't working quite right, because of how big everything else is."
Kakashi tries not to feel offended.
"Konoha is some twenty or thirty times larger than Central Park. It's just that it's not nearly as densely populated as New York City, so it feels smaller." Leah turns bright green eyes on him. "Are you quite alright?"
"You're being a little condescending," he informs her. "Also, I feel like the buildings are closing in on me. I… I need to move."
Leah nods. "Let's go to the park, then. You can get a good look at the buildings from there with less claustrophobia."
Kakashi tries to protest and say that it isn't claustrophobia, but Leah's already got his wrist in her hand, and is leading him down a street. West, he thinks, checking the sky.
o.o.o.o.o
The park does feel less like it's pressing down on him, but it's still unnerving. When he looks around, there's towering buildings in every direction, hundreds of feet tall and made of steel and glass and cement. Even from a distance, with something close to nature in between them, they are cold and intimidating, like a reminder of a cage that keeps the people below trapped like rats.
There are a lot of civilians here. They seem happy.
"I find it comforting," Leah says without prompting. He looks at her. "You probably hate the way that the park is enclosed on all sides by the skyscrapers, but to me, and many others who were built from the ground up in environments like this one, it's like a protective wall."
"It feels wrong," Kakashi says after a moment. "People should… cities and towns should be concentrations of urbanization and populations, surrounded by nature as far as the eye can see. Not a patch of nature surrounded by buildings without end."
Leah shrugs. "It ends eventually. It's just much, much larger than you're used to."
"You've mentioned."
She laughs. "Have you ever heard the story of the country mouse, Kakashi?"
He shakes his head, and she tells him. Her words weave a story, and it's nice, but also a little… unnerving.
Words should not paint pictures the way hers do.
His hand feels cold.
o.o.o.o.o
"Here's a list of tourist destinations," Leah says as she hands him a small pamphlet. It's in a language he can actually read. That's nice. "Pick one."
Several extremely tall buildings. A giant statue. Some famous neighborhoods. A ferry. Some museums. A memorial.
"What would you suggest?" He asks after a long moment.
"Hm… Times Square, the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, and… hm. The 9/11 memorial can give us the opportunity to wander around downtown a little before we visit the Statue of Liberty." Leah smiles at him. "And lucky for you, I'm fully capable of bypassing all those silly lines without making anyone suspicious."
"And all without chakra," he mutters, but he follows her. He raises his voice for the next question. "And how are we going to get wherever we're going?"
"Well, we're going to walk to Times Square, then the Empire State Building. We can take the subway down to the memorial, and we'll figure out how to get to the Statue from there."
"And then back to Konoha."
"Well, if you don't want to have a little fun, first, sure." Leah smiles encouragingly at him, but it feels oddly predatory. "I do know some interesting bars and such, and I'd have very little trouble with faking identification for you."
Kakashi makes a face, even though he knows she won't be able to see it. "We'll see."
o.o.o.o.o
Times Square feels like the very concept of overstimulation turned up to the extreme. It's too loud, too bright, too crowded, too smelly, too everything. There's advertisements on every surface, people in costume, hordes of tourists, and yet more of those large metal vehicles that look very prepared to kill someone.
Kakashi doesn't like it at all.
"It can be a little overwhelming, I know."
Kakashi is sitting on a little chair at some… some plaza thing? He isn't sure. There's rickety little metal tables and chairs all over, and Leah bought them some large, soft pretzel things. Hers has cinnamon sugar all over it, while Kakashi's is some plain thing that comes with cheese dip.
(It's hard to eat without showing his face, but he manages.)
It's… not a bad food, at least.
"You lived here?" He asks.
"Not quite, but it's close enough. This is a close analogue to a certain place back home, the place where everything went down."
"Went down how?"
Leah smiles at him. "Finish your pretzel, Kakashi. I'll explain later."
Kakashi is glad to leave the crowds at Times Square.
(He thinks he can almost hear Leah whisper "Fucking tourists," but… that doesn't really seem like her. She wouldn't swear like that.)
(Would she?)
o.o.o.o.o
"Getting vertigo yet?"
"No."
Kakashi isn't lying about the vertigo, but that doesn't change the fact that the situation is uncomfortable at best for him. There's something about seeing this city from atop the tallest building ther that makes him feel very, very small.
It's like the view from on top of the Hokage Monument, except there, you at least see the trees take over again soon enough.
There's no end in sight to the urbanization, save for where the ocean takes over.
"How many people did you say lived here, again?"
His voice feels small, too.
"Eight million in New York City. Manhattan alone is a little over one and a half million. The entire metropolitan area… somewhere around twenty-three, maybe twenty-four million." She says it like it's no big deal.
Kakashi takes a deep breath. "That's… a lot of people. I doubt there are that many people in the entire Hidden Continent."
"Fifteen million," Leah confirms.
Kakashi wants to ask how she knows, but his brain feels a little fuzzy.
"The scale can be confusing, I know." Leah pats him on the shoulder. "You get used to it, after a while."
"The scale?"
"The feeling that, however large the universe is, nothing you do is going to have that big of an impact on the future. The city's size is just the first step, really."
Kakashi stares at her for a moment, managing to tear his gaze away from the city below. "You say that like it's a good thing."
She shrugs. "I don't know about you, but I find it comforting. With all the trillions of life forms that even a single galaxy could contain, do you think the universe is going to judge you just for messing up a little? A failed test, a fall into a mud puddle, a loss of control… what does the universe care?"
Kakashi turns away. "That's… not comforting to me."
"I suppose not."
Kakashi stays here for longer than he should.
It's so… grey. The air is hard to breathe. There are spots of color, but they either stand out unnaturally or are washed out.
But there's sunlight, and visibility is high, and it means he can see forever and it is terrifying, in its own way.
o.o.o.o.o
The subway is disgusting and crowded and Kakashi hates it.
o.o.o.o.o
Kakashi should have guessed that Leah would make a beeline for an ice cream truck. It wasn't a milkshake, of course, but it was something.
He takes one after she orders, and follows her, one hand in his pocket and the other holding the ice cream so he can sneak licks when Leah isn't looking. It feels more cramped here than it did further North. The number of people is roughly the same, but the buildings are closer together, and still fairly tall, and feel like they could topple onto him at any moment.
They're also darker in color, so that might be part of it. The dark grey of the buildings washes things out even more.
The memorial that Leah leads him to is an undoubtedly strange reverse fountaint of sorts.
"What is this memorial for?"
"Two of the tallest buildings in the world used to stand here." Leah's fingers go tap-tap-tap against the cool black stone. "Fifteen or so years ago, an airplane—"
The flying metal contraptions that Kakash's seen crossing the sky, that supposedly have hundreds of people inside of them.
"—crashed into both. Including the other attacks of the day, and those who died in an attempt to save those trapped inside, over two and a half thousand people died as a result of the attacks. Still more have died since then as a result of illnesses or disabilities that they contracted due to the events, like lung diseases from smoke inhalation and such."
Kakashi stares down at the water. Much as he hates to admit it, that feels like it's… not enough. Kakashi is so used to death that even a few thousand feels like it's not enough for… for a memorial.
Then again, this feels more senseless. "Was it an accident?"
"It was blamed on terrorism, though there are a number of theories that indicate that the government was responsible." Leah shrugs. "Either way, it pushed the world into some very unfortunate wars that have resulted in many, many, many more deaths, most of which were wholly unnecessary."
"You… don't sound too torn up about that." He hesitates to say it, but she doesn't usually seem insulted when they point out things like that, so…
"It's senseless violence, really. I pity people for the pain they go through, but death is… death and life are simply states of being. One or the other, I don't really care. They are, in my eyes, the same."
Kakashi feels a cold shudder work its way up his back. Right. That.
Leah smiles at him. "Would you like to go to the statue now?"
o.o.o.o.o
The statue is less of a problem than the rest of the day, to Kakashi. It's on a tiny island in the open ocean, and even if there's not a clear path to open ocean in view, it's still less cloyingly claustrophobic than the city. The story behind the statue and the nearby "Ellis Island" are more optimistic than some of the other things he's heard today, and he feels himself relax, if only a little.
"Now, how about a drink?" Leah asks. "I could do with a gin and tonic."
Kakashi makes a face. "Now? Isn't it about time we returned to Konoha?"
Leah shrugs. "We could, or…"
"I'd really prefer not to return to the city," Kakashi informs her, steady and staid.
A strange look crosses her face. "Well, there is one other place we could go… very rural, much smaller, maybe a few hundred inhabitants in all."
Kakashi raises his visible eyebrow.
"My childhood memories are rooted there." Leah offers, a glint in her eyes like she knows just how tempting that is too him. Just how tempting any information at all on this woman is.
"…Fine."
o.o.o.o.o
Oklahoma, she calls it. Broxton.
There's a little diner, and milkshakes, and coffee. Kakashi's pretty glad they didn't go to the nearby bar; he's not really in the mood for alcohol.
"You're not old enough, anyway." Leah tells him, playing with her straw. "Minimum age for alcohol in this country is twenty-one."
Kakashi wrinkles his nose. He's not a big fan of alcohol, but that seems a little high.
"It's because the brain doesn't stop developing until twenty-five, and is still sensitive to damage from alcohol before that age," Leah says. "Don't worry about it."
Kakashi shrugs. He leans forward to rest his elbows on the table, crossing his arms, and looks out the window. "So this is where you grew up?"
"Something like that." Leah looks out the window, and there's something like regret and nostalgia in her eyes, if Kakashi's reading them right. "It's a little complicated."
"Is it now."
Leah gives him that irritating little half-smile. "Yes."
"You've been doing that all day," he says. "Saying that everything is close but not quite your home."
"I'll explain someday." A dollop of whipped cream licked off a straw. "Just not today. You got enough information today, I think."
Kakashi has to admit that he's gotten more in this one day than anyone has thus far. "I suppose."
"Finish your coffee, Kakashi, and I can get you home."
o.o.o.o.o
Kakashi stands in front of the Hokage, trying to figure out how to explain what, exactly, it was that he saw and experienced while on a day out with Leah.
"Can I use a genjutsu?" He finally asks.
(Konoha feels very small, right now.)
o.o.o.o.o
Next Time: Time for some PR.