The Hokage puffs away at his pipe, reading over the five different mission reports on his desk. Kakashi stands in front of him, so short he's unable to see over the table enough to know which report in particular the Hokage is looking at.
"Have you tried summoning him again?" the Hokage asks.
"No, it didn't seem like a good idea to disturb an ANBU too much," Kakashi admits.
The Hokage gestures to the ground between them and waits, placing his pipe on a stand and lacing his fingers together on the desk. Kakashi pauses for a moment and then repeats the same summoning he tried before.
A puff and then a brief shadow of white hair and pale skin, blood splattered and lit by blazing blue, the shriek of chirping electricity, before it all disappears when Hound dismisses himself immediately without even a second glance.
A spray of blood is left on the carpet.
"He seems busy," the Hokage muses and half turns. "What did you think, Hound?"
Kakashi blinks and there's an ANBU in the room but he's bigger than the one Kakashi knows. Broader shoulders with more emphasised muscles, and long brown hair pulled into a tight bun but it's the same mask.
"Hard to tell from a quick glimpse," the ANBU says in a gravelly voice. "I'd say ninjutsu but he had a tanto at his back."
"We'll have to try again later," the Hokage says easily enough. "Kakashi, return here tomorrow."
Kakashi bows and leaves the room after he's dismissed.
It's too much of a security risk, is what the Hokage says. That the summon can be accessed from anywhere, an unknown ANBU, with intimate knowledge of Iwa, who had no compunctions with using Konoha-nin to complete his mission - and the Hokage doesn't listen when Kakashi explains the ANBU came up with the plan on the fly, that he thought the chunin had the mission, that he went out of his way to help.
Kakashi tells this to Minato too and the blond purses his lips.
Minato explains to Kakashi that the Hokage and his advisors have talked with Minato as well and are simply making excuses.
Danzo is pushing that Hound is either a Hatake from another village, or it's another dimension's Sakumo that came through instead of his ninken that Kakashi tried to summon, and both would be a great boon for Konoha if they could get Hound to stay or pass on information.
(Minato was lying through his teeth when he told the Hokage that Kakashi was good but would never be that good, it couldn't possibly be Kakashi from the future, there's no need to take the child into T&I on a mere possibility. The only relief Minato has is that the few features seen despite the ANBU uniform makes Hound look far more like an adult Sakumo than a child Kakashi.)
Over the next week, Hound continually dismisses himself before they can see more than a shadow. It seems it's a particularly busy mission, maybe something went wrong and it's a scramble to fix it but Hound never appears distressed or particularly injured.
He's sometimes in the midst of an attack, sometimes moving fast and is forced to flip off a wall when he bursts out from the summons, one time he appeared in disguise. The parameters change fast enough that the Hokage concludes its multiple missions, back to back.
After an attempt by ANBU Gorilla to grab Hound and hold him still as soon as he appears -but Hound just puffs away- the next time doesn't end in Hound vanishing immediately.
"You are not my Hokage," Hound states, mask cold and impersonal as he stares the man down. "You do not have my loyalty or even my respect. You are distracting me from my missions and endangering not only myself but also my comrades. If you summon me again, I will take action."
"Who are you?" the Hokage demands as the ANBU in the room slowly circle around. "Why is it that you can be summoned?"
"I have made my position very clear," Hound states.
"Who is your Hokage?"
Hound dismisses himself and the Hokage gestures at Kakashi to repeat it. Kakashi bows his head and runs through the summoning again despite his own private thoughts.
ANBU Snake is thrown out of the window and the Hokage leaps back from his desk but Hound wasn't going for him. The hidden privacy seals engage, locking down the Hokage office.
Mouse body switches with a pot plant but isn't fast enough to avoid taking a kunai to the back, the weapon then switched out for a crouched Hound, who pulses chakra through his feet like tree walking but instead of cracking the bark, Mouse screams as he collapses.
Hound kicks up a side table as a shield, shuriken thunking into the wood, and then sends it hurling back towards Jackal with a gust of wind that whips up everything not stuck down, ice senbon suddenly added to the mix. Kakashi ducks and rolls towards a clear corner and when he looks up again, Wombat is down.
The room snaps to pitch black and when Kakashi breaks the genjutsu, there are two Rats and the walls are covered in exploding tags. Kakashi breaks the genjutsu of the exploding tags and Rat is down while Bull is attacking the Hokage.
Kakashi leaps up, kicking off the large Hokage desk towards the back of the room, landing on Bull's shoulder and slamming her into the wall from momentum alone but the Hokage's fingers are already broken and senbon are spikes down his arm, leaving him unable to use ninjutsu.
Hound is jumping, whirling rapidly with a blazing fire encasing one foot that he kicks straight into Chameleon's defensively raised forearm, but Chameleon is still thrown back with an explosion far too close to his head that also sends Hound spinning away in a far more controlled manner. Chameleon is down.
Kakashi backflips off Bull and hurls three kunai at Hound mid-air, all deflected, and Kakashi is snatched out of the air and tossed into a wall hard enough his ears ring. Jackal takes up a defensive position in front of the Hokage while Hound comes down on a stunned but recovering Bull, dragging her up by the hair and ramming a knee into Bull's face, knocking her out.
The ANBU backup clustered outside the widows watch on, unable to get past the strong seal barrier. They're all stuck in a stalemate, with Kakashi a chunin and unable to land a single hit, Jackal protecting the injured Hokage, and Hound able to dismiss himself at any time.
Hound walks around the room and picks up a scattered file off the ground, puts it on the edge of the Hokage desk like that has any impact on the room that looks like a hurricane hit. "No, I don't know how I can be summoned. Yes, I work for Konoha. No, you face no threat from me unless you keep interrupting my missions and putting my comrades' lives in danger."
"Who are you?" the Hokage demands.
Hound sighs and straightens up.
Jackal blocks the water whip with a screen of fire that turns it to burning steam. Wind slices through the entire back wall, clawing gouges out of the wall right down to the glowing barrier as Jackal and the Hokage dodge.
Kakashi fires off a lightning arrow that clashes with Hound's lightning arrow and the resulting flash of light is blinding. Kakashi opens his eyes after, takes a step and topples over to the feeling of paralysis poison but doesn't remember when he was hit. Jackal is down.
Hound sits on the edge of the Hokage desk, long legs stretched out in front of him, arms crossed.
The Hokage is watching Hound closely. "You are dismissed, Hound."
Hound nods and disappears in a puff of smoke.
"You look…" Tenzo trails off, arm still in a cast from the last mission Hound got yanked away from.
"I don't want to talk about it," Hound mutters.
.
A/N: Hound is canon Kakashi, so that 'not my Hokage' thing was just him being pissed off and more of a 'I don't answer to you'.
(Hound picked up Sakumo's file that the Hokage had out for research purposes and people start making their own conclusions.)