I'm back!
This one's going to be fun. Let me know what you think; I'd love to hear from you!
Anonymous reviewer(s): Thank you for reviewing! I try to respond to all reviews by private message but I'm sorry, without an account, I can't respond to anonymous reviews. I just wanted to let you know though that I read and appreciate all your reviews. They never fail to make my day!
:o:
Ectoplasm and Chakra
When Danny Phantom and Vlad Plasmius combined to create the catastrophe that would plague Amity Park for ten years, everyone assumed Danny Fenton died. But the truth was far different. Stranded in a strange land, a world-weary Danny meets a tiny blond boy with a nine-tailed fox on his shoulder and trouble on his heels. It is an odd turnabout to be simply ordinary in a village of the extraordinary… TUE timeline; Naruto prequel.
A Danny Phantom & Naruto Crossover Fanfiction
By: Sholay
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PART III – KAKASHI
:o:
It hadn't actually been a plan of his, but one morning on Danny's way to work his feet simply took him passed the hospital and toward the field with the memorial stone. Perhaps Danny was drawn there because it had been the last place he'd seen Itachi. Or maybe it was just whimsy. A dull ache in his chest however, seemed to hint at a deeper motive.
Whatever the reason, he found himself wanting to gaze on the stone and read again the list of fallen soldiers.
He was still a fair distance away when he became aware that there was someone else standing in front of the memorial. From this distance he could make out that the person was a man, tall with spiky grey hair.
Realizing that he may be intruding, Danny halted his steps then backed away.
It was hardly conscious movement. One moment he was stepping backward, the next his eyes sharpened and a gasp escaped him. The instinctual reaction to realized danger had him leaping sideways. He was mid-air when his brain caught up and decided to complicate matters. The result was him tripping awkwardly over his own feet as he landed and ending up in a heap on the grass.
The sting in his cheek was the only clue that his instincts had apparently just saved his life.
"You should trust those reflexes of yours more, instead of questioning them." A voice called from across the field. It came from the stranger standing near the memorial stone. "You might have landed on you feet, otherwise."
Danny was still gaping dumbly, seated firmly on the ground, hands fisted in the dirt. His head snapped back and forth as he looked at the man, then back behind himself. "What the—! What—what—was that a knife? What the—!"
In the moment between when he glanced behind him and back forward, the stranger was suddenly and inexplicably right in front of him. Let out a yip of shock, Danny scrambled backward and twisted on his hands, flipping to his feet with more fluidity than he usually showed. Wavering on his feet he got his first good look at the stranger. He was somewhat alarmed by the black mask that covered the bottom half of the man's face and the bandanna crossing over one eye. The eye he could see was regarding him lazily and was all the more disturbing because the man had nearly killed him and didn't even look bothered about it.
"Y-you… you just tried to kill me?!" Danny was a little upset by the way his voice sounded more shrill and scared than angry.
The man's head listed to one side, the expression in his eye vague. "Relax. If I'd intended to kill you, you'd be dead."
That comment did not in any way relax Danny. He backed away, raising his hands defensively though he had no idea what he'd do if the man decided to attack him again. He was reaching—reaching within himself… But the cold monster was gone. He had cut it out. He had cut out his only strength and now he was just weak.
'Gone! It's gone and Mom and Dad would be happy because it's gone and I'm better now!'
"My name is Hatake Kakashi and you are Fenton Danny, the foreigner and the Hokage's little side-project."
Struck by sudden exasperation, Danny straightened, eyes turning skyward as he huffed. "Do I really stick out that much? Honestly, I'm tan enough and I have black hair—which doesn't at all stick out as much as blond, pink or grey." He sent a pointedly critical eye over the man's wild, scarecrow hairstyle.
Kakashi's single visible eye seemed to tighten and the teen wondered if he should start running to dodge more thrown weaponry.
"It's not your appearance that marks you as a foreigner." Kakashi said ambiguously.
"Right. And I'll bet you're not going to expand on that wonderfully vague sentence, are you?"
Silence fell during which Danny purposefully maintained a low glare on the man.
Kakashi let out a sigh. "You're still upset about the kunai, aren't you?"
Danny reasoned that that must be the name of the blade that had nearly impaled his brain. "You tried to kill me."
Kakashi shrugged. "You have a surprisingly quiet tread. It was… unexpected."
Danny fell quiet at that, not knowing what to make of it. Certainly his 'tread' shouldn't have been audible to Kakashi—the man had been a good distance away and it was a windy day. His tread hadn't been audible to his own ears.
"And that's a perfectly good reason to try and kill someone, I see." Despite the fact that he wasn't sensing that Kakashi meant him any harm, he wasn't going to let it go that easily.
"You aren't even bleeding."
Danny swept a thumb across his cheek and saw that that was true.
"Whatever, dude." He deflated. The adrenaline had faded from his veins and he just wanted to get away from this creepy man. Shizune was going to lecture him for being late to work. "I'm not here to bring you any trouble. I'm just going to leave."
He turned his back on the man—ghost-fighting instincts fighting him hard on that one—and began walking away.
"Why did you come here?"
He paused, then looked back. Kakashi seemed to honestly be waiting for a response. Briefly, Danny considered lying out of spite. It was not his nature however, and his gaze dropped as he told what he knew to be the truth.
"I lost someone I cared a lot about. I came here for a place to remember them."
Kakashi looked away thoughtfully.
"What about you?" Danny threw the question back after a moment's pause.
"… I got lost." Came the clearly insincere response.
"Where?" Danny sneered. "On the 'road to life'?"
Kakashi actually let out a breath of amusement. "Heh. That's not bad, kid. Might have to use that one sometime."
Danny opened his mouth—to express that he really did need to leave—when Kakashi abruptly twitched then bodily hopped to the side. Danny stared at the odd movement—the man looked like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"Ack! Out of time…" Kakashi seemed to say to himself with a shake of his head.
Suddenly, a voice rang out, clear and loud, from thin air.
"KAKASHI! My eternal rival!"
Danny gave an involuntary hop of his own at the abrupt appearance of a second man next to them. Seriously, how did people in this village keep popping up so suddenly? They were standing in a field for crying out loud!
This new man was sporting a perfect, shiny bowl haircut that had to be a wig, bushy eyebrows and was wearing what could only described as a green spandex body-suit.
Danny eyed the eccentric outfit worriedly as he remembered his ghost form's own hazmat suit.
"You have been trying to avoid me! But I—the youthful Maito Gai—will not be deterred so easily! Kakashi! You must lay your youth down on the line as we continue our rivalry!"
"… Did you say something?" Kakashi looked at man with the bowl-cut—Gai—with impressive disinterest.
Gai's jaw dropped, but he quickly recovered. "Your hip attitude only makes me more determined!" Then, he snapped his arm out, giving Kakashi a thumbs up and a bright, blinding grin. "My hot-blooded passion and constant training is guaranteed to succeed over your effortless prodigal talents! Come! We will race around Konoha, 10 times, on one foot! You there!"
Danny felt a brilliant flash of fear as Gai turned his glowing eyes on him. He yelped as Gai covered the space between them in one leap and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"Yes! I sense within you a burning youthful passion! You have experienced the invigorating struggle of having to train yourself against opponents stronger than yourself, haven't you?!"
Danny was simultaneously freaked out by the man's huge grin and alarmed that a stranger had seemed to glean all that from just looking at him.
"I-I-I-I-I…."
"You'll be the perfect referee for our challenge!" Gai abruptly let Danny go, spun in a full 360 and produced a stopwatch straight from hammerspace. "Take this! And time our dynamic challenge! Yes! Let's go!"
Then, much to Danny's amazement, the man tucked up a leg and began hopping out of the field.
"Don't worry." Kakashi told him, seemingly not at all bothered by the bizarre entrance and even wackier exit of Maito Gai. "You don't actually have to wait here. Just start the stopwatch and leave it somewhere."
Danny looked down at the watch in his hands. It was digital and surprisingly modern for Konoha—which seemed almost to exist in an electronic dead zone. He pressed the start button and when he looked up Kakashi was nowhere to be seen.
After leaving the stopwatch running at the base of the Memorial Stone, Danny left the field, scratching his head and wondering what had just happened.
:o:
Danny got one day off work every week. Sometimes he would use this free day for some useful activities, like studying or exploring the city or going out for a meal with Naruto. More often however, this day would pass all-too-quickly in lethargic silence as he slept from morning to early evening. Unwilling to move, sometimes unwilling to even eat he would simply lay mindlessly in bed, aiming to sleep so he wouldn't have to think but hoping to dream. To dream of them.
On his day back to work after one such lazy free day, Danny felt something off in the air.
He'd gotten ready per his newly-standard routine: tugging on his newly-standard ankle-length pants and t-shirt as he strolled down the newly-standard dirt road to work.
He had paused to dig out a pebble from his deteriorating sneakers and was doing his best to avoid scratching an inflamed bug-bite on his ankle—Clockwork had sent him to this stupid, ankle-length-pants-wearing world just to spite him, he was certain—when he'd noticed his senses prickling.
There were fewer people out on the streets than usual. The people who were out were not the usual fare of people that he normally saw sifting between stalls and going about daily chores. These men and women were dressed mostly in dark colours. Many wore padded vests and even more had on the funny metal-plated headband that Danny was beginning to suspect denoted some sort of military ranking.
Everyone seemed huddled in groups near the street vendors' stalls. Some sat, some stood and loitered, others gazed at him with suspicious looks. They were all talking: quietly murmuring to one another.
An unusually vivid attack of déjà vu struck him as he was reminded of something that had never really happened: when Freakshow had caused him to shift back into his human form at a Dumpty Humpty concert, shattering his secret identity. People had gathered and stared and gossiped then, too.
For a brief, paranoid moment he wondered if they'd discovered him—if they'd found out who he really was…
The next instant he was dismissing the thought as ridiculous. What was there to find out anymore, anyway? His secrets were no longer relevant. He had nothing to hide from these people.
Still, he found his pace picking up. He gripped the strap of his satchel tightly, felt the leather dig into the scars still visible on his palms from the incident in Vlad's lab. He avoided further eye contact until he reached the hospital.
It was only once he was inside the familiar doors and within white walls that he relaxed. Then his ears pricked as they caught snippets of whispered conversations. Eyes flicking up, he quietly listened in on the two nurses talking with the receptionist.
"You heard?"
"Of course I heard, everyone's heard!"
"He's here isn't he—the last one?"
"—can't believe—"
"How tragic—"
"He's an orphan now…"
"So it really was all of them?"
"Do you think it's true what they're saying?"
"What, that Itachi—"
"Danny!"
His head came up as Shizune spotted him from down the hall and turned in his direction. Her hair was in some disarray and she looked more agitated than Danny ever remembered seeing her.
"Shizune," He greeted as he pulled on his typical apron. "What's going on? People have been acting strange all day."
"Danny…" Her normal smile was absent as she looked at him with an uneasy expression. "I'm not sure you should be here today."
Instantly, he straightened in objection. "No. Something's going on and I want to know what. I want to help. They mentioned Itachi—" Shizune sent the gossiping nurses a scathing look and they bowed and scurried away, chagrined.
"Don't blame them." He told her. "I've been in Konohagakure for practically three months now and I'm not planning on going anywhere. I'm not going to spill any village secrets, I swear. Please, Shizune. I can help. Don't send me home."
He didn't know why he was fighting so hard on this. Maybe it was because of Itachi, or maybe it was something else. All he knew is that he really did not want to be left in the dark. He didn't want to be isolated and blinded from whatever was happening.
Shizune considered him for a long moment before letting out a sharp exhale and spinning on her foot. "I don't know how much help you can be." She said as she strode down the hall. He knew her well enough now to understand this was an invitation for him to follow after her.
Danny spared a moment to cheer at his victory before jogging up to walk at her side. "Why? What's going on?"
"In here." She slid open a door and gestured with her head for Danny to enter.
"Wait," He paused. This wasn't a room he was usually allowed into. "Isn't this the intensive care—?"
"You want to help, right? Just get in." Shizune told him with some urgency.
He did and frowned when he saw there was someone—a rather small someone—occupying one of the beds. When he drew closer his mouth opened in a silent 'o' as he realized that he recognized that unruly mop of black hair, even with eyes he recalled to be big and dark closed.
"That's—"
"Uchiha Sasuke." Shizune spoke softly, sending the boy a sad look.
Danny's eyes snapped to her. "The nurses—they said—is he… his parents…?"
In spite of his inability to voice his question, Shizune somehow knew what he was trying to say and her lips pursed into a thin line. "I'm going to have to give those girls a stern reprimand for gossiping where all and sundry can hear them."
"I don't think they were being that open." Danny sent Shizune a small, apologetic look. "I just have keen ears."
"You do, don't you?" She said thoughtfully before turning her attention back to Sasuke. "I suppose there can be no harm in telling you this anyway. You're bound to find out sooner or later. The council likely isn't going to be happy though."
"If you don't mind," Danny said quietly. "I'd prefer you tell me rather than hearing some absurd second-hand story from the hundred and one gossip-mongers out there."
Her lips quirked, though there was no humour in her expression. Her eyes hardened. "He's not just an orphan, Danny. They're saying he's the only one left."
"Only what left?"
"You know where the Uchiha compound is, yes? Go there after work today. Then you'll see."
He looked at her in horror. "You can't mean… I… I was there. I saw the Uchiha compound—it's huge! There must be hundreds of people—"
"Were hundreds." Shizune corrected with a grimace.
"That's not possible!" He stressed, quietening when she gave him a sharp look. He was appalled. Horrified. He had slept through one day and this had happened? "You're telling me that in one day something wiped out an entire clan of people and left only one kid alive? How old is he anyway? Nine? Ten?"
"Eight." She answered.
Eight! Why was everyone eight?! First Sakura, then Naruto, now Sasuke.
"I was there at the main house just… just a few weeks ago! I met Fugaku…" That giant, foreboding man was dead? Danny couldn't believe it. Then he remembered Itachi and how teen had skewered a crow at over thirty paces away. "And Itachi! There's no way—"
Shizune suddenly snarled and snapped her head up. He instantly quietened at the look in her eyes.
"Listen, Danny. Take my advice and stop questioning this. And for the love of the Third don't mention Itachi's name around other people."
"Why?" When he received no answer he tried again. "Why, Shizune?"
"Danny you need to drop this. Please. Trust me. I've told you everything I can. I am not at liberty to say anything more."
He grimaced but bit down on his tongue. Shizune had yet to give him any reason to doubt her. If she said she couldn't tell him more then he believed her.
"Ok… you got what you wanted, right? You see there's not much you can do here. C'mon, let's—" She began to usher him out of the room, but Danny held up a hand.
"Wait. Let me—let me look after him." He requested.
"What?"
"He's going to need someone to look after him, check in on him and stuff, right?" He looked at Sasuke, lying motionless and pale on his back. "Let me do it."
"Looking after an unconscious person isn't as easy a job as you're probably thinking." She said, unconvinced. He realized he was going to have to give her a better reason to let him do this.
"Look, I can do this. I… I understand it's not easy. I'll do whatever I need to do. If he wakes up I'll be able to deal with him… I… I know what it feels like to lose everyone you care about." His voice withered as his gaze fell. Still, he could feel Shizune staring at him intently.
"Danny… you've never talked about your life before you came to Konohagakure…" She paused meaningfully.
"It's not like you talk about what you do on those little 'work hiatuses' you keep taking." He shot back sardonically. Shizune's gaze narrowed and he tsked. "Fine. There's a reason I'm not eager to return to my home, okay? There's no one there for me anymore."
Shizune's eyes turned soft and Danny passed a hand over his face, through his hair, to avoid her pity.
"Don't, alright?" He fixed a determined look on her. "Just let me look after him."
There was a long moment of silence. He felt an icy vice around his heart and for one, unexpected moment he was hopeful. He touched his fingertips to his heart and reached.
But no, that coldness was only his emotional reaction to the current, terrible situation. What he was looking for was gone. His power was gone. Danny Phantom was gone.
'He's the same as me.' Danny thought as he looked at Sasuke. But there was another thought as well. One that caused his heart to shudder with pain. His power… If he'd had his power…
'I could have prevented this.'
Before his thoughts could turn darker, Shizune nodded, apparently having made up her mind.
"Okay."
:o:
Per Shizune's prediction, it was more work looking after the comatose Sasuke than he'd expected. Feeding him and keeping him hydrated was a daily job so Danny had to forgo his one free day per week. The boy was also under high-security priority and so required around the clock surveillance. Shizune let him leave after dark, but while the sun was up Danny was confined to the room.
It wasn't all bad. It was kind of nice to have the break from forced socialization at work. He had long since come to the conclusion that they were all hiding something massive from him—his current working theory was that Konoha was the site of some underground, super-secret facility of uber-knife-throwers created by a group of angered, failed ankle-length trouser fashionistas who were all conveniently ex-military. Whatever the secret was, it made any relationship he could've had with the hospital staff, even Shizune, strained.
He had claimed a desk and chair near Sasuke's bed and soon picked up the habit of reading his textbooks aloud to the comatose boy.
Although, 'comatose' was perhaps a misnomer. 'Non-responsive' might have been more accurate.
The first time the boy stirred fitfully, Danny hopped out of his chair and rushed over, thinking Sasuke might be waking up. One moment he'd been leaning over the bed in concern, the next he was on the floor clutching his eye.
He sat there for a moment, stunned—because, seriously, he'd just gotten decked by an eight-year-old!—but then his eyes registered the flailing limbs and his ears heard the screaming.
He did his best to keep Sasuke from rolling off the bed, ending up practically on top of the kid as he held down small, flailing fists and leaned on twisting hips. Sasuke's black eyes were open, but senseless. Danny stared down at those eyes and tried to talk sense into the boy. When that didn't work he raised his own voice and screamed for help.
The nurses, led by Shizune, came quickly. They dislodged Danny from Sasuke and shoved him unceremoniously out of the room. The last thing he saw before the door was shut in his face was Shizune laying a hand over the convulsing boy's forehead, speaking words he could not hear.
For a long time Danny stayed there, outside the door, panting, eyes wide and hair dishevelled and hanging in front of his eyes. Only once the screams died down and the nurses came out of the room did he come back to life.
"What happened?" He asked
"Seizure." Shizune said, distractedly.
"Is he okay? Is he waking up?"
"Yes and no." She curtly answered both questions. Then, as though realizing he wasn't going to let it go so easily, she sighed and met his gaze evenly. "Listen. This is likely going to happen again. When it does, just do exactly what you did: hold him down, prevent him from hurting himself, and call for help."
"Is there anything I—"
"There's nothing you can do for him. There's nothing anyone—" She paused as she seemed to rethink that phrase. "We just need to wait for him to wake up. Until then, you just keep watching over him, okay?"
He bit his lip and nodded.
The next time Sasuke began to scream, Danny obediently held him down and called for help. Afterwards, while he dutifully cleaned up the water and flowers from a spilled vase, he kept one ear on the quiet, but heated conversation going on in the hallway outside Sasuke's room.
"The boy is trouble. Already the fact that he's alive has got the village talking. When he gets older and releases his kekkei genkai he's only become an even bigger problem."
"Do you have any orders, sir?"
"No. I made a deal and I keep to my word. Damnable though the recipient may be."
By luck and a conveniently placed window, Danny had glimpsed the owners of the voices as they left the hospital. He recognized only one of them, but had a feeling it would one day come in handy to know that village councilman Shimura Danzo took issue with the continued existence of the last Uchiha.
Quietly, he wondered what a kekkei genkai was. It was unusual for Danny to come across words that weren't translated by Clockwork's spell. Perhaps he'd ask Shizune about it later. Kekkei genkai. He felt like it was important to make an effort to remember that term.
"Itachi…"
He looked back at the kid, who was simultaneously sweating and shivering as he mumbled out that name.
"Itachi…"
"I know, Sasuke," He sent the boy a sad look. Keenly, he felt the loss of his own elder sibling.
Jazz…
:o:
Danny stared at his chopsticks. He squinted at the ramen, then back to the chopsticks.
Why was this so difficult?
He was terrible at using chopsticks. Always had been. Until now he'd sustained himself on mostly take-out and ate messily with his fingers and a flat-bottomed soupspoon he'd been reusing. But someone had suggested this cheap ramen joint that was supposed to be good and Danny hadn't been able to resist the allure of inexpensive food.
Now he was regretting that decision. Noodles couldn't be eaten with your fingers and when Danny had quietly asked for a fork, the man behind the counter had laughed in his face before walking away.
"Yo!" Someone greeted, sitting down on the stool next to him.
Danny blinked and looked up, meeting the twinkling eye of a familiar masked face.
"Ah… Hi again…" Danny said uncertainly. The last time he'd spoken with Kakashi, the man had thrown a knife at him. Danny was understandably wary.
"Having trouble?" Kakashi looked between the bowl of ramen and Danny.
"Um…"
"Your chopsticks won't magically start feeding you if you stare at them." The man advised unhelpfully as his own bowl of ramen arrived.
Danny felt his ears grow hot. "I-I know…" he stuttered. "I'm just… I'm just waiting for the noodles to cool down, s'all"
"Use both."
"Huh?"
"Pick them both up and hold them together—" Kakashi demonstrated with a deft flourish. "Hold the bowl in your other hand and use the chopsticks to push the noodles into your mouth."
Danny did as instructed and was pleased by the result.
"Ah! Thanks!" He grinned. "It works."
"That's how we teach children to use chopsticks before they learn the proper way."
Danny paused mid-slurp and glanced back at Kakashi. The man was looking at him amusedly over an empty bowl.
Empty?
"Wait, when did you…?" Danny started, looking down at the bowl, then back at Kakashi. He was sorely tempted to ask, but restrained himself. It wasn't really any of his business.
But… he gave the man a sideways look. How? One second the bowl had been full, the next it was completely empty… And the man had never taken off his mask.
It was during this suspicious sideways glance that someone else caught Danny's attention.
"Ah… you've noticed Naruto." Kakashi said mildly.
Danny nodded. That was the same blond kid from the apartment down the hall. The kid who hadn't paid his rent and had accompanied Danny to dinner a few times before Danny had gotten busy with Sasuke.
Naruto was sitting on a stool further down the table. No one was sitting immediately to the kid's left or right, in spite of the fact that the rest of the place was packed. That, Danny thought, was a little odd.
"He comes here often." Kakashi added.
"He lives on his own, doesn't he?"
Kakashi didn't answer, but it didn't matter, Danny already knew.
A thought flittered through Danny's mind. 'He's the same as me'.
"Why does he have a fox on his shoulder?" Danny asked and Kakashi looked at him sharply.
"What did you say?"
"A… fox." Danny looked at the man quizzically. "Can't you see it? It's sleeping all curled around his shoulder. I can't see well from here but I think it has multiple tails too."
Kakashi stared at him and, too late, he realized he'd said something wrong.
Fortunately, Kakashi did not pursue the topic and they spent the rest of his meal in silence. At some point, the elder man got up and left but Danny didn't take much notice. His eyes were on a diminutive figure in orange. When Naruto hopped down off his stool—falling nearly three feet before his feet touched the ground—and headed out Ichiraku Ramen, a group of seedy-looking men pointed and gossiped before getting up and leaving in the same direction as the boy.
Danny pushed away his empty bowl, tossed what he owed onto the counter, and followed.
:o:
The men didn't even try to disguise the fact that they were following Naruto. They pointed, chattered and smirked and Danny was disgusted to see many people take notice but then simply looked away. Danny, who was well versed in bullies and bullying, thanks to star jock Dash Baxter back at Casper High, still could not fathom the mentality that would lead to apparently responsible adults turning their back on a child.
Predictably, the men waited until Naruto entered a dark alley to ambush him. One had crept around to block off the exit while the other two came up behind the boy.
Danny lingered at the mouth of the alley, carefully staying out of sight while trying to quickly come up with a plan. He couldn't spot anything he could use as a weapon. That made things difficult.
'Ghost powers'd come in handy right about now. Eh, Fenton?' A small part of him that sounded like Sam mocked and he tried not to flinch at the reminder.
A reminder that was really more of a constant hollow ache in his chest…
"Hey, freak, remember us?" One of the men suddenly spoke loudly.
Naruto whirled, likely realizing he'd been trapped.
"No… Oh wait, you guys were the clowns in the last street festival, weren't you?" Naruto snapped with a cocky grin.
Still lingering out of sight, Danny had to give the kid props. He was gutsy. It was a little depressing though, to see that Naruto didn't even appear surprised at being ambushed in a dark alley by a group of thugs.
"Aw, that's cute." One of the two men in front of Danny said, stepping forward. "But no. You owe us money, kid."
"I don't owe you anything!"
"Yeah you do. You stole food from us, remember?"
"That was ages ago! And you already made me pay—"
"Ah, ah… that didn't include the interest."
The men were starting to close in on Naruto from both sides and Danny still didn't have a plan. Regardless, he put his hand on the wall, preparing himself to jump in. He had a fair idea now of where Naruto's rent money had gone and, thievery or not, the kid was a string bean—he looked to have a serious need for whatever food he could get his hands on.
"I don't have any money!" Naruto was shouting.
The men were advancing on the kid, rubbing their knuckles. "If you don't have the money we're gonna hafta find another way to make you pay."
"What, you gonna beat me up? You're only genin." Naruto jeered.
Danny paused, mid-stride as he wondered where he'd heard that word before…
"Why you little—"
"HEY!" Danny's voice was already ahead of him as he jogged forward. As one, the men all turned to him. Of the two in front of him, one had brown hair and the other had grey eyes. The man in the back, Danny saw, had short red hair.
"Who the hell are you?" Grey Eyes snarled at him.
"Doesn't matter." Danny said. "All that—Whoops!" He ducked neatly under their arms as they attempted to stop him and hopped over to Naruto. "All that matters is that I'm telling you to leave the kid alone."
Naruto was once again staring at him in disbelief.
People really needed to stop mistreating this kid.
"You should think twice before standing up to three ninja, boy." Brown Hair said.
If that was supposed to be some sort of threat, however, it sailed over Danny's head. "Ninja? What, like a gang or something? You can't mean real ninja."
"Why you little—!"
"Wait," Grey Eyes held back Brown Hair as he peered at Danny closely. "You're white." He pointed out and Danny bit back on a sarcastic response.
"You're that foreigner, aren't you?" When Danny nodded, Grey Eyes continued. "Then I'll give you one free chance. That kid you're protecting is a dangerous freak of nature. He deserves what's coming to him."
Danny's eyes narrowed. There was that word again. Freak. "I really doubt that."
"You're not going to move aside then?" Grey Eyes asked.
"No." Danny responded. And his stance shifted—widened, lowered. At his side, Naruto raised his fists.
Grey Eyes grinned. "Fine. I guess it couldn't hurt to teach you a lesson as well, anyway. A little bit of 'know your place'."
"And what gives you the right to tell me where my place is?" Danny said between clenched teeth.
"This." And the man fingered the metal-plated bandanna around his forehead. "You don't know, do you? Well, I'm gonna enlighten you, foreigner. Konohagakure isn't just any village. It's a village of ninja."
"Ninja? What are you—"
"Show him!"
Danny barely had time to spin around before a foot was planted into his midsection. Red Hair, who had yet to speak had sidled up to Danny unnoticed and lashed out at the teen. The kick actually lifted him off his feet and his back slammed against the wall of the alley.
"Had enough?" Grey Eyes taunted.
Danny was winded, but he managed to gather enough breath to speak. "That's all you got?" He smirked and looked at the men through his bangs. "The other day an eight-year-old hit me harder. If you're gonna claim to be ninjas you gotta do better than that."
Brown Hair snarled at him. "I'll beat you so hard you'll be spitting teeth." And he leapt forward
The blow aimed at his face was predictable, though Danny had been expecting the man's fist and not his foot. He twisted, dodging the blow. The man spun and aimed another kick. Danny leaned away from the hit, then back-stepped to avoid the combination of punches which followed. The man was fast. Faster than most ghosts Danny had fought.
But if there was one skill Danny had gotten good at, that wasn't completely dependant on his ghost powers, it was dodging. And he used it fully to his advantage now.
Ducking and weaving, Danny tried furiously to come up with a plan. He couldn't attack—he was barely fast enough to keep dodging. Finally, his back hit the wall and the man lashed out in the punch he'd been hoping for. He ducked. And a crack split the air.
Danny looked up and his eyes widened.
Brown Hair removed his fist from the hole in the brick wall, dust and shavings falling to the ground. But the hand that came away was completely unharmed, not even bruised from the contact with the wall.
Brown Hair straightened and Danny shuffled away. "You think this wall would hurt me? Ha! Ninja have the strength and power of ten men in their fists! That wall is going to be your head, boy!"
"Enough!"
The shout came from behind him and as Brown Hair stilled, Danny glanced behind himself quickly at the sound of a loud crumbling bang.
Grey Eyes had cracked the wall with the side of one fist and Danny's eyes widened as he saw the fist was glowing—swirling with energy.
These men were not ghosts. Even without his ghost sense he was fairly certain of that.
But then what were they?
The sound of yelling brought Danny's attention away from the fist and his eyebrows rose as he spotted Naruto. The boy had apparently been engaged in his own fight with Red Hair. Somehow Naruto managed to climb on top of Red Hair's shoulders and was gripping the man's ears and was whooping in enjoyment he dodged the man's angry swipes. Finally, Red Hair grabbed Naruto by the back of his shirt, ducked and flipped the boy over him. Naruto landed on his back on the ground and Danny winced at the impact. That must've hurt.
"I said enough!" Grey Eyes yelled. "You two are letting these useless boys get the better of you! Do I—" He didn't get to finish as a thick smoke suddenly exploded through the alley. Danny immediately squinted his eyes closed and the hollering and wailing around him told him the man hadn't managed to do the same in time.
Danny felt a hand grab his and was instantly wary. But the small size of the hand meant it could only have been Naruto's, so he didn't resist as he was lead away from the howling men.
"Come on!" Naruto called, letting go of his hand as they escaped the alley into clear air. Danny opened his eyes and saw that the kid was practically bouncing, a grin of excitement on his face. "That was just a smoke bomb. It won't keep them off us for long!"
Danny nodded. Together they raced through the streets, avoiding alleys and swerving around startled strangers. They didn't slow down until they made it back to their apartment building. In a bid to not wake the landlady, they yanked off their shoes before racing up the steps. Sliding around the corners, they sped through the corridors and Danny found himself choked with inexplicable, breathless laughter even as he tried to shush Naruto's giggling.
Naruto's room came first and Danny opened the unlocked door for both of them. Exhausted, they both collapsed against the wall of the room, panting with exertion.
Naruto was still laughing and Danny turned to flash a genuine grin at the boy.
"That was kinda fun." Danny admitted with some surprise.
Naruto flashed him a toothy smile. "You came to help me again!"
"Yeah, well…" The teen shrugged. "For all the good that did. You're the one who saved us in the end, kiddo." And without even upsetting his fox, no less. Danny eyed the still sleeping animal uneasily. There was something off about that thing. Had it really been sitting on Naruto's shoulder the whole time?
"One day, I'm goin' to become the best ninja in Konoha! I'm gonna pass the entrance exam for the Academy in a few months and then in no time I'll be a real genin. Then I'm gonna become Hokage and I'm gonna kick all those guys' butts!" Naruto puffed out his chest and nodded confidently.
'I'm going to be a ninja!' Hadn't Sakura said that to him too? Back then, he'd dismissed her words as a childish dream, but now…
For the first time, Danny seriously considered it. Could they actually be ninjas?
Ninjas?!
"Those guys were… ninjas?" He asked Naruto.
The boy nodded. "Not very good ones though."
Danny supposed that was likely true. Since, between the three of them, they couldn't even beat up a small kid and a clueless teenager.
He was going to have to talk to Shizune about this.
…Ninjas!
"So, this is your place?" He looked around the room, noticing all the empty packages of junk food strewn across the ground. "You should make sure to lock the room when you head out, at least." He considered also telling the boy to clean up after himself—three months living on his own had taught him that there was no such thing as a small ant problem—but held off. It wasn't his place to parent the boy.
After a few seconds of silence, he looked down to see Naruto staring up at him with big, wide blue eyes. Danny blinked.
"Um… Yeah?"
"You're scolding me." The kid said bluntly.
"Um… Yeah?" Danny's head tilted to one side.
"Sooo…." Naruto dropped his eyes as he drawled out the word. "That means we're friends now, right?" And the boy stuck out a hand.
"Sure, Friends. But—!" Danny withheld his hand and pinned Naruto with a stern look. "One condition."
"What? What? C'mooooon," Naruto whined impatiently with a little hop. When Danny merely raised an eyebrow in silence, the boy eventually quietened and pouted. "Okay… what?"
Danny gestured loosely up and down at the clothes Naruto was wearing. "No more knocking me over and stealing my clothes when I'm doing laundry. Okay?"
"Deal!" And Naruto surprised Danny by leaping high into the air and grabbing his hand, shaking it vigorously.
"Friends." Danny smiled.
"Best friends, dattebayo!" Naruto effused.
"Yes, yes. Best friends, dattebayo." Danny's tongue struggled over the odd word but he was rewarded by Naruto's momentary surprise and subsequent delighted laughter.
"No stealing my word!"
Danny chuckled and, as always when he felt a spark of happiness, felt a resonating spike of guilty pain in his heart.
Later on that night, Danny lay awake in bed, stared at his ceiling pensively.
'Today I helped someone. Or tried to, anyway. Forgot how that felt.'
He was still exhilarated. But…
'Isn't it bad to feel happy when it's my fault you're gone?'
Then, another thought occurred to him and he couldn't help the boyish grin that stole across his face.
'Sam, Tuck… These guys are ninjas! Actual, real-life ninjas! That is SO cool!'
:o:
"You're hurt." Shizune informed him the next day as she stood imposingly over him, hands planted on her hips.
Danny was seated at his usual table with his feet propped up on Sasuke's bed and a thick text in his lap. He made an exaggerated mime of taking off a pair of reading glasses to look up at her with a raised eyebrow.
"You know, we were just getting to the interesting part, The Functions of the Atrioventricular Valves: Messrs Biscuspid and Tricuspid. It's a very engaging tale and my unconscious buddy here is eager to hear it. Maybe you could just come back in an hour or five?"
"Laying the sarcasm on a little thick there, Danny." She said with a withering look. "Ok, fine. I'll bite: what'd I do to offend you?"
Immediately, he flung his legs off the bed and closed the book with a snap. Standing, he tossed the book onto the table and leaned in toward Shizune. "Konoha isn't just a random little idyllic village where an abnormally large proportion of the population seem to get into fights with their weed whackers, is it? You're ninjas!"
The look on Shizune's face was all the answer he needed. "Where did… how did you…?"
"Wow," He let out an astonished laugh, falling back against the table and raking a hand through his hair. "It's really true, isn't it? I didn't believe it... My God…"
Shizune hurried to the door of the room. She checked down the hallway in both directions to make sure they were alone before leaning back in and closing the door.
"Danny," She turned to him. "You're a foreigner and a stranger to this village. There are secrets—"
"How long did you honestly think that secret was going to last? It was a pretty stupid long-term plan." Honestly the only reason it had worked for as long as it had was because of Danny's own suspended belief. Because, ninja village? Seriously?
"The Hokage was of the opinion that you should be told from the beginning. But the council—"
"Yes, yes, the council. We already know where they stand. What about you, Shizune? You're supposed to be my friend."
Shizune met his disappointed frown evenly. "I could not tell you. You know that." She said bluntly. "How did you find out?" When he didn't reply she looked at his midsection, hidden under his shirt. "Is that how you got whatever injury you're hiding under that shirt?"
Danny cringed, bringing a hand to his bruised ribcage. "How did you even notice that? I've been in this room all day."
"When you came in, you flinched when you took your apron off its hook."
"That's it?"
"Ninja are trained to notice even the smallest details."
He blinked at her. "You're one too?" For whatever reason, that possibility hadn't occurred to him.
"You commented once on my 'fashion accessory'." She tweaked a finger at her metal plated headband. "Now you might as well know: everyone who has one of these is a ninja. Why? Think girls can't be ninja?" She quirked a challenging eyebrow at him.
He shook his head honestly. "No. I know you well enough to fear being on the wrong side of your temper. But you work in a hospital. That's kind of the opposite of what ninjas do. Conventionally." In his mind, he was recalling a similar conversation with Sam, who had once disparaged him for making some thoughtless gendered comment. At the time, he had begged off the impending argument with a hasty apology. Now he regretted it, knowing he could no longer tell her what he actually felt.
He couldn't tell her, for example, that hers was the voice he'd heard in his head, giving him a firm dressing down when he'd nearly fallen against Pariah Dark. He couldn't remind her of how she'd trained him and Tucker for that fitness test; how she'd fought against Aragon in the Ghost Zone, saving his life as she blazed brilliantly and courageously through the air on the back of Dora, the dragon princess. He couldn't argue back at her that he wasn't gender biased unless it was in favour of women because Jazz was the ultimate genius and Sam was the strongest, toughest, bravest person he'd ever known.
'And Mom, who never carried a cellphone because who needs to call for help when you can singlehandedly take down a horde of mutant ghost animals with a lightsaber…'
He knew he'd drifted off into memory when Shizune spoke and startled him back into awareness. "Come on, let's take a look at what you did to yourself. And why don't you tell me exactly what happened?"
Danny reddened as Shizune had him hop on a bed and remove his shirt. But the clinical detachment with which she treated him eventually had him relaxing enough to tell her what had happened the night before.
"Naruto!" She gasped, unconsciously pulling hard on the bandage she was wrapping around his torso.
Danny winced. "Yeah. Why? You know him?"
"No… well… I know of him. Just… Just continue."
He did and when he got to the end Shizune weighed him with a severely critical look. "You do realize that you were very, very lucky. Picking a fight like that was a very idiotic thing to do."
"Hey, now." Danny objected, though there was a small smile on his face. "I would have done a whole lot better if they'd been regular bullies and not beefed-up ninjas. Besides, if I hadn't interfered then they would've done just as bad or worse to Naruto. You haven't seen how people look at him in this village… Or have you?" A frown flickered across his face as he saw the way she avoided looking at him. "I don't suppose you'd tell me why everyone treats him like he's gum on their shoes?"
Shizune stayed stubbornly quiet as she finished bandaging Danny and indicated for him to pull his shirt back on.
"Fine." He huffed. "Then how about this: is it ok if I bring him here from time to time?"
"Danny, visitors aren't really—"
"Now that's a lie and you know it. Or are Sakura and Ino just special exceptions?" He sent a pointed look at the vase of fresh flowers sitting on Sasuke's bedside table.
"There are going to be a lot of people who aren't going to like having him here." She warned him.
"Are you going to be one of those people?" He retorted.
She leaned back, lips pressing tightly together.
"No."
"Then I can handle it."
:o:
When Danny showed up to the hospital the next day with Naruto in tow, people quite literally paused in their work to stare at them as they walked down the hall.
Naruto seemed largely unaffected and Danny was actually a little envious of the boy's thick skin.
"So he's the kid you're looking after?" Naruto hopped on a small stool so that he could properly see over the bed and examine Sasuke's lax face. "Why's he just lying there?"
"Something bad happened to him. It hurt him badly enough that he's having trouble waking up." Danny answered as he slipped on a work apron. He glanced at Naruto, observing the ever-present multi-tailed fox sleeping on the boy's shoulder. He had yet to ask the kid about his pet, and wondered if he should be allowing the animal so close to Sasuke. But a sneaking suspicion was growing in him about the nature of the fox and he refrained from mentioning it.
"What happened?" Naruto asked.
"I… don't know." Danny admitted. "But whatever it was, it killed his whole family."
"Oh…" Naruto's eyes widened as he was seized by an emotion Danny didn't quite grasp. "So he's… He's the same as me, then?"
'The same as us.' Danny thought, wondering at the weakness that made him too fearful to put a voice behind those words.
Naruto nodded and looked back down. "He's gonna need friends when he wakes up."
The solemn assuredness in the eight-year-old's voice was a little depressing. "Yes. I suspect he will."
It was near the end of the day when they were interrupted. "Danny, can you help me with something for a moment?" A nurse, the same one who'd been there the day he'd first woken up in the hospital, poked her head into the room. Danny nodded and followed after her, though not before telling Naruto to behave and not leave the room.
The task she'd needed help with was minor—simply handing out dinner to the patients and helping the more infirm to eat. Still, Danny was somewhat chafed at having been brought to help do the girl's job for her.
Taking the trolley of food trays, he rolled his eyes at the nurse's retreating back. He still hadn't forgiven the way she'd interrupted his discussion with Tucker. She had a habit of interrupting him when he was doing something more important.
He hadn't seen any of his family or friends since that night. No ghosts, no apparitions. No delusions, even…
Finishing up with the last patient, Danny was heading back to the intensive care room when he heard a raised voices coming from the direction of Sasuke's room.
A bad feeling settled in his stomach and he picked up his pace to a jog.
"No! I'm allowed to be here!" A shrill voice he recognized as Naruto's, yelled.
"I don't know who let a troublemaker like you in, but—"
"NO! Danny let me in! And he told me not to leave the room! Lemme go!"
Danny skidded into the room and gasped as he saw one of the male staff wrestling a squirming Naruto under one arm. The boy kicked and twisted and the man looked like he was considering hitting the boy. A few people had gathered inside the room to watch the spectacle and Danny shoved his way past them.
"HEY!" He ran up to the man holding Naruto. He raised his index finger and pointed at the ground. The image of his mother flashed across his face and he did his best to challenge her as he rebuked the guard. "Let him down! He's a guest here!"
"Listen twerp, I know you're not from around here so I'll make this simple. You gotta stay far away from this one." The man gestured with his head at Naruto and the boy hissed, turning red with anger. "He's a rotten kid."
"Really? Because from where I stand you're the one who—" With a sharp shake of his head, Danny bit down on his anger. He continued with a forced calm in his terse voice. "I invited Naruto here. And I cleared it with Shizune. Go check with her if you want confirmation but let him down."
Everyone in the room was staring at him. Even Naruto had ceased his struggling to look up at him with wide eyes.
The man holding on to Naruto narrowed his eyes at Danny. "Fine." He hissed and abruptly released his hold on Naruto who fell unceremoniously to his hands and knees. "But if Shizune doesn't back up your story…" He left the threat hanging and stalked out of the room. The gathered people slowly dispersed, but Danny paid them no heed as he approached Naruto.
"Owww… He didn't have to drop me." The boy complained.
Danny smiled lightly and extended a hand to help Naruto up. "You just attract trouble everywhere you go, don't you?" As he spoke, his eyes sharpened on the fox curled obliviously at the juncture of the boy's neck. Taking his chance, he put a hand down on Naruto's shoulder and confirmed a long suspicion as his hand passed right through the fox as though the animal were an illusion.
Or a ghost.
Naruto rubbed the underside of his nose with the back of one finger and grinned up at Danny.
"I'm sorry," The teen continued with a sigh as he took his hand off Naruto. He could deal with the strange ghost-fox later. "I shouldn't have left you alone… Or maybe at least told everyone that you were with me…"
Naruto just blinked big blue eyes at him.
After looking into those eyes for a long moment, Danny let out a quiet, incredulous chuckle. "Nothing fazes you, does it, kid?"
"Can you teach me that neat trick you did?"
Danny raised a quizzical eyebrow and Naruto practically hopped with pent up exuberance.
"You know! That trick you did to make your eyes glow!"
Those words were a frozen ice cube sliding down Danny's spine.
"W-what…?"
"Your eyes! They just got all… glow-y." Naruto cupped his hands around his own eyes in an imitation of binoculars as though to demonstrate. "And then the gorilla let me go. Was it chakra? Some sort of way of controlling the chakra behind your eyes?"
"I-I… I don't know what you're talking about." Danny denied, turning away. With unsteady hands he picked up his textbooks and notes and stuffed them messily into his bag. "Look, it's almost time for my shift to end. Why don't we head out and get some dinner?"
As always, the prospect of food easily distracted Naruto. By the time they parted ways to enter their respective apartments, Danny had convinced himself that the boy had been imagining things.
With what he felt was an impressive show of willpower, Danny didn't even glance at his mirror as he prepared for sleep. He refused the temptation to try and draw out something that wasn't there.
'It's gone. Gone, gone. Gone!'
:o:
Now that he knew what he was looking for, it was actually incredibly easy to pick out the ninjas in the village from the civilians.
Shizune had given Danny a day off, telling him he needed to rest his ribs. He had protested, but Shizune had informed him in no uncertain terms that if she saw his face at the hospital today then she would make sure he had a reason to be there—a reason that would hurt.
Wisely, Danny decided to take the day off.
He woke up late, but didn't stay in bed. He grabbed breakfast in the form of a couple of mangosteens—one of the fruits he'd discovered in Konoha and found to his liking—and downed that with some milk. Then, he stood over his folded mattress and considered his still unfurnished studio.
He had saved some money over the past couple of months. And Shizune had recommended a good shopping street for bargains when she'd noticed him wearing the same three shirts over and over. He could also use a hotplate. And maybe a chair and table. It wouldn't hurt to look at the prices for bedframes while he was at it.
Getting dressed, Danny emptied his satchel of medical texts before slinging it over his shoulder. Locking his door, he walked down the narrow hallway between the apartments. The wood paneling creaked under his feet as he stopped outside Naruto's room.
After some deliberation, he knocked on the door.
After a few minutes of standing awkwardly in the hallway, it became apparent that Naruto wasn't home.
Danny turned and continued on his way.
He shook away the twinge of loneliness.
Outside, Danny was greeted by a bright, cloudless sky and the common bustle of people talking, shopping and travelling from place to place.
Adjusting his satchel, Danny recalled that the market street was clear across the village and he sighed quietly, remembering with nostalgia his old motor scooter. Cutting off that thought before his memory widened to his friends, he huffed and started on his long trek.
As Danny walked the dirt streets, he marvelled again at the strange, Eastern buildings and fashions. He wondered if he'd ever get used to living in Konoha. He knew that he still couldn't manage to walk properly on these streets, as his shoes always managed to kick up enough dirt and mud to streak his bare ankles brown.
Usually, he walked with purpose to the hospital, ignoring the people around him. Today, he took the time to saunter and to observe.
Danny looked with new eyes at the women and men who, until now, he had just categorized as distrustful or shady. Now, he could see that each and every one of those people wore the same metal headband as Shizune. What he had always assumed to be an odd accessory now became a deadly symbol. He saw them everywhere, glinting off foreheads, hanging around necks, wrapped around sinuous arms, even worn as belts.
Ninjas walked differently than other people. Some were stealthy, others were showy. Some were sullen, others cocky. All of them carried an aura of danger.
Danny could tell with a glance which ninjas had faced battle and which hadn't. Both sides resonated deeply with his own experiences.
Looking at the ninjas of Konoha, Danny saw old faces, fresh faces, some wore vests, others didn't.
He wondered if there was some sort of ranking system.
Naruto had said the two idiots who had tried to beat them up in the alley were 'genin'. Naruto had also said that he wanted to go to the Academy to become a 'genin'. So that was probably a pretty low rank.
An Academy for Ninjas!
Danny felt a grin pulling at his mouth as just the thought of a Ninja Academy was so cool.
'Sam would've wanted to go.'
Even a part of him wanted to go, if only to learn the skills. A bigger part of him knew that he was not cut out to be a ninja. Without his ghost half, his fighting ability was laughable. Danny Fenton was not an aggressive personality. And Danny, Fenton or Phantom, could not stomach the idea of killing people for a living.
'But there was Shizune…'
He recalled that Shizune frequently took off from work. A frown deepened his brow as Shizune's once annoying but easily dismissed absences now took on a darker meaning.
Being a ninja couldn't be safe work. The Uchiha clan had been the village's police force—which meant that they must reasonably have all been ninjas—and they had all been killed.
Danny recalled the way the air had blackened around Uchiha Itachi when the youth had been angered.
"He's ANBU now, isnt' he? Youngest yet?"
These words, spoken by the two gossiping women that had told him where to find the Uchiha compound, came back to Danny now.
ANBU… was that a rank for ninjas? The women had sounded impressed. Did that mean that Itachi had held a high rank?
Danny didn't know what standard was for a 'good' or 'bad' ninja, but it was damn impressive the way that Itachi had killed a crow from over a hundred meters with a single dagger.
'And if he can kill as easily as he can toss a dagger…!'
Danny remembered the night he'd arrived in Konoha with a shiver. He reached up to grasp his shoulder where it had been punctured by a knife, only his lucky reflexes prevented that knife from piercing his heart. Itachi could have killed him that day. But he hadn't.
And now Itachi was dead.
Danny couldn't conceive that someone as deadly as Itachi was could have been killed. Even from the few short interactions Danny had had with Itachi, the youth seemed too powerful, too untouchable.
'Then again, Shizune said not to 'talk about him'. She said Sasuke's family was dead but…' There was something… odd about the way Shizune had talked about Itachi.
Was it possible Itachi was still alive?
"I heard what you did."
Danny actually yelped aloud as he hopped a foot in the air and spun around. Kakashi was walking side-by-side with him, calmly as though he'd always been there. The man had his entire body curved toward the book in his hands. His nose was buried so far into the book that Danny wondered how Kakashi had managed not to bump into every person he walked passed.
Quickly, Danny scanned the man and his gaze rested momentarily on the headband covering one of Kakashi's eyes.
Of course, it made sense that Kakashi was a ninja.
"Oh, so you know about that, then? That'll make things easier." Kakashi spoke to his book but Danny knew the man was addressing him and he shot Kakashi a dry stare.
"Know about what?" Danny deflected.
"What, indeed?" Kakashi murmured, then fell silent.
Danny allowed the silence to stretch for half a minute before conceding that Kakashi was neither going to go away anytime soon, nor was he going to willingly give up any secrets.
"Yeah, I know about the ninja thing." Danny offered, in a bid to get the conversation moving and over with. This scarecrow-haired man unnerved him.
"Shocking, isn't it?" Kakashi said conversationally, his nose still in his book.
Danny glanced at the man as Kakashi turned a page. He got a brief glimpse of the inside of the book and felt his face redden, his eyebrows lifting incredulously as he wondered if he'd actually just seen a drawing of a naked woman.
"Is this guy seriously reading a porn comic book in public?" Danny eyed Kakashi edgily, wondering why he felt simultaneously offended and curious. Clearing his throat, Danny chose to ignore the book and instead respond to Kakashi's comment.
"What? Being surrounded by killers? Actually… not as much as you might think." Danny shrugged looking at his hand as he rubbed his thumb across his nails. It was true enough: being surrounded by danger wasn't all that new for him. He'd just traded deranged supernatural creatures for trained supernormal murderers.
What had changed was his own sense of power and security. In Amity Park he'd been one of those supernatural creatures. Here… Here he was just… normal. Normal Danny Fenton.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kakashi lower the book. He felt the man's gaze on him.
"Not all ninja are killers."
"No?" Danny was honestly surprised. "Thought that was the job description."
Kakashi looked away. "No has explained to you what we are?"
Danny shrugged. "No one's really had the opportunity yet. I only found out a couple of days ago."
"When you got that injury to your ribs."
Danny's back straightened. How had Kakashi known? Was he really making that much of a production of his injury?
"You hide it well." Kakashi said, almost as though he was answering Danny's thoughts. "You must have some experience hiding injuries."
Danny weighed the value of denying it and came up empty. "Yep."
Kakashi nodded at the succinct reply. Then he made an abrupt turn toward a large building. "Come." Kakashi ordered as he stepped up onto the porch and toed off his sandals.
Danny frowned as he hesitated. There was a small wooden plank hanging off the awning of the building marking the place as some sort of public establishment but Danny tsked at his complete inability to read the sign.
Kakashi had already disappeared inside and, after another moment of indecision, Danny brushed off his concern and followed in after the man.
Danny had barely taken two steps into the building when he stopped dead. The halls were empty, there were cubbyholes instead of lockers and the floors and walls were wood instead of tile and concrete but there was no mistaking what this place was.
"You look pale." Kakashi observed.
"This place…" Danny stood in the center of the hallway, looking back and forth. Doors lines both walls and as he watched, one door slid open and a young boy with messy black hair entered into the hall. The boy eyed Danny with curiosity, openly stared at Kakashi with awe, then bowed before quickly backing away and disappearing around a bend in the hall.
"This is the Academy. Where young, bright-eyed, wet-eared hopefuls train to become genin. If they're so lucky. Are you going to be ill?"
"No." Danny wiped a cold hand over his hot face and leaned against a wall. He hadn't expected this. He hadn't anticipated that seeing another school—no matter how different—would hit him so hard. All he could see was them: Sam and Tucker hanging out in front of his locker, Jazz stalking over to scold him about forgetting to hand in some school assignment, them plotting behind the school to overturn the lunch menu, Sam telling Dash off, Tucker gossiping about girls, Jazz spazzing out over some presentation or event, hunting ghosts, eating lunch, meeting between classes, talking laughing, fighting—
Danny gasped like a drowning man coming up for air. He shook himself, raked a hand through his hair and then fisted his hand—tight—in the hair at the base of his head. The stinging in his scalp brought him back to himself.
"S-sorry…" Danny stammered, having no idea how his freak out must have looked to Kakashi. "I… I used to go to school. Back home. Not like a ninja academy, but a regular… but a school. Yeah."
"I see." Kakashi looked away and Danny was grateful for the opportunity to pull himself together. Once he had composed himself, he looked up to see Kakashi walking down the hallway and he hurried to catch up.
"Why did you bring me here?" Danny wanted to know.
"To show you something." Kakashi answered blithely as he pushed open a sliding door and walked in. When Danny hesitated to follow, Kakashi's head popped back out of the room. "Come in. They won't bite."
Danny quirked an eyebrow and followed the man into the room.
He was expecting a classroom, but not one of this size. The room was an auditorium with tables and chairs set on rising steps. There must have been a hundred kids in the room, all aged between nine and thirteen. The kids were surprisingly quiet, all sitting hushed as they listened to the teacher presenting at the front of the classroom. Danny had never seen such a quiet classroom.
"You're surprised." Kakashi commented.
"I didn't expect there to be so many kids…" Danny responded.
"Becoming a ninja is a point of pride in Konoha. It is a prestigious position. Many kids dream of becoming ninja."
"Kids don't always know what's best for themselves." Danny spoke lowly and there was a bitter ring to his tone.
"Perhaps not."
Danny and Kakashi had entered at the back of the classroom. They garnered a few stares from the students—Kakashi in particular.
"You're popular." Danny murmured and received no response from Kakashi.
Unlike students in Amity Park however, these kids didn't whisper and exchange notes. Instead, after a few minutes of staring, they simply turned around and went back to listening to the teacher.
"Before we end off the class, I'd like a few volunteers to demonstrate the techniques we've been practicing today." The teacher offered.
Danny's eyebrows rose as over half the class raised their hands eagerly. He recalled with some humour how Mr. Lancer had once resorted to guilting Danny into doing his assignments by telling a sad story of how teaching prevented him from visiting his 'sister'. His 'sister'—who was, in fact, Mr. Lancer himself dressed up in a dress.
'Well, he won't ever have to tell that story again.'
Danny's smile fell, but even his sombre mood didn't stop him from watching with interest as the teacher picked two students out of the crowd.
The first student, a girl with bright eyes and a round face, stood up ramrod straight with attention. She slapped her hands together, making a gesture that was meaningless to Danny.
"TRANSFORM!"
Danny's eyes widened as the girl lit up with a bright pale-blue light before a puff of smoke enshrouded her. Then, in her place was a duplicate of the teacher. Danny's eyes shifted between the fake teacher and the real one. If he squinted, he could just make out an odd blue shimmer around the fake teacher, otherwise, they looked exactly alike.
The girl transformed back into herself and the teacher congratulated her.
Then the next student stood. Posture military-straight, the brown-haired boy slapped his hands together making a symbol with his fingers that was different than the one the girl had made.
"CLONE TECHNIQUE!"
The boy's cry was followed by his body flashing briefly blue before smoke enveloped him. Then the smoke cleared and the boy had doubled.
The teacher gave his congratulations.
"Thank you, sir!" Came a chorus of cries from the two brown-haired boys before a puff of smoke turned them back into one.
The teacher dismissed the class then and as the children filed out Danny was still attempting to wrap his head around what he had seen.
"How did they do that?" Danny questioned.
"Chakra." Came Kakashi's simple answer.
Chakra… that word was slowly becoming familiar to Danny. Naruto had mentioned it. Shizune too. He dimly remembered something about 'Chakra Treatments' not working on him when he'd arrived injured in Konoha.
"Can anyone use it?" Danny asked.
"Only if you're trained in it from a young age. And also… only if you have it…" Kakashi's voice seemed to trail off oddly and Danny looked up to see that the man was staring at him thoughtfully.
"So what, you brought me here to show me kids practicing fancy techniques? They're fancy, yes. Cool. Exciting. But how does that counteract my point? Learning how to kill more efficiently is still learning how to kill."
"I didn't bring you here for the children. Come."
The kids had all left the room, but the teacher had hung back. Kakashi descended the stairs towards the instructor and Danny followed. The teacher was a man in his twenties or early thirties. He had brown hair pulled into a ponytail and the headband marking him as a ninja wrapped around his forehead. It occurred to Danny that the man looked somewhat familiar.
"Kakashi! What are you doing here?" The teacher greeted Kakashi with a surprised but pleasant expression. Then his eyes fell on Danny with interest. "And who's your friend?"
"This is Fenton Danny. He's the foreigner that's got the council in a tizzy." Kakashi responded serenely.
"Oh!" The teacher's eyes lit up with interest. "Mr. Fenton! Of course! How fortunate to speak with you face-to-face. I never had the chance to thank you properly!"
Danny was taken aback when the man bowed to him.
"I-I'm sorry but… have… have we met?" Danny responded uncertainly.
"Did you save so many lives that night that you've already forgotten me?" The teacher questioned, though his words were dulled by his teasing smile. "My name is Umino Iruka. You can call me Iruka. You saved my life."
"Oh!" Danny's eyes widened as he recalled where he had heard Iruka's name. "Punctured lung!" He exclaimed before he could stop himself.
His comment earned him two amused looks from the adults.
"Well, I see you remember my ailment." Iruka grinned.
"That's probably how he's been referring to you in his head all this time: 'Punctured Lung'." Kakashi drawled and Danny shot the man a mild glare.
"I'm sorry." Danny offered Iruka. "I do remember you. It's just that you look different… and I saw a lot of faces that night."
"Yeah, I guess I do look different without all the blood on me, right?" Iruka laughed. "But no need to apologize. If anything, I should be apologizing to you for not thanking you sooner, Mr. Fenton."
"I was lucky to catch your injury." Danny smiled honestly. He didn't need the thanks but knew it was important to receive gratitude graciously—something he had learned as Phantom and not as Fenton. "I'm very glad to see you well—that's all the thanks I need. And please, call me Danny."
"Very nice." Kakashi interjected, pulling Iruka and Danny's attention back to him.
"Kakashi… not that I'm not glad to see you but did you drag Danny away from his business just to bring him to see me?" Iruka asked. A worried expression then crossed his face. "You came in during my class. Didn't the council—"
"Well, there's the matter right there. Danny has just recently discovered the true nature of our village."
"You know that—?" Iruka cut himself off as he looked at Danny with wide eyes.
"Ninjas. Yup." Danny nodded.
"He's still a bit…sceptical." Kakashi said mildly. "So perhaps you could—"
"Well! Of course! You know how the hospital works, right? The medical ninja heal people right up in no time! Look at me, I was down for the count but now I'm fit as an ox. Only took a day of healing. Course, the healing couldn't have happened if you hadn't spotted the ailment. I'd say you'd make an excellent medical ninja, Danny!"
"Ah… " Danny was taken aback as he processed this information.
"Thank you, Iruka. I think you've said just the right thing. We should let you get back to your class."
Iruka nodded. "Yes. But Danny—feel free to drop by anytime. We could go for ramen, maybe."
Danny nodded and bid Iruka goodbye before following Kakashi out of the Academy.
"So… that's it?" Danny asked Kakashi after they had put on their shoes and exited the Academy. They loitered in the shadows near the Academy walls. "You wanted me to see how ninja techniques helped Iruka? A few more days and I would have figured that out at the hospital."
"I wanted you to speak with Iruka because he was someone you helped. You were directly involved and had a direct interest in him."
Danny was beginning to understand the lesson and wasn't sure that he appreciated it. "And what? You're saying that if I were a ninja I would have been able to heal him and not just realize his symptoms?"
"I'm saying that being a ninja isn't about killing. It's about protecting those we care about. It's about fighting for a cause greater than our own life. I approached you today to tell you something, you know."
Danny did vaguely remember that. "Yeah, you said that you 'knew what I did'. What did I do?"
"I saw you in that alley the other night, when you interfered to spare Naruto from a beating."
"A beating from ninjas as I recall." Danny pointed out. Then his eyes narrowed, "And how did you know about that?"
"Those idiots will never advance past genin. They don't even deserve their title of ninja. And I know because I was there." Kakashi's voice was calm and without inflection.
"You were there and you didn't help?" Danny was incredulous.
"You two had the situation well in hand. If I had perceived you to be in danger, I would have intervened."
"I perceived danger." Danny objected, then sighed as he let it go. "Fine. Whatever. So what's the lesson?"
"Sometimes you need to fight to protect what's important to you." Kakashi said simply.
Danny wasn't sure why, but for some reason this comment caused him to flare. "And sometimes, being a fighter is what calls down danger on your loved ones."
Kakashi was silent and for a few breaths, Danny met the elder man's calm gaze defiantly, daring Kakashi to dispute his words.
"Perhaps you are right. Perhaps accepting danger will also call danger to you. That is why we do not act alone, why we have teammates and companions to watch our backs as we watch theirs."
"And what if…" Danny hissed out the pain in his heart as he spoke his next words. "And what if you're the only one who survives out of such a team."
Despite the mask that covered most of Kakashi's face Danny still saw the man's face whiten and his expression grow wretched. Danny wondered, then, what was the loss that Kakashi had suffered.
"Then you must find a new reason to fight. Because they chose their path—"
"They chose nothing!" Danny spat, clenching his fists and turning away as he grinded his teeth together. "They didn't chose that. I—"
"Then your duty is to live your life in remembrance. To carry their expectations of you, to fulfill their duties as well as your own and to continually strive for redemption, even if it will always be beyond your reach."
Danny's shoulders hunched and his eyes squeezed shut because that sounded like such a painful way to live.
It seemed though, that Kakashi had said his peace and silence fell between them for a long while.
"Why…" Danny looked up at Kakashi and the teen paused in his sentence as he saw that Kakashi had pulled out his lewd comic book and was reading intently. Danny felt his eye twitch because Kakashi was ruining his serious moment of emotional turmoil – and then took a breath before continuing, "You keep popping up to talk to me and give me advice. Why? Why do you care?"
"You helped Naruto. As a foreigner and an outsider you have less reason than most to befriend someone who, himself, is ostracized and disliked."
"Being a foreigner is a stupid reason not to help someone." Danny replied. "And Naruto is a kid. He shouldn't be treated like he is. If there's a secret reason why everyone in the village hates Naruto then I'm not privy to it. I don't even think Naruto is privy to it, which makes everyone's actions even more cruel. And, frankly, even if people have a reason, it doesn't justify anything. He's alone, and he's a kid. Someone should be looking after him!"
Kakashi was staring at him oddly and Danny was alarmed to feel his eyes itch. He blinked, once, twice, and then scrubbed at his eyes with his palms.
'Tears. It was only tears.'
"You see, there it is, right there. You're different." Kakashi said.
"I'm… different." Danny repeated flatly. There was something messed up about Konoha if it was 'different' to think that an eight-year old should have a proper home.
"You are, indeed." Kakashi's gaze was penetrating and Danny frowned, turning his head to the side and averting his gaze.
"So, that's it, then? That's all you have to say?" Danny asked after a moment of silence. When he received no reply he turned his head back but saw only empty space. Eyes widening, his head swivelled to look down the alley, then into the bustling street.
There was no sign of Kakashi.
"Ninjas." Danny spat the word out with a tsk.
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END PART III
To be continued in PART IV – SASUKE
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