Chapter XII
Kakashi awoke with a throbbing head and heavy body. His throat was dry and even moving his eyelids required more will power than usual. The vague familiarity of the after-effects of alcohol brought back memories of his first and possibly last time he spent the night at a bar with Asuma and Ibiki back when he had no idea who dealt with torture and interrogation branch of the ANBU. That sadist managed to shove a whole bottle of vodka down his throat without lifting a finger, damn him.
Much to his relief, Kakashi found that he remembered everything up to the point when he entered the room, including the strange exchange of words he had with Thompson-sama. What troubled him was that his memories afterwards fizzled into nothingness, which gave way to a new concern.
Sakura.
She had been upset at him, but he supposed she was glad to leave the presence of a man who viewed her as his personal doll. Or did he mistake his own relief for hers? It was a bit strange, but he could recall some remnants of a possessive spirit during the haphazard chat.
Possessive... Was that it? Maybe not. The word was a bit too strong for his taste.
After this, fat chance he'd touch any kind of alcohol again. Why anyone enjoyed drowning himself in a collective ritual of liver poisoning was beyond his understanding. All the other jounins seemed to enjoy the strange procedures of alcohol worship in a social atmosphere. He, on the other hand, always rejected or left before an invitation was extended to him.
Assuming that thinking had somewhat cleared his mind, Kakashi decided to open his right eye and stare at the ceiling. Eyelids opened slowly to reveal the morning light muted by the rain clouds reflected dimly off the ceiling. Lined with streaks of pink.
Opening both eyes, Kakashi blinked in slight confusion before his attention was brought to the weight on his chest. There Sakura laid, her small figure curled up with her head on his chest and looking quite content.
The obi of her houmongi was untied and slack around her waist and the neckline had loosened enough for him to see her collarbones. Rose strands sprawled from the woman's head to his neck and several unruly strands had strayed into his line of vision. A hand clutched the dark cotton fabric of his kimono tighter as she sighed.
It was too early to be in shock and since he was too lazy to get up, Kakashi merely watched the kunoichi's head rise and fall in rhythm with his breathing. The clash of the familiar in an unfamiliar setting was a source of amusement for the man. Here he was, lying in bed with an intense hangover, watching his former student sleeping on his chest. Mulling over his current setting once again, a nervous tension twisted his gut.
He prayed that nothing happened last night. At least nothing he had seen or read in any lewd form of mass media.
Though he would gladly cut off all ties with time and space to be in this moment, Kakashi knew that leaving immediately would be favorable. After this headache subsided, that was. With any luck, Sakura might have brought some remedy for a hangover. He had forgotten how troublesome these were.
The clicking of a turning doorknob cut through Kakashi's foggy senses. Quickly assuming a slumbering posture, he listened intently to the approaching footsteps to identify the one who had so rudely interrupted his morning activities.
He felt a hand stretching out, hovering hesitantly over him. Slipping a kunai into his grasp, he waited for the hand to fall. As soon the hand touched Sakura, the jounin retaliated immediately. In one movement, the man yanked on the inferior limb and imprisoned the perpetrator between the edge of the mattress and his kunai. Only then did he open a hostile eye to inspect his catch.
His eye grew wide in surprise.
"You..."
Sakura stirred and turned a sleepy head to the commotion. Rubbing her eyes in effort to clear her cloudy vision, she stared at the unfortunate creature at the Copy Ninja's mercy for several seconds before quickly sitting up on the mattress in recognition.
"Yuko-san!"
————————————————
Shiro toured the library of the mansion, eyes scanning the shelves for nothing in particular. The blond ninja named Naruto promised an unspeakable punishment if he was to flee their proximity, but in truth, he had nowhere to go. He, despite his build and physical attributes, was born in a land twenty yards away from the edge of Kakashi's scroll map.
He had lived in this country only for his first four years of his life and thus remembered very little of anything. As soon as he arrived from port, he had walked the streets in attempt to see the one street he lived on only to find everything familiar.
"Oi, Shiro." A calm voice cut through the gunman's musings. The most ninja-like ninja he identified as Sasuke stood several meters away from him also inspecting the books.
"Do you know how to read this?" Sasuke held up a thick hardcover book titled Moby Dick. Shiro scrunched his face.
"Ew."
"Mature."
"No one under fifty has the patience to read a book of psychotic captain that has trouble confessing his feelings of true 'wub' to a whale." The young man retuned to his browsing and stuffed his gloved hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat. Sasuke gave the book in his hand a distasteful look before re-shelving the blasphemous book. At least he knew that the man was bilingual. Another reason to tolerate his immaturity.
"Man, there's only boring books here." Shiro despaired at his limited choice of literature and thwarted his attention to subjects that contained more color.
This mansion was boring. The mansion's owner was boring. The mansion's books were boring. And even the paintings were boring. Other than the fact that the eyes moved to stare... straight down... at...him...
In immediate reaction, Shiro swiftly pulled out a spare handgun and shot the forehead of a stiffly dancing lady on the canvas. Blood dribbled out of the hole from the happy maiden's forehead, signifying that someone had been eavesdropping on the two's conversation.
Sasuke cuffed the over-reactive gunman soundly over the head.
"You idiot, I was going to feed that guy false information!"
"But it was too creepy!" Shiro whined as he held one arm protectively over his bruise and pointed his gun toward the blissfully bleeding goddess once again. The man shriveled in Sasuke's withering glare and continued to rub his head sore.
I doubt Mr. Thompson would mind if disposed of a rat in his mansion, Sasuke hoped with little faith as he attached his feet to the wall next to the frame with chakra and sliced the edges of the oil painting. The least he could do was preserve what was left of the blood stained art.
After he finished cutting out the sides and top of the canvas, Sasuke slowly lowered the cloth so that the perpetrator would slide noiselessly to the floor. A quick take at the tiny hallway behind the painting and he was back next to Shiro's victim.
The familiar physique of the carcass struck a nervous chord in the Uchiha. Eyebrows knit together and mouth set in a grim line, he rolled the corpse with his feet to identify the dead.
It was then Naruto entered the crime scene.
————————————————
"A-are you sure?" After finding a stunned and tearful Yuko-san at the mercy of her husband's kunai, Sakura had immediately reprimanded her superior while pulling her kimono together into a respectable bunch. Mornings seemed to be so much more of a hassle with Kakashi around.
"So... your husband wants me dead because he wants my wife." Kakashi tasted the words in his mouth. They had a wonderfully smug flavor to them.
Yuko nodded. The three sat on the floor; Sakura and Kakashi cross-legged, while Yuko-san kneeled in that unbreakable aura of poise she emitted.
To Sakura, the reason was absurd and disturbed her to a reasonable degree.
"But... why?" She was confused and desperately did not want to accept the fact that the man had the gall to even consider adding a kunoichi to his collection. Exotic taste, yes. Expressing wishes for a long and pain-free life, no.
Kakashi rose and remained calm as blood rushed to his head and began their quest in what seemed to be mining for diamonds in his brain. He paced about the room in attempt to ease the distant clanging he felt in his head. Something needed to be done about this hangover.
"Thompson-sama had agreed with another man to keep Kakashi-san at this house until he was killed. The other man I do not know, but he seems extremely familiar with my husband. Both talked over the phone before Kakashi-san came to drop off some luggage."
"Does the man have any suspicions against you?" The last thing Kakashi wanted was unnecessary collateral damage.
"He thinks all the women of the world are smitten by him." Never mind.
"Why did you go through all this trouble to—?"
"I hate him." The words came out so easily that Sakura contemplated seriously on the success rate this woman could have as a kunoichi. Her intelligence gathering skills were above average for someone who had never received ninja training, and yet on the other hand, her teamwork sucked.
"Mr. Thompson is supposed to die tonight." In a rare show of emotion, the petite woman gripped the cloth of her kimono tightly. "When he dies, that ridiculous contract with my family's business will be invalid since he has no children to inherit his authority and I will be able to live as a person. A real person."
She squeezed her eyes shut to moderate the amount of stress in her voice. Quickly recovering her composure, Yuko smiled apologetically before moving on.
"It is best if you have a head start. Even if the facts do not fall into place, the blame will still be set on your team. It is the least I can give you after you have given me a chance to escape this life."
Though Sakura saw that protecting Thompson-sama would be easier, letting the course of events happen without interruption would be a good way to determine the Hidden Cloud's current political position. Closing the borders without warning was one major oddity. Immediately blaming the team for a planned death was another.
Yet not only did they have to deal with supposed Bloodline Limit hunters, Raikage's possibly non-existent secret agenda was also causing problems by merely keeping Team Seven in the Lightning Country. Kakashi stared intently at the sun began to illuminate the clouds. Multi-tasking was a bothersome concept, and to find their cover blown with no way out proved to be a chaotic catalyst.
"I had made it clear to Thompson-sama that we would be leaving as soon as we could," he stated calmly, making the blood cells mining in his brain vibrate and explode. He really needed to take care of this hangover. "Yuko-san, thank you for your information. I hope we will be able to repay you someday."
As Yuko stood, so did Sakura. Kakashi returned to Sakura's side.
"Here." The woman reached in her sleeve and handed a small book to the kunoichi, which the latter received after glancing at her husband. Flipping the front cover open, there was an address scrawled crudely in the corner.
"If you ever need a safe place to stay, go there and say that 'hime-chan' sent you." Sakura closed the book gingerly and bowed. She was selfish, but Yuko-san was a charitable in her own twisted way.
"Thank you."
————————————————
On seeing the corpse, Naruto went around the bend leaving Common Sense and Sanity in his wake and Sasuke on high alert. Before the distraught Uzumaki could rant in a deliriously rabid manner, the Uchiha quickly called for his attention.
"Naruto! You go report to Kakashi and start packing. Shiro and I will clean this place up." Forming several seals, Sasuke embedded his chakra into the entire library, shielding the area so no one incapable of ninjutsu could enter.
"My genjutsu will only keep up for thirty minutes max. Move!" Naruto disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Sasuke bit his lip at the projected complexity of this problem. Damn. Never thought that this kind of Absolute Worst Situation could happen.
————————————————
"Kakashi-sensei! Sakura-chan!" The kitsune barged into the couple's bedroom, still in hysterics. Kakashi stood in the middle of the room adjusting his gloves.
"Hm?"
"Where's Sakura-chan?" Naruto asked looking around wildly.
"She's getting changed. Why?"
"Thompson-sama's dead!" The man stopped in the middle of his preparations.
"Shiro killed him on accident." Well that certainly made things less complicated and yet more so. Kakashi made a mental note to ask Sakura if she could paralyze certain areas of the brain. Do something about the Shiro-kid's attention span.
"What's the situation?"
"Sasuke just used genjutsu in the library which would give us thirty minutes at most. He and Shiro are cleaning up and most of our belongings are still packed so we can move out in five minutes."
Kakashi crossed his arms in contemplation. Sakura emerged from the bathroom dressed in an over-sized T-shirt while rubbing a towel on her head. Seeing another teammate in the room, the kunoichi stopped to look about.
"What's going on?"
"Five minutes." Kakashi walked to the coffee table and tossed Sakura her pack. "Be at the gazebo." The man disappeared in a blur leaving Sakura confused and speechless. Few seconds later, she noticed that Naruto had not exited the room and was watching her with suspiciously curious eyes.
"What?"
"Ne... Sakura-chan," Naruto started slowly, cupping a hand over one side of his mouth to ensure 'privacy'.
"So what happened last night?" Sakura blinked. The quick succession of seemingly extraterrestrial topics rendered the kunoichi bank-faced and befuddled. There was no doubt men were from a different planet. Or it could be her innate ability to draw out the peculiarities of masculine intelligence.
"Huh?"
"Did you guys...y'know..." The jounin made some motions with his hands, which completely eluded his naïve spectator.
"...'Go at it'?"
Later that day the maid chanced upon three molars scattered on the rug while she dusted the room.
————————————————
The rain was not heavy, but thunder in the distance foreshadowed a downpour.
Kakashi was late as always.
The three ninjas and one gunman had finished exchanging all their information and now sat in a somber silence. Shiro looked guilty. Sasuke looked pensive. Sakura looked nervous. Naruto looked... swollen. In the face.
"Yo." Kakashi materialized from above. Everyone shouldered their packs to leave in response. His tardiness was still irritating, but at least he had the sense to shorten the delay to less than five minutes.
No one said anything as they took off into the grove of trees outside the mansion gate.
As they took off, Kakashi decided to share a bit of news.
"I didn't tell you everything that was in the mission scroll before we left."
"Ah," Sasuke replied monotonously while Sakura recalled Kakashi's stern expression when he burned the scroll Tsunade lent to the leader. So far, every bit of bad news had the word "possibly" or "probably" attached. This one, she guessed as her stomach sank, would not.
"From now on, we're on our own."
Stopping on a branch, Kakashi turned around to face the rest of Team Seven. Everyone slammed their feet into a branch to accommodate the sudden halt.
On our own. Naruto quirked an eyebrow. Hadn't they been on their own since the borders closed?
Kakashi gripped his hitae-ate and threw it in a muddy puddle where it disturbed the dirt and disappeared beneath the sludge. Naruto looked dumbstruck as did everyone else besides Shiro who was oblivious as expected.
"From now on, we are missing-nins of Konoha."
————————————————
Author's Notes:
Some interesting quotes from reviews of the last chapter:
"I've also done sake/sasuke on occasion" – Shiroi Hikari
""Love me! Love me!"" – (N/A) (Note: Quotation taken out of context)
"Just let the poor man have is sakura, err sake." – Nereidaia
"OMGPLZUPDATESOONx10!" – Digital Siren (I've received a few of these...)
"Wasted Kakashi kawaii Kakashi." – deity of death1
As for the difference between "looking forward to you next chapter" to "PLZUPDATE!!!1!1!" is that the first statement clearly shows that they have read my previous author's notes stating time and again that I will update every week. The latter shows lack of reading comprehension and coherent typing skills.
I think the quality of my chapters are declining. Or is it because I'm usually writing from 1-3 AM?
"Fanartist"