Yin Dimension - Lightning Hound

Half a day's worth of walking led him to the outskirts of the Land of Fire. Having the landscape of the Land of Fire completely imprinted in his mind, navigating the dense terrain had become like second nature to him. There wasn't any doubt in his steps as Kakashi veered off to the left, heading completely off course.

Konoha may have been his final destination, but there was a detour that Kakashi needed to make first.

His favorite hidden spot in the Land of Fire was the cave hidden behind the majestic waterfall. When he was alone on his solo missions, that cave was always his go-to location for a pit stop simply for its obscurity. Concealed by layers and layers of dense forestry, the only way to really spot it was through dumb luck.

After all, Kakashi found it through dumb luck too. With enemies on his tail, Kakashi blundered blindly through the forest to throw them off of his tail. That incident yielded him discovery of his favorite hideout and an enemyless sight.

Ducking underneath a low hanging branch, Kakashi stepped onto the narrow path and slippery path. From the softness of the soil, rain had made its appearance in the last few days. The soil shifted under his weight, gravity sending it rolling downwards in small chunks. He raised his hand to brush the branches aside to make enough room for him to pass. The movement jostled some of the leaves off of its stem, sending them fluttering to the ground. One landed on his toes, the scratchy texture tickling his bare skin.

Having been here more than a dozen times, trekking through the dense path hardly posed a challenge for him anymore, even in his weakened condition. In just under ten minutes, Kakashi made it to the other side.

The trees and shrubbery gave way; their leaves no longer obscuring his view of the massive waterfall. The sound of rushing water filled his ears. Rays of sunlight reflected off of the translucent water, causing Kakashi to subtly avert his eyes to avoid the brunt of the impact.

The grass was longer than he remembered. As he traversed along the banks of the river, Kakashi noted the stalks of grass that seemed to poke through the fabric of his pants at his calves.

Funny how in the past the grass never seemed to grow no matter how long it had been since the last time Kakashi had been here. Yet this time, the grass seemed to triple its height. His thought didn't linger too long on the oddity as he arrived at the base of the waterfall.

From first glance, it seemed impossible to get behind the waterfall without being slammed by a heavy blast of water. What others weren't aware of was a secret entrance just off of the side, hidden behind a large boulder. Kakashi pushed it out of the way, unveiling the circular tiny entrance, just large enough for him to crawl through.

Small pebbles pricked at his palms and as Kakashi crossed the small tunnel. The moment his head poked out of the small tunnel opening, Kakashi immediately clambered to his feet. In such a short journey, Kakashi learned that being in such a confined space while dealing with the after effects of the lingering aches from his injuries was not a good idea.

Not that anything he did would a normal person classify as a good idea.

The first thing he did was to weave the signs to execute a low level genjutsu. Despite the fact that the jutsu would afford him nothing more than protection against wandering civilians and maybe the odd genin, anything was better than nothing. Even if it felt like a false sense of security, it still gave him some sense of it.

With the enemy threat looming over his head, Kakashi needed every bit of that he could get. Unfortunately with his current chakra levels, that was all he could afford right now.

Kakashi made quick work of changing out of this wretched uniform. As he did, he noted a ragged tear through his left sleeve. A nick on the arm, deep enough to have pierced his skin. Kakashi was bleeding and he hadn't even noticed it.

How typical of him.

Halfway through changing, Kakashi stopped to bandage his cut. By the time he was finished, Kakashi was dressed head to toe in nondescript civilian clothes. Just a simple, beige shirt and dark pants. They were hardly form fitting and in the shinobi world, loose clothing was problematic. Aside from the fact that the risk of their clothing getting caught onto something was infinitely higher, it also afforded their enemies more leverage to capture them.

However, if everything went like it should, Kakashi wouldn't be getting into any fights.

Did anything ever go the way it should though? No, but when his only alternative was getting executed on sight by wearing the enemy uniform, this was a risk that he was willing to take.

After a quick meal consisting of ration bars, Kakashi was ready to turn in for a nap. From the position of the sun in the sky before he entered the cave, it was around mid-day. Sleep for a few hours to re-energize, wake up and eat dinner, and then travel through the night had been his plan. In his weakened state, he needed to take advantage of the cover that the darkness afforded him.

Changing his bandages with one hand was an awkward task. Using his teeth to hold one end in place, his other wrapped the bandages around his right arm. Slowly, because although his left arm was mostly healed, the ache was still prevalent. As for his right arm, even a medic couldn't completely save his mangled arm. The bone had been snapped back into place - Kakashi was glad that he had not been awake for that part - and the torn muscles and vessels were somewhat healed. Yet the entirety of his arm was a mess of purple and brown splotches.

That wasn't the most horrible state he had witnessed his arm in but it was certainly one of the top.

After looping the bandage three times over his neck, Kakashi struggled to tie the bandage together. It took him four attempts to secure it; Kakashi had gotten so frustrated in the process that he almost abandoned the idea of forming a makeshift cast.

Ugly was the appropriate word to describe it. Compared to the cast that Misa put on him, his was just an awful mess of knots and unaligned bandages. Kakashi even began to doubt if this would have any healing effect, but for all the effort he went through to put it on, Kakashi would keep it.

At least for a little while.

Kakashi woke up to a darkened cave. Peering out from the waterfall, Kakashi noted that the sky was completely dark. The brightness of the moon and stars contrasted sharply against the dark background.

Looks like Kakashi had slept longer than he anticipated. However, he was prepared to make up for lost time. Tucking a few ration bars into his pockets, Kakashi swung the backpack over his left shoulder. Undoing the genjutsu with two signs, Kakashi headed out of the caves the same way he came in. Boulder pushed back in its rightful place and backpack securely on his back, Kakashi left.

As he walked, Kakashi finished off two more ration bars to curb his hunger. Ration bars were notorious for being extremely unappetizing due to its bland taste, but it was a shinobi favorite for its convenience and high energy content. Having lived off of ration bars for so many years, Kakashi's appetite had eventually learned to keep it down.

That didn't mean Kakashi enjoyed it. Once he was finished with his dinner, he took a large swing of water to wash away the remaining bits of cracker that wedged itself in the crevices of his teeth.

While he travelled, Kakashi realized that he would pass the location where he was attacked. Deciding to make a small detour, Kakashi found himself heading towards the approximate area where the mysterious lightning bolt had struck him. Upon reaching that clearing, Kakashi took the time to examine his surroundings.

No footprints in the vicinity. Even the imprint of his body in the soil from falling out of a tree was missing. Neither of those findings fazed him; it was entirely possible that the rain had washed away the remnants of the ambush.

Daring to use a little bit of chakra, Kakashi ascended on top of the branches. No scuff marks. Every single piece of bark remained intact. Even the branch that the first lightning bolt was supposed to have taken out was still there.

Did he remember incorrectly? Impossible, Kakashi was almost certain that this place had been it, yet all the signs were telling him differently. The strangeness brought back his initial impression of Kusa and how it had been nothing like how he remembered it.

There should have been a village, one formed by the group that defected from Konoha. From the news that traveled and the few times that Kakashi studied it from afar, the village had grown to be decently sized. Although their forces still couldn't compare to any of the Five Great Nations, it had a steady footing in the sixth position.

The village wasn't there. On his way out of Kusa territory, all Kakashi had seen were a couple of houses, sparingly. In the beginning, he had chalked it up to him being on the wrong side of Kusa, but when more and more things didn't seem to add up, Kakashi was beginning to question his original judgment.

Kakashi had fallen off of the cliffs. That was a fact. Did the enemy do it though? The enemy would have no motive to; it would have been so easy to kill him while he was unconscious. Unless the enemy presumed him to be dead and wanted to dump his body somewhere far from the crime scene, but again, a simple fire jutsu would have easily erased the evidence. Why go through all that effort?

The lack of burn marks. Even with medical ninjutsu, it was almost impossible to completely heal burn marks. For someone who had gotten struck by lightning, head on, Kakashi was surprisingly unfried.

The cliffs. The missing village. The clothes. And now the unscathed clearing. All of these oddities were making his head spin as he worked to sort out all of the logical conclusions. Except...he could not come up with a single logical theory.

Kakashi shook those thoughts out of his head. No use in thinking about that right now. Konoha was his priority; the village would have all of the answers that he needed. That was what he tried to convince himself of anyways.

Three days later, Kakashi finally spotted Konoha's main gates. He didn't recognize the guards, but Kakashi figured that they would recognize him. Clearly, they did, but not in the way that he wanted as Kakashi found himself retreating as the first chunin jumped at him with a kunai. The second followed, unsheathing his sword.

"Kakashi Hatake, what are you doing here?"

They did know him, so why did they treat him like he was the enemy? "What are you talking about? I'm a shinobi of Konoha. I'm just trying to go home."

The second chunin had the audacity to laugh at him. "Is this a genjutsu? Are those words really coming out of your mouth, you traitor?"

Traitor. That was the word that Kakashi hated hearing the most. For all of his life, he dealt with villagers painting his father as a traitor, when he had been nothing but loyal. The same people who degraded his father's reputation had also been the same ones to eventually defect from the village.

Kakashi was the one who hunted the traitors and killed them. For all of the titles that were associated with his name, traitor was not one of them. And now hearing that wretched word hurled at him made rage boil inside of him. Anger. A feeling that he hadn't felt since his father died and he learned to shut off all of his emotions.

With a kunai in his left hand, Kakashi blocked the sword while twisting his body out of the way to avoid the first chunin's attack. For a while, the three of them danced around each other's attacks, with Kakashi mostly on defense. The longer this fight went on, the more frustrated that Kakashi had gotten. It shouldn't have been that difficult to defeat two chunins, but with an arm out of commission and extremely limited chakra, Kakashi felt weak.

That was because he was.

Hand weaving a quick sign for an Academy level genjutsu, Kakashi finally got the upper hand when he noticed the first chunin's eyes glaze over for a split second. That was all the time Kakashi needed to hop on top of the surface of the blade of the second chunin and use it as a springboard. Flying through mid-air, the sole of his foot connected against the first chunin's stomach with enough force to knock him flat on his back. Landing deftly back into the ground, Kakashi whirled around and ducked just in time to avoid being beheaded.

While the second chunin was getting a hold of his momentum, Kakashi's foot shot outward, wrapping itself around his ankle. Yanking his foot back, the force of the action sent the second chunin off balance and careening towards the ground. Sensing the first chunin's presence, Kakashi dodged to the side.

Their kunais clashed together, emitting a loud clang in the air. They jumped apart, the chunin already running through a set of hand signs at a rate that Kakashi didn't even need the Sharingan to know what jutsu he was about to perform. Waiting until the last possible second to dodge, Kakashi finally moved when the jutsu was executed. Taking advantage of the obscured vision range from the heat and smoke of the fireball, Kakashi darted over to the second chunin. In the process of adding a wind jutsu to the fireball, the second chunin reacted half a second too late.

Ramming his shoulder into the chunin's chest sent him back onto the ground. Knee pressed on his chest, Kakashi pointed the tip of his kunai at his throat.

"Why did you attack me?"

Despite his current predicament, he had no qualms about smart mouthing Kakashi. "Go to hell, you traitor." Kakashi dug the kunai into his skin, deep enough to draw a trickle of blood. Kakashi's eye flashed angrily.

"You're the traitor. You attacked a comrade."

"Comrade?" The second chunin stated, with strong contempt in his voice. "You stopped being a comrade when you killed off the Third Hokage! The Fourth Hokage said he killed you off, but I guess not. How stupid of you to send yourself at death's door; I'm sure everyone will enjoy killing you a second time."

His words stunned Kakashi into silence. Kakashi committed the gravest mistake as a shinobi: freezing in the middle of the battlefield, yet he couldn't help it. The chunin wasn't lying. There was no way that he could come up with such a ridiculous lie out of spite and tell him with that amount of scorn and hatred.

He killed the Third Hokage. What?

The chakra signature of the first chunin coming from behind him knocked Kakashi out of his stupor. Rolling off his hostage, Kakashi abandoned all of his plans and ran towards the forestry. He needed time to sort through this newly given information because this certainly wasn't it. This wasn't the world that he knew.

The two chunins chased after him. Even though not at full capacity, Kakashi was faster. Only his advantage was short-lived when a flash of blond landed right in front of him, halting him to his tracks.

"Minato…" Kakashi said, breathlessly. How ironic that Kakashi had managed to live despite falling off of a cliff, only for him to be killed by Danzo's greatest enemy. And on Konoha's territory too. How had Danzo even let Minato so close to the village?

Kakashi's head snapped towards the direction of the village. Had Rougyu succeeded in overtaking the village? What happened in the week since he was gone? Before Kakashi had the chance to make sense of it, Minato already made his move. One moment he felt a buzzing sensation in his lower back side and the next, Minato held one of his famed three pronged kunais at his throat.

Hiraishin. Kakashi had seen it multiple times in action, but it was the first time it was used on him.

A droplet of blood trickled down his neck.

"How are you not dead?" Cold. Apathetic. Menacing. This was a Minato that Kakashi didn't recognize. They never interacted much prior to the civil war, but instinctively, Kakashi knew that this wasn't the Minato that he knew. Beyond that, both of them were equally dedicated to their own villages, just pitted on the opposite side. There was no reason for Minato to possess so much hatred towards him.

Well, unless he also believed that Kakashi killed the Third Hokage, then maybe.

"Who are you?" Kakashi noticed Minato visibly tensed at his question. "I don't believe that you're the Minato I know. You're an imposter."

Minato scoffed. "I don't believe you have any right to speak. You should be dead; I watched you fall from that cliff. What luck for you to have survived."

That solved the mystery of how he ended up in his present state, but there were still too many questions that were left unexplained. Supposedly, Kakashi was a wanted man for something that he swore he did not do. Konoha placed a target on his head. Minato was sent to kill him. He didn't die.

How are you not dead? Minato's words echoed back at him. Yeah, Kakashi was wondering that too.

"I didn't kill the Third Hokage." The sharp edge of the blade dug deeper into his throat, breaking the skin.

"There's no point in denying it now. All of the evidence points towards you. You didn't die the first time, then I'll kill you a second time and this time, I'll make sure the job is finished."

Kakashi couldn't help it; he laughed at the absurdity of it all. Maybe death would end the madness of this hell or genjutsu or whatever the fuck this was. There would only be two outcomes: he'd either return to his own world or he would actually die. Both options sounded a lot better than being here with an imposter Minato who wanted his head and being wronged for murdering someone he didn't kill.

His maniac laughter made Minato hesitate.

"Who are you?" Clearly, this wasn't a reaction that imposter Minato was expecting from him. Like hell, Kakashi didn't even know how he was supposed to react. Perhaps this time, he really had gone insane.

"Kakashi Hatake, supposedly the person who killed Hiruzen Sarutobi."

"Hiruzen?" Minato repeated.

Kakashi shrugged. "Didn't you say I killed the Third Hokage? I obviously didn't, but none of you are willing to believe me." His comment was met with silence. Kakashi could tell that Minato was distracted at the moment; this was his opportunity to make a break for it, but what was the point?

Somehow, Minato had gotten his infamous seal on his body. Before he could even take two steps, Minato could teleport right to him. Kakashi didn't even dare to think about being lucky enough to escape out of Minato's range before he could catch him.

Finally, Minato spoke again. "You're...not Kakashi?" His statement was laced with hesitance.

"And you're not Minato. What of it?"

"No, I mean, you're not Kakashi," Minato said with a bit more conviction and emphasis this time. Only, Kakashi failed to see how that statement was any different from the one he said before.

"Are you that sadistic that you're going to drag out my death like this?" Hey, at least Kakashi wasn't dying alone in a grassy field this time. His only regret was that he couldn't take out Minato with him.

Instead of slitting his throat, Minato lowered the kunai. He still kept a firm grip on him.

"Sorry, but I need answers from you."

And then Kakashi was promptly knocked out.

A/N: Hi again!

If it's been a while, reread the end of chapter 1 and then read this last scene and it will make sense. :)

I'm excited to hear your thoughts. Thank you for reading. Until next time!

-MM