A/N Sorry this is a little late and a bit short. Haven't been feeling well, so i thought I'd better put up what I can while I can.

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Kakashi crouched on a branch near the top of the tallest tree for miles. Through the tangle of twigs above his head he could see the sky, a ceiling of clear pastel blue. And way below his feet the trees' discarded leaves, that had long since lost their autumn colours, to form a blanket of russet brown.

He was perfectly poised, perfectly balanced, perfectly in tune with the tree and with the forest. Kakashi was part of this forest. Just as much as the bare trees, the birds, the squirrels and all the other forest creatures. None had even bothered to look up from their constant foraging when he had appeared amongst them. Clearly not disturbed by his presence at all.

"Ah yes, and for a while I didn't think we'd make it."

Iruka landed on the branch beside him, causing only the slightest movement in the finest twigs. Not enough to make a sound, but he was well aware that Kakashi had caused none at all. He was also slightly out of breath as he sat down on the branch, unwilling to use the energy he would have needed to balance the way Kakashi was.

"Make what?"

Kakashi leaned back against the trunk of the tree. "Smell the air Iruka, can't you tell? The smell of home. We just crossed into fire country. Pakkun should be waiting for us in Konoha. Another day or two to get everything straightened out and then this will all be over. …You can go back to teaching your brats."

Iruka looked at Kakashi's beaming face and upcurved eye, trying to remember the last time he'd seen him look this good. Not that he ever looked bad exactly, even wounded and filthy and half-dead from chakra depletion the man looked good enough to eat. Which, come to think of it, he'd done… many times… when he'd come back from a long mission.

"There's not much that makes you happy like this is there?"

Kakashi grabbed him by the waist and leaned over to press him into a kiss. "You mean apart from you… and Icha Icha? But God this mission must have aged me forty years, that makes me older than Hokage-baabaa. Hell we even di…"

Iruka pecked at his cheek. "We even what?"

A shiver of cold sweat run over him as the doors in his memory slammed shut. So now there was one more place in there he just didn't want to go. This time he'd looked beyond death, and what scared him about it the most, was that he'd liked it.

"Doesn't matter. We did a lot of things."

He snagged Iruka's earlobe between his lips and smiled feeling it glow warm against his tongue, evidence of an equal glow spreading across tan cheeks as he dipped a hand to squeeze his crotch. "Come on, let's keep moving, I'd like to fuck you in a real bed tonight."

Iruka pushed Kakashi back, just a little, but enough to assert himself. "You silver tongued charmer. But just you rememberHatake-san, from the moment we go through that gate you're keeping those hands where I can see them. Both of them." His cross tone faltered, becoming breathless as Kakshi closed in and grabbed him again and started doing something that felt much too good for him to object to. "At least until we're safely behind locked doors."

At that moment Iruka realised that Kakashi's chakra had vanished. He hid his too, and felt Kakashi's hand on the back of his shirt, holding him still, although he hadn't seen him move.

"Cover your face, I smell blood." Kakashi's mask was already in place.

Iruka's mind was staggering to catch up. Kakashi had gone from flirtatious tease to ruthless professional in a heartbeat. "Blood? You mean…"

A kunai thudded into the tree, close enough to shave the hairs from Kakashi's forearm, he didn't need to think in order to recognised the trace of chakra clinging to it. Yanking Iruka towards him, he sent them both falling headlong to the forest floor, barely slowing their fall enough at the last moment for a safe and silent landing.

Once on the ground, Iruka wound a strip of cloth over his mouth and nose, watching every nuance of Kakashi's body language, his heart throbbing, with pride as much as with adrenaline. It wasn't often that he had the chance to see his lover in this kind of action. He didn't love Kakahi because he was the awesome copy ninja, but it certainly was one hell of a bonus.

Words reached his ear along a thread of chakra, almost silent but clearly audible. An interesting jutsu, he wondered who he'd copied it from.

"Shit, it's Jiraiya. The blood mist must have him. Who knows who or what he thinks we are."

Iruka kept quiet and waited for instructions. He was full of questions, but he knew better than to ask them now.

Kakashi shot him a quick glance. "He was obviously aiming for me, not you. Stay down and I'll lead him away."

There was a swirl of air, the tang of chakra smoke, and before Iruka could decide whether or not to object, he found himself alone amongst the litter of last summer's fallen leaves.

Kakashi already knew the right direction from the trajectory of the kunai. The distance, of course, could be no more than a lucky guess. But it was damn well about time for luck to be on his side for once. He materialised fifty yards behind the toad sennin. An instant later they were both in the same tree, each holding the others wrist with their unarmed hand. And… in that very same instant, they both realised that each of them had had just enough of a momentary opening to get in one clear shot… and that neither of them had taken it.

Kakashi looked at his adversary closely. He seemed lucid. His clear eyes showed their normal depth of intelligence, although his sly twinkle of perversion was currently missing. "You aren't possessed?"

Jiraiya peered back into the uncovered eye. "You're not insane?"

He lowered the arm with the kunai, but still maintained his hold on the other man. "Why would you think I'm possessed?"

Kakashi did the same. "Why would you think I'm insane?"

"I asked first."

Kakashi looked hard for a hint of deceit before releasing his grip. "Because you threw a damn knife at me, and because this area is saturated in blood mist. I've seen a lot of what that can do to people recently."

"Blood mist, I've heard of it. A long time ago. It's a blood limit jutsu, they say the founder of Mist used it."

"He still does. But tell me why you attacked us, and why you thought I was insane."

"Because your damn dog bit me. He's your manifestation isn't he? If he's gone mad it's only reasonable to assume that you have too."

"My dog? You're sure it was my dog?"

Jiraiya rolled his eyes, but the menace had already gone out of them. "I think I know Pakkun when I see him by now."

Kakashi was genuinely shocked. "Pakkun? Pakkun bit you?

Then he caught it. The tiny underneath that told him that this was the truth, but not the whole truth. "What aren't you telling me?"

Jiraiya sighed. "Later. Best get back to your pretty little sensei, he'll be wondering if I've gutted you yet or not."

The air had already started to spin and colour with smoke. "Yeah, like you could take me down old man."

They found Iruka where he'd left him, or rather they didn't. Kakashi smiled, feeling a hint of proprietary pride. The henge was perfect. No one who hadn't just been right there could have guessed that the rock was anything other than what it seemed. Not just it's colour and texture, but the angle of the grain running through it and the species of lichens and mosses clinging to its surface. He shoved Jiraiya aside.

"Hey! Don't sit on him."

Kakashi grabbed Iruka's hand and pulled him from under the legendary sennin, forcing him back to his normal form.

Jiraiya threw back his head and roared with open honest laughter. "Now I know why those damn kids are all so good at henge."

Then just as suddenly he was deadly serious again. He leaned back into a tree, while Iruka relaxed into a sprawl in the leaves near his feet, and Kakshi hopped onto a low branch, crouched like a forest predator, keeping watch over its brood.

Jiraiya sniffed at the air. "So you're saying that it's not just me and that the forest really does smell of blood."

"Then you have noticed it."

"Yes, very faint, most of the time barely there at all. But definitely blood. Dead but not spoiled, like the jutsu-preserved stuff they use at the hospital. Tsunade reeks of it sometimes. And it's got demon in it too, right?"

Kakashi nodded. "It's the blood mist. You breathe it in and it gets into your brain, creates illusions. Have you seen who's creating it?"

"There've been shadows creeping about. Hard to get a fix on, they don't stay in one place for long. At first I thought they were clones, they don't eat or sleep at all that I can tell. There're maybe fifty of them at my best guess. You say they make this mist?"

"That seems to be the way it works. Ketsuekimusha, the Mist sennin infects them with his blood. Then he can use their blood to make mist and anyone who breaths it is controlled too. Or at least can be deluded into doing whatever he wants, so it comes to the same thing. But it's not a genjutsu, it can't be dispelled. The illusion's coming from their own minds so it feels completely real to them."

Jiraiya rubbed his fingertips together, processing this new information and slotting it into the gaps between everything he'd already learned. Blood that takes over other blood and can be spread through the air, as mist.

"So that explains why the sensei is masked too. Very clever. I thought you were getting possessive, didn't want anyone else looking at him."

A white eyebrow twitched very slightly. "You can look all you like, but remember that he's mine. If you touch, I'll kill you."

Jiraiya wiggled his fingers in the air. "Ooo scary, lucky he's not my type. I like breasts."

Iruka was starting to bristle, being discussed as if he wasn't right there. He was about to jump up and yell at the two perverts, when he realised something too.

He pointed a finger at the ero-sennin. "But you aren't masked."

Jiraiya just laughed. A deep belly laugh, too loud for the silence of the still trees. "Takes more than a jutsu to confuse my brain. I'd know if I was seeing things."

Kakashi narrowed his eye with suspicion. "You're quite sure about that? You said Pakkun attacked you. Are you sure that wasn't an illusion."

Jiraiya stared back at the copy nin, a hint of anger crossing his expressive face. "Damn right he did. Charged right at me and sank in his teeth. See." He pulled back his sleeve.

Kakashi landed by Jiraiya's side and examined the bite. It was from a dog alright, a small one. Surely even the most realistic illusion wouldn't leave tooth marks.

His eye darted back to the older man's face, warning that he wasn't satisfied yet. "And what else Jijii? We'll count this as 'later', now that Iruka knows I've not been gutted."

Jiraiya's face became a blank slate, his mouth a hard straight line, as he yanked his garment back from his throat. There was a scar, perilously close to his jugular, as if some animal had tried to rip out his throat. It was identical in size and shape to the one on his arm. But this one was old, and had long since healed to a white oval of pits and ridges.

"He bit me once before, a long time ago. When he was your father's."

He paused as if deciding whether to go on, as he caught the emotional flare that Kakashi either didn't, or couldn't, repress.

"They'd just come back from some place in wave, an island. Not long before… well you both know the story."

His father? Kakashi felt the blood drain from his face under the mask. "That wouldn't have been Ookami Island by any chance?"

The sennin shook his great white mane. "Never said. But the truth is he never seemed quite the same after that mission. He just clammed up every time I tried to talk to him about it. Then I went away, and when I came back…"

Kakashi sat down and gripped Iruka's hand as if afraid that he might fall, although he was already on the ground. Had it been true? Had the house really smelled of blood in those weeks and months before his father's suicide? That was the way he remembered it, but he'd always assumed it was just a nasty trick of his imagination. That the smell of blood that day, when he'd come home and found him, had been so overwhelming that it had clouded his memory of things ever being different.

For just how many decades had the old mist sennin, Ketsuekimusha, been living on Ookami Island before Itachi found him? And who else had he destroyed in his efforts to manufacture an heir for his foul demon blood?

Kakashi felt his spine arch and stiffen as he pulled himself to his feet. His eye darted from one man to the other, the legendary sennin and the chuunin schoolteacher. Two men that he loved and respected beyond all others, but in such very different ways. It was as if they represented all of Konoha and everything and everyone he cared for, bracketed between them.

"They're waiting. These shadows in the woods. Waiting for something to happen in Konoha before they move in with the mist. And I think we found out what they're waiting for, back in the desert. If you're right and Pakkun's been affected by the mist, he won't have got through with my message. So we're the only ones who know. They have a plan to smuggle in bombs, blow up the mission room, and take out the Hokage tower and everyone inside along with it. And that's just the start."

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In the heart of Konoha, in the mission room, just outside the Hokage's office, Shizune waited patiently for the last of the former rookie eight plus team Gai to arrive.

Naruto appeared in the doorway and stood there, panting. "Damn alarm clock. But at least I know I'm not dead last this time, I passed the Nara house on my way over and it didn't look as anyone there was even awake yet."

A lazy voice spoke from the far corner. "If you're talking about me, I was the first one here. Well to be more accurate I never left. I fell asleep yesterday going through those boring scrolls."

Shizume smiled one of her rare smiles. "Don't worry Naruto, you aren't late. In fact you're all early. I must say I'm very impressed with everyone's enthusiasm."

She went back to her normal expression of quiet intensity. "But I hope you all realize that this won't be an easy mission. We really don't know the nature of the threat to Konoha, so all high ranked shinobi are still being kept close to home. You won't have any back up."

As she was speaking she stepped around to the back of the mission room desk, and took three scrolls from a top drawer.

"I divided the names you gave me geographically. Team Gai, you're a little older so I'd like you to go east. We haven't heard much from Orochimaru recently, but he's a threat that can't be overestimated. Team Asuma, I'd like you to go west. Team Kurenai north. I know I don't really need to say this, but all of you watch what you say and to whom you say it. Don't give any hint that Hatake-san may be in trouble. Both he and Konoha have many rivals and many enemies, neither needs to advertise their vulnerability."

Hinata quietly slipped her hand into the older woman's. "Don't worry Shizune-sama. We'll be careful."

Shizune smiled again as she folded her fingers around the gentle, but deceptively powerful, white palm. "I know you will, you are Konoha ninjas."

Naruto watched the nine shadows vanish. "Shit. Why can't we go too? I want to find Kakashi-sensei."

His pink-haired teammate grabbed his arm and dragged him back towards the file room. Smiling a bit too brightly. "We're doing our part too. Come on, Tsunade-sama just unsealed the first batch of classified scrolls for us."

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From the slight emotional distance from which he viewed almost everything that didn't directly involve Iruka, Kakashi couldn't help noticing that, if the situation hadn't been so deadly serious, Jiraiya's response would have been very funny. He did horrified surprise so perfectly.

"Bombs? In the mission room?"

"The evidence is pretty clear."

"Shit. With this emergency most of our best people will be hanging out there. We have to get the place evacuated." About ten miles, he could do it in five or six jumps. Jiraiya prepared to teleport.

A flare of gold lit up the sky in the direction of the village, followed almost immediately by red. Red light so evil that they caught enough to feel sickened all those miles away.

Then the boom reached them, like a second blow, harder and more savage than the first.

Kakshi's first reaction was to check Iruka, who stood stunned, watching a dark plume of smoke coil up from his home, spreading to darken the sky above it like a veil of mourning.

Jiraiya put his arm around his student's student, pulling him close so that he could whisper in his ear. "Kakashi, that red that followed the explosion, it was demon chakra, and it wasn't the same as the stuff out here in the forest."

This time they both looked towards the teacher.

Kakashi kept his voice equally low. "I know, Naruto, I felt it too."

"Do you think he realised?"

"Iruka's a lot smarter than you give him credit for Jijii. Even if he didn't recognise it, he'd know it's demon. How many demons are likely to be in the Hokage tower?"