end of the backlog, updates will be more sporadic from here on

re: Guest - for sure, telling anyone wouldn't be the best move for him. only a handful of people might believe him, most of those would need incredible amounts of proof first, and there's too little material benefit to trying. emotional benefit's a different story, but of course Kakashi's emotions are fine, he's great, good ninja don't need confidantes or friends or therapists, etc. he'll sit on his feelings 'til the day he dies, which will realistically be in five or so years max with how ninja lifespans work out. i'm glad you like the story so far! there's actually a little bit more to the alternate universe than just Kakashi going rogue (namely, one conversation between Minato and Hiruzen went differently, and also some large-scale worldbuilding stuff that is not strictly not canon), but by the end of this chapter pretty much all of the major differences should have been set up.

Whenever Team 7 landed a C-rank after Wave, the genin geared up for war. Kakashi ran them through the protocol for how to respond in the case of an incapacitated or out-of-contact commander, repeatedly in Naruto's case.

They didn't get many C-ranks since Kakashi stopped taking them out of the Village after the second one fell apart too. He wouldn't have minded so much if it was him alone or leading a team of chuunin, but his genin were barely out of the Academy and he couldn't trust them to only stumble across Academy-level threats. The Hokage assigned them a small handful more over his vocal protests. "I can't spare shinobi from duty because they might get hurt," the Sandaime said, expression not harsh but still as immovable as the carved face on the mountain behind him.

Yes, Kakashi agrees with that in principle, but on their last C-rank a Konoha ANBU had burst through the cucumber trellises to attack them after – as they found out later – she passed through a patch of heretofore never-before-documented toadstools with an aggression-heightening scent capable of slipping through her mask's filter. Konoha's research division couldn't even use the mushrooms in the end because they were too virulent to work with.

If it wasn't taboo to talk about ANBU then a shinobi could milk a story like that for the rest of their career, but Team 7's genin couldn't consider an attack by allied black ops while on a C-rank farmhand mission an hour's run from the Village gates particularly remarkable. Kakashi entered them into the Chuunin Exams on the faint hope that even one of them would scrape through with a promotion and therefore clear the team for B-rank missions.

Kakashi didn't request C-ranks for himself after he abandoned his team, so he doesn't know if the pattern would have held for him on his own. It did, however, break since his death. He and Hoshigaki took an escort mission for a caravan traveling the same direction as them, and it ended up bog-standard without even a spot of inclement weather to mar it.

But then came Wave, and after.

He can pass off the exorcism. Hoshigaki accepted it because it sounded shady, they knew what they were getting into. The next one though, with Hoshigaki and one silent tag-along guarding a gang boss during a meeting, turns into a production. The alcohol's poisoned, a rival boss breaks down while accusing their client of always loving his siblings more than him, someone jumps onto the table with a katana, and the whole building explodes because of an accident with the gas lines rather than any kind of sabotage.

It could still be a coincidence.

It isn't, but it could be.

Hoshigaki takes it as a round of interesting luck. Another mission will confirm either way for Kakashi, and until then Kakashi won't contradict him. Though he will suggest they not try again while in the city. Just in case.

"They're not all going to be like this," Hoshigaki answers.

"Maybe I really did jinx us."

Hoshigaki pauses, some of the amusement clearing way for confusion. "You actually think so?"

"Who knows," says Kakashi, pronouncing it like I certainly don't, don't ask me. "We don't need to be doing this right now anyway."

They really, really don't. The money can't hurt, but Kakashi's medical bills aside (he's come to realize he might have taken Konoha's hospital for granted) they spend hardly anything. While he needs to pay Kakuzu back a percentage of what they should have gained from the Wave mission since they claimed the job off of him, Gato didn't offer much in the first place. Hoshigaki's just looking for ways to kill time as far as he can tell.

Though once Hoshigaki stops, it leaves Kakashi looking for ways to fill his own schedule. Which he can. Naturally. He's been a functioning adult since he was five. No ninjutsu or training – they're in a city. No Memorial Stone – that's in Konoha, which he can't enter, because he's in the Akatsuki, because he's a missing-nin, because he died against Pein and he met Sakumo and a light shone down and the world tilted on its axis and then he was a traitor who'd massacred the Uchiha –

– no Memorial Stone.

No acquaintances to pester aside from the pack and Hoshigaki and the newest add-on to this misbegotten party, no missions to serve Konoha through, no genin to try to train since they're with Gai, who's already taught Sasuke to trust his comrades and Naruto to ask questions when he needs help and Sakura to accept a clear role in the team when Kakashi at that point still hadn't gotten Sasuke to have a single full conversation with either teammate, and he can't anticipate Gai's attention because –

("The next time we meet, I'll understand what I have to do.")

– because he made Gai cry, which he hasn't managed since he was a chuunin and deliberately cruel rather than deliberately annoying.

What is he doing?

He rummages for a while through the library's history section and old newspaper catalogs, but he can verify only so many times that the broad strokes of history match up near exactly with what he remembers. Besides the perpetrator of the massacre, the one other difference conspicuous enough for a civilian newspaper in another city to report on was the inauguration of the Yondaime Hokage, Uzumaki Kushina. Which threw Kakashi for a loop for several reasons.

Minato deserved the position and held it well, but there's little avoiding that more factors played a role in his appointment. The Leaf's other kage-level shinobi were Danzo, who the Sandaime didn't raise as a possibility, the Sannin, none of whom were apparently psychologically fit for a high leadership position despite seeming fine enough at the time to Kakashi, and Kushina, a foreign-born jinchuuriki woman with no direct ties to the sitting Hokage.

Besides that, you'd expect having a different Hokage might lead to some changes in the timeline, but even with the knowledge of the Yondaime's identity in hand he still hasn't identified many aside from the obvious.

Then again, neither Yondaime held the position long.

Immediately following that finding, he searched for an account of the Kyuubi attack to confirm that Minato died then and not earlier. Minato did, his name printed in the list that made it out of the Village several months after the Kyuubi's resealing, and Kakashi read it and stood bowed and shaking over the table in the library's back room, his hands clammy and his chest aching. The names filled the page. Nearer to the end, Uzumaki Kushina held the line above Uzumaki Kushina's child, Naruto hidden away among the lost.

He couldn't stay there forever. He pulled himself together, folded the paper away, and returned to the inn to meet Hoshigaki and hear about the mission that would land them Nezuki.

Besides wasting time in the library and letting Hoshigaki haul him around the city, he dawdles over whether to set up a shrine in the inn room – the answer always circles back to a vehement no, which hardly stops him from getting into multiple hours-long debates about it with himself and his ghosts – and over what to actually do about the time travel portion of this mess.

He doesn't have the ability or the resources to handle Pein. The other Akatsuki members aren't one-man armies to the same extent as their leader, but he would need to work around Kisame to reach them, and once he does he'll stand alone against two Akatsuki members and with no hope of back-up. Unfeasible from a purely practical standpoint, so it goes on the back burner.

The Akatsuki don't mobilize for another few years anyway for unclear reasons linked to Pein's Bijuu sealing method. Chronologically, the most imminent danger arrives during Konoha's Chuunin Exams. Sand is one of the Five and not worth tangling with, but if he can pressure Sound and Orochimaru into focusing on him then he might rout the invasion. Because that's apparently a course of action he can consider now, occupying Orochimaru and his followers' attention with a team of two people.

A team of one if he needs to and if he plays it carefully enough, though that won't end well.

Kakashi informs Hoshigaki of his whereabouts only sporadically, and only starting from about a week following his death, after he ran into a team of Kumo hunter-nin while on his own. If they killed him while Hoshigaki didn't know his location then the swordsman would have a much harder time tracking them down to get rid of Obito's eye. The Mist-nin's given him some grief for it, if less so since leaving Wave. Hoshigaki himself always tells Kakashi where he goes, and if he doesn't have a destination in mind he gives the general area he plans to stay near, so it takes Kakashi little effort to flag him down near a temple one day to talk. This is not a discussion he particularly wants to have indoors.

It's not an emergency either, so he doesn't rush Hoshigaki through his window shopping. A few merchants have mats laid on the side of the street, wares arranged across them. One carries a row of fox-themed charms, banking on business from the faithful regardless of the temple behind them belonging to a different religion. The principal deity across large swathes of Fire, River, and eastern Wind is Kurama, a god of rain and of luck fair and poor, and he doesn't begrudge followers keeping other beliefs.

Kakashi can count on both hands the number of times he's heard of Kurama within the Hidden Leaf's walls. He's not a god of shinobi, and since the Nine-tails' attack he's sunk further out of favor. While not a fox himself, the animals carry his blessing. But in the rest of the country his presence remains ubiquitous.

In the end Hoshigaki buys nothing. Trinkets don't travel well even with a partner who can draw storage seals; any souvenirs he gets tend towards the edible. Kakashi leads him away and over to a patch of trees downhill from the road, summons Guruko, the least identifiable dog of the pack, to cart Nezuki out of hearing range and keep watch for anyone passing too close, and says to Hoshigaki, "Water Country is on the opposite side of Fire from Rice."

"You meant to do that now?"

"Yes," says Kakashi.

"Why..." Hoshigaki grimaces. "You heard what Leader said."

"He hardly made it out to be urgent."

Hoshigaki doesn't speak, and his expression doesn't change. Kakashi holds his ground, and a few moments later Hoshigaki says, "You're being unreasonable." If he doesn't sound happy about it, he doesn't sound offended either.

Kakashi has gone out of his way to offer no proof of time travel, has in fact lied about events to ensure that they don't line up. The invasion of Konoha he died during? Instigated by Hidden Stone during a war that begins this time next year. He won't say that Orochimaru will sabotage the next Chuunin Exams and raise any possibility for Hoshigaki that the time travel might really have happened.

Which leaves him nothing to justify himself with. If he was with Konoha he could lie during a solo mission report about stumbling across Orochimaru's activity somehow, but he could get away with it only because he doesn't spend twelve hours a day minimum around the Sandaime Hokage. Also, Hoshigaki won't care about a threat to Konoha anyway.

"It's important," he says, uncomfortably aware of how much he has to rely on the Kiri missing-nin's boundless goodwill. Not a phrase he ever expected to cross his mind, but here they are.

He would offer concessions, but Hoshigaki takes extremely poorly to bribery. (He can't name where the information comes from, but he has it.) The concessions can only come after Hoshigaki's already caved, at which point they tip closer to an apology.

"An explanation's too much to ask for, isn't it," says Hoshigaki. Kakashi still doesn't hear a no. "Orochimaru's slippery. It would take a while to track him down in his territory. I don't... well, if it's what you're after, but can't this wait until we finish Leader's mission?"

"It can't." Somehow with a straight face he continues, "I have a way to speed up the search." The worst way imaginable, so terrible Naruto would spend several minutes yelling at him for proposing it and Sakura would agree to it nearly on the spot because she learned too much from Kakashi for her own good. But it will work. If it doesn't kill them first.

"...If it's not low profile, Leader's going to find out. You can't set the country on fire to smoke the snake out."

"Wasn't going to," Kakashi replies, probably not lying. Gods willing.

"This will cause so many problems," says Hoshigaki, pained.

"If Leader asks, it was my fault."

"It is your fault. I'm somewhat more concerned about Konan-san."

"Konan?"

"She recruited every member of the other teams except Zetsu." He evidently picks up that Kakashi doesn't catch the implication because he adds, "The organization's usual recruitment process is to beat up a ninja until they agree to play nice."

And it works?

...Did Kakashi join like that?

"I did it for you," Hoshigaki confirms, and oddly doesn't look too entertained by the memory, "though someone else handled most of the work already. And I came in voluntarily." He blinks, then says, "Anyway, no. We can't do that."

"It's really important," Kakashi tries.

"Why."

"It's really very important. I'm not asking permission, you understand."

"...No. You wouldn't be. You know how they'll see it if you strike out on your own?"

"Orochimaru's survived this long after leaving."

"Clearly. That's because he has..." Hoshigaki pauses, frowning. "...He shouldn't have."

"What?"

"Doesn't matter," he says after a moment. He focuses again. "No one will kill you for an unsanctioned leave of absence if you're just trying to take out Orochimaru, although Leader might want to. But that's not a bar you should be proud of clearing."

Kakashi cannot care less about Pein's feelings, and however Konan might respond doesn't concern him as long as she waits until after he inconveniences Orochimaru. "If no one from the organization is going to kill me, there's not much to be afraid of."

"You – " Hoshigaki lets outs a loud, strangled breath, then turns aside and takes three steps away.

Kakashi didn't mean to actually drive him speechless.

Still, it's intriguing that a conflict of interest between Kakashi and Pein would become this much of a dilemma for him.

He exhales. Five long seconds later he says without looking at Kakashi, "Whatever you remember Orochimaru doing, it hasn't happened."

"I know – "

"One year," says Hoshigaki tightly. He turns to face his partner, who was, for the record, about to agree. "I have final say on where we go for the next three hundred and sixty-five days. Starting after we leave Rice."

Steep, but considering Kakashi's asking him to drop every responsibility in order to hike across a large country and fight a Sannin for no stated reason... "Yeah."

"Why, though." Kakashi doesn't reply; he might never have heard a more rhetorical question. Hoshigaki sighs, "Whatever. Could you call Guruko-san?"

A lightning technique to simulate a dog whistle, and once Kakashi finishes Hoshigaki says, rather meanly, "You can help me with something. Did you know the temple pond had sharks?"

Kakashi reflexively pictures Hoshigaki's battle summons, but of course no one would drop those into a pond, and you can't spend too long around the swordsman without learning that some sharks remain small enough to slip into plumbing. "Freshwater sharks?"

Hoshigaki's lips pull back. "No. I wasn't planning on looking for the person who left them, but since you're here..."

So Kakashi spends the rest of the stay in the city pretending to care about exotic fish while chatting to the sellers about their previous customers. Hoshigaki's really not given to pettiness, but he'll take the chance to knock out two birds with one stone if it lands in his lap.

His irritation, when it occurs at all, doesn't endure past a minute at most, but some part of the arrangement has to have hit a sore spot. Or several. He stays unhappy for almost an entire ten minutes. Nezuki asks to stay with Kakashi that afternoon despite their having hardly spoken a word to each other since their introduction, and as soon as Hoshigaki leaves earshot she pokes her head out of his vest pocket and demands, "What happened between you?"

"I talked him into going somewhere he doesn't want to." With a flicker of humor: "Don't judge me too harshly for it." She has Hoshigaki on a pedestal.

For clear reason. Several years ago, the other Kakashi asked why half of the Kiri missing-nin who can recognize Kisame on sight treat him with a certain... Kakashi doesn't know what to call it. Something slightly more respectful than entitlement.

As Hoshigaki explained it, rarely children born and raised Water Country develop an inhumanly large chakra pool alongside more obvious physical traits. The cause differs based on where in the country one asks, reasons ranging from possession to an ocean god's blessing to infidelity with a spirit disguised as the husband, which... well, who knows. They have more cultural significance attached which Kisame didn't go into depth on except to mention that the last one, with striped skin and hair that poisoned on contact, died before the Shodai Mizukage's reign, so the country had a drought of them before he came about.

How did they take it when their first fish person in sixty years fled the country? Kakashi did not say then. The bingo books and their Kiri-nin's listed defection dates answered the question well enough.

"You're a bad influence," says Nezuki.

Kakashi's a bad influence on the Kiri missing-nin who can't stand going three weeks without an adrenaline rush.

...It's true that Hoshigaki wouldn't have heard of Icha Icha on his own.

"Pot, kettle. You did the same thing."

She bristles. "Did not."

Kakashi smiles down at her. "Did too."

"That was different!"

"Naturally."

"It was. You wouldn't understand."

He hums noncommittally rather than arguing. "He's more sentimental than you'd expect, looking at him."

On paper, Hoshigaki couldn't hold less attachment to his old allegiances if he tried. He defected after killing his commander and claiming Samehada from his corpse, in the process robbing Mist and Water of an irreplaceable heirloom. He might have done it for petty greed or anger or to prove that he could, but which of those would have led to him several years later falling victim to an argument that appealed to his feelings for the nation he hasn't set foot in since he fled it?

He could fulfill Nezuki's request relatively quickly by tracking down Terumi Mei and foisting off on her the task of finding a summoner from within her ranks, but instead he's decided to look for missing-nin on the mainland because Water Country is tens of thousands of square miles of perfectly innocuous land he refuses to touch. Kakashi doesn't know anyone else that neurotic.

Was Hoshigaki like that with Itachi?

He must have been. The missing-nin who stood at Itachi's side feels like a separate person to this one, who Kakashi, with some discomfort, realizes he cannot imagine hurting him to the same extent without some truly extraordinary motivation, but the timeline doesn't appear to have changed enough to cause such a dramatic shift. The only difference in him should be that he works with Kakashi now rather than Itachi.

He might well have been this... this with Itachi too. Kakashi has far too many similarities to the Uchiha prodigy, at least on the surface. He's only a little older, a little more jaded to others' perceptions of him, a little less of a raging psychopath.

Okay, so he's imagined once or twice his hands around his father's neck, but he didn't go through with it. His father was dead already by then, and Kakashi as a chuunin was an idiot who came up with a lot of stupid thoughts, and he's fantasized about stabbing the Iwa-nin who caved their team in and killed Obito far more often than once or twice.

Anyway, a few days before they've planned to leave the city he finds the shark killer. Hoshigaki chooses a method of problem resolution that strikes Kakashi as closer to his own than any of Hoshigaki's. His backstabbing alternate self might have rubbed off on the swordsman.

The culprit wakes up in the night to a Kiri missing-nin switching on her lights, then treating her to a cordial if not particularly friendly lecture on pet ownership and a sharp-toothed reminder that no one will believe her about this if she tells them. He leaves a postcard on the dining table for her to find in the morning as proof that she didn't dream it. Kakashi imagines she'll never sleep again, but Hoshigaki enjoys himself and he's the one Kakashi lives with.