A shinobi is a high school student like another - 25
OoOoOoOoOoOo
'let me apologize to begin with
let me apologize for what i'm about to say
but trying to regain your trust
was harder than it seemed
and somehow i got caught up in between
between my pride and my promise
between my lies and how the truth gets in the way
the things i want to say to you
get lost before they come
the only thing that's worse than one is none' – In Between, ''Minutes to midnight'' Linkin Park
OoOoOoOoOoOo
The infirmary was cold and silent when I finally really woke up. I gulped down the cold coffee and the sandwich before grabbing the few things left on the chair and quietly slipping out. Tsunade wasn't around, nor Shizune, but it was no reason to let my guard drop.
I got out of the HQ like a ghost - okay, like an old ghost in need of a walker - the majority of the agents walking through the corridors without seeing me, too busy to notice me.
My watch was saying it was five in the afternoon when I parked my bones at a bus stop two blocks from the HQ - my head wasn't spinning anymore, but going to Iruka's only by my own two feet with what little energy I had would have been one of my stupidest idea, as well as one of the last. Iruka had to be at his place at that time. I hoped he wasn't alone right now. I hoped he'd be when I'd made it to his door.
My half empty stomach twisted on itself during all the bus ride - a chance the bus was half empty too in this direction, transporting only little granmas with grey locks and flowered baskets. The grey streets whizzing by the windows between two stops did nothing to distract me from the thoughts spinning round my mind.
How in the hell was I going to begin this? What in the hell was I going to say? Please, made that he wasn't being watched right now.
I stopped one stop before his street - ninja one day, paranoid always as we say between us. There were people out, people walking, kids dragging their mother by the hand toward shop's windows still lightened up with Christmas' lights and decor, kids gathered together with bikes and skate-boards, rests of dirty snowmen piled on the sidewalks. I walked down the street, my hat pulled low 'till my eyes.
When I could make out the green wood circling the windows of the 'Ocean's shore', the wind suddenly chilled - or maybe it was only me. In any way, there was something wrong, something different from the other times. No one paid any attention to me, leaning against the shadows of a blind wall. I decided to do something incredibly stupid, seeing how low I was running on chakra: I pulled my hat away from my eyes, pulled the bandages off and opened my eye.
The 'Ocean's Shore' was crawling with energies at the pub's level - I was expecting this. But two chakra's systems caught my eye - they were in the pub and were way too organized to be mere civilians. My heart leaped into my throat when I saw another, even more organized than the earlier two, higher in the building - higher and at level with Iruka's studio, with Iruka.
I hastily closed my eye - even after a few seconds, I could feel the drain on my energy's reserves, and I'd rather avoid collapsing in the middle of a street - wasn't very discreet. My heart was loud in my chest hammering like mad against my ribs. I swallowed and breathed deep.
Let's see what we have: little me, usual weapons hidden in their places but nothing as backup and not suicidal enough to try jutsu in my state - the situation, not far from unknown and with a big Not Good in the horizon.
I immediately 'folded' all my chakra into me, trying to dissimule the best I could my energy traces in the same way I had asked Naruto to do before Christmas. It was the only way to get closer from the 'Ocean's shore' without being spotted, if the 'spotted' part wasn't done already. Oh kami, I hoped I hadn't been spotted yet...
I slipped through the crowd, moving with the mass to get closer from the building - the only safe way in I could see from here was the backdoor - avoiding the pub and the two at this level. With some luck, I'd caught the one upstairs unaware and we'd get the hell away from here fast. Iruka wasn't safe at his place anymore, I had to move him to the HQ.
I opened the door quietly, climbed the stairs - I could hear by the closed door that led to the pub that the place was packed. But the stairs were silent... too silent, just like the first floor, and the second one. I ghosted on Iruka's floor till his door. I stayed flat against the wall and turned the doorknob as slowly as possible - I had not the time nor the reserves to glance through the door, not that going in blind was a better course of action.
The door opened - I reached to the closest moving shape, a metallic dart hidden in my palm. The blow was turned around and neutered almost instantaneously and very discreetly. The same shape took my wrist (not the good one) and roughly dragged me inside. I hissed under the pain, muted but still there. By the time I came down from 'mission mode' and adrenalina, the person had revealed his identity - not that hard once I could see the clothing -, hugged me hard enough to asphyxiate me or shatter my ribs, whichever came first, and Iruka was standing behind with not a better face than this morning.
"Kakashi, you couldn't came at a better time, I have no idea what to do with the guys downstairs!"
"...Haku?! What are you doing here?"
He finally released me and stepped back to be able to look at me in the eyes without having to break his neck - Haku is a little head shorter than me, and two big ones shorter than Zabu-man - before explaining. Haku closed the door and locked it before leaning against it, apparently uncurious. It was very far from his usual comportment I noticed with a little part of brain as I was listening to Haku.
"Zabuza called me, asking me to stay with Iruka as soon as school was out and until you came back - we were followed from school to here, and the two guys down didn't move since then!"
"They won't move further," said Iruka from his spot next the door. He elaborated a bit when Haku's silence got a bit insistent. "Syd's keeping an eye on them since he noticed them."
I nodded as a response, but I doubt Iruka realized it: it was his back that was facing us. I suddendly frowned - what could Syd do against two missing-nin? One more mystery...
Haku hadn't let go of my wrists since he had dragged me in, but it was only now that he seemed to realize it. He let go of them, frowned when I couldn't help but hiss in relief. He grabbed my right hand, and brutally pulled up my sleeve, uncovering the new bandages already stained with blood - and the other ones. Iruka was facing us now, and I didn't knew what name to give to his expression.
"That wasn't there earlier," said Haku, his finger on my wrist. "What happened?"
"Itachi."
Iruka came closer, frowning and still wearing this expression. He visibly swallowed when seeing the others bandages.
"You were right," I told him, turning away from Haku's hands still on my sleeve to look Iruka in the eyes. "Itachi's like us, even more dangerous since he's untrained."
At those words Haku jerked his head up, and grabbed my chin with one hand.
"What are you saying?"
"Haku, can you make sure no-one disturbs us?" I cut him before he could do more than open his mouth: "I talked to Yondaime before coming here."
His mouth made a loud 'clac' when closing, his jaw tight. He let go of me, walked to the door and closed it quietly behind him, even when it was obvious he wanted to slam it. I didn't wonder more about his attitude even it was surprising - now was just not the time.
The flat was suddenly silent. Not exactly silent to be exact, there was the trickle of voices and music filtering from two floors down, the noises of the street muffled by the window above the rumpled bed, the sound of my own heartbeats, too loud in my ears. Iruka wasn't looking at me. I was looking in front of me. There was a layer of frozen snow on his windowsill. Iruka shuffled his feet a bit, looking everywhere but at me standing still in the middle of his place - I could see it from the corner of my eye.
"I..."
My croaking voice seemed too loud. Iruka jumped a bit, startled, caught himself watching me, got back to look at the floor, his arms crossed. I sighed.
" 'd better sat," I finally said to the silence.
He walked to his bed, pulled the cover, sat on it, forearms on his tights. I dropped my useless bag to the floor, and dragged his desk-chair to face him. I copied his stance, hands between my knees before raising them and rubbing my face.
"You're in danger," I said from behind my fingers.
I could have done better as an introduction. Go and tell this to whatever had replaced my brain. I continued before Iruka could do or say anything.
"The guys downstairs, they're the 'adverse camp'. I'm in the other one. If they get you... I'd rather not think about it."
"Wait a second, I'm not getting anything there.Why would they want to 'get' me? What's this shit of 'adverse camp'; you told me you weren't in a gang - and then what happened to you, and what happened with Itachi?"
I was rather happy to let him handle the conversation. Answering questions was so much simpler than trying to put my thoughts into some semblance of order to say something coherent. As for answering...
"Did you watch TV between Christmas and New Year?"
"What does that have to do ...?"
I took off the hat, put it next to my bag. Then I carefully took off my jacket, my sweater, kept my tee-shirt. The gel-like wanabee band-aids on the burns, and the bandages, were here and there and there again, going from my neck to my wrist. There was only the necessary ones left, the skin in between red and swollen, or of a sickly pinkish. I took off the bandages of my head. My hair was barely decided to grow again, not very fast - not fast enough to hide the cuts and marks just healed. I stopped the show there. And I waited for him to draw his own conclusions.
Iruka had took one and one and had come with three. He was far from dumb and would have ended by knowing, even if I didn't had have to tell him. The video had been played and replayed for a week, and I wouldn't have been surprised if he hadn't had began to have suspicions.
"Holy sh..."
He literally jumped from the bed, began pacing. He turned his back on me, then turned 'round. I was still sitting on the chair.
"What are you? No, wait, all of the others, the ones I saw, Zabuza, Rin, and all, they the same aren't they? What are you lot?"
Very very far from dumb.
"We're... all that's left of the Ancient Konoha with the monument. Ninja... we protect the city, in the shadows."
"The whole burning thing didn't exactly stay in the shadows. And 'ninja' as in 'ninja's wars'? With only credo: protect Konoha?"
Until there... it was going better than hoped - I had more or less forgot he knew a lot about the ninja and the old Konoha by his uncle. I nodded.
"Even at the expense of your own lives?"
My mind made a 180. His voice had dropped to Arctic-like qualities I had heard him use only once. And why this...? I made a move of head and shoulder that could have said everything and nothing. My life, it was this, it was the HQ and the dark streets of Konoha at night. It wasn't going further. We were all expecting to die in our line of work. I was expecting to end this way. But... it wasn't exactly easy to explain. Iruka suddenly frowned to my non-answer. He started pacing again.
"Is it legal?"
"Those who need to know know we exist. We stay out of politics."
We only intervened when politics were being threatened to be shot or worse, but it wasn't the question.
"Who's in the other camp?"
"People like us, but who sell their skills to the highest bidder. Traffics, mafia, this kind of stuff."
Why wasn't I explaining to him the situation as it was, with Otsuka and all the shit he had done and the war brewing up if it hadn't began yet? I don't know.
"What do I have that's so interesting those guys want me?"
"I don't know exactly... No, wait, listen. Not anyone can be a ninja, do what we can do. It's transmitted down from generation to generation, into clans, families. But there's also what we call 'spontaneous mutations'."
"And I'm one, a mutation? Feel like being in the X-men comics - what's next, the Professor X wheeling through the door?"
"If we were in the X-men, you'd be Cerebro - but one who'd spot chakra, not mutants. Chakra, it's the energy we use, not very noticeable, not known outside the ninja's archives and nothing to do with anything mystical. I think it's because of this you have your headaches."
He had stopped, turning his back on me, as far as possible in his flat, his arms around him. He kept silent for a while. I put my sweater back on.
"You want to get me you too? Or do you say 'recruiting' in your camp?"
I jumped a bit when he finally spoke up. His voice was bitter - painful.
"It's..." He didn't leave me the time to say one more word.
"How long have you been targeting me?"
"Iruka, I..."
"Have you slept with me just to recruit me?!"
He had turned back toward me abruptly, fists tights, arms crossed. I felt like a slab of lead fell down to my stomach, a frozen one.
"No-"
"Why should I believe you?!"
"I never lied to you- I thought you trusted me, what changed?"
Fear was making me lose the little control I had over my words. Fear, and the emotional roller coaster I had been dragged on since this morning, and a bit of anger too, that he could think I would sink so low as to use him against himself - and there was something else too, something I didn't waste time to analyse. Fucking emotional roller coaster.
"Everything changed! And I'm not sure I want to trust you! No anymore!"
I wanted to vomit, and my throat was tightening at the same time. I struggled to catch back my breath.
"I... Nevermind what you think, you want (I hated myself for even saying it), you're in danger..."
"Out."
"Iruka! Listen to me!"
"Take your things and get out! I don't want to see you again! Not you, nor anyone else!"
His eyes were red, and he was literally shaking with rage, and something else I couldn't qualify. Me, I think I slipped into shock, into autopilot. I put my hat back, my jacket, grabbed my bag. He turned his back on me. I went to the door, opened it and closed it behind me without a glance for him.
I barely noticed Haku sitting against the wall in the dark corridor. I passed before him. He didn't say anything. I don't know if he left then.
Before I stepped in the stairs, I heard a noise behind me, as if someone had thrown a glass or something fragile and heavy as hard as he could against a wall - or a door.
OoOoOoOoO
I took the bus to go back to my place. It was night when I stood before my door for the second time of the day. I didn't notice my hands shaking when I opened the door to the bleak light of the street. I didn't notice the dark inside and the heating turned off when I closed back the door. I didn't care. I was... numb - all hollow inside. All hollow but heavy, so heavy, too heavy.
I slipped to the floor against the door, the different levels of wood digging into my back. I wasn't feeling anything.
OoOoOoOoOoOoO End twenty-fifth part OoOoOoOoOoO