Please see chapter 1 for disclaimer information
Water Runs Red – Chapter 2
Kakashi followed the dark haired chuunin. He stayed farther back than he normally would with someone of lower rank. His camouflage skills were excellent; he had after all been in ANBU for many years. Something just did not seem right to the silver haired man when he thought about how fast the chuunin had reacted in the mission room earlier.
He followed the dark haired teacher to a non-descript apartment building in one of the less populated areas of town. He stayed outside the building as the lights went on in the third floor apartment. He moved closer to the living room window as the lights went off in that room and were replaced by lights in the other room; Kakashi assumed that was the bedroom. Within moments, the apartment was dark, but the silver haired jônin stayed on guard. He wasn't going to risk entering the apartment with the chuunin inside, but he was going to get a good look around wherever the dark haired man wasn't. It was a simple apartment, very neat. The one wall of the living room was dedicated to an impressive entertainment center. Stereo, TV, DVD, VCR, and (if Kakashi was right) even a karaoke machine. There was also a desk with a set of headphones and a very neat stack of student papers on it. The kitchen was visible as well and was empty as far as he could tell from the window with a small table. The only other furniture he could see was a couch facing the TV with several magazines neatly stacked on one of the cushions.
It surprised him that the room seemed to be decorated in reds and browns, somehow Iruka had struck him as more of a blue type … then again maybe it was just because of the name. He left his window perch and went towards the administrative building. He wasn't going to find anything else out tonight about Iruka by watching an empty living room and he didn't have enough information to risk infiltrating the man's apartment. Before he got a block, a thought occurred and he quickly cut his thumb on his teeth to do a quick summons.
Not even waiting for the smoke to clear, he started speaking, "Pakkun, one block back there is an apartment on the third floor. My scent will be near the window. I want you to stay there until I return unless the man inside goes anywhere. If he leaves, follow him but be very careful."
The pug rolled his eyes and scratched behind his ear with one foot. "We're in Konoha, why do you need me to do this for you?" Pakkun yawned giving his master a most unimpressed look.
"I don't know. All right? Something is odd and I don't know what." Without another word to his summons, he tore off across the rooftops to the administrative building.
He wasn't a jônin for nothing and quickly made his way into the Hokage's office. The records room was harder to get into and he knew he had a very limited time before his presence would be able to be detected and this building was patrolled, in fact patrolled by people he himself had supervised the training of.
He grabbed the personnel record for one Umino Iruka and quickly snapped pictures of the pages, not even bothering to read, just getting the pictures so he could get out. It took less than a minute, while Kakashi was quick at such work, the thinness of the file was the real reason he was making his way back towards his apartment less than five minutes after setting foot in the Hokage's office.
He unsealed his door moments later and made sure the traps were disarmed and no one had been in his apartment. Kicking the blankets over towards the futon, he quickly threw the film into the chemical canisters he had and went to grab something to eat after setting a ten-minute timer.
Ten minutes later found him on the floor of his room with still dripping wet film spread out on a towel, hovering over it with a magnifying lens. He was finding nothing. Nothing in the background section except that both Iruka's parents had been leaf nin. Nothing different than most other nin in the village. Graduated near the bottom in the academy, passed his chuunin exam at an average age. It wasn't until he reached the mission records that anything actually interesting was written. The chuunin had been on twelve A ranked missions. All of them were marked as successful. He'd have to go through the actual mission records to be sure, but from the few word notations in the chuunin's file, they didn't seem like standard fare for someone of his rank They appeared to be all information gathering in nature. Then the missions stopped and the notation of Iruka's assignment to the Academy created a demarcation line between the interesting glimpses of the 'A' ranked missions and a horrible boring stream of occasional 'C' ranked missions during the summers. Not even many of those, just a few, it appeared to be the bare minimum to still be considered an active shinobi for the village.
There was nothing in the file that Kakashi had been expecting, no notes of extra training, no applications for Jônin testing, nothing to make the chuunin seem like anything other than just another desk ninja.
He paused to think maybe he was wrong, and nothing was actually odd. Maybe the guy just had a temper that he normally kept hidden. Sure, he was quick, but in a hidden village, good reflexes were the norm not the exception. He darted across the rooftops to check on Pakkun. When he confirmed the human inside was sound asleep and not budging, Kakashi released his summons and headed back to his apartment. He tried to sleep, but it took him an extra long time to actually fall asleep since he was trying to analyze if there actually was anything unusual about the Chuunin teacher of if it was just his imagination.
The next day it was as if the hangover had never happened. A good nights rest, a good breakfast, and a hot shower and Iruka seemed like everyone always expected him to be – polite to a fault and as threatening as a pebble. After the day before, his class was still on edge and acting like they were walking on eggshells every time they had to interact with him. That all changed after lunch. It was Friday, and since Friday was the day where injuries would most be able to heal before the next school day, it was what was affectionately known as 'keep the kids from killing each other day'. Yes, sharp weapons practice.
For the second time in as many days, it was even Iruka's least favorite sharp weapon – shuriken. Yes, twenty some almost nins running around with real weapons. It was going well though, he was on top of his game and was able to easily avoid the misses that came hurtling towards him, although he wasn't sure they were all misses.
Theoretically, the children's weapons should all be confined to their own practice area since there were wall between the fields so multiple classes could be out at the same time. The fourteenth law of teaching pre-nins states that anything that is theoretically impossible, can and will be done if it involves bodily injury.
Thus, when Iruka was lecturing on proper throwing stance, a stray kunai from the next field over ricocheted off the school building and was headed straight for Iruka's back. Even a trained Jônin would probably miss the incoming missile. It's slight noise would be more than drowned out by the chatter of a herd of pre-nin thinking of nothing more than it only being an hour until the weekend on a beautiful spring day when none of them wanted to be learning about proper finger placement on a shuriken.
In fact, the only person who should have known about the impending injury was a lone Jônin sitting on top of said roof watching the chuunin teacher as he instructed the students. That the Chuunin started to dodge the blade before it reached him surprised the Jônin watcher. What surprised him even more was that the brown haired teacher stopped his dodge and instead twisted into the blade with his shoulder.
Kakashi frowned; he saw the man's stance before the blade sunk into his shoulder, most of the impact absorbed by the Chuunin's vest. He knew the man could have dodged it and that there was no explanation for his movement besides having seen the blade approaching him. Then it occurred to him when the teacher dropped to his knees, a shocked little girl standing in front of him. Had the teacher dodged the blade, it would have continued on, right into the face of a young girl he had been showing correct finger placement to.
The Chuunin yelped in pain, and yelled across the wall, "Hey watch it over there! One of your kunai almost impaled one of my students." As Kakashi kept watching, the Chuunin's class was let go a bit early and the other teacher apologized profusely. Finally, Iruka left to head towards the hospital.
Kakashi knew a chance when he saw one and quickly got a few blocks in front of the Chuunin. He made it look like he was walking towards the academy when he saw Iruka headed towards the hospital, "Yo, Iruka-sensei."
Iruka turned towards the silver haired jônin, a hand still holding the bandage on the back of his shoulder and his bloodied vest handing from his weapons pouch. "Good afternoon, Hatake-sensei."
Kakashi stopped in front of the chuunin teacher, "I assume you are headed towards the hospital?" When Iruka nodded, the jônin started walking with him towards the medical complex, "I didn't realize you were on a mission, I thought you were at the academy today. I was on my way there to speak to you about the Genins."
"Fridays are weapons practice days." Iruka didn't say any more as if that explained everything.
The Jônin followed him into the building as Iruka was ushered over to a medical looking chair, Kakashi had been in more than a few similar to it when he needed to be patched up but not actually injured to the point of needing to lie down. "I could talk to you later about them?"
The chuunin smiled, "Oh this is just a scratch, a few stitches and it will be done. What information did you want on your new students?"
Kakashi managed to engage Iruka into a conversation about the three Genins he had been given. While most of the information from their former teacher he had already realized on the mission to protect the bridge builder, some of it did end up being rather insightful and useful. Tidbits like Sakura sometimes could recite back a theory in several different ways and make it sound like she really understood it, but that she sometimes didn't actually understand it until she tried to apply it in a practical situation.
Kakashi kept a close eye on the chuunin as the doctor had him remove his shirt and started to heal the wound on the back of his shoulder. He noted the comments from the doctor about how it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and that Iruka had basically gotten hit in the best possible place to take a weapon like that. As he kept talking to the Chuunin, Kakashi walked around to the other side of the doctor doing the repair work.
Speaking of getting hit in the best possible place, now that Kakashi could see the wound on the chuunin from the attack by Mizuki, he saw that one also hit in a good spot. The chuunin was either lucky, or had planned this. The kunai really had entered the Chuunin's shoulder at the best possible place, and now with the man without his shirt on Kakashi could see something else. The long sleeves the man always wore covered the fact he was in much better shape than an academy schoolteacher should be. It wasn't until he glanced at the Chuunin's other shoulder that he saw a surprise. The man had a tattoo on his shoulder blade.
Kakashi flipped his headband up for a second, to make sure he didn't miss anything, but only for a second, he didn't want to be caught in the act of inspecting the man's shoulder with his Sharingan eye. The tattoo was in simple black ink and seemed to be several years old. A few small scars marred it and seemed to have been long healed. The tattoo wasn't anything he recognized as having significance, just three simple symbols, the Kanji for 'Shinnen', of one of the seven virtues, 'faith'.
If the tattoo surprised Kakashi, he was even more surprised when the doctor finished up and Iruka pulled his ripped and blood stained shirt back on. Kakashi was mentally kicking himself for not noticing that the presumably unassuming academy teacher also had his navel pierced.
The Jônin simply digested this information and continued his banter about the students as he walked the Chuunin back to the man's apartment. Now he knew there had to be something odd with this man, and he had to find out what it was. A mystery like this, right under his nose in the village was too much for the jônin to ignore. He couldn't find any more pieces to the puzzle that was Iruka by the time they reached the Chuunin's door. Kakashi was forced to say his goodbyes and start to ponder plan B for finding out information when the Chuunin excused himself into the apartment with excuses of needing to rest after the injury.