Full Summary: Yin and Yang are two opposite forces, but they cannot exist without the other, they are interlocked, intertwined within the fabric of reality. Kakashi Hatake is both yin and yang — in one reality, he has dedicated his life to his village, and in the other, he has cleanly severed his ties. But, yin and yang are forever intertwined, and it's no different for the two Kakashi's. Within yin, resides a piece of yang, and within yang, resides a piece of yin...
Existing on opposite sides of the universe, their lives never had a reason to intersect until they were both killed. Now, Kakashi Hatake finds himself waking up in a body of himself, but with kill on sight orders attached to his name. And Kakashi Hatake also finds himself in the body of himself, but as one who never left the village. Having been given second chances, one is in search for the truth of his murder while the other is out for cold blooded revenge.
TW: Graphic depiction of violence, major character death
Yin Dimension - Blood Hound
His current form of entertainment was in the form of watching the shadows created by his hands enact the same scene over and over again. Unwilling, his mind always filled the silence with the same dialogue that haunted him every single day for the past year.
A blessing and a curse at the same time. The curse was that Kakashi remembered that wretched moment down to the exact detail. The things that he didn't notice the first time, he eventually caught on when it played through his mind like a broken record. However, as wretched as it may have been, it was a blessing in disguise.
Konoha had finally shown their true colors.
When his father died, everyone had written off his death as an unfortunate happenstance, a byproduct of the guilt that wracked him. Naive and ignorant, Kakashi bought into that explanation.
But from the moment Konoha turned on him, Kakashi had finally seen Konoha's true face. Brainwashing children to buy into the Will of Fire nonsense and pledge their loyalty to the village, only to be driven to their own demise when they no longer had a use for them. Kakashi understood far too late that his father had been one of the victims and now Kakashi wasn't too far behind following his father's fate. Yet they didn't anticipate that Kakashi's will was much stronger than his father's, which led to his current predicament.
Plastered right on the first page of the Konoha section of the Bingo Book was his face. Kakashi Hatake. An S rank missing nin, with over one hundred thousand ryos bounty on his head and counting. The number only went up with each kill that he made.
As if driving him out of the village hadn't been enough, Konoha constantly sent Anbu shinobis after him. Over the past year, there had been so many that Kakashi eventually lost count, not that he cared to know.
The only number he knew was that none of them returned alive.
And maybe sitting in the middle of a clearing with a campfire ablaze was like a beacon calling out to his pursuers, practically screaming that he was here. No fires was the very first thing that Kakashi learned as an Anbu agent; comfort always came second to stealth.
Just to spite them, Kakashi had thrown all of the Anbu rules out the window from the very moment he slashed right through the Leaf symbol on his hitai-ite. Others would call him foolish and petty, yet Kakashi knew it irritated them to no end. Even without an ounce of self-preservation in his actions, no one had succeeded in killing him.
If he was still loyal to Konoha, perhaps Kakashi might have suggested it was stupid idea to send Anbu agents after a former member. While the Hokage believed they would be a better fit since they knew his fighting style, it went both ways. Having spent the last ten years fighting alongside the same people that came after him, Kakashi knew everything that there was to know about their movements.
And they had the audacity to underestimate him.
Any day now, another team would find him. The fact that an entire month had passed without a single trace of Anbu unsettled him. Others might find it relieving, thinking that they had finally given up, but Kakashi wasn't gullible.
Giving up simply wasn't in Konoha's dictionary. And knowing the Hokage as well as he did, Kakashi was quite confident that the extended inactivity meant that he was plotting something on a much larger scale.
Perhaps it was the final plan to take him down for once and for all.
Or perhaps they were planting more false evidence to pin the blame on everything that went wrong onto him.
Kakashi chuckled mirthlessly. Once one of Konoha's most prized shinobi merely reduced to a scapegoat, whose usefulness was reaching the limit.
Regardless of what it was, one thing was for certain.
He would not go down with a fight.
Five days later, they cornered him. Three of those days, Kakashi lived through, blissfully unaware that those were his last three days of freedom. Two of those days, Kakashi was quite proud of himself for sending the Anbu agents on his tail on a wild goose chase. At one point, he had even been so confident that he pulled it off, only to realize that there wasn't only one team after him this time.
It became a game at that point. Kakashi would plant false trails to throw the first team off of his tail, only for the second team to find him. He would do the same to the second, while the first team realized that they had been duped. By the time the second team had fallen for his trap, the first would have already found their way to him.
Rinse and repeat. However, Kakashi was well aware that the chase couldn't go on forever; his body could only handle so many soldier pills before his strength gave out. Right as Kakashi planned to outright fight them, having already figured out each of the Anbu's favored fighting styles based on the pattern of their chakra signature alone, a third team emerged.
Forty-eight hours later, Kakashi was cornered. His only two options were to fight his way through the ranks - there were at least fifteen of them and the new team's skill was still unknown to him - or jump off the cliff and into the treacherous waters below. A certain death if he took the latter option, as they were currently in the Land of Whirlpool. As its namesake would have it, deadly whirlpools existed in every single body of moving water in this territory and Kakashi didn't believe the waters below would be an exception.
As for taking the former option, well Kakashi didn't think his odds were too good either. Running on numerous soldier pills and less than half of his chakra, Kakashi would be damned if he lived to see tomorrow.
Death was always an imminent risk in their line of work, but he'd never thought he would go out this way. To be hunted down by the same village he once dedicated his life to protect. What bitter irony.
Kakashi tensed, forming chakra in his right hand as he noted some of the Anbu shifting. But rather than attacking him head on, they parted to the side, allowing their leader to pass.
Him. The last person that Kakashi wanted to see, even on the verge of death.
Kakashi snorted. "To think that you would go through all of that trouble to come out here yourself. You're supposed to be sitting cozily in your office and giving out directives to assassinate me, not getting your own hands dirty."
He didn't take the bait. Of course he wouldn't; he was a seasoned shinobi too. Kakashi simply wanted to get the satisfaction of getting the last word in, knowing that he had come to an end. Even if he could beat him, there was no way that he could ward off the platoon of Anbu.
Kakashi spread out his arms, cocking his head to the side. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
He narrowed his eyes at Kakashi. "Are you going to fight?"
"Would you rather I jump so you don't have to deal with my blood spilt on your hands?" Kakashi asked in a mocking tone, jerking his head back in the direction of the cliffside. "I'm not a coward like my father."
He opened his mouth to say something, but Kakashi didn't give him the chance. Fueled by hatred and a last burst of adrenaline, Kakashi charged at him with his trademark jutsu, the Chidori.
Everything was a blur. All he could remember was a burst of pain before it all went dark.
Yet Kakashi refused to let go. While his soul gravitated towards the limbo plane, the interchange between the living and heaven planes, Kakashi fought against it the entire way there. While others might have welcomed the release, Kakashi refused to rest. Not while bitterness swarmed in his heart. Not while he knew that his killer would go on living a peaceful life while he lost his. Not while Konoha continued to exist, painting a picture of perfection, when in reality their foundation was built with the dead bodies of their scapegoats.
Not while Kakashi could do something about it.
The force snapped, sending him hurling back at the speed of light. When Kakashi finally gathered his bearings again after the disorientating experience, he noted that he was floating. Slowly, he sank himself back down so that his feet touched ground again - dead or not, floating in the air was simply too weird.
The cliffside. The sound of roaring waters. Blood stained rocks. The team was long gone, likely having returned to the village as heroes. He would be exalted with the glory of taking down an international criminal like Kakashi, earning the approval of shinobis and civilians alike.
He would continue his reign as Hokage and carry on with selling the propaganda that Kakashi was an enemy of Konoha. Living peacefully and completely guilt-free, while bearing the knowledge that he had driven an innocent man to his death.
And Kakashi would make sure that he suffered for it. Whatever it took, Kakashi would take him down with him.
No exceptions.
Even if that meant he would have to roam the plane of living as a ghost until he saw the man's death, then so be it.
A/N: Hi, welcome to this story!
I'm so excited to share this story with you! This story will follow 2 different Kakashi's, both of which will trade places. The first 2 chapters will be before their souls are switched, so you can see what their personalities are like and get a little backstory. The labels at the top of each chapter will indicate which dimension and which Kakashi it is so keep those in mind!
I honestly don't know what I'm doing starting another story, but I am haha. If you've followed me with my previous works, you know I tend to update weekly, but no promises with this story since the timeline is quite messy. I'm constantly going back to change things so the plot flows, so please be patient with my updates.
Thank you for reading. Excited to hear your thoughts!