Lucien was zoned out. He vaguely noticed Naruto, who had finally grown silent and now appeared in deep thought, Sasuke, who hadn't spoken a word since they started walking, and Sakura, who still held on of his hands with hers and led the little party on a winding trail through the trees. But he wasn't focused on them. He was retracing his steps from- wait, what time was it? Was it still the same day? How long had he been asleep? Well, he supposed it didn't really matter. Now, let's see… He'd decided that he would take a walk in the woods to stave off his boredom, packed his rucksack, and left. About three hours in, a huge storm had come out of nowhere. After that… Nothing. The last thing he could remember was the thunder become an almost palpable roar. And then everything had melted together and he'd woken up in a tree.
He didn't realize Sakura had stopped until he bumped into her. Backtracking and murmuring an apology, he glanced up. And froze.
Cold, unwavering metal against hot, racing vein. A knife at his throat. His wide, doe-brown eyes trailed up the blade, over the white bandages of the handle, across the long pale fingers holding it, over the black fingerless gloves, pale arm, dark shirt, green vest, dark mask, up to the single visible dark grey eye gazing right back at him.
Silence. Lucien opened his mouth, but couldn't speak. The icy metal bit into his neck and he flinched, eyes clamping tight shut, knuckles white as he clenched the strap of his bag. Then he heard Sakura's voice call out.
"Kakashi-sensei!" The knife paused.
"It's okay, he's a friend! Naruto found him in the forest. He's lost."
Lucien shivered as the cool blade trailed faintly across his jugular before its cold touch vanished completely from his skin. Suddenly warm fingers lifted his chin, forcing his slightly bowed head up.
"What's your name?" The voice was low and even, unscathed and apparently unruffled despite having a moment ago been close to slitting his throat. Lucien's eyes snapped open into a furiously and he jerked away from the touch, glaring into the dark eyes scrutinizing him.
"None of your business." The skintight mask over the taller man's face shifted slightly as he chuckled.
"You're fraternizing with my students and are a possible threat to them. I'd say that gives me the right to say it's my business, wouldn't you?"
The teen growled in frustration, but didn't answer. The grey eye arced happily. One of Lucien's eyebrows rose. This guy was weird. And, sadly, right. He sighed and muttered, "Lucien. And I'm guessing yours is Kakashi?"
The eye cracked open slightly. It still looked like the man was smiling.
"Correct! Well, Lucien, it seems I have to help you or face being mobbed by angry ninja kids, so-"
Lucien fumed. Why was this man so infuriating! Letting his breath hiss out through his clenched teeth, he snarled (sarcasm practically dripping from every word), "Oh, don't bother yourself on my account. I'll leave you to your students so you can teach them how to throw knives at innocent bystanders. I have to get going, anyway." He wheeled and met a pair of blue eyes. Naruto gazed up at him imploringly, eyes practically shimmering with innocent childlike cuteness. 'Well, damn.' Puppy-dog eyes win again.
He twitched; he could almost hear Kakashi grinning. Spinning around, he poked his finger into the other man's chest, hissing, "This doesn't mean you've won anything," and marched resolutely past him, Naruto bouncing up beside him. Sakura scurried after, glancing back at her sensei, and Sasuke trailed along with a bored expression on his face. Lucien glared down the trail as he walked, but the glare slowly morphed into a blank mask as he withdrew into his own thoughts. How was he going to get home? He didn't even know where he was! As if on cue, he heard the low, smooth voice of Kakashi next to him.
"So, where do you live?"
"Well, that depends on where I am now. If I told you the name of my street and I'm not even in the same city as I was, then you'd be completely lost. The name of my city and I might not even be in the same state. Maybe you should just tell me where I am, instead of me telling you where I'm not."
"…Alright then, you're just outside of Konoha, the Village Hidden in the Leaves."
"Uh… What state is that in?" Lucien asked, feeling dazed again.
"…State? You want to know it's condition?" Kakashi was looking at him sideways, his face carefully blank, though the thought 'This kid's frikkin' nuts' was clear in his eye. Lucien scowled, glaring at him.
"No, idiot, I want to know what state it's in. You know, name your city, state, and country?"
"…"
"…As in the United States of America?"
"…The what?"
"Is Konoha a part of some bigger piece of land that has a name?"
"It's in the Fire Country if that's what you mean," Kakashi stated matter-of-factly, apparently deciding that Lucien was indeed insane. The aforementioned curly-haired teen was now frozen where he stood, one foot perched just off the ground, his brain running a mile a minute. He was quickly coming to the same conclusion Kakashi'd just come to; 'They're all nuts.' Turning to look at the taller man with the oddly-styled grey hair and his three 'ninja' lackeys, Lucien forced a smile, which looked a lot more like he was baring his teeth than grinning good-naturedly. This, along with his dangerously narrowed eyes had Sakura and Naruto edging away from him. Sasuke was already far enough back to be safe, but Kakashi was right next to Lucien (now facing him) and was in danger of burning to death under his glare.
"Is this some kind of joke," the dark-haired boy ground out through gritted teeth. Kakashi blinked, then his eye arced again.
"Nope!"
Lucien snorted derisively, his hands clenched into fists. "Yeah, right. First you all tell me you're ninjas, now you're giving me some bull about a Fire Country! How stupid do you think I am!" Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and barreled back down the trail, not looking back at them and running as fast as he could. Hey, if these guys were trying to trick him, there was a chance they were doing it to hurt him later, and he didn't want to gamble on that. To his relief, they didn't follow.
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Panting heavily, Lucien slumped against a tree. He wasn't sure how long he'd been running, but he was positive it was for longer than he'd run in his life. He'd left the trail a ways back, hoping that, if they did come after him, they would continue to follow it assuming he wouldn't be foolish enough to skip off into uncharted wilderness. Well, he knew how to deal with uncharted wilderness, but people with knives (even if three of the four of them were prepubescent) he'd rather not handle.
Relaxing against the bark, he dug into his bag until he found his water and took another drink from it. Sighing, he began to sift through his bag again to see what else was in it. Some peaches, his jacket, a dirty pair of pants and a shirt from when he went swimming with Bryan a few days ago (he'd worn his trunks under his clothes but hadn't brought a fresh set to change into after and then had forgotten to take the worn clothes out of his bag), his iPod mini, headphones, and iTrip (which let him broadcast the iPod over an unused radio station), a Swiss Army knife (he'd never really needed it for anything but brought it with him everywhere because it was a very nice one his sister had given him for his birthday one year), and some change. None of those would really help him now. None of them screamed at him 'Use me to get home!' Hell, he'd even left his compass because he'd navigated the woods behind his house so many times that he didn't need it anymore.
Sighing, he closed the flap and set the bag beside him before breathing in deeply and letting the warm sunshine affect him. The scent of pine, herbs, flowers, and other plants calmed him, and he fell into a partial doze, his eyes closed and breathing slow and even, though he wasn't quite asleep.
He lay like that for an uncertain amount of time, but he was startled fully awake by the feeling of arms under his shoulders and knees. He remained perfectly still, controlling his breathing and trying to keep his eyes from moving under their lids as he was lifted from the ground, but stiffened slightly when he was pulled against someone's chest. Someone's vested chest. And if he could see he would bet that vest was green.
'Dammit! How'd he find me!'
He felt his still body shift as the person holding him adjusted his weight to crouch and pick something else up from the ground. His bag? Then they were in motion, moving quickly. Far too quickly, actually. Could a human even move fast enough to make that much resistance in the air? It felt like a wind was blowing against them, and Lucien twitched and shifted minutely, his eyes opening enough to see that they were flying. No, not flying, moving very fast through the trees, which was just as weird. Gasping, he squirmed and felt the arms around him tighten in response.
He stifled a yell as his captor leapt smoothly over a gap far too wide for any human to jump and continue on as if it was nothing, still easily keeping a now-struggling Lucien from falling. Then the trees where behind them and they were in the air, plummeting for the ground, and Lucien squeezed his eyes tight shut and instinctively buried his face in the vest next to him, gripping the shoulders of it.
They landed as if the person had just hopped down from a steep stair, not as if they had just fallen twenty-some feet from a tree, and kept moving at an even faster pace. He didn't remove his fingers from where they clutched the man's shoulders, nor did he open his eyes when he heard the soft, rapid patter of three more pairs of feet around him. Something ahead of them groaned, like wooden doors on old hinges but much larger, and now people's voices hummed around them and now below them and now the footsteps racing around and below him sounded on planks of wood and now they had slowed and now doors were pushed open and now they had stopped and there was silence.
Lucien was holding his breath as he slowly, cautiously opened his eyes. Light and color swayed and danced before Sakura, Sasuke, and Naruto swam into focus, the background no longer a forest but a large, plain room with big windows opened to let in the fresh air and the fading sunlight. His eyes opened fully and snapped upwards. Kakashi's dark eye gazed boredly back into his, and Lucien blinked up at him for a moment before thrashing in his arms and shouting, "Let me down you psychotic nutcase!" He just caught a glimpse of the eye arching gleefully again before Kakashi's voice replied happily, "As you wish," and the arms released him.
He fell on his back and glared up at the smiling face above him from where he lay. In Kakashi's left hand was his bag.
Before he could demand it back, an aged, wise voice startled him out of his righteous anger.
"So you've actually fallen so low as to have to hunt down your companions, Kakashi?" (A/N: By 'companions,' he means boyfriends, girlfriends, one-night-stands, etc. He's trying to poke fun at Kakashi's perverted ways, or at least his perverted reading material, in a way that won't scar the poor twelve-year-olds for life. XD)
Propping himself up on his elbows, Lucien looked to his other side. Behind a large oak desk sat an old man dressed in white and red and sporting an odd hat. A smoking pipe sat at one side of his mouth and his stern (but currently amused) light grey eyes rested on Lucien, the pipe-less side of his mouth slightly upturned. Kakashi coughed softly.
"Not exactly, Lord Hokage. My students found this boy in the woods outside of the gates and brought him to me, telling me he was lost. He attested to this, but when asked where he lived, he refused to answer and instead wanted to know where he was. When I told him, he seemed incredulous and accused me of lying before running off into the woods. Under the circumstances, I thought it would be best for you to decide what should be done with him. If he's lying, it means he has something to hide which may prove dangerous to the village. If he's merely insane, he might be a danger to himself or someone else." Over the course of Kakashi's 'story,' a scowl had formed and proceeded to grow darker and more murderous with every word. This did not escape the Hokage's keen sight and he chuckled softly before saying to Lucien, "I assume this is not your account of this little misadventure. Perhaps you would be willing to share your side?"
Lucien pushed himself to his feet and dusted himself off (being sure to be a fair distance away from the grey-haired, masked psycho once he was standing) before casting a dark look at an expressionless Kakashi and starting.
"I was taking a walk in the woods behind me house when a storm came through, which seemed strange to me because the day had been cloudless and sunny until a few seconds before the storm reached me. I guess I must have blacked out during it because I woke up in a tree in an unfamiliar part of the forest. I heard voices soon after that and met Naruto after he tried to attack me, thinking I was spying on him, or something." Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
"We got to the ground and I met Sasuke and Sakura and told them I was lost. They told me they would take me to Kakashi, who would help me find my way back. We found him and he promptly threatened my life. Sakura explained my situation and he backed off and asked me where I was from. I explained that it was difficult to do in case I was really as far from home as I was and told him to instead tell me where I was. After spewing off some crap about a fire country and he and his students being ninja, I decided he was crazy and I would be better off on my own. I also decided that, he and one of his students having just recently nearly killed me, they might take drastic measures should I try to leave, so I ran.
"After I stopped, this insane idiot (here he jerked his thumb at Kakashi) kidnapped me and forcibly brought me here." Crossing his arms, Lucien watched the thoughtful expression on the Hokage's face. Then the old man motioned Kakashi forward while speaking to Lucien, Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke.
"Would you four be so kind as to step outside for a moment? I would like to discuss something with Hatake." Lucien blinked and felt Naruto and Sakura gently tug him toward the door. He followed without argument, wondering who Hatake was and what the Hokage wanted to speak with him about. 'Unless…' Kakashi was Hatake… That would make sense, he supposed. Maybe Hatake was his last name, or something. But that still didn't answer what he wanted to talk to him about…
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A/N: Constructive criticism is welcome, flames are not. Thanks for reading!