"Kakashi!" the scream rang throughout the entire building and everyone on the same floor as the woman who had been the speaker cringed before staring into her office curiously. Whenever there boss used that voice, it usually meant something really bad was happening. And just the fact that she had called specifically for Kakashi made it even worse because Kakashi had the best record out of all of them. He had only failed one time when they had failed several times. He was the best and she had called for him using that voice, which meant nothing good.

Kakashi, for his credit, acted completely undisturbed by what he had heard as he stood up from his desk and made his way over to his boss's office, but anyone who knew him well enough noticed the slight quickness of his step and subtle change in his expression that showed that he knew just how serious this situation was. "What can I do for you Lady Tsunade?" he asked the woman who was now turning her glare straight at him. Her only answer was to throw the file that she had been looking through down on her desk. "Naruto Uzumaki?" Kakashi raised his one visible eyebrow as an eye patch covered the other one. "You've found him?"

"We've had three calls," she hissed. "Three calls in the last week."

Kakashi's eyes widened and his mouth gaped behind the facemask that he wore. Naruto Uzumaki was Kakashi's only failure in all of the time that he had worked as a social worker, but he didn't really count it as a failure because he was still determined to save the boy from his brother. It would only be a failure if Naruto died before he was able to. One of the things that made him so hard, though, was Naruto's uncanny ability to hide in plain sight. Kakashi had never gotten more than one tip from any one area that Naruto lived in. So the fact that they had gotten three tips in one week was more than surprising. Actually it was very worrying.

"How bad is it?" Kakashi asked.

"The first two were from his nurse when he went in and she noticed the abuse," Tsunade hissed, "but they didn't send it to us because they thought that they could handle it to us."

"And the third one?" Kakashi pressed.

Tsunade sighed. Both she and Kakashi had met Naruto when he was very young and they were vying for him so every time that they got bad news they couldn't help but to feel that they had really failed him. It was, after all, them who assigned Kyuubi to take care of Naruto. "The third," she said after a moment's pause, "is from the hospital. Apparently he tried to kill himself and they noticed all of the signs of abuse while they were operating on him."

Kakashi was so shocked that he couldn't speak for a moment. Naruto had lasted this long without trying to kill himself so it must have just gotten really bad. "I won't fail this time," he finally said. "I'm going to save him."

"You had better," Tsunade said sternly. "I don't think that he'll be able to last much longer."

Kakashi's first stop when he got to Naruto's school was to go straight to the nurse's office. Since she was the first to notice the signs, she would probably be the best to explain what all was going on. He found her with her head down on her desk and he was pretty sure that she was probably fighting off tears.

"Hello?" he called out to her while he knocked on her door. Her head shot up and she stared at him.

"How can I help you?" she asked after a moment of composing herself.

"My name is Kakashi," he responded as he fished out his wallet and showed her his badge, "and I'm from the social services."

"Are you here about Uzumaki-san?" she asked.

"Yes," Kakashi nodded. "I was his social worker when he was young."

"Then why haven't you taken him away from his brother yet?" she narrowed her eyes accusingly.

"Unfortunately," Kakashi shook his head sadly. "We didn't realize that Kyuubi was abusing Naruto until after the two of them disappeared. We've been trying to catch him ever since, but he keeps slipping out of our grasp."

"Oh," the nurse sighed. "I've seen him a lot you know? I've seen him a lot, but I've always assumed that he was just one of those fighters. I didn't ever think that he was being abused."

"You can't blame yourself," Kakashi shook his head. "You are not the only one who hasn't noticed abuse. Most people actually don't, but at least you noticed it when you did, and, hopefully, with your help we can finally get him away from his brother."

"I'll do it," she said determinedly.

"There is one point that I have to stress, though," Kakashi said sternly. "Don't let Naruto know that we are investigating his case."

"Why not?" the nurse asked. "Wouldn't it be better to have his cooperation so that we can get him out of there quickly?"

"Normally yes," Kakashi agreed, "but Naruto is different. Every time that he gets any sort of inkling that his case is being investigated he tells Kyuubi and they disappear again. We can't let that happen."

"But why would he do that?" the nurse asked.

"Honestly," Kakashi replied, "I have no idea, but it's actually not uncommon for those who are abused to do something like that so that their family members don't punish them for not doing it."

The nurse could only nod her head in agreement. She couldn't understand that fear, but she understood the logic of doing whatever it took to not be hurt so she said nothing. Instead she settled herself in to tell Kakashi everything that she knew about Naruto and his life at the school.

The next stop was Naruto's classroom. It was eerily quiet inside as Kakashi knocked on the door and he really didn't blame them. Most children didn't understand death and they responded with these sorts of shocked silences whenever something happened that was even close to that with any of their fellow students. At least this gave Kakashi some hope that the students actually might have been nice to Naruto. If they were responding with this sort of silence then they probably at least thought well of him. At least that's what Kakashi hoped was the case.

"Come in," the teacher called out. Kakashi could hear the slight shake in the man's voice, but he chose to ignore in favor of asking the questions that needed answering.

Before Kakashi even got the chance to speak someone in the room called out to him and Kakashi turned to see one of his old cases sitting in the room. Well at least he knew he would hopefully be able to get someone in this room to talk about Naruto. "Is that you Sasuke?" Kakashi asked. It had been a while since he had seen Sasuke in person, but he did eventually do random check ups over the Internet to make sure that he was still doing well.

To say that Sasuke was surprised to see his old caseworker in the building would be a complete understatement. The only reason that Kakashi would search him out specifically at school instead of waiting for him at his home meant that something had to be seriously wrongs. His first thought was that his father might have broken out of prison and a cold fear gripped his chest, but then Kakashi looked up at him and was shocked to see him there and that was almost worse because that meant his suspicions had been correct. Naruto was being abused. He had known all along and yet he hadn't done anything because he was afraid of his father finding him again.

"And who are you?" the teacher asked. He didn't need to suffer some random guy coming into his class when he was trying to teach his students. Well, he wasn't really trying to teach anything right now as he recognized that his students needed time to grieve for the one student that was missing and he really couldn't have mustered up the strength to teach through all of the guilt that he felt at the moment. He couldn't help but feel like his missing student's suicide was somewhat his fault. He hadn't exactly been the nicer teacher to him.

"My name is Kakashi Hatake," he said as he dug out his wallet to reveal his badge once again, "and I'm here to investigate the events leading up to Naruto Uzumaki's attempted suicide." The whole class froze and that dashed all of Kakashi's hopes that they might have actually nice to the boy. If they all felt guilty, that meant that they all had something to feel guilty about. More then likely, the silence from earlier was brought on entirely by guilt because all of these people had been mean to Naruto during his time in this school. Just like all the rest of the schools that Naruto had gone to. Saving Naruto now was going to be more difficult than Kakashi would have ever imagined.