Kakashi closed his eyes and reached out to scan the environment. "Nothing," he found.

"Excellent." Orochimaru lay the boy down gently in the space they were using as a guard post. Since things were much improved between them, Kakashi had suggested family time.

"Do you think I should take him flying sometimes?" Kakashi wondered. "I haven't done so, except to move him here. He might like it."

Orochimaru shook his head. "Not until we move. No clone of yours can get away with capturing shinobi that many times."

Kakashi lowered his head. "Mah, that's right. Well, I can wait."

Orochimaru sat and made himself comfortable. "Speaking of your clones, how are they adjusting to their new roles?"

Kakashi sent out requests for news. When he received reports a couple seconds later, he grinned. "Oh, no trouble. No trouble at all." He opened his eyes, allowing them to sparkle with a mischievous look. "No bad trouble, anyway."

Orochimaru hissed admiringly. "You look truly demonic with that look in your eyes, Puppy. You could have been an absolute horror."

Kakashi closed his eyes in happy little curves, still smiling. "I was raised differently."

"Fortunately for the rest of us."

Kakashi nodded. My life is a string of good fortune, as much as it may seem otherwise when I'm depressed. What would I have become if it hadn't been?

"Puppy," Orochimaru said softly. "I've thought more about what you said last night." He crossed his arms. "The surprise is out, so there's no need to wait. I didn't appreciate your idea being kept from me, but I would like to explore the sunken island."

Kakashi raised his tail. All right! "Of course. Now, how do you want to get there? You're right - I can't ask one of my clones to kidnap the foreign shinobi every time we wish to fly somewhere."

"I know a way," Orochimaru said lightly. Kakashi's tail started to wag.

.

Several hours later and many kilometers to the northwest, they were far from the bay, far from any mysteries or superstitions that would hold back the development of a bustling town, and meandering their way through said town towards the docks.

Kakashi was calling himself Mako now, and had dark brown hair and glasses. He also had his hand entwined with Tsukina's, which might get him jumped at some point. Tsukina laughed at his concern. "Relax," she whispered. "We're going to disappear anyway."

"Won't that be suspicious since everyone is looking at you?"

"Of course not. I've been disappearing in this form for a long time; nobody thinks it odd that a women who attracts as much attention as I do would develop the ability to disappear from the public eye. Everyone has to have privacy."

Kakashi sighed. "I still do not understand how this works. By attracting so much attention, you avoid detection. How is it possible?"

Tsukina shot him a glare. "You have your clones causing as much trouble as they possibly can. It's the same method."

"My clones are disguised so they don't look exactly like me, though," Kakashi whispered.

Tsukina chuckled. "I am still happy you don't understand it."

Kakashi gave up. He is unbelievable. It has always been hard to get a straight answer out of him in this form. Instead, Kakashi looked around and pretended to be looking at products for sale, all the while making his way closer to the docks.

At a tug of her hand, he slipped after Tsukina down a narrow alley, so suddenly and smoothly that it was possible an onlooker who had been directly watching them might not know where they had gone. This movement… It is only running, but it feels different. I feel different. They turned at bizarre angles, making their way up, to the side, and through a winding course of buildings and other obstacles. Kakashi had the peculiar feeling of not running so much as sliding.

Finally, they transformed into ordinary animals and strode out onto the docks, where nobody noticed them and they slipped into the water as soundlessly as otters. Once in relatively deep water, Kakashi spread a thin layer of transparent darkness out to capture a bubble of air, and wrapped them both in it.

"Diving Spider no Jutsu," Orochimaru murmured. They did not bother with any disguise once coming out of the transformation.

Kakashi shrugged. "There are no boundaries to my darkness. Hand signs make jutsu more structured, more different and distinct, in a way that I'm probably failing to capture. My darkness is not like that. I can't find any differences to tell one thing from the other. I can't give any use of it a name."

"Or you don't want to," Orochimaru replied.

"That too. It's a part of me; why should I have to give it a name? I don't have a special name for moving my arm."

"Flexing. Twisting. Grabbing," Orochimaru listed. "But I suppose you're right. All are much less precise than the names of ninjutsus."

Kakashi's heart took a leap. "You know, I don't have to name it when I walk on water or up a tree. What if chakra was like that in his time? What if it didn't need a name?"

Orochimaru was silent for a while. Eventually, he murmured, "Interesting idea. But it should wait until we can ask him."

Kakashi judged them to be far enough out for it to be safe to form a ray-shape out of the air bubble he had captured. "You and your interesting things. I had no trouble waiting before you showed up." Kakashi remembered those dark times. "Everything seemed very much the same. I didn't itch to approach anything. Now there are so many things I have to be in agony waiting for. I can't believe I let you do this to me."

"I have the same trouble," Orochimaru shot back. "You and your mysteries."

"Yours," Kakashi countered. After all this time, I still don't know why you are like me. Will I ever learn?

The bubble-ray surfaced to take on fresh air, and Kakashi looked back. The coastline was out of sight, except as a vague blurry line. "Alright, now for the interesting part," he told Orochimaru, and the ray dived.

Deeper and deeper they went, into darkness so extreme that Kakashi soon lost sight of his companion's white skin. The darkness of the bubble refused to bend at all, so outside pressure did not reach them, but Kakashi was still nervous about the increasing pressure he could feel. He checked on Orochimaru every two seconds to be sure it did not reach them inside.

Orochimaru's eyes lit up, literally, in the brief flare of a bioluminescent fish swimming by. Kakashi relaxed, whispering, "Whoa…" Did such a shade of blue-white exist in the world above?

By the flashes and glows of fish, minuscule crustaceans, and whirling clouds of water, they saw strange formations on the sea floor, and even stranger creatures. A brief flash illuminated something too briefly for either of them to see, but Kakashi thought it looked like a tremendous fan of coral, hundreds of meters below where coral should grow. He checked and saw it to be a colony of tube-shaped worms, instead. Amazing. They appeared to be flicking parts of themselves out into the water near a plume of thick smoke that was invisible in the dark.

Kakashi allowed himself full vision in the darkness, which he had been repressing earlier. The ocean floor suddenly became more visible and more clearly detailed than anything Kakashi had ever seen, even on the night when he had first released his senses. "Oh my gods," he could not help exclaiming. "That smoke! It's like we're surrounded by small volcanoes."

"Is that what these piles are?" Orochimaru asked, squinting.

"Yeah," Kakashi nodded. "Well, no, not that one." He sensed Orochimaru's attention on a particularly bright pile of creatures. "That's a dead whale."

"That explains why it would be brighter than everything else," Orochimaru mused. A relatively large fish with big teeth captured a smaller fish when the smaller fish swam directly up to the light dangling from its forehead. "Hah, there are probably fish down here that have such a light directly in their mouths to spare them the extra step."

"Or not," Kakashi said, in a tone of voice that indicated Orochimaru should not ask what he meant. Kakashi steered them away from the giant insect with a shudder. Not even an Aburame would go near that! "There are rocks up ahead, and the slope changes. I think we're nearing the island."

The slope did indeed rise gently. The light-makers disappeared as the water became shallow enough to possess faint traces of sunlight, and they began to see red algae and other mid-depth organisms. Kakashi was checking the temperature of the water to see if this was a warm shallow sea when, out of the blue, something dark loomed.

Kakashi easily dodged the largest and strangest plume of rock he had ever seen. Naturally, he took them back for a closer look. Orochimaru had to squint to see, but even he could make out an oddly-shaped rock formation. "What is that, Puppy?"

"Lava," Kakashi whispered. "It's round because that's how it comes out, before it cools down and turns solid." The bubble ray turned as Kakashi did, taking in their surroundings. "We're here."

Kakashi rose to take more fresh air, before descending for a thorough exploration. Orochimaru hissed in displeasure. "The light is not nearly enough. I can see evidence of an explosion, but not much more."

Kakashi tried to make up for this by describing everything they passed by in vivid language - the scattered pieces of rock, the fractured bedrock they passed over, the petrified remains of blasted trees. As they moved to the outside of the ruins, Kakashi found more and more petrified wood to describe. It must have been close enough to the edge of the island to slide into the sea and thereby avoid being burned up.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, bringing the ray to a sudden stop. "There - a mast! It's long, round, smooth. It must be."

"What else?" Orochimaru urged as they approached for a better look.

"Ah… Not much. Those tatters might have been cloth once. Not now. Sorry," Kakashi apologized.

"What else? Living places?" Orochimaru asked.

They drifted around the shallow sea for a long time, but did not find anything very substantial. Splinters and petrified wood abounded, the mast being the largest of them all. Kakashi guessed that human homes would not have crumbled into the ocean, so they would have all burned. All in all, the goal of their little voyage turned out to be a huge letdown. "This is better," Kakashi said in reference to the plume of black smoke they passed on their way out. Orochimaru agreed.

.

Night had long since fallen when they returned. Kakashi yawned, but dutifully kept his senses extended. "Shinobi to the east," he reported. "Not close. One of my clones is keeping an eye on them." Orochimaru did not respond. They were both tired.

The caretaking clone looked Kakashi significantly in the eyes before allowing himself to be reabsorbed. Kakashi understood why once he had the clone's memories. The guard clone had returned with the vest.

The guard clone snuck in quietly and placed the vest behind Kakashi's back, then rejoined him, so stealthily that Orochimaru did not notice. Kakashi walked up with both of his hands behind his back holding the vest. "Hey."

Orochimaru glanced up from his measurements, then down at Kakashi's hands. Kakashi took them out from behind his back and held out the vest, now solid black. "Surprise!"

The snake's eyes widened. "I had almost forgotten…" he said as he took it. Kakashi grinned and watched as Orochimaru put it on. It really does do nice things for his shoulders! Once it was on, Kakashi embraced him in a hug.

Orochimaru held him back, but hesitantly. Huh? What's wrong? There shouldn't be anything wrong after such a good day. Kakashi glanced down at Orochimaru's soul and saw conflict there. It looked very alluring; Kakashi thought it looked spicy, though he had no idea how he could tell that. At any rate, it told him what was wrong. "Go on," he encouraged.

Orochimaru squeezed him tightly, gasping as he did so. His heartbeat took a noticeable leap. "Do you really mean that, Puppy?" he asked.

Kakashi considered carefully. Do I want him to do anything? He does look better in the vest…

He nodded. "I do. But only if you keep the vest on. You look and feel good in it."

"More clothing. What an odd fetish," Orochimaru mused aloud as he ran his fingers through Kakashi's hair.

"You look good in it," Kakashi said as he nuzzled back. "I did say my mind needed to be on board."

Orochimaru stepped back as if he had been branded with red-hot iron. He glanced down at the younger snake with dilated pupils. "He'll be fine." He then grabbed Kakashi's vest and forced him from the room. Kakashi stumbled to keep up.

.

Morning found Kakashi soundly asleep. His tail was tucked between his legs, his paws were curled restfully, he was warm, and everything was quiet and still. Orochimaru's arm wrapped around his belly, heavy and soothing. He did not wake up until Orochimaru moved said arm.

"Mmm." Soft. Mmph? Ssssss. Aaaavvvv. Hmm. His thoughts were still indistinct for a long time after he technically was no longer sleeping. Kakashi finally reached consciousness when Orochimaru yawned. "Mm?" He forced an eyelid open.

"Good morning," Orochimaru whispered.

"Mm." Kakashi closed his eyes again. Wanna sleep and be lazy.

Orochimaru took his arm from around Kakashi's waist and got up. "I'll catch breakfast." Kakashi missed him, but not enough to move. He went back to sleep.

Love you. Feathers. My back. Naruto? Pups. Kakashi's eyelids twitched. Love you.

"Sister?"

Sister pawed at his nose. He had to get up, before Orochimaru was done catching breakfast. Kakashi struggled to get up, but found all of his limbs paralyzed. He could not move.

But then, as if by magic, he did. He lifted an arm and slid the covers down. Following Sister's lead, he walked down the hallway, brushing against the wall as he went. He lifted a hand to touch a doorway, and -

Oh. He hadn't actually gotten up. He was still in bed. But he had to get up, before Orochimaru came back. Kakashi tried to get up.

With much effort, he succeeded in wriggling his way out from under the covers. Stumbling, Kakashi made his way to the door, and walked out. He walked down the hall -

Oh. No. He was still in bed. Kakashi tried to get up again. He still had to get out of bed before Orochimaru came back.

"Sensei!" Naruto yelled as he jumped up and down on the bed next to Kakashi. Kakashi groaned and buried his head beneath a pillow. Maybe it wasn't so important that he get up after all. Orochimaru could wait.

Naruto got down from the bed and ran away. Where was he? He had to find his way out of here, and fast! Enemies would come around the corner any minute now. Naruto tried to remember the map Yamato had told him to memorize before coming down here, but he could not. Every turn he thought he remembered led him to a dead end. He ran faster and faster, more and more frantically, trying to find out where he was by sheer repetition of the paths. The paths changed every time he passed through them, so he could not.

Naruto fell down, panting. He was so tired. He was going to be caught and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He cowered on the ground with his arms tucked over his head, trying to at least not see it.

A bird squawked. It was a messenger hawk! Naruto uncurled and ran for the messenger hawk, which was perched on the sill of an open window. It squawked at him and flew away. Naruto tried to fly after it, but ended up hanging off the sill with half of his body in either direction. He flailed forward, finally managing to fall.

Kakashi dusted himself off. Where was the bird from? He couldn't remember what color it was. He was just going to have to consult the mission notes and find out. But where were the notes? Minato sensei had promised to post them on a tree, but which tree? Kakashi couldn't remember if it was north or south of the base. Which side of the base was he on, anyway?

Kakashi headed north and remembered that the notes were posted to the south, just in time to fall off the northern cliff he had been specifically warned not to go near. There were rocks at the bottom. He closed his eyes and braced for impact, but instead fell through the rocks into an underground chamber where Madara and Obito stopped talking about whatever they had been talking about and stared at him.

"How did you get here?! And why'd you take so long?" Obito angrily demanded to know. His hair was long, hanging to his shoulders. Madara's was much longer, hanging nearly to the bottom of his red battle armor, and he stared at Kakashi disapprovingly. They looked like father and son.

Kakashi realized he was intruding on valued family time. "Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -"

"Go away!" Obito shouted, in tears. "Don't you know how long I've been living with my granny for? I never even knew my parents. You don't have any right to be here."

That was right; Kakashi didn't. He scrambled backward. "Okay, I'll -" He tried to get to his feet, but fell. "Sorry!" Over and over again, he tried to leave, but kept falling down. His ears burned. He was so clumsy.

Eventually, he gave up and lay down, wishing to just disappear from embarrassment. To his surprise, he did. He was now floating in a void. Where was he?

He realized where he was when his limbs began to curl up against his will. Kakashi struggled, but could no longer move them. His soul wound up tightly into a little ball, ready to be retrieved from storage at a moment's notice. A thin red string wrapped around Kakashi's throat, holding him prisoner.

"Ahem." Orochimaru cleared his throat. Kakashi remembered. That's why I had to get up before he returned! If I didn't, I would get trapped here. It's too late, I'm trapped -

"Puppy."

Kakashi's eyes flew open. He saw a perfectly normal room around himself, and Orochimaru standing over him with 2 dead birds, looking amused. What the hell just happened? I was chasing after...something. Why don't I remember? Wait, was it a dream?

Orochimaru poked him on the forehead to make sure he was awake. Kakashi's eyes opened again, and he wrestled himself upright. The movement made his head spin. He accepted a bird gratefully.

"Are you sure it was as weak as you implied?" Orochimaru asked. "You seem so tired this morning."

Kakashi wondered what he was talking about. Then he remembered. Oh, yeah, he was wearing the vest. It looked nice. Kakashi blushed. "I'm sure."

Orochimaru wrapped his arms around Kakashi's midsection. "We can always try again," he murmured into Kakashi's shoulder. Kakashi closed his eyes and leaned back into the embrace, not saying aloud that he did not want to. He couldn't imagine how he had found it interesting the night before. I am never going to lose my virginity at this rate, and I can't imagine why I would ever want to, so that is okay.

The lack of reaction was enough. Orochimaru sighed and leaned back. "Or I can take last night as the lucky surprise it was and leave it like that." Kakashi nodded in agreement.

"I was just dreaming about Obito," he said, changing the subject. "Again." He took a bite, snapping the bird's spine and breastbone.

Orochimaru stopped before he could swallow his own meal. "I don't dream about Jiraiya this much. This is beyond the normal, Puppy."

Kakashi swallowed, spat out the remaining downy feathers that had resisted plucking, and shrugged. "No, it's very normal for me."

Orochimaru stayed silent, saying nothing before or after swallowing his catch whole. Kakashi wondered if that practice did any damage to his intestines. He did not ask. There were far more important questions to ask. "So, then, what do you dream about?" I've never asked.

"Odd things." The snake looked away. "They really are meaningless."

Kakashi's tail raised and started to wave back and forth. That means… "I can't believe that," he insisted. "If it seems meaningless, then it must be the most meaningful of all." What is he hiding?

Orochimaru chuckled, shaking his head. "Not so. I take the bodies of others, remember? Presumably, some of their influence remains. If I dream about being other people, that's the reason. Nothing more."

Kakashi leaned closer. "What kind of other people?"

"Generally female," Orochimaru answered. "On the rare occasions that my attention is drawn to it."

Kakashi leaned even closer. "Go on…"

The Sannin smirked. "If you insist…"

"I do insist."

"Very well, then." Orochimaru closed his beautiful snake eyes, but only for a moment, which Kakashi was glad for. "I tend to be in a forest or in town, although dreams where I'm in a rocky desert are not uncommon either. You said once that you expected I would dream about Jiraiya too, since he meant something similar to me as Obito does to you."

Kakashi nodded. "Well, not quite," the snake said. He brushed some of his hair out of his face, giving Kakashi time to grow curious. "He is never there. Sometimes, I am trying to pursue him. I am usually aware of him, and think about him. But as far as I can remember, he never actually appears."

Kakashi thought over his own dreams. "For me, the odds are even as to whether Obito will appear or not. A lot of the time, I find evidence of his presence, but he's not there. Before I met him and saw that he was alive, I think my dreams were almost all of this type."

"I don't even get that much," Orochimaru said. "He's just gone missing on me. Or sometimes I've gone missing on him - I tend to be kidnapped a lot."

Kakashi blinked. Kidnapped? Him? "Really? That's a very strange kind of dream."

Orochimaru shook his head. "It's common to find yourself lost somewhere strange, I believe. And if it isn't, I do tend to capture and hold my containers for a long time before taking them."

Literal kidnapping has nothing to do with dream kidnapping. Dreams always stand for something else. What does dream kidnapping stand for? "I don't believe that either. But that's alright; go on."

"Sometimes I am deaf, or blind," Orochimaru recalled. "But I am never without my sense of smell. I tend to be younger than my current age. I am often in a familiar place, either a location I recognize from Konoha or someplace that feels familiar even if I can't place it. There is this one recurring series where I am tending to a garden, and every time I turn around something's gone missing. I try to drive out the deer or whatever is taking the crops, but to no avail. I've started to remember that this has happened before in my recent dreams, and being resigned to having to be in charge of a garden again. I never remember that those previous times were all dreams and this is one too."

"I keep having dreams where my ears are furry and I try to hide them," Kakashi replied. "Or I used to. I haven't had any for a while now."

Orochimaru glanced at him. "Does anyone ever notice or react?"

"No," Kakashi admitted. "It's the classic naked dream, translated into half-wolf."

Orochimaru nodded. Kakashi's ears pricked forward as something interesting occurred to him. "Mah, what does your garden grow?"

The snake narrowed his eyes. "That is a good question. I have no idea, Puppy."

"I've had dreams where someone was interfering with me and I was powerless before. I was very aware of what they were interfering with."

"All I remember is plants," Orochimaru countered. "Nothing else. In the dream, I'm more upset about the loss of my garden than about any of the plants in it. The mere fact that they were growing there is what I try to defend."

"Oh…" Kakashi looked at him fondly. "A guarding dream? Maybe growing and nourishing something is important to you."

Orochimaru shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Have you ever had a garden in real life?"

Orochimaru shook his head again. "When the hell would I? In the middle of an experiment?"

"You should," Kakashi pressed. "Maybe it will change your dreams somehow."

The snake contemplated this. "I would like to be free of that frustration…"

Kakashi smiled. "It's settled, then. I'll get seeds, and we'll have to settle down in one location sooner or later to take care of our little brother. You can try to grow something then."

"Are you going to finish that?"

Kakashi looked down at the bird remains in his hands. "Of course. You caught it for me."

.

A/N: ^.^