Chapter 1: Genesis
He's two years old when he first begins to remember.
Crackling, unnatural lightning forming around the palm of his hand, a roar forming on his lips as he charged forwards, wrath bleeding through every pore of his mind. His left eye sought the world out in endless gradients of clarity, burning the primal terror in the enemy shinobi's eyes into his memory as the Kiri-nin came to the realization that he was going to die.
Good. He had hoped that it would be painful.
And then the face changes, from Mist shinobi to beloved teammate, her mouth set in a wide 'O', as his hand plunges into her chest with a sickening squelch.
"Ka..ka..shi."
These are her last words and he can't stop hearing them, can't stop feeling the warm sensation of blood and mangled flesh on his hands, and oh God, there's so much blood. Why, why, whywhywhy is there so much blood. He can feel himself shattering under the pressure, buckling and straining and slowly but steadily cracking away.
So many broken promises.
So little to live for.
He can't even comprehend the memories at the time, didn't even muster the energy to scream as the vision washed over him.
Only numbness. Terrible, terrible numbness.
The process of assimilating his past life's experiences is gradual and undeniably painful. His parents (not the real ones, not Sakumo) worry and titter over him, saying he's too quiet and unbearably shy. He can't bring himself to care.
He's 5 years old when the phantasmal dreams nearly crushes him under the weight of his own guilt.
Hatred bearing down on him with the weight of one-thousand-thousand mountains, paralyzing him as he sees a golden figure activating a seal-matrix to transport the Tailed Beast Bomb away.
Minato-sensei.
So much death all around him as he struggles to take stock of the situation, to organize and rally himself towards action. It's all a blur, evacuating civilians and doing his best to mitigate the damage that the Demon Fox was rending to his home
And, somehow, the disaster ends.
It's quiet when it does.
Far, far too quiet.
He's well and truly alone now.
Kakashi Hatake, Copy Cat Ninja, Class-A rank threat, quite possible the greatest ninjutsu-specialist that Konoha has ever produced-
And failure. Liar, friend-killer, and failure.
Not for the first time in his life, Kakashi admits to himself that he wants to die.
His not-parents die, and for some reason he can't really bring himself to care that much. He's still lost in his own head, drifting away in the deluge of memories of a life long past, sorting through and trying to compartmentalize, compartmentalize, compartmentalize.
The Yamanaka said that wasn't healthy, once upon a time.
He still can't bring himself to care.
It's his sixth birthday, and he remembers it all. His Team 7, the Sandaime dying, Akatsuki, Kaguya (and in hindsight, God, wasn't that bizarre?), and the generation that had been raised in hallowed peace. But for some unknowable reason, he can't remember dying.
If he died at all, of course. Maybe this was some sealing experiment gone wrong, but as time goes on, the more that idea seems like a pipe-dream.
He was a runty little street-rat now, only collecting the barest scraps of food that he could to survive, but he survives. The undercity was still terribly cruel, make no mistake, but children were shielded from its wrath for the most part. Until a certain age, naturally, and then you were just the same as all the rest.
The feeling of homesickness is somewhat unexpected, but it gnaws at him all the same. Konoha's lush forests, its rustic atmosphere, his students, and maybe, just maybe even Gai. He would never admit it to him, though. He misses them all so much. The memories sting and ache, but he holds onto them like they're the most precious things in the world to him, because they are.
They were a respite. But now he's back, and looking back on it it was foolish that anything else was possible. Inevitable was a funny word that Kakashi didn't like to use often, but for this it was fitting.
Alone, alone, alone.
It's alright though, because Kakashi's used to it.
(A small voice whispers to him, "But you're not. Not so used to it anymore, are you?")
He spends his days and nights thinking about what Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke and Pakkun and the rest of his pack are doing. Are they eating alright? Getting enough sleep? How are their children? He frets and frets because there's nothing else to do except wallow, and maybe train, but to be honest he doesn't see the point.
What is he fighting for?
But his mind is a honed killing-machine, sharpened and polished to perfection, and it yearns for something to do. So sometimes, he trains anyway.
Not that it does much, of course. Being six years old and locked away from chakra, perhaps not having it at all even, would do that to you. Habits are habits though, and Kakashi doesn't have the strength to deny them.
A band of older kids notice him playing around with a box of throwing knives made from scraps, hitting dead-center in the make-shift target almost every single time. First, they stare. And after that was over, they began to demand.
Kakashi ignored them, because, duh, why wouldn't he. It's a well-practiced motion after years of dealing with Gai and Obito-
He takes a sharp breath at the thought. The name sends a jolt of electricity up his spine, even after all this time.
It's still agonizing. Strange, because he thought he had gotten over it after all those years.
The brats notice his lapse of attention and take it as consent, apparently, so they begin to lug away the box of sharpened almost-scrap metal. His eyes narrow, following the merry posse of thieves trying to make it out as fast as their little legs can take them with their new haul.
The shinobi leaves them bruised and battered on the side of the road. That was rather rude of them.
He's almost seven years old when he has his first real interaction with an adult. The barkeep that would occasionally let him take a bag of peanuts or two for free waves him over, and Kakashi's feeling generous that day so he deigns to listen to the man.
"Where are your parents, kid?" The man takes a puff of his pipe, exhaling noxious fumes as he breathes out. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice whispers, Asuma. Remember him?
"Dead." His voice is raspy and scratchy after years of neglect.
The man nods slowly, because it's par for the course. Doesn't offer condolences or comfort, because he probably had none left to give.
"Do you need a place to stay?"
He seems genuine.
Kakashi shrugs his shoulders.
Why not?
It's his 7th birthday, and for the first time in this lifetime he has something resembling a routine. And a group of brats following him around, so really, what else is new?
Miles, Clatter, Grimelet, Gecko, and Chowder are their names.
Or something like that, because Kakashi didn't bother to pay attention during their introductions. All five of them are annoying, and that's what matters.
Grimelet's the group's de facto leader, and, gosh, she's so damn loud all the time. Her attitude is a mixture of Naruto and Sakura's worst aspects, constantly demanding more and more of Kakashi's personal information, because the word privacy doesn't exist to her. It's nostalgic and annoyingly familiar all in one, and he only barely tolerates her presence.
"So, why do you wear that mask all the time?"
Barely.
"Huh?" He picks at his ear as if he didn't hear her. Turning his attention back to the target-board placed 20 paces away, he picks up another kunai and takes aim.
The blade whistles through the air as his wrist releases it, causing the girl to flinch back. It lands dead-center with a dull thunk, burying itself into the wood all the way up to its hilt, right next to its other half-a-dozen brethren.
Lazily leaning his head backwards, his eyes flick towards her.
"Did you say something?"
She clears her throat and straightens, meeting his gaze with a hint of frustration. "I said, why do you wear that mask all the time? We've never seen you without it."
"'Cuz I want to." He doesn't volunteer any more words after that, belligerently ignoring all her subsequent attempts at conversation. She leaves in a huff, and Kakashi goes and retrieves all the throwing-knives from the board.
He inspects the hole-filled target with a sigh. It needed a replacement. He'd find a new board.
It was around time to leave, anyway.
Ever since Vander had let him into their little band of misfits, things had changed a bit. Where once his life was governed entirely by whim, eating and sleeping when he wanted to, it was now put on something of a schedule. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner became actual things again, and before long he found his sickly-thin limbs filling out with a layer of corded muscle and baby-fat. He supposed that that was nice.
Vander… He rolls the name around in his head.
This so-called 'Hound of the Underworld'. The name made him chuckle when he had first heard it, and it still did. Once a powerful figure-head in the undercity's movement for independence, now reduced to the mere manager of a bar to take care of a gaggle of kids. If nothing else, Kakashi could relate.
He pulls a stool aside and takes a seat at the fishmonger's booth.
"I'll have the usual." His voice is so irritatingly squeaky that it's driving him insane, so he makes the conscious decision to talk only when absolutely necessary.
Almost immediately, a bowl full of tentacles and fish lathered in copious amounts of brown sauce was slammed down in front of him. A silhouette loomed over him, a towering figure of sea-born muscle and bone.
He offers him a cheerful thumbs-up.
"Thanks."
The blue-skinned fish-man grins with a cheek-splitting smile full of teeth, which he returns. The boy pulls down his mask and gives a testing lick of a piece. He hums in approval, popping it into his mouth.
The food at Jericho's was simultaneously filling and delicious, contrary to its appearance. A deep umami flavor pervaded every bite of the seafood, the fermented bean paste marinade creating a savory selection of surprisingly tasty entrees. It reminded him of home.
Heavy footfalls could be heard approaching him. The silver-haired boy's eyes sweep over, watching as a stool next to him squeals as it's pulled out. The man falls into the seat with a grunt, pulling out his pipe but not lighting it.
"You're not exactly a normal kid, are you?"
He chews for a good long while, relishing the juices flowing out of the slimy meat, and then belches loudly. That was a good one. The barkeep watches on, completely unamused at his hilarious antics.
"What brought this on?" Kakashi pops another tentacle into his mouth.
One of his knives hit the counter with a dull clang, dim lantern-light reflecting off its mirror-like polished surface. He was a bit of a perfectionist like that.
"You made these yourself." It isn't a question, so Kakashi doesn't respond. The man continues.
"We're past the stage of me needing to tell you that sharp things are dangerous, so let's cut the bullshit." His eyes soften just a touch, and the shinobi's stubbornness wilts at the sheer amount of paternal care he finds inside them.. "Trust me kid, I want to help you, but I can't if you don't tell me anything."
He glares sullenly into his bowl of suddenly not-so-appetizing seafood. After a sum total of half a century's worth of living, guilt-trips still work, huh?
"You're ruining the mood, you know?" Vander opens his mouth, but Kakashi interrupts before he can get a word in. "Fine, I'll tell you. It can't really hurt at this point."
And to be frank, it really can't. Giving out information freely grates on any good shinobi, as it should, but it was probably rational to assume that an exception could be made when he was thrown into a different world.
The shinobi recounts his past life clinically and robotically, slipping back into his younger years. The porcelain masks and the daggers beneath cloaks, the cold persona of a merciless killer. It's easier like this, he thinks, when everything's a mission report. His words roll out of his mouth like a steady stream of opium, numbing his lips and clearing his mind. There's a distance between him and his memories, Kakashi realizes, a veil of unfamiliarity as if he was a spectator witnessing the performance, and not the performer.
Almost paradoxically impersonal. He prefers it this way.
Vander's left breathless by the end of it. Vaguely disbelieving, infinitely incredulous, but not outright denying. His pipe has long since gone cold since he first lit it, but he chews at the lip of it anyway, contemplative and pensive. His eyes are distant and hard, set on the far-off horizon obscured by fumes.
"Well, that's the gist of it anyway." He sticks a skewer into another piece of fish.
There's a second of quietness. There's a bubble of empty space around them, he realizes. No spectators eavesdropping on their conversation, the stall completely empty.
"Your life's been fucked up so far." Kakashi has to smother a chuckle at this, dry as the joke is.
"You can say that again."
He finishes the rest of his meal in silence. It's not as uncomfortable as he would have expected.
The next day he brings a fresh board (though fresh is debatable, he ripped it out of the walls of a rotting hut from the outskirts of the city), concentric rings painted with black pollution-infused grime drawn on to emulate a normal target lesion.
To his surprise, Grimelet's there again, except now she has a kunai in her hands. She chucks it at the board and lets out a hiss of frustration as it only bounces off the wood. The blade turned midair so that the side-edge impacted the wood before the point could.
Kakashi only watched her. Quietly, quietly.
Again.
Unsuccessful.
Again.
Nope, missed entirely.
Again.
Better, but it still didn't stick the landing. It was luck anyway.
Again.
Worse this time. She grits her teeth and stomps forward 5 steps as if it's a concession of victory, like every drop of her honor is on the line.
Again.
Again.
Again, again, again, again.
She's going to ruin all of my kunai at this rate.
Not a single clean hit. Still, she doesn't give up. He's made around two-hundred throwing daggers over the years. At least half of them are scattered around the alley-way, reminders of her failure. They're not victims of willy-nilly attempts either. Each time she tweaks something, tries to analyze her shortcomings, but always to no avail.
Again.
That sort of determination, that drive, that fire…
Good. It was satisfactory. But stubbornness wasn't enough to survive.
"Your grip is wrong, " he calls out.
She startles backwards like a skittish deer, ready to bolt at a moment's notice. He raises an eyebrow at her reaction, making sure she's calm before continuing.
Kakashi lets a blade slip down from his sleeve and lackadaisically tosses it up in the air. It spirals about in the thick, pollution-infested air, light glinting off its smooth bevel as it descends. She watches it fall, confused, turning to him just as it's about to hit the floor.
His wrist flickers with a flash of steel silver.
The once airborne kunai clatters against the plank, accompanied with a sharp thunk as it's impaled through its handle ring by one of its own. It swings like a pendulum, once, twice, thrice, and then comes to a rest, laying dormant as it's held up by the other knife.
Little Grimelet gapes at the display, wonderment shining through her amazed eyes.
He quirks an eye-smile, and for the first time in years-
Kakashi-sensei teaches.
/-/
Grimelet, he learns, is not in fact Grimelet. A shame, the name had fit.
She's the furthest thing from a quick study, so while on the appearance spectrum she was closer to Sakura than Naruto, it was the opposite in terms of intelligence. That was fine. He had worked with knuckle-heads before.
A dagger sinks into the wood for the first time. She whoops in joy, prancing around as it was the greatest achievement in the world. Her excitement is infectious.
"Did you see that!? That was, like, so, awesome!"
It hits on the second outermost ring of the new board, but he nods in approval anyway.
"Good work." Violet (though he supposes that that name fits too), vibrated in joy, appearing as though ready to burst. They'd been at this for around ten minutes, though with her attitude you'd think that it had been days.
"Now, hit the bullseye."
It takes a few hundred more to get that far.
But, she gets it before the end of the day.
Kakashi's 8 years old now, and it's only slightly terrifying to realize that this place is beginning to feel like home.
He sets up a memorial stone in the corner of the den, carving in the names of every shinobi that he could manage into the boulder. It's a comfortable ritual, one that he had never managed to get rid of, even after he had become Hokage. He was a creature of habit.
Violet's tutoring was going… Well, it was slow, and in all honesty, that was his fault. His hard-won technique and reflexes had been washed away with his rebirth, and it took far too much time to gain them back.
As he had expected, the lack of chakra had become a massive handicap. Beyond the simple incapability of performing jutsu like the Chidori, physical conditioning had become a good deal more cumbersome. The flow of the energy throughout the body aided in development and recovery, something that he had taken for granted before, which now was just gone.
He actually needed time to recover from workouts. (That particular bit of knowledge was found after he tried to subject himself to one of Gai's routines. Kakashi never attempted it again.)
How incredibly strange.
Despite that, he had gotten his body up to a relatively satisfactory level. He could certainly send the average academy graduate into the ground, but that wasn't exactly a standard of excellence that Kakashi wanted to hold himself by. But it would be fine for now.
For now.
A jab flies past his ear, his head turning just an inch to the left to avoid it. Undeterred, the strike is followed by a fluid chopping right, dodged once again by ducking backwards. He flips a page in the book, giggling softly at the author's steamy prose. The literature is of surprising quality, though it had cost a few favors for his contact to smuggle it from top-side. Another habit that he had never managed to get rid of.
Worth it.
She readies again, expression guarded and focused despite his shameless provocation. It was a shame that she'd gotten used to his antics so quickly; that was only something that the little Team 7 had fully managed after 2 years of exposure to him. His opponent blitzes forward, slipping a lazy swipe of his hands and launches a wrapped fist directly upwards at his jaw.
It's clear to him that she's talented with her hands, a born and bred boxer of considerable natural talent. Her footwork is made for this kind of combat, flexible and smooth, flowing like water to set up each shot with impunity.
But if years of fighting, killing, has taught him anything, it's that no weapons are off-limits in a life-or-death battle. And using your hands isn't enough.
He steps backwards, his leg whips out in a swift counterattack, finding itself intercepted by the unyielding frame of his opponent's shinbone. The sound of bone smashing against bone resounds through the grimy alleyway, and he disengages from the exchange with an arched eyebrow.
"Ow, ow! Fuck, that hurts!" She hops up and down, cradling her leg as if somehow that would relieve the pain.
"You're still not checking my kicks correctly."
"Yeah, well it's hard when you kick so damn fast!" Gri-Violet growls, a wince fixed firmly upon her face. "You know what Vander's gonna say when he sees this bruise?"
He rolls his eyes. "Stop whining. If I had kicked any harder you'd end up with a fracture. Enforcers aren't going to give you that sort of lenience."
That shuts her up. Vi's lips press into a thin, hard line, eyes freezing into chips of ice.
"Again."
"No." She opens her mouth to object. "We're drilling that one-hundred more times. We're not stopping until you get it, so we'll restart the counter every time you get it wrong." The girl grits her teeth and glares at him as if trying to flay him alive with stink-eye alone, but she relents.
Animosity was good when she channeled it productively. Best to feed that a little.
"You're not in a boxing match, Grimelet. Remember that."
She scowls at him with all the vitriol of an enraged puppy. "I know that already, you've said it like, forty times. And my name is Violet!"
It was also just a teensy bit of fun to fuck around with her, and Kakashi would freely admit that.
Her technique when not in the heat of battle is in fact picture-perfect, but each time the motions are visibly powered by thought. That was unacceptable. Everything, every single individual motionhad to be muscle memory, etched into her flesh and bones.
Kakashi switches the angle and target and alternates the legs with each kick, making sure to keep the blows firm but gentle. He hums in approval everytime she gets it correct, but as the kicks increase in speed, she begins to struggle, unsureness creeping its way into her form. They never followed a particular tempo, a staggered interval between them all to keep it unpredictable, and soon, a mistake happens.
His left leg stops before it makes contact, hovering an inch away from her skin before lightly tapping it. She corrects it nearly instantaneously. Nodding, he continues forward, resetting the pace.
Physically, Kakashi is a year older, but still she stands taller than him, something that had been an endless subject of amusement for her. Malnourishment had done a number on him, nutrition in short supply for those who couldn't fight for it. Even with all the knowledge and experience of a veteran ninja, brain could only carry you so far against brawn. And in the body of a child, he didn't have much brawn.
Vi makes another mistake, this time a minute one, subtle in its inaccuracy but not subtle enough to ignore. He takes the time to walk her through it.
Looking back, it was one of his biggest regrets that he hadn't taught his students properly-
failure.
-and every now and then he wonders what could've been had he done it. The rift that had emerged between Sasuke and Naruto, would it have gotten to that point if he had intervened? How would have things changed?
Admittedly, legitimately teaching this time around was less fulfilling than what everybody seemed to play it up to be. His student was cocky, brash, sassy, a lot less friendly and only slightly more competent than Naruto had been. Her personality lent itself well to her brawler-esque fighting style, but not very much else…
The girl let out a yowl of anger as she again blunders, stomping her foot to the ground.
"This is so stupid! Nobody even kicks in a street-fight, that's like-" Vi scrunched her nose. "Un-sports-man-like. Or something."
"Enforcers won't be-"
"Enforcers have guns! They won't bother with really fighting us, 'cuz they're little bitches."
He hums in agreement, turning another page. "Then would you like to practice dodging bullets instead?"
Vi's jaw slackens as she stares at him incredulously. "You can't be serious."
"Well, not dodging bullets, per se. We can work our way up." He grabs a handful of pebbles on the ground, rolling them around in his fingers and leaving a residue of pollution and dirt behind.
"Yeah, well, you can't dodge those either. You're just looking for an excuse to throw rocks at me, " she says, sticking her tongue out. "I'm no sucker!"
"Try me then." He tosses the gravel at the ground, motioning towards himself. "One at a time, as hard as you can. I won't even move my feet."
Her eyes gain a dangerous glint, a hint of malicious thrill sparking through them as she realizes that this is her opportunity for revenge. Little hands scrape across the filthy concrete, gathering as many painful looking rocks as they can find.
She readies herself, posing like a pitcher, rotating her entire upper body back and tensing up as if she were a human spring. Her right eye was squinted, with her tongue hanging out in concentration as she calibrated the shot.
In an instant, the tension is released from her frame, a rock blurring forward on a collision course with his face.
It was fast. Surprisingly so, in fact. It seemed that those skills accumlumated from hours of training her marksmanship, something that she had initially taken up because it was "cool as fuck", translated over to this.
Not that it mattered, of course.
His head droops backwards, watching the rock whistle right over his left eye, while his hand snatches out and grabs the projectile out of the air.
Kakashi straightens, cheerfully lobbing it back at her. It taps her on the forehead, before falling to the ground with a little click.
"I'll give you three more tries, Grimelet. Then we're going straight back to the drills. If you hit me, then we can stop for today."
She snarls irritatedly, kicking away the stone that hit her and readying another pseudo-bullet.
Once.
Missed. It impacts her shoulder as Kakashi politely returns it.
Twice.
Another miss, but she gets smarter, aiming for his center of mass this time. Doesn't matter.
Thrice.
He chuckles when he sees her tactic. It was clever. Vi slips two pebbles into her hand as she reloads, and if he were any less observant, he would've missed it whilst reading his book. As they're launched, it still doesn't make a difference. His slouched body contorts to avoid both of them at once, and as his cute little minion realizes this, her look of triumph dissolves into defeat.
Snapping his book closed, Kakashi prances over and ruffles her hair, which feels admittedly strange when he's shorter than her. "Good job! You almost got me with that one!" Which is a lie, but she needs some encouragement.
Vi bats his arm away, and sighs.
They start again, an occasional squeal of anger echoing throughout the alleyway as she fails, again and again.
She gets better. Eventually.
Kakashi's nine years old when he has an altercation with law enforcement.
"Pull down your mask."
He pretends to think it over, with his hand stroking his chin and everything, though judging by his exasperated huff the Enforcer doesn't appreciate that. "Hmm… No."
"I wasn't asking, kid."
"I'm shy."
The masked man exhales deeply, mumbling something like, "you filthy street-rats are all the same, huh?"
"Rude."
"Pull it down. Now."
"Why?" He digs a finger into his ear and wiggles it around. "I've read up on the law, you know. Can't do searches without sufficient evidence."
"You're a suspicious person, we have the right to search you." His temper's growing short, words coming out clipped and impatient. "Besides, I'm not sure why you're even up here. It's pretty clear that you're an undercity kid."
There's a short pause as Kakashi briefly considers it, weighing the options. His hand reaches for his leg-pouch, and the officer tenses, fingers twitching towards his shock baton.
"Calm down, jeez." He reveals his book and a handful of coins. "Just here to get the latest copy in this series. No need to get so twitchy. Look, I have the money and everything."
The cop stares at him incredulously, his confusion apparent even through his visor. "You are… way too young to be reading that."
"So you've read it before, huh? Who's your favorite character?" The shinobi wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, flipping through the pages with practiced ease.
"It's Danika- and,you're distracting me, aren't you? That's not the point. Just-" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "You know what, whatever. Get out of here, brat. Keep your nose clean."
"Will do!" He calls out at the retreating back of the man. The Enforcer gave a backwards wave in response, disappearing out of sight.
What a surprisingly swell dude.
It was a shame that he had to betray that trust.
Of course, he wasn't here just to get the latest copy. It was the primary objective of this expedition, sure, but hardly the only one.
His eyes gravitate towards the spire of the Academy. This entire world was a mystery to him. Whispers of magic and foreign lands danced across the tongues of the people, with the region of Ionia holding particular promise. Because there were ninja there, apparently. Magic sounded far too similar to chakra for his tastes, too.
It had been years since he had been forced to gather information, with infiltration not being a specialty of his. He was still competent at it, though.
Time to steal shit. And books.
And what better place to steal books than the famous Academy? If he was lucky, their library would have some good 'reading material' too.
Conveniently enough for him, there was a public library, available for all to browse. A bell on the door tinkled softly, announcing his entrance. Immediately, an earthy, woody scent assaulted his nostrils, the telltale smell of well-used books.
Shelves upon shelves were stocked to the brim with tomes, neatly organized with golden plaques labeling each section.
It was time to get to work.
/-/
Ionia was not what he expected.
If there was any lingering doubt that he had been sent to a different world, this had dashed it away. The region's political climate seemed to be analogous to the Warring States Era, with different factions vying for dominance in response to the devastating Noxian invasion years prior. The Order of the Shadows, the Kinkou, The Navori Brotherhood, all prominent names that meant nothing to him except that they were fighting each other, for some reason. While foreign forces continued to ravage the lands, they were fighting each other.
From the outside, the situation looked like a hilarious exercise in futility, but it was so sad that he couldn't even laugh.
Information on magic was limited. Suspiciously so. There were a few passing mentions to the 'mystical arts' in the Ionian history books, but otherwise, there was nothing. Even common fairy tales were noticeably absent. Irritating, but he could live without it.
Overall, this trip was disappointing. All that he had gleaned was that 1: the ninja of this world were dumbasses, and 2: someone didn't want information about magic getting out.
Or, it would have been, had he not decided to do some good 'ole fashioned crime.
The dorms of the institution's halls were dangerously easy to access, with only two guards manning the entrance and simple locks securing each individual door.
He looked up and down his 'shopping' list. Scrawled in a colorful array of crayon-wax that he had stolen from Chow-Powder's collection, these were the bare necessities that would make this journey worthwhile.
-mony (lots)
-clothes
-shiny stuf
-knives
-new mask
Sparse, but it would get the job done. As soon as he found a fitting set of clothes (which in retrospect may be hard to find because he's a little runt) he could just wander around and pretend to be a cute, innocent, lost little sibling who was definitely not robbing every room that he could get his grubby little mitts into.
Of course, if the passerby didn't buy the story, or God forbid, try to escort him to said nonexistent sibling's room, then he'd just knock them out and stuff them into the nearest storage room.
K.I.S.S.
Keep it simple, stupid.
Or something like that.
Kakashi had decided to don a beanie during his stay here, obscuring his luscious spiky silver locks for fear of being identified. His little feet brought down the main wing of the first floor, where he found his first rectangular-prism shaped victim.
Room 001. A much more logical name than, say, Powder, or, Claggor. Their parents must have really hated them.
He reached upwards with all the height he could muster, getting up on his tippy-toes to spy through the peephole. Empty, as far as he could see.
Good enough.
The lock-picking kit that he retrieved from his leg-pouch had costed him a pretty penny, and it seemed to be of reasonable wear and build. Bronze metal glinted under the afternoon sunlight as he wiggled one of the rakes around, hearing the mechanism give a dull pop as it released.
That was really easy.
In terms of interior decor, this room was rather lacking. No posters up on the walls, no memorabilia of friends or families on the shelves. Just books, books, and more books. What a sad guy.
A small sum of money had been concealed neatly in the hidden compartment of a sock-drawer, along with a stash of jewelry. He took a tenth of the coins away, storing them in his beanie. No need to leave the college students destitute, after all.
But the real loot was found underneath the bed, where a suspicious looking cardboard box was placed.
Kakashi crawled into the confines of the bedframe with all the dignity of a lobster stealing erotica from some lonely kid's spank bank, reaching inwards and grasping hold of the treasure chest, yanking it out.
His hands reverently held the scripture betwixt his digits, tracing the cover with all the gentleness of a lover's touch. The book, the one that he had already bought, but-
First Edition Special, the bright golden label read.
He took it back. This trip was anything but disappointing.
Carefully storing the holy object into his pouch, right next to his existing copy that he had bought from the store a few moments earlier, he forged onwards.
The rest of his heists weren't nearly as exciting, but they were undeniably productive. He now had everything on his list except knives and a new mask, but one couldn't ask for too much when fate had blessed him with such a gift.
Returning to the undercity one bagful of illegal tender heavier and with a set of new clothes, Kakashi couldn't say that that voyage could have gone any better.
He might just do it more often, if those people were so generous enough to offer their brimming coffers up to him again.
"What's got you so happy?"
Turning his attention away from his Holy Writ for just a moment, his eyes flit towards the speaker. Claggor, bright-eyed and curious, sat on his bunk bed at the bottom. To be honest, this brat was probably his favorite out of the bunch, though that wasn't saying much. Powder's ears perk up as well, still tinkering away with her contraptions. Mylo's already fast asleep, even though it's only around eight. Violet doesn't bother to mask her interest, quietly scrutinizing him.
"Went topside today."
They all gape, shocked. It was nearly unheard of to venture up into the upper districts of the city, especially as a younger denizen of the slums.
"B-but… Why?"
His bag, still strapped to his leg and nearly bursting at the seams with golden coins, gives a little jingle.
"What do you guys want to eat tonight?" His eye arches in a facsimile of a smile, the best he can give with the mask still on his face. The children's eyes light up like firelights, and for a brief painful moment he remembers Naruto, with his face exactly the same.
The memory takes his breath away.
"Really Kakashi-sensei!? You're sure?"
He nods, a small tentative smile forming at the corners of his lips. Minato-sensei's son, reacting with such vehement emotion to just simply being treated to ramen. What a dumb joke. Bittersweet and tasteless, all at the same time. Kakashi should've been there, been the pillar of support that this kid needed all this time. He could've stopped this.
It's hard to stop this flood of thoughts, repeating like a mantra that he's a failure, a waste of space, a liar and a cheat and human-scum, because he knows on some level that they're all right.
But for an ever tantalizing little while, they stop.
'Kakashi-sensei.' He tests the word on his lips. Maybe that name can mean something that's not failure. It certainly sounded better than 'Friend-Killer Kakashi', or 'ANBU Hound'.
"All right! You're the best, sensei!" The little ray of sunshine and rainbows wraps his hands around the back of his head, lips stretching his cheeks with an ecstatic grin. "Get ready, I'll eat you out of house and home!"
Maybe now, he had a chance.
/-/
Author's Note:
Kakashi being sad :(
I'm trying my hand both at writing for the Arcane fandom for the first time, and conveying feelings through narration because I'm not good at that lol. the tone i'm going for is a mix of angst (and i cannot lie, i am cringing whenever i come across those moments when i proofread) and crack, but it's probably not going to work out in the long run. hopefully some of you found it funny.
this was just a little brain-worm that i had inside me that i just had to write out. imo Kakashi is the saddest character that we see in Naruto, and what better place to put him in than one of the saddest tv shows i've watched since like, ever. not sure if i'm going to continue this, because I want to keep on rolling out updates to Blonde Menace, but if i get any more persistent sparks of inspiration i'll put them on paper.
Anyway, questions, critiques, concerns? leave them in the reviews! i'm a new writer, so all feedback is appreciated.
