Homecoming

by Nezuko, Prince of Rats

This is a work of derivative fiction based on "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei.

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Chapter 6: Barricade

Genma limped slowly along the corridors of the hospital's second floor. The mop was an inadequate crutch at best, an actual hazard at worst, as it occasionally slipped on the waxed floor tiles, causing the injured jounin to lurch and stumble painfully. He was glad when he found a cluster of wheeled IV poles standing in a corner, substituting one of them for the unreliable mop.

'Maybe I should keep this, just in case,' he thought, aligning the mop's wooden handle with the cold chrome-covered pole. He continued to shuffle along in the shadows, dragging his haloed, shattered right leg painfully around with every step. The new walking aid was better, though still not perfect, and he was starting to seriously tire.

'He can't really be here,' he told himself, 'I saw him cut down...' Genma stopped to rest, sagging against the wall and pushing sweaty strands of his long brown hair off his forehead, covering his eyes. He was assaulted by memory fragments, like a choppy movie playing over in his head, against his will. Pieces, disjoint and unsettling, combined with a rush of emotion.

Kakashi leaning over him, mismatched eyes narrowed, intense, the blood-red Sharingan swirling. Kakashi's calm voice, "You'll be safe hidden here, hang on Genma-kun." Himself unable to move, in terrible pain. Kakashi bleeding, surrounded by the enemy, their white coats swirling, dust and smoke in the air. The crackle and hiss of chakra exploding. Kakashi's anguished scream, his body falling, falling, falling, blood flying from his mouth in slow motion. His own horror at being unable to do anything but witness his friend's murder.

The flashback faded, leaving Genma, shaking, his arms wrapped around his aching sides. He gasped for breath, biting his lip hard to dispel the memory. Kakashi couldn't really be here, he couldn't, but if he was... If those girls were telling the truth... He pulled himself upright, leaning on the pole. He had a mission to complete. He had to find him. Because if Kakashi was really here, alive, that changed everything.

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Kakashi woke to the sound, no the awareness, of someone standing outside his room. He glanced at the window - it was dark outside. There was no clock in the room, which annoyed him no end, as his internal clock was still haywire. He remembered things a bit better now. Remembered he was in the hospital. That he'd been hurt on a mission. Definitely hurt, because he felt like absolute hell. Remembered that he couldn't remember how it had happened, or much at all about the mission. He remembered that Iruka had been there earlier, that Iruka made him feel safe. And he felt anything but safe right now. Iruka was not there, he was badly hurt, in a hospital bed, a presence was outside his door, and he remembered one other thing: the medics were not what they seemed. They were ninja first, medics second, and they were the enemy.

The door slid open, a shaft of bright light from the hallway spilling into the dimly lit room. Kakashi had already peeled the patch off his Sharingan eye, but he hid under the covers, waiting, waiting. He would not attack until the enemy was within range of the bed. He had no weapons, minimal chakra and a bad enough injury to severely restrict his mobility. He had to be smart, tactical, economical with his motion.

The door closed, and a dragging sound accompanied the approach of the person - it was just one - who had entered. Kakashi felt the chakra distortion that told him the intruder was masked with a genjutsu, but not much of one - maybe this was a low-ranking enemy who would be easily defeated despite Kakashi's weakness. He lowered the blanket, uncovering his eyes and stared at the silhouette of a kimono-clad ninja leaning on a strangely elaborate staff. The Sharingan instantly and effortlessly penetrated the illusion, but what it revealed was a shock.

"Genma?" Kakashi said wonderingly.

Genma just stared. 'He looks bad,' thought Kakashi. His face was battered, his leg in some strange medical or torture device. He was pale and clearly weak, barely supporting himself with what appeared to be an IV stand. 'And he looks like he's just seen a ghost.'

Genma's mind was running through a similar inventory of Kakashi's state: head and torso bandaged, skin sickly sallow, body clearly without much reserve. But Genma was somewhere between suspicious and elated.

He let go of the pole and leaned against the closed door, hands quickly forming the kata seals. "Kai!" Genma directed the illusion dispersal jutsu at the man in the bed. But Kakashi remained.

"I'm real, Genma-kun!" Kakashi laughed. Suddenly the terror he had felt was gone, replaced by delight. Genma was here. Genma was, well not OK, but on his feet. A lot better than he had been when Kakashi had last seen him. That realization brought with it a sudden flood of memory.

Genma in the hands of enemy ninja. Genma immobilized, unable to fight back. A white-coated enemy swinging a sheathed katana at Genma's already fractured right leg. The sickening sound of splintering bone and Genma's strangled cry.

He was shocked out of his reverie by Genma's voice.

"Kakashi?"

"Genma! You're..."

"You bastard!" Genma roared, shaking. He leaned on the IV stand again and dragged himself across the room.

"Genma?"

"You fucking bastard!" Genma had reached the bedside; he took a violent swing at Kakashi's face.

Kakashi was shocked. And the shock kicked his brain into gear. Genma was his friend and ally, drinking buddy and mission partner. Genma would not attack him. Maybe this wasn't really Genma. He forced chakra into the Sharingan, desperate to pierce the illusion. But what he saw was just confusing. The rapid motion of Genma's approaching fist. The remnants of Genma's weak genjutsu. Genma himself. And something... blurry... about his friend. Like damage to his aura. Nonetheless, while it was a seriously injured Shiranui Genma, it was the genuine one, to be sure.

Kakashi's transplanted eye analyzed the arc and velocity of Genma's swing perfectly. It sent the message flying through Kakashi's optic nerve and into his brain's visual cortex, and the synapses in another part of his brain quickly translated it into appropriate action. Dodge. Counter. But here the messages jumbled and failed, blocked by bruised grey matter and dead wires. He tried to dodge, but he was too slow. His aching torso tried to move the rest of his body out of harms way, to lift an arm to block the swing, but the damaged and weakened muscles couldn't respond quickly enough. Genma's fist collided with his neck and the edge of his jaw, forcing an ugly grunt out of his mouth.

Genma, however, wasn't really in any shape for a fight either. The punch took all his energy, and the momentum carried him far off balance. He touched the heel of his broken right leg to the floor to steady himself, which sent a violent pain right through the limb, up his spine and into the center of his brain, where it sparked blackly before putting out Genma's lights altogether. The long-haired man pitched forward, collapsing onto Kakashi, his full weight crashing down on Kakashi's injured chest. This triggered a similar chain reaction in the silver-haired jounin's own nervous system: sudden, violent explosion of pain, sparking and tunneling of vision, blackness.

Genma came to first; really only a few seconds had passed. His leg, his face, his guts hurt like crazy. He found himself lying face down across another body. Warm. Breathing. Bandaged. Kakashi! He pushed himself up, rolled away a little, so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed, his good leg braced against the floor and the injured, haloed one jutting out into space.

"Kakashi? Kashi?" Genma shook his now unconscious friend.

"Unnnwah?" Kakashi groaned, rousing.

"Shit, it really is you!"

"Un. Genma?" Kakashi coughed a painful sounding gurgle, and the center of the bandages on his chest began to show a crimson stain.

"You bastard. I thought you were dead! I saw you die, dammit!"

"You'd..." Kakashi labored to alertness, his head and jaw aching and his torso on fire, "rather I were dead?"

"No no! I just... What the fuck were you thinking? You were completely outnumbered!"

"We were outnumbered, Genma. We." Something in the sudden appearance of his mission partner had jarred loose the piece of bruised brain holding back Kakashi's recollection of their mission. It came flooding back. "I wasn't gonna let those assholes..."

"That's exactly what you should have done, you idiot!" Genma raged. "What part of strategic disadvantage do you not get? You should have left me with them and reported back for reinforcements!"

"Reinforcements? What garbage are you spewing now?" Kakashi countered. "We didn't know what the situation was at that point! And I sure as hell wasn't gonna leave you in the hands of those sadists if I could help it!"

"So you gave them yourself instead? Your life is more important to this village than mine is!" Genma was shaking, red faced. His white knuckled grip on the edge of the bed was all that was keeping him upright, or he would have been waving his arms wildly in his agitation.

"That. Is. Crap." Kakashi's voice was low pitched. Deadly. "A life does not equal a life, but yours is no more or less worth than mine or anyone else's."

Genma stopped his tirade, arrested by his friend's tone and his words.

"Besides, it came out OK. I was better equipped to escape from them than you were. It was the right decision." The mature tone was gone and Kakashi suddenly sounded just as petulantly defiant as he had as the prodigal child genius he had once been. The same way Genma had heard him countless times, defending his risky but successful maneuvers in a debriefing room, after the fact. The flashback was completed by the bandages the silver-haired man sported. Injured but alive and successful, defending his actions against harsh accusations of recklessness.

Genma laughed. A hollow laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. "Kashi, you're a brat. You may have outranked me before you were even out of diapers, every step of our careers, but you are and always will be a brat." He lifted a hand towards Kakashi's head, presumably to tousle his spiky hair, but the Copy-nin stopped him.

"Please, Genma-aniki. My head hurts."

"Yeah, you wish you had a brother as great as me!" Genma mocked. But he wobbled a little where he sat. Kakashi coughed again, that wet, wheezing cough, and groaned, holding his hands over his aching chest and belly.

While he caught his breath, he studied the halo around Genma's right leg, at length asking, "How is it?"

"Hurts. Alot. What did they do to you?"

"Don't remember."

At that moment the door slid sharply back, and three alarmed medics rushed into the room.

"Hatake-sama? Are you alright? We heard the noise and your monitor..."

"Shiranui-san? What are you doing down here?"

"How did he get..."

The medics surged forward.

"Shit!" Genma shouted pushing a rolling table over between the medics and Kakashi and himself.

"Get down! Get behind me!" Kakashi ordered. He was crouched in the bed, hauling himself up by the pole of the IV stand his own medication was hanging from.

Genma made a swift sequence of hand seals, then grabbed the IV pole he'd been using as a crutch and vaulted backwards over the bed, landing against the wall behind it. He fell into a single legged squat, his injured leg stuck out in front of him. As he landed, his delayed lightning jutsu leapt to life, sending an arcing curtain of sparks towards the shocked medical personnel.

Kakashi didn't wait for the lightning to die before he added his own assault to the barrage, materializing a sheet of flame behind the electric current. Screaming out a blood curdling war cry, he whipped his heavy IV pole into the air, aiming it squarely at the head of the nearest medic.

The white-clad chuunin fell with a gasp, a profusely bleeding gash opened on his temple.

"Hokage's balls! Matsui-san!" An obviously burned medic rushed to his fallen comrade. A third white-clad figure lay slumped on the floor, limbs twitching.

"Get away!" Genma growled, animal menace flowing out of every pore.

"Dammit! Get Matsui and Itoh and clear out of here!" Another medic, a woman and seemingly the one in charge, yelled from the hallway. "Get some reinforcements! What the fuck are these guys on?"

Much shouting and running could be heard from the hall as the medics retreated, leaving Genma and Kakashi on the floor, breathing heavily. The bandages on Kakashi's torso were now clearly sopping up fresh blood from beneath them.

"We've gotta... make a ... plan..." Kakashi gritted. The IV had yanked free of his arm and was squirting clear liquid onto the floor from the pole where it still dangled.

"Unh," Genma grunted in reply. He held himself gingerly still, his back and abdomen filled with a terrible ache.

"Did they hit you?" Kakashi asked, reaching a hand towards his comrade.

"No. Just jarred something jumping around." Genma ground his teeth, his eyebrows knotted and low.

"We don't have the best position."

"We're on the second floor," Genma replied, "Think you can manage a descent from the window?"

"Even if I can, Genma, you can't."

"Look, we've already been through this. One of us has to go for help. And it obviously can't be me." Genma all but snarled.

"I'm not leaving you here!"

"I'm not watching you get carved up and killed again!" Genma shouted back.

Kakashi groaned and slumped forward.

"Kashi!"

"Ung. Look... Genma..." Kakashi coughed, "I can't make it out of here either." He glanced up from under tightly furrowed brows, his Sharingan eye gleaming as red as the blood seeping from his chest. "We're gonna have to think of something... else."

END Chapter 6

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Author's Notes

Aniki big brother

Extra Special Thanks to HeyDiddleDiddle (aka AMidnightSunrise), Momo (aka MessyPeaches) and HikaruxYuki for early reads and comments.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna leave it like this for long. Thanks to all for your encouraging and helpful reviews. As always, reviews and critique are most welcome.