Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kakashi regained his sense of self in a dark place, taking him back to the night Hinata had first sighted Obito during the team's first mission. Through many sleepless nights of caring for Naruto, Kushina, and Minato, nothing had come close to how gut-wrenching and exhausting that night had been. Even in the midst of the darkness, there was a flickering orange glow in the distance. Who wants to be first to walk down the spooky path in the middle of the night? Kakashi turned his head side to side and decided to start walking.
It only took a minute or two for him to reach the wooded clearing. The campfire glowed warm and alive in this dreary place. As his eyes adjusted to the combination of light and dark, Kakashi realized he was not alone. Seated on a log in front of the campfire was a man roughly Kakashi's age. The features were familiar, but impossible, "Hello, son!" Sakumo Hatake, Kakashi's father, smiled as he took in Kakashi.
"Fa-Father!?" Kakashi stuttered.
"The one and only," he winked, "God, you've grown up!"
Kakashi stared, unbelieving, "Dad, what are you doing here?!" he shook his head.
"Well, I could ask the same thing, but by now you might have figured out you're somewhere hovering between life and death right now." Father dipped his head slightly. "Please, why don't you have a seat; we can talk." Father gestured to a log adjacent to his own.
Is this some kind of trick, a genjutsu?! Kakashi's memory washed over him with a tsunami – the explosion and flying through the air. "Father?"
"Yes, son, what you remember is very real, as is this," Dad's eyes averted to the ground, "Normally, I'd be thrilled for your visit, but not like this."
"Dad," Kakashi sat on the log beside him, "am I dead, too?"
"I don't think so," his old man shrugged, "If that were the case, I doubt we'd be meeting like this."
"Dad," Kakashi said, longingly.
"Son," he shifted on his log to stare at Kakashi. "Tell me everything that has happened." Kakashi did, recalling events from being selected as Minato's genin to the recent events of Pain's attack on the village. "Wow, you've been busy!" Father spoke amazed. "And you have a kid on the way!"
"Yeah, if it is a boy, Shizune and I were thinking of naming it after you," he said with a smile, warmed by the thought of his fiancé and their unborn child.
"Would you truly want that?" Father spoke with tears in his eyes, "To doom a child to carry my name."
"It's a good name," Kakashi protested, "the name of my father."
"It's the name of a man who abandoned his son!" Dad let a few more tears flow, "A man who selfishly threw everything away because he was so short-sighted and got a lot of people killed in the process!"
"It's the name of the man who gave me life!" Kakashi said firmly, "The man who taught me to be the best, the man I idolized! The man who taught me that the lives of teammates were sometimes more important than some stupid mission! And had I listened to that lesson long ago, a lot of people would still be alive now!"
Father sat up, moved, but also concerned. "It seems we both have our sins to contend with. I'm just glad you've dealt with yours more effectively than I did." He rubbed the spot where he'd impaled himself with his sword.
"It's an everyday struggle, Father," Kakashi corrected, "and not a day goes by where I don't miss you, wishing you were here." Kakashi chewed his lip, "Father, what was the mission?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know the one," Kakashi said, "there was no record of it in the Hokage's archives. When Minato became Hokage, he and I scoured the archives looking for answers. All we found was a record of a mission that ended in failure – no mission log, no after-action report, and no indication what made it so damn important that one man had to shoulder the shame of the village for it!" Kakashi shook his head, "Even Jiraiya, the last person Lord Third confessed to, didn't learn what was so goddamn important that it took your reputation and threw it into the trash bin!" Kakashi huffed the frustration of not knowing for almost twenty years, "Father, please, I need an answer! You owe that much to me!"
"I owe you so much more, an explanation seems a bit hollow," Father answered somberly. "We were tasked with returning an artifact from our archives, a piece of an ancient rock statue from Iwakagure that had been claimed as a prize of war by our forces in the Second Shinobi War."
"A statue, a fucking statue!" Kakashi growled indignantly, "Lord Third threw you under the cart for a goddamn hunk of rock!"
"It's wasn't any statue," Father raised a finger sternly, "it was a national treasure molded out of a rock that fell from the sky around the time of the founding of the shinobi villages. It was a priceless historical artifact that we'd taken by force and had held under lock and key for decades. We were returning it in an act of goodwill, hoping to improve our relations with Iwa as a result."
"What was the statue of?" Kakashi felt the hairs of the back of his neck stand on end.
"In a word, evil," Dad shook his head. "It was kept in wooden crate with a special form of seal around it; we were instructed under pain of death not to tamper with the box under any circumstance." He sighed, "Instead, our asses got ambushed, several of my team were badly wounded, and the bandits got the box." He shook his head. "I made a judgement call, and I broke off pursuit to get my teammates lifesaving medical care. The Iwa were furious, accused us of staging the incident to keep the damn thing. Our relations with them never improved," he tented his hands, "and I doomed you and your generation to another shinobi war down the road as a result"
"And Lord Third let you take the fall for it?!" Kakashi again growled.
"That," he raised a finger, "is a much more nuanced story. I volunteered, perhaps foolishly, to retrieve the statue," he corrected. "After catching up to the bandits, I destroyed the statue and butchered all the bandits. In order to cover up what I'd done, I testified in open court-martial that I let the bandits get away, at the expense of saving my teammates. I never factored in how many people were willing to sacrifice a team of shinobi to save a little bit of honor."
"Destroyed the statue, why?" Kakashi demanded.
"As I told you, the statue in the box was not of this Earth," Father explained, "I don't think the Iwa ever understood what it was, or they wouldn't have kept it, either. The statue emitted a bizarre chakra signature, like it was a piece of something larger."
Alarm klaxons began going off in the back of Kakashi's head. "Naruto and Hinata said something about a demonic statue being described on the stone tablet the Uchiha Clan had – the husk of Ten-Tails! The Sage of Six Paths imprisoned it on the moon!"
Father's expression widened in alarm. "So, whomever has been engineering this all has probably has been planting seeds for a very long time. It was just as Lord Third feared."
"Dad, why did you put up the charade?" Kakashi cried, "The whole village thought you'd turned into a coward!"
Dad sighed, "Iwa was in a position where they could have crushed us then and there. They had every excuse to tear up the peace agreement and make us pay if word got out that I had destroyed the statue instead of letting it fall to some bandits. I made the decision to fall on my sword, despite Lord Third's protest. I figured a little bit of honor lost wasn't such a bad thing," he shook his head, "I was wrong, and I never realized how hard it would be to live a lie," he stared at Kakashi, "or to know my son would live in the shadow of that lie!"
"You said Lord Third knew about all of this? Then, why the hell did he destroy any record of it!" Kakashi vented in frustration.
"He didn't, he merely concealed it in file 444," father sighed.
"A standard, unclassified file?" Kakashi was shocked.
"It was the last place someone would go looking for something classified of that nature. Lord Third was rightfully paranoid of what might happen if my report fell into the wrong hands, especially if Iwa found out what the statue was or that I'd intentionally destroyed it." He shrugged, "It was one thing to lose a national treasure; it was considerably different to destroy it on purpose. Had I owned up or the story leaked out, the Third Shinobi War would have started that same day, and our village would not have come out on the winning side." Gentle tears streamed from Father's eyes, "I knew it was kicking the can down the road, but I did it to protect my village," he locked gaze with Kakashi, "I did it to protect you!"
"Father!" the swirl of emotion made collecting words difficult for Kakashi. Before he could say anything more, he felt himself being dragged away by and unseen force.
"It seems someone is waiting for you back there," Father smiled, "Good-bye, son! Live well, and take care of your family!" Father was replaced by a blinding light, and Kakashi writhed in a vain effort to push the light away.
"Kakashi!" a familiar, chirpy voice screeched, "Kakashi, can you hear me!"
Kakashi's eyes focused and he his beautiful fiancé stared down at him. "Sh-i-Shizune!" he groaned as he tried to lift his head.
"Stay still," she commanded as she frantically shined a penlight into his eyes.
"Shizune, you're all right," he groaned as reality came crashing around him. Panic flashed through him, "Shizune, the baby!"
"It's all right," another female voice called, "She didn't use anything that puts the child in harm's way," Kakashi turned his eye to see Sakura kneeling next to him. "Sensei, don't ever do that again!" she commanded.
"What happened?" he scanned, looking for Shikamaru, Temari, and Choji.
"There was an explosion," Shizune cried, we thought we'd lost you there for a minute."
The memory of fighting one of Pain's forms hit Kakashi like a brick, as did the memory of what preceded the explosion, "Lord Fourth?!"
"He's alive, Kakashi, just very badly wounded right now," Sakura explained, "Tsunade and Akemi are with him right now." Kakashi caught the sight of Choji, Shikamaru, and Temari carrying a stretcher. "Now, let's get you out of here and regroup!"
Naruto sized up Pain again, knowing his opponent was far from defeated. Mom's arrival had given them a short moment to breathe, but the enemy was recovering with inhuman speed. He expanded with his senses again, sensing the build up of chakra to critical mass. If he tosses that, the rest of the village is toast, as well as us! "Mom!" he called out.
"Yes, son?" she asked.
"He's preparing a massive chakra burst; I don't think I can redirect it or block it!"
"Not by yourself," Hinata added.
Mom exchanged a glance to him and Hinata, "Not any one of us, but maybe all three of us!"
"I'll protect us," Hinata rose her hands in a defensive stance, drawing chakra around them as she focused the eight trigrams seal around them.
"And I'll protect the village!" Mom extended her chains to form a backstop behind them.
Naruto placed his hands on the backs of the two women who meant the most to him, bridging the three of them the way Akemi had the night they had split Nine-Tails. "I'll provide the chakra," Naruto focused, feeling the flow of Nine-Tails, Hagumoro, and Hamura's chakra through them. He glowed a fiery orange, mom a hellish red, and Hinata soothing blue-purple. Here goes nothing!
Pain released the attack, and Naruto felt the barrier fill in the gap between her net of chains behind them. Hinata's hands moved furiously to form a wall of chakra around the three as the torrent of destructive chakra burst like a wave breaking against a seawall. It took everything he had, but he braced himself, Mom, and Hinata against the tide. While the chains stretched, the barrier they held did not break nor did Hinata's the bubble of protection as she desperately weaved chakra between them and the blast.
The dust cleared, and an exhausted-looking Pain stood in the still-devastated ground before them. Now is your chance! Before he recovers! Naruto broke contact with Mom and Hinata, knowing they had mere seconds before Pain would regenerate. Turning back the attack had taken a toll on all three of them, and Naruto sensed Mom and Hinata would need longer to recover.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Naruto made the necessary hand seal, as he had since learning the technique at age eleven. Around a hundred shadow clones formed around him, Mom, and Hinata. "Go!" human waves of clones began assaulting Pain as he held back in reserve. Naruto began drawing in his chakra; spinning, concentrating, and building it into the size of a beachball. Not having time to concentrate properly, Naruto called on several clones to help properly shape the expanding mass. First Hinata, then Mom joined the effort, adding their chakra to the effort.
Pain cleared the last of the mass of clones, struggling to catch his breath through the exhaustion of his chakra reserves. "Let's see you dodge this, asshole!" Naruto charged forward with the swirling hurricane of chakra the same diameter as he stood tall. He didn't even sense the impact with Pain as the explosive mass swallowed Pain whole and exploded like a supernova. As Pain cartwheeled backwards through the rubble of the wrecked section of village, his chakra signature flickered until it was snuffed out like a candle in a high wind.
As his opponent's signature faded from existence, adrenaline began burning off, but Naruto's apprehension didn't. The real one is not among them! Where the hell is he! Try as he might, he could still feel Nagato's signature, and it was close, but he couldn't pin it down. Naruto began running towards the corpse of the now fallen enemy, the aches from where he'd been impaled through his legs making themselves known, as the numerous injuries to his hands and arms as he jogged forward with a limp.
"Naruto, wait!" Mom called from behind him as he desperately investigated the body for even the slightest clue. As Mom and Hinata arrived, his sense focused on one of the long-bladed spikes Pain had used earlier. While impaled, Naruto had felt the same chakra flowing through him as he sensed from nearby. Naruto delicately lifted the spike from the where it had fallen from Pain's grip and jabbed it into his right upper arm.
"NARUTO!" Hinata protested.
While painful, Naruto could sense where Nagato was, just beyond the barrier east of the village. "I've got him!" he grinned through pain.
"Naruto, you're hurt," Mom scolded, "and it could be another trap!"
"I can feel him, Mom," he said almost manic with relief, "just east of here!"
"Then hang back and I'll waste the motherfucking bastard!" Naruto sensed his mom's anger rising as she drew out a kunai.
"No," Naruto commanded, "there is more to this than just killing an enemy, Mom!"
"LIKE WHAT!" she boomed in anger.
"Like he might know where Madara is!" he shot back, "What if this war could be over before it has a chance to start, Mom?"
Mom's flailing hair slowed as her anger drew down, "Son…"
"Kushina, we'll get Nagato," Hinata said as she stared in the direction of the chakra signature Naruto was tracing, "Get Jiraiya and bring him to us!"
"Jiraiya?" Mom asked, confused.
"Nagato was once his student," Naruto said, beginning to walk in the direction of the puppet master. "He might be able to reason with him, without further bloodshed." Naruto sighed, feeling the countless voids where a living person's chakra had been minutes earlier. Each death weighed heavily on Naruto; Nagato's puppets had been looking for him. Had I been here, I could have led them away. All these people would be alive.
"Naruto," a soft, firm hand gripped his as he turned to seen Hinata, "You're not going alone." He wanted to say something about how she should stay behind, that it could be dangerous. However, Naruto nodded, and they limped hand in hand toward whatever awaited them when they reached Nagato.
Author's notes: Hi everyone, apologies for this being a day late. I had to train someone new at work and some family commitments this weekend - both of which ate into my writing time. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and will continue to enjoy. To anyone stateside at time of publication, happy Fourth of July. Everyone stay healthy, stay safe, and see you next weekend when the crew deals with the aftermath of Pain's Assault.