A/N: I guessed that being at school would increase my rate of chapter production. This estimate failed to take into account that fact that one of my classes this semester was too much to handle. Anyone who's interested or simply curious/worried about this story can look up the signs and symptoms of burnout themselves. I won't make such a promise again.

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Time passed. Kakashi's clones continued about their business in the small bayside town that was most definitely haunted. The 'sea witches' that had charged people for their 'magic' were ousted, and the yellow-vested clone that ousted them was having a lot of fun, until their lawsuit against him was thrown out. There were no witnesses to attest that they actually had been tortured by being flung around in a parabolic arc that rendered them weightless, so the charges couldn't be held up. The clone sat on the cliff where they had used to practice their 'magic,' and sighed. What was his purpose now?

The clone out at sea hadn't reported back, so there was no news there. The rogue clone and shadow clone sent out small boats on the night of the full moon, just to see what would happen. The boats, which were hardly more than children's toys, made it out over the rock formation with nothing happening at all. The rogue clone insisted on sending another boat, with him on it, just in case an unmanned boat would not be attacked. Several villagers that happened to be awake at this time stopped what they were doing and gathered to watch as an obviously-grown person waved his arms back and forth, trying to balance on a boat so small it didn't have enough space for even one of his feet. Said small boat did not sink, which the shadow clone reported as being worrisome. There were many witnesses who saw him change his material properties to keep the boat from sinking. If they figure out he has the ability to make himself lighter, we're going to land ourselves under intense scrutiny, the shadow clone reported.

Understood, Kakashi replied through a frame. Any other results?

He dove off as soon as he approached the rock formation, and did not surface for several minutes. When he did, it was only a few meters from me, and the witnesses were startled. I know our orders are to act as strange as possible, but that does not include demonstrating unusual powers in front of witnesses! We pretended nothing had happened and went to the hotel. I smacked him upside the head, so he will not act recklessly in front of witnesses again. And he said the rock formation was different now.

Damn, why did the other one have to go to sea without leaving a report on what he meant by normal? Kakashi included a burst of frustration in this message. I assume this clone was more descriptive?

The rocks had odd photosensitive structures running through them. They were reacting to the moonlight. Absorbing it? He spread transparent darkness in the water between one of these structures and the moonlight, to let the light through but absorb any moon chakra. It became less active and started to retreat into the rock. They're absorbing chakra from the moon just like plants absorb sunlight.

What do these structures look like?

Eyes. More like insect eyes than animal eyes. They are orb shaped, face mostly upwards, and have some kind of stalk at their base. Whatever reactions they have happen inside the orb.

What else?

The bones on the bottom of the bay are gone.

Ah...the ones that were so numerous you told Orochimaru we could make a fortune off of selling them?

-possibly.- Ahem. But anyway, the important part is that they aren't there now. They're buried too deeply for anyone but us to find.

Was he detected?

Yes. When he tried to send his darkness into one of the buried bones to see if anything else had happened to it, it was moved away. He was definitely detected.

Results?

All our boats disappeared. This is just before he surfaced. At least some of the witnesses saw the boats sink.

Understood. Keep your eyes out.

Understood.

Kakashi returned his eyes to normal, stirred his soul to make sure all the frames he'd just exchanged with his shadow clone were evenly distributed, and sighed. It was a pleased sigh, not a tired one. So the so-called rock formation might actually be a giant plant-thing feeding on bones and moon chakra. This is very interesting, and I will love talking about it with Orochimaru. But first, I need to lambast a certain clone for not discovering any of this earlier.

Before he could do that, Kakashi needed to find his seafaring clone. He dove back into the nature of reality as he could perceive it, searching for echoes. There were many echoes, from each of his clones. He could not find the distant ones from his most distant clone. Damn… Unfortunately, that was all he knew how to do. Kakashi's eyes lightened and returned to their normal human appearance as he realized he didn't know how to find anything from that viewpoint, except by the echoes his clones gave off. There are few landmarks in that view. I can see souls, but he is far away from any gatherings of souls. I can feel echoes, but not when he's so far away and I have so many other clones active. Damn!

It was roughly a week and a half after he and Orochimaru had talked about Orochimaru's dreams, discovered that he often dreamed about gardens, and resolved to get him a garden at some point. Kakashi was beginning to think they should have planted seeds right then. They were here, dangerously close to enemy shinobi, all because Kakashi wanted to see a mystery ship. But there were no signs of mystery ships, and neither of them had any way of knowing when the next one would arrive, and the enemy shinobi were not leaving. They're probably talking to some of the witnesses right now, if they weren't among them already. Oh, the irony. As a demon his main fear was having too much time, yet in this particular circumstance his problem was that he didn't have enough. It's not the funny kind of irony.

Kakashi was alone in an isolated room of the base right now, because there was only so much idle chatter he and Orochimaru could enjoy when both of them were stuck on high alert, unable to safely venture outside. This was not a hideout with many books, and even if it had been home to all the books everywhere, that would not have alleviated the situation because their bond was based in being predators together. Hunting, flying, making plans, searching and finding and running - those were all things that predators did. Kakashi found himself wishing their bond was based at least a little on ideas, so that they could exchange ideas happily while a clone sat on guard duty. As it was, there was little to do when they had no new information or exciting plans to be making. A week and a half was relatively soon to be requesting reports, but Kakashi had to. Orochimaru was getting temperamental, and Kakashi's fears that he would demand to know why Kakashi was so interested in these mystery ships were growing by the day.

Hopefully these wonderful, wonderful reports would bribe the snake away from asking for a little bit longer. Thank you, mysterious man-eating moon-plant rock formation. Kakashi got up and ran to go tell him.

He found Orochimaru pacing in one of the training rooms. "He is opening his eyes occasionally and moving them," the snake said. "Still no sign that he actually sees anything. His pupils don't expand or contract enough yet."

"Never mind that!" Kakashi grinned. "I have good news! It is good because it is news."

Orochimaru stopped pacing. "The ships, or the shinobi?"

Kakashi grinned harder. "Neither of those! My clones have sent back reports on the rock formation."

Orochimaru sat, and invited Kakashi to sit across from him. "I don't recall there being anything special about the rock formation before," he began.

Kakashi nodded. "There wasn't. However, my seafaring clone did not look at the rock formation or the seabed under the light of the full moon. The state of the moon makes a great difference." He proceeded to tell Orochimaru the exact story his shadow clone had just told, adding his own conclusions at the very end. Then. before Orochimaru could say or ask anything, Kakashi lowered his voice. "Mah, this reminds me of something," he began in a speculative whisper. "In your original story, you said that the rocks glow on the equinoxes. You did not say if this glow is normal or another one of the unusual phenomena. I've been assuming this whole time that they had some natural bioluminescence, but my findings make me question that assumption."

Orochimaru tilted his head, looking at Kakashi in an amused and puzzled way. "Have you? I remember telling the story very clearly. On those nights, the formation glows. That implies very clearly that it does not glow on other nights."

Kakashi shrugged. "If that is the case, we know where at least some of the moon chakra is going. Does the glow resemble moonlight?"

"I do not know if that question has been asked before…" Orochimaru whispered. He folded his fingers beneath his chin and rested his hand on them. "Give me a moment to recall. I had to see this, at least once." Kakashi waited patiently as Orochimaru assembled a mental image of what it had looked like. The serpent tilted his head one way, then another, as if listening for something. Kakashi perked his ears, expecting to hear nothing. He heard a faint whisper of air movement; nothing more. But wasn't that expected?

"No," Orochimaru whispered. "I remember the light being tinted. If it was moonlight being projected back out, it must have passed through crystals or something similar. It was not the pure white of the moon."

"Yeah…" Kakashi's eyes widened. "Wait. There is something else about your original story that doesn't make sense. You mentioned divers. They never find anything; not wood, and not bones. Why did my clones find bones? And wood?"

Orochimaru smirked. "The people here do not have sophisticated diving equipment, whereas you have eyes that can see through anything but light. They couldn't excavate the seafloor, Puppy."

"My clones didn't have to excavate or look through anything either," Kakashi shot back. "They were right there, visible in the water."

Orochimaru's smirk faded. "Your shadow clone never told me that. He was reporting on wood and bones that weren't buried?"

"No, the materials were not buried." Kakashi smacked himself on the forehead. "Damn! I was not thinking of the specific details of your story at the time I sent them out. If I had made sure to account for every detail, I would have remembered that that was supposed to be strange."

"Exactly how much was not buried?" Orochimaru interrupted to ask.

Stop the self-pitying. We have work to do. Kakashi lowered his hand and sobered himself. "The things you would expect not to be buried, for the most part. Long bones and ribcages were visible in the water, with skulls half-covered in sand. Pieces of wood larger than a meter on any dimension were visible poking out of the sand. There were about the same amount of bones as wood pieces." His eyes flicked upward as he imagined the scene in his mind. "But there shouldn't have been, considering that ships tend to be much larger than people, and many of the people have survived by swimming for their lives. Then again, there was almost that amount over again of splinters and little pieces that my clone had to use demon senses to find. But how can that much wood be turned to splinters? The proportion of wood that is in pieces to wood that is in splinters isn't equal when you break wood apart. There should have been more intact wood…"

Orochimaru's eyes flashed. "Did your clone look at the composition of the bones? That rock formation may be more like a carnivorous plant, in which case, it might be lighting up simply to lure people out as food."

"Damn! No," Kakashi said. "And the monster clone was detected when he tried to look, as I said. I have no idea. We did look at the wood, and I have the memories of what you told me about. I remember the signs of smashing, ripping, scattering… But the wood itself looked fine. Not decayed."

"Why the equinoxes?" Orochimaru murmured. "What value does an equinox have to a carnivorous plant?"

"Could be coincidence. It just becomes active every half year, and happens to coincide -"

"And why the moon?" Orochimaru's eyes were fully glazed, confirming Kakashi's suspicion that his thoughts were elsewhere. "Why moonlight?"

"Does the sun have any chakra?" Kakashi asked forcefully. "It absorbs moon chakra, not moon light."

Orochimaru blinked, and his eyes unglazed somewhat. "Hmm. I would expect it to, but I have never actually checked."

"Even if the sun does have chakra, it could be unsuitable," Kakashi said with a shrug. "There are any number of reasons why it prefers moon chakra. I don't think that is the most important question to be asking right now."

"What is?" Orochimaru asked. He sounded serious, which caught Kakashi off guard.

The wolf ninja was forced to scratch his hair as a distraction while he thought as fast as he could. "Well..." Why the equinox? What is it doing to the bones? Why did my clones see the bones? Is it a carnivorous plant? What does it use the moon chakra for? "Uh…" How did it detect my clone? Why did it move the bones away in response? Did it do it purposefully? Is there a mind in there? "Hmm…" If my seafaring clone looked at it below the surface level, which I have to assume he did because no version of me would be stupid enough not to, why didn't he see that this rock formation is more than just rocks?

Orochimaru's face twitched. "Puppy?" he asked gently. He suppressed a snort as Kakashi jerked like he'd been electrocuted. "Are you unable to answer?"

Kakashi shook his head. I don't even remember the question. But I do know what I need to do. He stood and looked down at Orochimaru, his eyes serious and determined. "I must call back all of my clones."

The Snake Sannin stood up so they were on equal level. "I need to find my seafaring clone," Kakashi explained. "But there are only two things I can sense when I look at the basic structure of reality: I can see souls, and I can feel echoes coming off of my own clones. He isn't near any gatherings of souls, which means my only option is to track him by echoes. I must clear all of my other clones out of the way to do that."

Orochimaru's eyes glittered as he studied Kakashi's face. "The sudden disappearance of all the local eccentrics will alert the enemy shinobi. In addition, you leave clones as guards for this base. Retracting all your clones and going off to search for him will leave only me as a lookout. We will be in a very dangerous position, with our defenses down and the enemy alerted."

Kakashi squeezed his eyes shut. "That's true." I shouldn't feel good about that, but it's a relief to hear that I can't do everything. "But you are Orochimaru of the Sannin. If searching for my lost clone takes enough time for them to find us here, which I doubt, you are more than capable of defending this base."

"But we won't be able to stay here, which is the main concern." Orochimaru's eyes narrowed. Kakashi's throat dried. Orochimaru walked up to him, turning aside at the last second to walk around him instead. As he passed behind Kakashi, he whispered, "Is it really so important that we stay, Puppy?"

Kakashi tightened his soul, exerting greater control over his body than usual. "Yes."

"Stuck in one small base with little to do but think, I can't help but think, Puppy." Orochimaru passed in front of him, glancing directly into Kakashi's eyes as if searching. "Why is it that you want to stay nearby so badly? Don't think I haven't noticed that you aren't telling me everything."

"Only in accordance with your rules," Kakashi said. Speak slowly. Evenly. Say only things that are technically the truth.

"I doubt that," Orochimaru said. He stopped. "Because I am being asked to stay with you, which makes this a matter that affects me very much."

Kakashi's heart was beating fast. As a snake and fellow hunter, Orochimaru could most likely smell that. Shit. What to do? What to say?

"The truth, Puppy," Orochimaru demanded. "All of it this time."

Kakashi's eyes flicked to the side, glancing down at the floor. Damn! He has me cornered. I should've prepared for this. He took a deep breath and tried to cultivate a fatalistic attitude, but what he had to say prevented him from doing so. "I don't think the ghosts are really ghosts," he admitted.

"Go on," Orochimaru ordered.

"I don't think they're deluded or lost," Kakashi continued. "I think they might just be...right."

He saw Orochimaru shift out of the corner of his eye. "They claim to come from the north, they smile when threatened, they don't notice that their vessels are broken and covered in ghostly light," Orochimaru listed. "And all of those are accurate, reasonable claims?"

"They come from somewhere far away, perhaps the other side of the northern ocean. They aren't in danger. Their vessels are not broken," Kakashi replied. Please don't make me say the word out loud.

"A knife to the throat, and not in danger? Torn sails aren't torn?" Orochimaru's voice was becoming sarcastic. Kakashi winced. "Why the hell would you think that, Puppy?"

Dammit, I have no choice! Kakashi's hand filled with darkness, taking the shape of a kunai. He spun and pressed the blade directly against Orochimaru's throat, giving the snake no time to react. The metal made contact with the snake's skin, showing its sharpness and coldness. Kakashi was not hesitant at all, and looked Orochimaru in the face as he held it there.

The snake's eyes were wide. He hissed in surprise, but did not move. He found Kakashi's eyes and stared back. "What do you imagine this will do, Puppy?" he asked with a mocking smile. Kakashi knew it was all a brave front; Orochimaru knew he could be easily harmed, and was appropriately frightened. But whether real or not, a smile was a smile.

"Are you smiling right now?" Kakashi asked.

The Snake Sannin blinked. "...Yes…"

"Why?"

This time Orochimaru did not hesitate to answer. "Of all the ways you could kill me with your demon powers, a kunai is not one of them. What do I have to fear from a blade?"

Kakashi narrowed his eyes. "A knife to the throat, and you aren't in danger? Why the hell would you think that?"

Orochimaru's pupils dilated, and he looked at Kakashi as if amazed. Kakashi tried not to let the pride he felt show too openly on his face. "Because I won't die from a mere stab wound," Orochimaru whispered. "I'm too powerful to."

Kakashi took the kunai away from his throat, dissolving it into darkness and absorbing it into his hand. "Precisely."

Orochimaru grinned, a real grin this time. "What do you think they are?" He sounded so intrigued that it hurt to deny him his answers.

Kakashi sighed and pushed through the pain. "Please," he begged. "At least give me long enough to reach my seafaring clone first."

It seemed like ages before he heard an answer. At last: "If you insist."

"Thank you." Kakashi opened his eyes. "Now, go. Go to the guard post and tell my guard clone to do one last full-area sweep for shinobi. I will ask all of my clones to locate the enemy shinobi in town before returning to me. Lock down the entrance."

"Understood." Orochimaru disappeared from the room. Kakashi clapped his hands together and generated 3 frames, one for each of the clones he had active in town. Each frame contained the same message. All clones: Locate the enemy shinobi, and return to me immediately. You are all dismissed.

The yellow clone happened to be spying on the enemy shinobi for lack of anything interesting to do. His eyes widened. Understood! I've found them! he messaged back, also making three frames so that the other clones would not waste their time. As he was already hidden, he turned to darkness where he was, and flowed out of his hiding place in gaseous form, gliding along the ceiling and out of cracks in the walls.

The shadow clone was in the process of being shaken down for information by witnesses who he was half-sure were enemy shinobi. He was having great fun stalling them and considered himself to be making good progress on finding out if they were enemy shinobi or not, but orders were orders. He stopped speaking and stood straight up in midsentence. "I'm sorry, but I have to go," he told them, before turning and running. As soon as he was out of direct sight of anyone he popped, releasing his memories all at once.

Before the witnesses could ask him anything, the monster clone dropped his fishing rod in the water. "I have to go too," he said in a creepy monotone. "I must answer the call." He turned and ran in a different direction, turning into a large, black wolf and racing into the forest as soon as he was out of sight.

The guard clone made a hand sign just to help himself focus, since he was not using jutsu. "Nothing!" His eyes flew open, and he nodded at Orochimaru. "I will bring our little brother up to you," he promised, before using the needle-point technique to send all of himself through space to the little snake's side. He picked up the little snake and hesitated. Who knew what their messaging technique could do to a physical body? He brought the young snake back up to the guard post the hard way instead.

As a result, all three dark clones converged on the base at roughly the same time. The former yellow clone was invisible in the trees, until he suddenly appeared in a burst of roiling black smoke. A gigantic black wolf leaped up through the smoke, howling in a bone-chilling way and leaving deep claw marks on the guard post. The guard clone had never bothered to turn off his demon eyes, which maintained their appearance even as the rest of him turned into an amorphous shape not unlike the shape the young snake's soul had assumed when it was lost. He saw Orochimaru involuntarily shiver, and realized his own appearance - a dark vaguely humanoid shape with visible eyes - must be too close a resemblance for comfort.

They all disappeared into the base, some of their darkness flowing into cracks in the rock, but most of it flowing through the entrance and relocking the safeguards as soon as all the darkness was through. What Kakashi called "vision" was actually something his soul was perfectly capable of carrying out on its own, body or no body, so his darkness found its way back to his main body with no problems. Kakashi shuddered as the memories poured in. Glee. Howl. Fear. Smoke. Moonlight. He shook his head, groaning at having to take time to process his memories before he could do anything.

No. Instead of doing that, Kakashi had all the darkness he'd just absorbed roll itself up in a little ball inside him. I am not going to waste time processing that. Quickly! He channeled darkness to his eyes and threw them wide open.

Almost immediately, a strong current threatened to sweep him away. Kakashi escaped sideways, into a milder current of reality, and looked around. A certain glowing flotilla of lights no longer echoed. Nothing did. Kakashi moved toward the glowing lights after his attempts to see through them failed. I can't see empty stretches with no souls on them with all of these souls in the way! I only hope I'm not terribly visible in this mode.

Moving from current to current, trying not to force his way through any one of them out of consideration for the structure of reality, he slowly made his way around the lights. There! He saw an empty patch which only lightly sparkled with small souls. I hope this is the right one. There is almost no correspondence with physical location in this view; I could be looking at a stretch of forest. He had no way to know, so instead of look any further, Kakashi held still and tried to feel.

Reality and all of its strange, vibrant, suspenseful yet active energy washed over him, and none of it felt altered in any way. Kakashi looked out in all directions, felt in all directions. No matter where he felt, all of the currents were undisturbed. There were no echoes, anywhere.

What?! Kakashi made his way between two patches of light to another relatively empty stretch. Still there was nothing. He remembered clearly what those echoes felt like. He could not be missing it in all the chaotic energy, right? But that would mean...there simply were no echoes to be felt…

That's not possible! He never returned to me! Kakashi tried random directions. He followed one current, then another, then another. He even went directly up to the tangle, out of sheer desperation and because it was the only real landmark he had in this view. He paused next to the tangle, and felt carefully. The energy of reality was disturbed here, so he couldn't make out very much, but Kakashi thought that part of the chaos he could feel near the tangle maybe, just maybe, could have been a faint echo.

But he wasn't here to look for that, whatever that was. He was here to look for a clone he could actually reach. Kakashi ventured out into the more coherent parts of reality again, and stopped. Nothing. There was nothing. Not even the faintest whisper of a faraway echo.

What's more, he had gotten himself completely lost, and there were no clones to guide him back.