Minato steeples his fingers together, tucking his thumb underneath his chin and pressing his index fingers in between his eyebrows. He stifles a particularly violent sigh that wants to rip itself out of his chest, taking a moment to just breathe and ignore the paperwork piled around him. Everything is fine.
Or, at least, that's what Minato keeps telling himself as another hawk dives in through his window, screeching as it crashes into a pillar of precariously stacked books. Groaning aloud, Minato hauls himself to his feet, taking three long strides across the room to lift a particularly heavy binder off the poor bird's tail. He gets a chunk out of his sleeve and two bloody fingers for his effort, but the hawk seems relatively unharmed as it hops awkwardly over to its perch, immediately turning to preen out of place feathers.
Minato wraps a handkerchief around the bleeding appendages, grumbling to himself. He can feel his Anbu chuckling to themselves at the sight.
"If you assholes would have some decorum and use the door like normal human beings, maybe I wouldn't feel the need to boobytrap the window." Minato definitely isn't pouting. He isn't.
His Anbu seem to find this even funnier if the smothered chuckling means anything.
"Everyone's a critic," Minato mutters as he approaches the bird of prey, reaching out a wary hand.
It doesn't attack him this time, simply leaning away, primly holding out its talons, and not even bothering to look at the overly cautious blond. Minato counts his blessings, few and far in between as they are, and gently unhooks the message tube from around its proffered leg. He walks back over to his desk, unscrewing the capsule as he goes, and pushes some chakra through the parchment to check for signs of sabotage.
When nothing jumps out at him or feels immediately out of place, the Yondaime carefully unrolls the scroll and skims it with practiced precision. What's left of Minato's expression smooths out into pointed blankness.
"Karasu," Minato murmurs airily, feeling one of his Anbu kneel at his feet without bothering to look up from the missive. "Jiraiya-sensei arrived earlier this morning. He's spent enough time unwinding. I need him in my office, now." Karasu vanishes, his orders clean and concise, before Minato flicks his hand. Another Anbu lands in front of his desk.
"Tsuru. Bring me Itachi, but have him wait outside until I'm done with Jiraiya-sensei." The Anbu salutes before vanishing as well. Minato slowly rolls the missive back closed.
"Tanuki," Minato calls, watching as a third Anbu jumps down and lands in a kneel before his desk. "Help me clean all the books back up?" The blond smiles crookedly at the Anbu in front of him, watching as the man's eye twitches in irritation.
"Please?"
Sighing audibly, the Anbu levers himself to his feet, trudging over to the mess of scattered books, papers, and feathers.
"Yes, Hokage-sama," he agrees with exasperation.
"You know how much I appreciate you!" Minato says brightly, standing up and walking over to join the irritated Anbu. He takes a wide berth around the demon bird.
"As much as I'd love to stack them right back where they were, I have a feeling Sensei will just knock them all back over. So maybe if we just… stuff them over in the corner, it'll be fine?" Minato suggests, scratching the back of his head.
"...as you say," Tanuki agrees after several seconds of silence, not bothering to mention the sheer disastrous state the rest of the room is in.
"I know," Minato says pitifully, hanging his head. "Please, just let me have this."
Tanuki sighs again, crouching down and scooping up a handful of papers.
"Come on, Hokage-sama, we don't have all day."
Minato shoots him a painfully grateful look before copying the Anbu, sorting through scattered books that probably had been in some sort of order before this. Shikaku is going to kill him.
They actually manage to get a surprising amount of it cleaned up before Minato senses Jiraiya approaching, boisterous and bright as always.
"That's enough for now, Tanuki. Thank you again for your help," he says with a pathetic smile, tired blue eyes crinkling. Tanuki nods before hopping back into his assigned watch spot, seconds before Jiraiya crashes through the open window.
"Out of the village for nine months and the first thing you want me to do when I get back is…" Minato doesn't even bother turning around as his sensei takes in the state of his office, voice trailing off in horror.
"Holy hell, kid. What happened in here?" the Toad sage wheezes, uncomprehending.
Minato buries his face in his hands and lets out a controlled breath.
"I never realized that an international incident could be achieved entirely through paperwork. Why didn't anyone tell me this before I took office? Was it deliberate?" Minato spins around to face his sensei. "This has to be why you didn't want the hat. There's no other conceivable reason. You knew and you didn't say anything."
"I would never!" Jiraiya exclaims, placing his hand delicately over his chest. "I only ever had your best interests in mind, Minato."
"Is that why you took me to a brothel for my sixteenth birthday? Out of my, 'best interest'?" Minato asks, raising an unimpressed eyebrow and making quotations with his fingers.
"Of course it was! We didn't want any mini-Minato's running around before you were good and ready, yeah?" Jiraiya blusters, crossing his arms and puffing out his chest.
Minato looks to the rafters.
"See, this is why I'm so high strung. Can you imagine growing up and trying not to be corrupted by this man?"
His Anbu, the professionals that they are, don't humor him with a response.
"Ah, lighten up, Yondaime-sama. We can't all be this laid-back. Imagine what it would do to the village's reputation!" Jiraiya says with a grin. "Besides, how would I be able to gather any information from anyone if I was stuck behind a desk all day?"
Minato sighs.
"Are you? Are you actually gathering information, or am I just paying you to go get drunk and hit on poor, unsuspecting girls?" Minato says, an edge of… something in his tone.
"Excuse you, I'll have you know I'm the best Spy-master in the world!" Jiraiya declares as his spine straightens.
Ah, he's picked up on it, then.
"Please, for the love of Kami, please tell me you have something solid on Gin," Minato pleads, voice cracking miserably in the middle of his sentence.
There's silence in the office, for a moment.
"So you've already heard, then," Jiraiya says, forcing a laugh. "He's quite something, don't you think?"
"Already heard," Minato wheezes, "Already-"
Jiraiya is hiding something.
He cuts himself off, spinning back towards his desk and taking controlled steps across the floor, snatching up the innocuously placed scroll on his desk and slapping into his stunned sensei's hands. He can feel his Anbu shift in unease as Minato feels his patience finally, finally crack.
"I have already heard from three different Kage and dozens of villages bordering Hi no Kuni about the S ranked mercenary running around, collecting bounties left and right, single-handedly taking down two Akatsuki members, and yet somehow managing to fly completely under everyone's radar for years without so much as a whisper of his existence," Minato seethes, voice still unsettlingly pleasant even as his teeth grind together. "The only one I haven't heard from has been you. Our Village spymaster."
A gust of wind rustles the still scattered papers in Minato's office, gratingly loud in the silence that follows his outburst. Jiraiya stares down at the missive in his hands for a moment longer before unrolling it and skimming the contents. His brow furrows and eyes harden before he slowly rolls it back up and cautiously extends his hand out to Minato. The blond swipes the scroll from his grasp with a practiced motion before pacing to the other side of his desk, lowering himself down into his chair.
The tension is thick.
"You have to understand, Minato-"
"What I understand," Minato cuts him off brutally, steel coating his voice. "Is that by your poor judgment and reluctance to inform me of an unknown threat to our village, you have left us entirely vulnerable to an attack. This man has taken down multiple Kiri and Kumo jounin with if eye witness accounts are to be believed, complete ease and without suffering so much as a scratch."
The air is thick, and Minato can feel one of his newer Anbu shifts uncomfortably. It seems he'll have to have a word with Shisui, later. Flicking his hand, he gestures for his guard ensemble to leave the room. This is not a conversation they need to be involved in.
He can feel Tanuki hesitate slightly, having been present for much of the three and a half days that Minato has been in his office, but he straightens his spine and leaves the room without a word.
"I didn't have enough information to go off of," Jiraiya says suddenly, eyes looking somewhere towards Minato's feet. "I only had one person who had so much as seen him contact me, and I didn't want the village jumping at shadows, not with everything going on right now."
"Had this been going on for a couple of weeks, or hell, even a month, maybe I would be inclined to believe you," Minato says, icy words gliding off his tongue, "but it has been two and a half since I received my first mission report mentioning him. What do you know, Sensei?"
Jiraiya shifts uncomfortably, jaw clenching and fingers twitching nervously into his sleeves.
"It's not as simple as that, Minato," Jiraiya pushes. "You know this."
"You have a duty to inform me about threats, Sensei!" Minato exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. "You didn't have to give me an in-depth character analysis; all I needed was a warning to keep my shinobi from getting themselves killed!"
"I couldn't be certain he was a threat!" Jiraiya fires back. "I'm still not! What if your warnings had led to one of your jounin attacking him? He would have burned a bridge before it was even built."
"That's not your call to make!" Minato snaps, eyes flashing. "That may as well have happened regardless."
"I'm telling you, Minato, I knew what I was doing." Jiraiya retaliates. "I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive. Hiruzen-sensei always let me-"
"I have allowed you to do as you please, inform me by your discretion, and galavant across the shinobi nations without so much as a By Your Leave, but this has gone on for long enough," Minato cuts him off viciously. "I am not Sarutobi-sama, nor am I a child anymore. You will tell me everything you know about this man, or face the consequences of insubordination and reckless endangerment of our village."
Jiraiya stands utterly still for a few seconds, struck silent by his former student's outburst. His voice stalls in the back of his throat as he meets Minato's eyes, the thinly controlled rage and hurt shining back at him nearly too much to handle. Before he can even comprehend it, Jiraiya is sinking to the ground, head bowed in deference.
"As you wish, Hokage-sama."
Minato has been a shinobi for longer than he can remember, a child prodigy and the result of ongoing wars between different nations. He was field promoted to Chunin at twelve and made Jounin by the time he was fifteen, though he probably could have passed the exam a year earlier had they not been so short of evaluators. He has been a shinobi for twenty-six years and counting, Hokage for twelve of them.
Not once, in all those years, has he ever been forced to pull rank.
Never.
Minato places his head back in his hands; frustration, betrayal, and regret warring in equal parts through his chest, sealing his throat closed. He slumps in defeat, eyes slipping closed. Kami, but he is tired.
"I'm sorry, Minato," Jiraiya says softly after several minutes of jaggedly uncomfortable silence. "You're right, I should have deferred to your judgment to make the call, not tried to fix it myself. That's why they gave you the hat after all."
Jiraiya's attempt at a joke falls flat, but Minato lifts his head back up regardless and stares down his sensei. He wants to yell, or apologize, or maybe even cry.
"Grab a chair that's not completely covered in stuff and tell me what you know," Minato compromises.
Jiraiya nods and shakily climbs back to his feet, looking around in undisguised awe as he searches for perhaps the only metal folding chair not being used as a foundation for a mountain of books.
"I uh, know this probably isn't the best time to ask, but what happened in here?" Jiraiya finally bursts. "Did the records room have a leak or something?"
Minato's eye twitches.
"We've been trying to find any missions from the last five years that mention a silver-haired mercenary with a face mask and missing eye," Minato finally replies, rubbing his temples. "Iruka, Inoichi, Genma, and Hayate have been combing through every single report for the past week, but everything in here is mission reports only Shikaku or I have clearance to go through. Orochimaru, too, once he makes it back."
"Oro-teme isn't in the village?" Jiraiya asks, his head popping up from where he was carefully trying to maneuver back into the middle of the office without tripping over anything.
"No," Minato says with an exhausted sigh. "He, Obito, and Shisui are probably about halfway back from Kumo by now. I had them attempting to discuss the implications of the Akatsuki's threat and our new wild card with A."
"Ah," Jiraiya says, plopping his newly acquired chair down in front of the desk. "Well, better him than me!"
Minato rolls his eyes but is silently grateful that his sensei has decided to let the incident go and allow Minato to gather himself.
"Why Oro-teme, though? Obito might not be the sharpest knife in the block, but he's been learning from you for a while now, hasn't he?" Jiraiya asks, quirking a brow. "Besides, Shisui would keep him in line. That kid's a real gem."
Minato levels a flat glare at his sensei.
"Obito is not stupid, Sensei," he deadpans.
"That's not what I meant and you know it!" Jiraiya huffs. "He's just not the most, shall we say, politically eloquent one of your bunch. And A hates Oro-teme."
Minato nods, conceding.
"He's come a long way from the bumbling teenager you're used to, you know. But you're not wrong. I sent Orochimaru because I need to make sure my shinobi make it home in one piece," Minato explains, casting a disdainful look at the unanswered missive from A still sitting on his desk.
"I thought Shisui could just about keep up with you, now. And Obito is one of our best," Jiraiya pushes, unsatisfied.
"I considered sending Rin with them, instead," Minato confesses. "A long-ranged fighter and my best field medic, so that if anything happened, she would be there to back them up. A is unpredictable, and if Bee decides to pull anything while my shinobi are there, he's going to pin it on us and spend no time thinking about whether or not to take it out on them. Obito and Shisui would hold their own, and probably make it out relatively unharmed, but…"
"He wouldn't try it with someone like Orochimaru there as well," Jiraiya finishes, nodding with a slight grin. "The bastard would level their village in a heartbeat and not even apologize to you for it."
Minato nods, a grin pulling at his lips as well.
"A might be rash, but even he isn't quite stupid enough to try something with all three of them there," Minato smirks. "That's not to say that Rin wouldn't have put him through a wall, but I know he'd actually hesitate with Orochimaru there."
Jiraiya nods and hums, letting silence descend once more as he gathers his thoughts.
Minato allows him the luxury, brushing dull, greasy hair out of his face. He needs to eat something, shower, and then sleep. He had hoped this wouldn't be as complicated as it was turning out to be.
"One of my informants in Kusa contacted me about three months ago about a young shinobi who swanned onto his home turf asking about Konohagakure. Apparently, he paid well," Jiraiya grumbled, still a bit insulted the man had been bought out, but he remained unaffiliated for a reason.
Minato nods at him to continue, pulling out a piece of scrap paper to take notes.
"I had been in, maybe only a week earlier asking around about the Akatsuki, after Yagura's disappearance. There had been multiple sightings of who I believe to be Sasori and his informants in the area, so I was trying to see if anyone knew anything," Jiraiya grimaces, his lip curling. "Fat load of luck that gave me. There wasn't anyone who even knew about the Akatsuki period, let alone had seen any of them.
"I didn't stay long, I didn't want my trail to go cold, but I must have just missed him. Regardless, this Gin fellow strolls into the bar, spends an hour drinking and flipping through his bingo book before asking my lovely informant what I was looking for in Kusa."
"And he told them," Minato finishes, finger tapping his desk. "Why go through the trouble of hunting down Akatsuki members just to get your attention, though?"
"That confused me at first, too. Especially after the death of Hidan," Jiraiya confesses, shifting and crossing his ankles.
Minato takes the hint, pulling open the bottom drawer and fishing out a bottle of sake and some cups.
"Bless your heart, student of mine, you do care," Jiraiya simpers as Minato pours him a glass before settling back with his own.
"So Jin kills Hidan, what then?" Minato asks, eyes narrow. "He'd already taken out several Kiri shinobi at this point, so Terumi barely even had to fight before taking the hat."
"Mm, I'd heard about that. Apparently, Zabuza decided to return to the village as well, I guess since Yagura wasn't around to kill him anymore," Jiraiya elaborates, swirling his sake.
"I hadn't heard about that," Minato replies warily, another note to add on top of everything.
"They're trying to keep everything under wraps right now, make it look more like an election than the bloody insurrection it actually was," Jiraiya sighs. "Openly accepting a nukenin who tried to assassinate the prior Kage is probably not the best way to stay covert."
Minato just nods, gesturing at Jiraiya to continue.
"Well, as I was saying, Jin brings in Hidan's head, the man apparently still screaming bloody murder and curses on his entire family before handing him over to the bounty collection agency and receiving his compensation. I heard about it within the hour and was there in less than a day. If he was looking for a way to catch my attention, he definitely found it."
Minato nods again, sitting up straighter and looking at his sensei.
"By the time I get there, he's long gone, and there's not a single soul who can tell me where he went," Jiraiya says, tone dark. "I even persuaded them to let me talk to Hidan's head - disgusting, by the way - and even after telling him I was going to track the kid down myself and end him, he still couldn't tell me where he went."
"Wait, so the head is still alive?" Minato asks, slightly perturbed.
"Nah, not at this point. Apparently, the kid told them he'd either starve to death or die of dehydration, whichever took him first. Only took about four days, and I made sure to keep a Kage bunshin around to double-check. The guy's dirt in the ground, at this point." Jiraiya finishes his cup before pouring himself another. "I guess being immortal isn't all it's cracked up to be. What I want to know is how Jin figured that out in the first place."
Minato hums, taking a sip of his sake as well.
"You have theories, as to why he's attacking the Akatsuki along with shinobi from other villages," Minato states.
It's not a question.
"You've been hosting other Kage, fostering relationships with other villages in the light of this threat," Jiraiya says, tone low. "He's attacked Kiri, Kumo, and Iwa shinobi, mostly Jounin or their own Black Ops."
"You think he's opposed to the peace, so he's taking down the potential allied threat himself while making it look like Konoha and Suna are behind it," Minato says slowly.
"It's only a guess, of course. No one has been able to pin him down long enough to have so much as a conversation with him, let alone get his motives," Jiraiya responds cautiously.
"It could be a fluke," Minato agrees, "but it's too dangerous to let it go unchecked. He's going to have the other villages at our throats at this rate."
"And now he's taken down the other half of the immortal duo, showcasing exactly how powerful he really is," Jiraiya finishes, taking another deep draft of his sake. "They were S-class Nukenin for a reason, Minato. I don't even think you would have come out of a skirmish like that unharmed."
"Supposedly," Minato counters, fingers tracing the missive that had started the argument in the first place. "If it was me, I would make a shadow clone to claim the bounty while I recovered a fair distance away."
"Something that won't bleed or have any need to nurse wounds, while still capable of normal human interaction," Jiraiya thinks out loud, eyes clouding slightly. "That's risky, though. One misplaced elbow and you're down an irreplaceable body scroll. Not to mention the sheer chakra drain required to make a physical clone…"
Minato silently takes a sip of his drink, allowing his sensei a moment to collect his thoughts.
"I would stay nearby, within 30 meters at all times. Close enough to interfere if something goes wrong, but far enough back nobody is going to notice," Minato finally tacks on, taking another mouthful of sake.
"This person we're fabricating," Jiraiya says slowly, "is shaping up to sound an awful lot like a Kage level shinobi with genius to rival yours, an information network to rival my own, and a tactical brain that could keep up with a Nara."
"We're assuming a lot of things here," Minato replies, voice equally as slow. "We don't actually know if any of this is true, or if he really did any of this, to begin with. He could be working with someone."
"For the sake of the village, I hope that's true," Jiraiya says, voice low and dangerous.
"I couldn't agree more."
The two spend several more minutes piecing together theories and searching for flaws in their shared intelligence in silence before Minato stands abruptly, pulling a hand through his tangled hair.
"I don't know about you, but I haven't slept in three days, and I have another shinobi waiting on his mission outside," Minato says, sighing in exasperation.
Jiraiya nods in consolidation, standing from his chair as well and offering Minato his arm. After a moment of hesitation, Minato grabs it weakly and allows himself to be pulled into a crushing side hug.
"I'm sorry for stressing you out, kiddo," Jiraiya says, genuine remorse in his words. "Sometimes we old men like to pretend we know best when really we're just making it up as we go."
Minato sighs for what feels like the millionth time and allows his body to relax against his sensei's side.
"I'm still not overly happy with you, but I think I can understand why you did it," Minato confesses. "Just, please, don't do anything like that again."
Jiraiya winces slightly at Minato's blunt words but nods regardless, relaxing his grip enough to allow his exhausted student to slip out from under his arms.
"I'm sorry for yelling, too," Minato murmurs. "It wasn't fair of me to-"
"Nope!" Jiraiya cuts him off. "That was totally justified. In fact, you could stand to lose your temper more often. I think I'm finally starting to see that fire Kushina talked about at your wedding!"
Minato just snorts, shoving Jiraiya towards the window.
"Take the rest of the day off. We can compare intel tomorrow," Minato says with a wave of his hand, shooing his sensei out of his office. "Just stay away from the onsens!"
"What?" Jiraiya yells over his shoulder as he leaps from the room. "I can't hear you over the sound of me leaving!"
Minato barks out a laugh, walking back over to his desk and slumping down in his chair once more.
"Ah, well. Kami knows Tsunade will take care of him if he gets too out of hand," Minato says softly as he sorts his notes into a pile and dumps them into the middle drawer for later review. "Now it's just this 'Jin' fellow I need to worry about, huh?"
Shaking his head to clear out muddled thoughts, Minato presses his hand to the discrete seal under the bottom lip of his desk, forcing his face back into a mask of neutrality as his door swings open.
"Pardon the intrusion, Hokage-sama," comes a velvet soft voice.
"Not at all, Itachi-kun! Please, come sit," Minato instructs, gesturing to the chair in front of him.
He can't help but feel gratified as Itachi pointedly keeps his gaze straight ahead, not so much as glancing at the mess around him.
"Tsunade has informed me of your clean bill of health, which I can't help but be immeasurably grateful for. No lingering symptoms?" Minato inquires, despite having had dinner with Fugaku and Mikoto the week prior.
"I am well, Hokage-sama, thank you for asking," Itachi responds quietly, face impassive. "My residual cough has cleared up, and I am ready to be of service."
Nodding absently, Minato fingers the missive from the hawk still perched in his office.
"Well enough to take a solo mission outside the village, perhaps for more than six weeks?" Minato asks, meeting the teen's eyes.
Sliding gracefully forward, Itachi folds himself into a respectful kneel, bowing his head.
"How may I be of service, Hokage-sama?"
"None of that, now," Minato says lightly, waving his hand. "Please, just sit. This may take us a minute."
Itachi nods before levering himself back into the chair, face blank but eyes intent.
"You see, there is a young man who has recently caught my attention…"
Many weeks previously
Kakashi settles on a branch about a kilometer south of the hamlet to just… process. There was a lot to unpack within that conversation, even if it was only a couple of sentences exchanged. (Minato-sensei) The Yondaime had been dead for nearly 17 years last time Kakashi had checked, so unless this was some sort of international conspiracy Jiraiya had managed to cook up in a drunken moment of pure stupidity, something was very, very wrong here.
Kakashi pulled his bingo book back out of his pack, tracing a finger lightly over the spine. The Yondaime had other nation's officials staying inside their walls. The Uchiha were alive. The Mizukage had disappeared. He was looking for the Akatsuki.
Dropping to the ground under the cover of dozens of trees, Kakashi bites his thumb without feeling it before flying through a series of hand seals, slamming a palm to the ground. Black ink stretches around him like a spiderweb, a puff of smoke flashing into existence with a loud pop!
Kakashi stands stock-still as the smoke dissipates into the surrounding area before making eye contact with a small brown pug. It seems just as startled to see him as Kakashi is, words tumbling out of their mouths at the same time.
"Pakkun?"
"A Hatake?"
It really only takes a second before a lance of something (betrayalpaingrief) rips through Kakashi's face as the ninken evaluates him with no small amount of apprehension and distrust.
"How do you know my name, pup?" the pug growls out, eyes narrowed.
Kakashi could lie. Could make something up about how he 'found it while going through (Tou-san) Sakumo's old things and signing the summoning scroll.' He could tell the ninken 'how startled I was to learn of my heritage, and how badly I wanted to connect with my clan.' He could make it believable. Kakashi was good at lying; he did so to himself all the time.
Instead, he says, "Because I raised you," and leaves it at that.
The pug blinks, incredulous, before sitting down hesitantly and nodding to the grass in front of him.
"Then you better tell me all about it, because last time I checked it was my dam who whelped me, not a one-eyed string bean."
Kakashi felt himself folding into a deceptively casual sprawl on the ground, distantly noting that Pakkun's idiolect was all wrong, and the cadence of his voice was a bit too fast.
"Well, you see, I think I'm lost," Kakashi says, fingers itching to open a copy of Icha-Icha Paradise to avoid Pakkun's (hostile) suspicious gaze.
His Icha-Icha didn't come with him though. (Nothing did, except the stolen eye.)
"Lost," Pakkun replies, dry as a dune in Suna.
"Very." Kakashi nods his head. "You see, I went to sleep in my bed in Konoha last night but I woke up in the middle of Kusa in different clothes and what appears to be a dead Hokage heading the village. I was thinking perhaps I had gone crazy, and yet here you are."
Kakashi closes his mouth to keep himself from vomiting information at the pug like he's used to, allowing Pakkun several seconds to gather his thoughts before replying.
"The Hatake are extinct," he says bluntly. "Have been for around 20 years. If there was another one, we'd have heard about it by now."
There's truth in his words, Kakashi thinks and it makes him fidget in place.
"You're more than a little lost," the pug observes. "Because you shouldn't have been able to summon me without signing the scroll, and it's been in our possession since Rikumo died."
Kakashi feels a wave of shock roll through him at the name, sitting up straighter.
"Rikumo, Sakumo's older brother?" he asks, voice coming out flat.
"That would be the one, yes," Pakkun replies, tilting his head to scratch his ear. "Never met either one of them, though. Sakumo died years before I was born, and Rikumo already had a pack. Still, though, he died while I was a little pup, so unless you're his little bastard child or something I have a feeling my life is about to get a whole lot more complicated."
Kakashi physically reels back, rocking onto his heels as he absorbs the information. Pakkun rises and pads towards Kakashi, taking delicate sniffs of his clothes.
Sakumo had died as a child, and Rikumo had been the one to sign the contract with the Ninken instead of the Okami.
"How did he die?" Kakashi asks, voice entirely devoid of emotion.
"Hmm?" Pakkun rumbles, pulling his head away from Kakashi's knee. "He and his team were ambushed during the Third Great Shinobi War. I was told he and several of his pack died evacuating a civilian town. Why?"
Rikumo died a hero, then, Kakashi muses. (Sakumo hadn't died a coward. Rikumo hadn't left behind a shattered son and a too heavy burden of incomprehensible hatred.)"No reason," Kakashi responds stiffly. "I was just wondering how the scroll ended up back with you guys, that's all."
Pakkun shrugs, or as close as his body can get to it.
"One of his pack brought it back. I guess they just assumed we would wait for the next human to reverse summon themselves to us before we decided whether or not to bind ourselves to humans again," Pakkun sits back down, peering up at Kakashi. "And yet, here you are."
"Here I am," Kakashi echoes, numb.
Pakkun seems entirely unimpressed as the silence stretches, raising a non-existent eyebrow at Kakashi's inner turmoil.
"So, did'ja want to re-sign the scroll, or what?" Pakkun rumbles conversationally, turning his head to scratch his ear again.
"I- what?" Kakashi responds, incredulous.
"Do you want to re-sign the scroll?" Pakkun repeats. "Although, thinking about it now, it may have already been signed the second you woke up here. Either way, we can get Nao-sensei to check for us, being the bookkeep and all that."
Pakkun pops up from the ground and shakes off, his posture relaxing from the (hostility) nervous tension that had been running through it before.
"Either way, I'm sure the pack will accept you. If you've worked with us before, it'll show." Pakkun sniffs him, delicate, before grumbling slightly. "You may not smell like a dog anymore, but we can tell."
"You believe me," Kakashi manages to choke out, visible eye wide in bafflement. "You're not even going to ask for a second opinion."
"Why would I need one?" Pakkun asks, face scrunching. "You knew my name, plus about Sakumo and Rikumo, and you know, the whole being able to summon me thing?"
Kakashi can only blink. He couldn't ever remember Pakkun being this… naive. The pug Kakashi knew had a sharp tongue and even sharper wit to match it. He was the oldest, most dependable, put together ninken he had. Kakashi had hand raised him to-
Kakashi's line of thought abruptly cuts off. This isn't his Pakkun. These aren't his clothes. Those aren't his comrades.
This isn't his world.
(He's alone; completely, utterly alone. He's already lost everything once. He can't stand to do it a second time. It will kill him. He will not come back. They promised, promised to never leave him alone. Not like that. Not again.)
Kakashi doesn't even realize he's begun to hyperventilate until he feels a small weight climb into his lap, two small paws pushing decisively against his chest.
"Easy there, boss," Pakkun barks, the echo of a familiar command jolting Kakashi back into the present. "We'll figure this out. I'm sure it'll be fine. Just, uh…"
Pakkun seems uncertain of himself, dropping back to all fours and reaching out a paw. Kakashi watches, incredulous, as Pakkun slowly drags his paw across his (filthy, bloodstained) shaking hands.
Kakashi can't quite find the control to voice his confusion, but his face must give it away.
"My paw pads," Pakkun says, deadpan. "I've been told they are quite soft and soothing."
Kakashi can't help but bark out a laugh. It tears through him more like a sob, but it's something, at least. The panic recedes as swiftly as it had onset, years of practice and compartmentalizing snapping his consciousness back to the front.
Kakashi lets one hand sink into the grass, the other falling lightly on a tawny head and scratching behind darkened ears just the way he knows Pakkun likes. The pug lets out a blissful sigh, all but melting into Kakashi's chest.
And really, Kakashi should have been expecting that to happen at one point or another. His brain can only process so much at a time, and the bar had been… (The last cracks of his fractured sanity, scraping against each other, gouging out bloody chunks in a desperate attempt to keep moving forward. Faces flashing. Rin and Obito and Minato and Kushina-) straining.
"You good, boss?" Pakkun asks after several more seconds of pampering, craning his neck to look up at Kakashi.
"Yeah," Kakashi breathes. "Yeah, I'm alright. I just needed to adjust."
"Huh. That was faster than expected."
Pakkun blinks. Kakashi blinks back.
"Well, no time like the present. Let's summon Nao-sensei and get this over with," Pakkun says, using Kakashi's chest as a springboard and bounding a couple feet back, tail wagging despite himself. "I've always wanted a summoner. This should be fun!"
Kakashi can't help but sigh fondly, a hand covering his face. Naive indeed, the poor dog. Kakashi could only hope that Bisuke and Shiba would still be voices of reason.
"Let's meet your pack," Kakashi agrees, standing.
Biting his thumb, Kakashi whips through the seals and plants his palm firmly in the clearing.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu," Kakashi murmurs.