Disclaimer: I am neither Rowling nor Kishimoto, so no, I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto.
Wow, this story has gotten more attention than I thought it would! A big shout out to howlingwindofthestorm, tenshi-no-akuma-81, and all the other wonderful people who reviewed, alerted and favorited this story, this chapter's for you!
A/N- Kakashi's ANBU mask is 'Inu', meaning dog. Given his summons, it makes sense.
(Note- this chapter has been edited since its original posting)
A special thanks to Sheeshasan for pointing out some mistakes!
Chapter 2: In Which Masks have Two Uses
Kakashi's muscles ached as he tree-hopped into the familiar woods outside Kohona. His mission had been difficult to say the least, and now all he wanted was a morphine drip and a hot shower. He'd been caught off guard by the two unexpected missing-nin, and apparently his employer had forgotten to mention the assassination target only twelve. Now there was just another child dead, another name to add to the list of People Hatake Kakashi Has Killed Because the Hokage Told Him To.
But, of course, he was ANBU, and these things didn't matter anymore.
The mission was a success, and none of his teammates died. That's all that mattered in the end. He supposed that he should be worried about the lack of guilt for murdering a civilian child who did nothing more than be born to the wrong parents. But he wasn't, and besides, this wasn't particularly a bad thing to ANBU Inu. Hell, if Kakashi felt guilty for every death he had caused, he'd be insane by now.
He'd seen it happen before.
Instead, assassinations had begun to bring an emptiness that made him numb, both physically and mentally. The deep kunai wound on his upper arm really should be bothering him more than it was. Kakashi put seeing a medic on his mental to-do list, right below reporting to the mission office and taking a shower. Chidori was a useful killing technique, but damn if it didn't get blood everywhere.
Through the leaves Kakashi caught a glimpse of the outer village wall. Back when he was a regular shinobi, this was about the time teams would finally relax, start talking and joking around. But this was ANBU so there was only silence. Maybe his team was a little somber, but they were alive and none of them had done anything overly stupid, and for that the ANBU captain was grateful.
Losing comrades, though most of the time it couldn't be helped, was never fun. Kakashi never wanted to admit it to himself, but it had become easier in ANBU. Maybe it was because of how often it happened, or that no ANBU tactics ever seemed to keep safety in mind, so he was in a way expected to lose agents. More likely, however, it was the masks. Whoever had come up with the animal masks was a genius. Not only did it protect the agent's identities, it preserved what was left of their captain's sanity, if and when they were killed in battle. When he'd never seen his comrade's face, or maybe never even known their real name, their deaths didn't haunt him the way others had.
But that didn't matter; ANBU needed skilled captains and Kakashi could be one. So he just kept taking missions, kept walking the tenuous line between duty to his village and his comrade's lives. When he eventually did lose one or two…well, he was getting very good at suppressing bad memories.
Heaven knows he's had enough practice.
But it was alright. With Minato-sensei had died the last person Kakashi cared about. Now all he had to concentrate on was being Inu, and the harder and more deadly the mission, the more his nightmares seemed to fade. For most it was the opposite, but for Kakashi, when his psyche was already recently traumatized, it seemed to go out of the way to prevent more damage and let him sleep. And when he didn't, well, there were always ANBU-strength sleeping pills.
Before long his team was in the village, heading for the Hokage Tower, silent as mice. The halls of the tower were mostly empty; it was the middle of the night and only sleepy-eyed secretaries and the occasional guard could be seen. No one spared them a second glance, and Kakashi's team was waved through with barely an I.D. check.
As he reached for the door handle of the Hokage's office, Kakashi's arm twinged, and suddenly gave out on him. With a muttered curse, he grasped the wound, surprised at the amount of blood that had collected down his arm without his noticing.
"You should get that looked at." Grumbled a rough voice behind him ANBU Inu blinked and stared at the white mask of Ox. In the whole week that their mission had lasted, Kakashi was sure he'd never heard Ox speak more than about three words at a time. He hadn't thought much of it before; Ox listened to orders and was damn strong, so there was no reason to complain. But it wasn't just that he had spoken a full sentence that had shocked Kakashi so much, it was the… concern in the large man's voice. Did he think he was still a kid that needed help or something ludicrous like that?
"I can look after my own wounds." He snapped, opening the door with his other arm. Bristling slightly, he even made a point of resting his weight on the injured arm as he knelt on one knee in front of the Hokage's desk, hearing the rest of his team do the same behind him.
"Team Inu, reporting, Hokage-sama." There was a rustle of papers, but Kakashi didn't look up.
"And the mission?"
"Mission successful. Target, approximately twenty guards and two missing-nin were eliminated within the timeframe, no casualties." Ah, no casualties. It had to be his favorite phrase.
"Good. You may go, all accept Inu." Kakashi stood as his teammates disappeared in a puff of smoke. The Hokage put down a scroll, sighed, and spoke.
"I know you just finished your last mission, but I'm assigning you another one now." The young ANBU grimaced, glad that his dog mask hid the emotion. Sure, he liked missions, Kami knows where he'd be without them, but sometimes he just wanted a nice quiet night of drug-induced sleep. But if the Hokage wanted him to do a mission, he would do a mission.
"Understood." The ANBU Dog answered in a deadpan. Sarutobi hesitated, never a good sign before a mission briefing.
"The mission is classified as unranked, but chances are it will end up A or B. It's… very far away. On the Outside. You have been keeping up on your English, I assume?"
"Of course. I'm being called out to deal with missing-nin." It wasn't a question. The Elemental Continent rarely if ever made contact with the Outside, but occasionally missing-nin would escape there. So a small group in ANBU was kept up who spoke the Outside's languages and knew the customs. Kakashi was chosen as the English speaker for various reasons, and it was his job to eliminate any missing-nin in the English-speaking parts of the Outside, should anyone request it.
The Sandaime hesitated. "That's… part of it. Do you remember Dumbledore-san?"
Oh. So that's what this is about. "The old man who wanted me to become a wizard? Yes." When he was four, the idea of magic seemed amazing. But the Third had later explained that if he wanted to go to a wizard school full-time, he would most likely never reach Jonin. His father had been strangely neutral, saying that he should decide for himself when the time came. But the more he learned about wizards, the more they looked like civilians, and that was not what he wanted to be. When he received the promised letter years later, the shinobi had shot it down and hadn't spared it a second thought since.
"He has requested you for a mission guarding his school." It took only a moment for it all to click in Kakashi's genius brain.
"He couldn't get me as a wizard, so he's requesting me as a shinobi. Let me guess, I'm posing as a student?" At an unheard of mission pay, I bet. He didn't say the last part out loud because it wasn't any of his business, but he knew it must've been a lot to buy a Black Ops captain.
"You're right as always, Kakashi." The Third chuckled.
"Please, sir, I'm Inu right now." Kakashi interrupted. Just because the Sandaime had some sort of strange desire to be everyone under eighteen's grandfather doesn't mean he was exempt from the ANBU secrecy of identities.
"Yes… of course, Inu." The Hokage coughed before continuing. "You're correct. The mission Dumbledore requested is for you to pose as a student and guard the school, in particular one boy who has been targeted by a powerful wizard named Voldemort. Knowing what I do about wizards, you should easily be able to accomplish this. But that is his part of mission. What I'm assigning you is much different." Kakashi perked up a little; this sounded interesting.
"There are rumors that Voldemort has recruited some missing-nin. If they prove true, then it'll be up to you to take care of them. You are to gather as much information as you can about these wizards and any threat they might pose to us, as well as anything they have which might prove useful. The best way to do this is to play along and learn wizardry. Don't give me that look, it's part of the mission." Kakashi huffed, because there's no way the Hokage could have seen his appalled expression under his mask, or had he accidentally let off some killing intent…?
"With all respect Hokage-sama, is playing school-child really necessary?" Hatake Kakashi had spent seven months in the Kohona Ninja Academy and could only thank Kami that the Hokage had let him graduate early. It wasn't the war-torn-battlefield kind of hell, just the having-to-sit-still-bored-for-hours kind of hell. Both were unbearable, in their own way. He had no plans of going back to school anytime soon, pretend or otherwise.
"Yes! People would notice a student that never went to class. You don't really have to do the schoolwork, just get the information." Again, Kakashi was thankful for ANBU masks and their ability to hide annoyed eye-rolls.
"It's a nine-month mission. Do you accept?" The Sandiame was back to business mode.
"Of course. When do I leave?" Kakashi replied. He had yet to turn down a mission, whatever it might be. Somewhere along the line he had stopped caring. It didn't matter how long a mission was anymore, now that there wasn't someone to come home to.
"Be in my office tomorrow night, at eight. You cannot be late, under any circumstances. Your transportation is time sensitive, and if you're late you can't get there at all and therefore fail the mission. Understand?" He got a nod in return. If it meant failing a mission, Kakashi would make it on time. The Hokage handed him the mission briefing, then in a puff of smoke and leaves the thirteen-year-old was gone.
.X.X.X.
Blood, Kakashi had discovered very early on, is a troublesome thing, to take a page from Nara Shikaku's book. It stunk to high heaven, even days after, which admittedly made it easy to track. But it was annoying as hell to clean up. The Jonin grimaced and scrubbed his white ANBU vest harder, trying to get all of the damned stuff out. That's what I get for falling asleep before washing. His upper arm stung painfully under the rough bandage he'd thrown around it last night- or was it this morning? Seeing a medic-nin might not be a bad idea either.
Blood, like everything else, had become just another part of Kakashi's ANBU life, like hard ration bars and nightmares and the terrifying uncaringness that he still preferred over anything else, even though he knew what it meant. That he was becoming a mindless killing tool who felt no remorse for those he murdered in cold blood.
Finally the last trace of red-brown had disappeared. Even the smell was gone thanks to a special soap he bought from the Inuzuka, the other sharp-nosed clan. He hung the vest over the lone chair in his ANBU quarters to dry. As a captain, he got a larger room, with a bed, a table and chair, and a tiny kitchenette. Kakashi felt like a prince in a castle.
Not.
Almost cracking a smile under his mask, he turned his attention to the rest of the clothes he'd woken up in, scrubbing them mercilessly until they were mostly clean. Unlike his vest, the blood on his black shirt and pants stained to a dark rusty brown. Tossing those on the chair with his vest, Kakashi checked the tiny clock on the wall. It was almost two in the afternoon; he'd overslept last night. He'd have to hurry if he was to prepare for such a long mission. It was the lengthiest one he'd ever been on by far, and to make it worse there was nowhere to restock any of his ninja supplies on the Outside.
As the ANBU got in the shower, he made one of his mental to-do lists. He'd had to buy some more storage scrolls if he was going to get everything he needed into one pack. Minato-sensei had taught him some sealing jutsu and Kakashi, with practice, had become adept at simple supply sealing jutsu. Then he needed to buy more ration bars and food pills, get his hands on some winter clothing, clean and sharpen his katana, take stock on all his extra weapons, visit the memorial stone… he felt tired just thinking about it. On top of all that he had to move out of his apartment, standard procedure for any mission lasting more than three months.
No time like the present, I suppose. Stepping out of the shower, the thirteen-year-old ANBU pulled on some clean clothes and began his sizeable mission preparations.
.X.X.X.X.
"I'm going on a mission today. You'd laugh if you saw it, Obito. Somewhere on the Outside there's a place with magic." Kakashi snorted. "Yeah. I know. Like from kid's books. The best part is my white chakra is a magic-chakra hybrid of some sort, so the Hokage told me I have to become a wizard. You know, to get information about them. But there are also some missing-nins around there, so at least I won't be as bored. Anyway… I just came to say it's a nine-month long mission, so I won't be able to visit. Sorry. I'll make a memorial there, and visit you all every day, I swear."
Coming to the memorial stone and talking to people that were dead might not be completely healthy, but it made Kakashi feel better. Just talking, telling Obito and Rin and Minato-sensei about his day... sometimes it was like they were still alive.
"Well, goodbye, for a while." He mumbled awkwardly. Instead of going straight to the Hokage's tower, he found himself heading slightly south, towards the shinobi cemetery. I guess Dad wants me to say goodbye, too. It took a while to find his parent's headstones in the uniform rows of the shinobi cemetery, but eventually he remembered where they were. It had been a while since Kakashi had visited them. He didn't talk to his parents like at the memorial stone. Kakashi just traced the stone words, first on his father's grave, then his mother's. Ever since Obito, Kakashi had at least partially forgiven his father for what he'd done, and started visiting his parent's graves more often. His mother had died of sickness when he was young; the least traumatic death of those close to him, so visiting her was relatively painless. Then, pausing to brush a leaf off his mother's headstone, the thirteen-year-old started to the Hokage's tower.
.X.X.X.X.
"A cup?" Kakashi said, doubtful. "How is that transportation?" Turning a table into a stupid dog was one thing. A cup somehow transporting him to another continent was another story. At first the ANBU had been curious about the 'time sensitive transportation'; he'd even arrived early (Translation: on time), for Kami's sake. Somewhere, Asuma and Gai must be having a good laugh at his expense.
Sarutobi chuckled. "I would love to know. This western magic works in odd ways. Of course, part of your mission is to find out things like that." Kakashi nodded, he had read as much in the mission briefing. Even Konoha, which had more information on wizards than anywhere else combined, had little on the subject. He was still suspicious of the cup, but the ANBU kept his mouth shut.
"All of the information you need is in the mission file. I expect a report every two weeks. Oh, and," The Hokage handed Kakashi the cup, "You can imagine how quickly war would break out if too many wizards began hiring shinobi. Complete the mission, but… don't make them too eager to hire you back. Maybe throw around a little killing intent."
"Killing intent? Hokage-sama, if you wanted me to scare the hell out of the client, you could have just asked." The last thing Kakashi heard was the Sandaime's laughter before there was a nauseating yank in his stomach and the world spun.
.X.X.X.X.
The first thing Kakashi did when he fell into this new world was curse. The… whatever that had been had completely thrown off his balance, and he ended up falling on his injured arm, reopening the wound.
In the next instant Kakashi was on his feet registering another person near him, and instinctively put his katana to their throat, not quite drawing blood, in case they weren't an enemy. Keeping in mind what the Sandaime said, he didn't make any sort of effort to reign in his killing intent.
"Who are you?" the ANBU barked in English, as he rose to his feet and got a look at his captive. She was an older woman, with glasses and graying hair pulled into a strict bun. Whether or not she was his employer's contact was yet to be seen. Whatever that- what had the Hokage called it, portkey?- was, he didn't like it. Kakashi wasn't even sure if he was in the right place; the room he ended up in had no windows or clues about where he was. For all he knew, this was all a setup and he had walked straight into an ambush.
"P-Professor Minerva McGonagall." The woman stuttered, giving off mountains of sour fear-scent. Must be a civilian- wait, what is wrong with her chakra signature? He was no sensor-nin, but at this range there was no mistaking it. The woman's faint chakra signature was unlike any he had ever encountered. It almost resembled his white chakra, but seemed… hollow, somehow. Was it some sort of kekkei genkai?
"That is the name of the person I meet." He stated, but didn't lower his sword. "But that does not mean you are that person." Maybe he was being a little paranoid, but in a situation like this it was best to be careful.
"You want-proof? I was sent here by Dumbledore to pick up someone from the Hidden Continent by the name of Kakashi Hatake. Are you him?" The woman stuck her chin in the air in an attempt to regain her dignity. The scent of fear on her ruined the effect.
Kakashi considered everything that he'd heard and noticed for a moment, and decided that there was a very high chance that this 'McGonagall' was not an imposter. If he was, in fact walking into an ambush it probably would have happened by now. He also concluded that the odd chakra he sensed was because the woman was a wizard, and it's similarity to white chakra was more proof that his chakra was related to magic. Slowly he drew back the sword and sheathed it underneath his white ANBU captain's cloak.
"Yes, but 'Inu' is my name now. You take me to Dumbledore." The woman hesitated for a heartbeat, then nodded and opened the wooden door behind her. Amazingly, it was broad daylight outside, even though the sun had been near setting in Kohona. Was this the time change the mission report had mentioned? It was colder, too, than it should be for late summer. The tiny room he had appeared in turned out to be a wooden house on a grassy hill just outside of a small village.
The witch and the black-ops ninja walked in silence to the edge of the town.
CagedWolfCagedWolfCagedWolfC agedWolf
Minerva McGonagall was not entirely sure what to think about Dumbledore's new "security measure". He'd asked her to go pick up the foreign "guard", he'd called him, in the portkey house just outside of Hogsmeade, but hadn't given much more information than that. Over the years she'd grown used to the old wizard's odd ways, but this was ridiculous. McGonagall was a woman who prided herself on having information, in fact, the sorting hat had nearly put her into Ravenclaw for the trait. But all the elusive Headmaster had told her was the man's name and that he was some sort of Auror from the Hidden Continent. Not much was known about the place to her annoyance, just that it was a little outside of Japan and shrouded in the most powerful Unplottable spells wizard-kind had ever seen.
Because of their isolation cultural differences were to be expected, but this was out of line. Kakashi Hatake, or for some reason, Inu, had burst out of the portkey and put a sword to her neck. A sword! In all honesty she had expected to die right then and there, but by some miracle the strange man had believed she was not a threat and backed off. As Deputy Headmistress and teacher at Hogwarts, McGonagall had seen a lot of odd things, but right now Inu was at the top of the list.
It seemed everything about him was different, from his white hair and accented speech to the hellish animal mask that she had no idea what to make of. The only not-appalling thing about Inu was his creamy full length cloak with a deep hood. Once the witch had caught a glimpse of a black and gray outfit under the cloak, but it was too brief to tell if it was as weird as the rest of him.
"What is the village name?" McGonagall jumped in surprise at Inu's almost passable English. For a moment she thought his voice sounded young, but the witch quickly dismissed the thought as her imagination. Sure, Inu was short, but not all adults were tall, and she would never offend a guest like that. No child could ever be like this.
"Hogsmeade. And you'll have to take that," She gestured to his mask, "off if you don't want to start a riot. We don't trust people with masks here."
"Go to Dumbledore. I will follow in town and not be seen." And the mysterious man made some sort of sign language with one hand and vanished in a puff of white smoke. No crack of Apparation, or even a wand out for a spell.
What, exactly, was Inu?
And there we go! How did you all like it?
A/N-
In this story Kakashi is a year younger than in Naruto cannon, so he could be the same age as Harry. It's not a big deal, but remember that he was twelve for "Kakashi Gaiden", and thirteen for the Kyuubi attack. This story takes place the year after all that (and Rin's death) happened.
Harry Potter might have more significant changes, but I'll keep the changes minor as far as the plot goes. Don't worry, you won't be seeing any Horcruxes. Maybe some Occlumency, but that's about it.
Note on scene changes-
For the rest of the story
.X.X.X.X.X.
Means a scene change, and
CagedWolfCagedWolfCagedWolfC agedWolf
Means a point of view change.
(The POV change was inspired by my favorite author(s) TwinTrouble. Check out their stories!)
Fun Fact! ANBU captains actually wear white cloaks in Naruto. But actually looking at them, the sleeve design they have makes no sense. Google "Naruto ANBU cloak" to see what I mean. Seriously- "Hey guy that's about to kill me, wait for a second for me to unbutton my really cool ANBU cloak so I can reach any of my weapons." Kakashi's in this looks a lot like the cloak the 8-man 'Search for Itachi' squad wears, but plain white and without the designs. You know, the one that makes any sense?
Word count- 4,340