Harune was no stranger to discomfort, though she wished she had decided to wait the winter out before she set off on her mission. The Kamineko sat herself down on a tree branch, nestling into the crevice made where the limb connected to the trunk. With a few quick hand seals, she created a small metal bowl and filled it with her flames, and held it in her lap.
It had only been about a week and a half since Harune had left Konoha, but she was still wandering within the Fire Country. She could have easily crossed out into the lands beyond the borders of her nation days ago, however Harune had realized that before she could start tracking down the criminal organization she had once been a part of, she would need to gather as much intel on them as possible, and her only connection to them as it stood was Orochimaru. Consequently, Harune had taken to breaking into and inspecting every last one of Orochimaru's hideouts within the Land of Fire. Though she was relatively sure that the majority of the rogue Sannin's laboratories set up in his home country had been all but forgotten on his part, she remained ever-vigilant in her thorough searches of the labs she had once called home.
There was only one hideout left to investigate, and according to Harune's mental map of Orochimaru's vast network of safehouses, it was less than half a day's travel northwest of her current position.
The former test subject stared into the dancing flames she held between her legs, shielding them from the harsh winds that threatened to extinguish her only (rather pitiful) heat source. Though she had managed to convince herself so far that it was best to save this hideout for last due to its proximity to the border, Harune knew deep down that she was in complete and utter denial.
In truth, she had been avoiding the lab, and while she had beat herself up every day that she procrastinated, Harune struggled to bring herself to face the very place she had suffered the first experiment at Orochimaru's hand: the implantation of her Byaku-Sharingan eye.
It was the first lab Orochimaru had taken his most prized possession. The experiment-crazy jutsu-coveting Sannin had wasted no time in expanding Harune's very evident potential to become one of his most capable vessels, and though he had only very recently taken to a new body, Orochimaru regarded the girl as a long term investment. The hard contempt in her eyes that fueled the ferocity in her fight was a quality he looked for in every one of his disciples, confident he could cultivate it to his own benefit.
As manipulative and cunning a man as he was, it was his misplaced trust in his own capacity to mould Harune's learned loathing of the world in which she lived that had led to the loss of his once most powerful assets.
The three years working under the exiled Sannin had very confusing for Harune. The stubborn kunoichi was, needless to say, less than easily influenced, however she sometimes found herself empathizing with Orochimaru. He too had suffered the tragic loss of his parents, and while he never spoke about it, Harune somehow knew that he felt guilty for not having been able to protect them. Still, it didn't excuse his maniacal and sadistic habit of tearing the world apart for his own gain.
And even though she knew that Orochimaru's activities were less than kosher, Harune went along with it. Each poke, each prod, every needle, and every scalpel held the promise to make her stronger. And the stronger she grew, the closer she came to crushing the twisted snake of a man. Such a goal, however, came with a heavy price, and conceding to Orochimaru's will meant that Harune was forced to turn a blind eye to the havoc he wreaked, burning whole villages to the ground, kidnapping children from their families, torturing innocent people.
While he used her ability to absorb and assimilate the chakra, natures, and jutsus of anyone she came into contact with to turn her into an indestructible weapon, Orochimaru had never once questioned her complete compliance, believing that, although it had taken quite the battle to recruit her, his young subordinate shared his ambitions.
Harune shuddered, not because of the sudden rush of cold wind that cut right through her body, but because she knew that Orochimaru hadn't been completely off the mark.
But she had changed, she told herself. Even back then, under the corrupt influence of her hopelessness, Harune had not completely submitted herself to the will of her former master. The Kamineko Chakra Assimilation Jutsu, though invaluable and seemingly impossible to counter, had one very crucial criterion to assure its complete effectiveness, and Harune had learned early on that Orochimaru was, so perfectly conveniently, unaware of it.
Developed with the intention of providing a sort of life after death for deceased Kamineko clan members, the Chakra Assimilation Jutsu was designed only to work on the dead. In her final battle alongside Takeo and Katsu, Harune had learned that it was possible to perform the technique on a live host, but the side effects were devastating. Not only could the chakra and jutsus absorbed be used only once, but the user suffered severe consequences, nearly losing all control over their own chakra supply, and essentially threatening to kill them.
Having long since surrendered to her fate as Orochimaru's next host, Harune made it her own personal mission to turn herself into the ultimate weapon.
The process was simple; Orochimaru sought out the carriers of precious kekkei genkai, Harune hunted them down and collected their chakra. It didn't matter to the Sannin whether Harune's victims lived or died, nor did he consider it strange that the girl had never killed any of them at all; he simply attributed it to her Konohan upbringing—You're too soft, Harune— and all the while Harune was turning herself into a ticking time bomb.
The plan had been going perfectly, Harune thought, drowsiness beginning to tug on her consciousness. Then, with only 2 months to Orochimaru's possession of her own body, loaded with hundreds of different chakra masses and thousands of jutsus, and ultimately, his unwitting suicide, Harune ran into him.
It was a late June morning, and he was washing his face in the stream by which his ANBU squadron had set up the night before.
Harune would have walked right on by, not daring to approach so many ANBU agents on her own; it didn't matter what village, Kamineko Harune knew she had earned herself a page in every country's Bingo Book, including her own. The Riperu no Chakra and Konoha no Shinigami were the names with which she had been dubbed by those who feared her strength.
Harune smirked, her eyes half-lidded as she dozed off into the memory of her retrieval from Orochimaru. The Chakra Reaper of the Leaf had always held a sense of pride in her nickname and the terror it instilled in her fellow shinobi, but even she knew better than to heedlessly engage an entire ANBU squadron in battle.
And so she almost did walk right past the man who had strayed a little ways off from his comrades, but there was no mistaking the damp silver locks of hair that hung over his face as he washed away the grit and dirt that clung to him from travelling for days on end.
"Kakashi," she breathed, involuntarily taking a step towards him. He tensed immediately, and as soon as her foot touched the ground, his hand had already withdrawn his katana and had it pointed to her throat.
The kunoichi didn't flinch, not even as she felt the sharp tip of the blade press against her skin, threatening to slice her open with the flick of a wrist if she even so much as breathed in the wrong way. She didn't know if it was pure shock or pure ecstasy that had paralyzed her, but it certainly wasn't fear. Fear had escaped her emotional spectrum eons ago. He could have killed her right then and there; she wouldn't have cared. Actually, she would have died happy.
"Kakashi," she repeated, the lump in her throat preventing her voice from coming out as more than a hoarse whisper. Green eyes crinkled with a bright smile in spite of the dark grey storm boring into them with a glare menacing enough to make a kage pee himself.
"Who the hell are you," Kakashi growled, irritated by the woman before him, who only smiled wider as he pressed his katana further onto her. Nothing got on his nerves more than not being taken seriously.
"Okay, that's enough there, Mophead," Harune said softly, putting up her hand to push the katana away. Kakashi's natural eye widened, and he snapped his Sharingan open to analyze the woman. He hadn't been called Mophead in years, not since—
"Harune?" he whispered, letting his hand drop to his side. The woman nodded excitedly, and Kakashi questioned how he hadn't immediately recognized the earthy green of her eyes and the shining black locks that hung off her shoulder in one long braid.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as though afraid any sudden movements would scare her away, Kakashi lifted his free arm, a wave of intense relief and happiness hitting him like a ton of bricks when his hand came into contact with Harune's shoulder. She was real, not some sort of dream his haunted brain had concocted whenever he had foolishly allowed his eyes to shut for a few hours of nightmarish sleep. Then, forgetting all the cautiousness of less than a moment ago, Kakashi pulled the woman into him, wrapping both arms around her and holding on as tightly as was humanly possible. There it was, that sweet and simultaneously metallic scent, sending him back in time to the too few years when everything in his life was okay, and his friends were still alive, and Harune was as clingy to his genin team as ever, and Minato was there to guide him out of the darkness in which he had grown up.
He buried his face into her hair, breathing her in and momentarily allowing himself to sink into the comforting sensation of which he was so deeply depraved.
Harune had to stop herself from flinching the moment Kakashi had pulled her towards him, reminding herself that this was her childhood best friend, not one of Orochimaru's twisted and perverted labrats. It had taken even more effort to figure out how to respond to Kakashi's very sudden display of affection. Needless to say, neither Orochimaru nor anyone affiliated with him were particularly caring people, and Harune had grown unaccustomed to being touched unless she was fighting on the battlefield or being sliced open during one of the Sannin's grotesque trials.
Kakashi was beginning to grow concerned about Harune's apparent unresponsiveness and was about to pull away when he finally felt Harune's arms wrap around his neck and her hands secure themselves in his hair.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Kakashi said in her ear, not daring to pull away from her for fear that she would slip away from him once more. Not only that, but if his ANBU teammates were to hear him talking, they would surely come out to see what was going on, cutting his reunion with Harune short, and he wasn't ready for that yet.
"Ano…" Harune started, unsure of how to explain what exactly she was doing. She couldn't really tell an ANBU captain that she was out to steal on of Sasori of the Red Sand's puppets.
Harune's eyes shot wide open, and she nearly toppled off the tree limb she had nested herself on.
How could she have forgotten?!
Orochimaru had wanted Harune to retrieve one of Sasori's many lethal puppets, undoubtedly for one of his newest trials.
"If you can't take his chakra, then we'll take the next best thing," the serpentine Sannin's voice hissed in Harune's memory. She had been utterly confused at the time as to what he had meant by her not being able to claim Sasori's chakra as her own; at the time she hadn't known that she had worked alongside the Puppet Master for an entire year, not since Orochimaru had suppressed her memories in a genjutsu.
But now, she knew. Inoichi had said he had found visions of a red-haired boy about her age floating in her splintered mind, and if it was true that Akatsuki operated in pairs, then Sasori of the Red Sand had to have been her partner.
Harune grimaced. She hated puppet users; the clickety-clackety sound of the wooden dolls' movements, the permanent, vacant expressions on their faces, and worst of all, the audacity of the shinobi who had the gall to hide themselves behind their nasty playthings. Harune couldn't stand cowards in battle, and to her, puppet masters were just that.
How she had endured working alongside one, Harune couldn't imagine.
But it didn't matter, not when she finally had something on Akatsuki.
Kuso, she cursed herself, had she only remembered sooner. She was an idiot for having let that simple piece of information slip her mind. So simple, and yet so important. She was a jonin, for Christ's sake, how could she have allowed herself to forget that this whole time, she had known about Akatsuki.
Well, she sighed internally, repositioning herself against the tree trunk, I might be six months late, but better late than never. At least I know I have to go back hunting for Sasori of the Red Sand. It's time to finish what I had started.
Kakashi glared into the fire crackling at the center of his little ANBU cell. All he wanted was to get back to Konoha as quickly as possible and apologize to Harune yet again for having been such a dick the last two months.
They would have made it back today, had their return not been stalled by a group of lowly bandits who clearly didn't know their asses from their hands.
He probably would have found the situation a little more amusing had he not had attaining Harune's forgiveness on his mind. He couldn't really blame the bandits for confusing his elite ANBU assassination unit for a mere genin team; with a child as young as Uchiha Itachi flying through the trees alongside Tenzo and Yugao, both still quite young themselves, and him, it was a relatively understandable error.
They hadn't killed their attackers; they were simple men and hardly a serious threat, but they had tied them up to a tree unconscious and under a numbing genjutsu that would disorient them for quite some time as punishment for delaying their return home. It would be at least another half a day's travel back.
Letting out a grunt, Kakashi lay himself down beside the fire, trying his best to remain numb to the bitter cold surrounding him.