The sun had begun to fall below the horizon and darkness spread through the forest like an outstretched hand. The snowstorm had passed, leaving only the bitter cold that raked at Kakashi Hatake's bones. His white ANBU captain cloak, while good for camouflage, did very little to protect him from the elements. If he were a lesser man, he'd complain. But, he was a Konoha shinobi.
From his perch in the trees, he could see the rolling, ice-covered hills of Shimo no Kuni stretching for miles over the horizon. Dark shapes appeared in the snow, leaving a trail behind them before they vanished and reappeared at his side. Kakashi didn't bother to turn towards him panting ninken and instead focused on the hills.
"So, what do you have to report?" he asked.
Pakkun scratched his ear and snorted. "We found a trace of his scent at the edge of the forest and tracked it over the hill. It split into several different paths after that though."
"Probably clones," Kakashi surmised.
The small pug nodded. "The one I found was lying face down in the snow but it smelled funny the closer I got to it. Didn't bother touching it because I figured it was a trap." "More than likely." The silver-haired shinobi sighed and looked over his pack before narrowing his eyes. "Where's Akino, Urushi, and Shiba?"
"Tracking the last scent with Neko and Sugaru, I presume," Pakkun replied. He paused long enough for Kakashi to turn to him. The dog licked his muzzle. "Interesting tactic, sending your squad ahead of you for such a dangerous opponent."
"He has stolen intel from Konoha so I guessed he'd be more apt to return to Kumogakure than risk losing his life in a fight with us. Besides, if he decided to double back in order to lose us, he'd run back into me," Kakashi explained. There was another reason for his plan as well. The information lost, according to the Hokage, had been low-risk and of very little importance to the grand scheme of things. Their mission was more of a testing ground for the members of a new special unit that Kakashi was meant to lead. He had his methods of determining whether or not he could trust his subordinates or teammates. If they could work as a team, independent of him, then ultimately, they would pass.
At present though, they were failing.
Their target was a rogue Konoha shinobi that had fled the village when Lord Fugaku was installed as the Fourth Hokage. A former member of Root known only as Mohō, he'd spent the past few months collecting information about the organization and placement of Konoha's forces near the border of Hi no Kuni and Yu no Kuni. The "Land of Hot Water" was a small pacifist nation that had declared neutrality in the war between Konoha and Kumo while attempting to offer trade items to both. Lord Fugaku did not trust them, especially not after it had taken over a week for them to give up the location of this spy and by then, he'd already left their borders.
Kakashi couldn't imagine the restraint it took for the Hokage not to burn the village down himself.
A piercing howl beyond the frosty hills took Kakashi out of his thoughts. Pakkun sniffed and came to his side. "That sounds like Urushi," he said. "They must have found your guy."
"Then you burrow ahead and support the rest of the pack."
"Right," Pakkun barked. He and the other four hounds jumped from the tree and Kakashi descended behind them. The pack disappeared beneath the snow and the silver-haired shinobi followed closely after them until they sped away from him. Running alone, all he heard was the crunching snow beneath his feet as he climbed the hill and the distant sounds of blades clashing.
So, he decided to engage them? That surprised Kakashi but didn't worry him. He trusted that at the bare minimum, they could him off until he arrived.
The explosion caught him off guard.
Chunks of ice flew into the air and Kakashi darted to the side to avoid them as they crashed around him. He could sense the release of chakra in the air, swirling in the midst of the disturbed snow. The ground beneath the ANBU captain rumbled, and he bounded back on his toes. A man burst out of the ice with a large bloody slash across his chest and what appeared to be bite wounds as if he'd been mauled by the hounds. His face fell into dismay when he saw Kakashi in front of him. The scroll was in his hand and though he moved quickly to put it into a pouch, he wasn't fast enough to hide it.
Lightning sparked in Kakashi's hand and the sound of birds chirping filled the air. A trail of hard snow followed him as he burst forward and plunged his right arm into the man's chest.
The world folded in around him and the warmth he felt was unfitting for the harsh winter landscape he'd just been in. The sky had turned the color of blood and wisteria petals. He could hear the distorted and muffled sound of the wind in his ears along with the birdsong of his Chidori fading.
Genjutsu, Kakashi thought. And not a very subtle one. His left eye blinked open and the illusion shattered around him like broken glass. Again, he stood in front of the spy and the man's face turned pale as the snow beneath them. "The Sharingan? You can't be..."
Kakashi rushed forward, breaking his sentence off. Mohō drew a sword from his back and swung at the ANBU captain's head. He read the move like simple poetry and ducked beneath the whistling steel. His hand went to his own ninjato hilt, and he pulled the blade from its scabbard. To the spy's credit, his reflexes were solid. He twisted his wrist to rotate his downward, parrying Kakashi's own blow. Snow swirled around the two as they blocked and countered each other's swings. The more they pressed one another, the deeper their foothold grew and the harder it was getting to move. The spy locked eyes with him and Kakashi saw him attempt the same genjutsu to lull him into a sense of comfort.
When it failed, the rogue shinobi twitched and left himself open. But not to an attack from the ANBU captain.
Kakashi's ninken burst out of the snow, snarling as they latched onto the man. Bull, the large black tosa mastiff, bit down on his shoulder and dragged him to the ground, screaming. A woman with indigo-colored hair and another masked man appeared at Kakashi's side, panting. He looked at them then back at the spy, struggling to free himself from the dogs.
"About time you showed up," he said.
"I'm sorry," the woman replied behind her cat mask. Kakashi saw the long deep scar that ran across her feline disguise. Yugao Uzuki, code name Neko, was four years his junior and a supposedly promising young prodigy that had been promoted to jonin in the past two years. Kakashi thought that she was too kind and soft to be an ANBU, but judging from the gash that the Kumo spy had received on his chest, skilled enough.
"My insects don't fare well in the cold," the other masked man signed, a sheepish expression on his face.
Of course not, Kakashi thought. Yoji, operating under the name Sugaru, was another supposed prodigy hailing from Konoha's Aburame clan. According to the information retrieved by the Military Police Force, his name had been on the list for recruitment to Root, Danzo Shimura's former private sect of the ANBU Black Ops. Until his untimely demise, the silver-haired captain mused. He'd only been a few days away from his initial mission before Danzo had been found dead in his office and the entire Root branch and all its members had been purged.
All except Mohō, still screaming in agony on the ground. Kakashi whistled a shrill tone and his pack paused their mauling. The look of relief in the spy's eyes almost made the captain feel pity for him. He knelt down next to the man and retrieved the scroll from his pouch then whistled again to his dogs. Kakashi walked away as the pack closed on Mohō, snarling at him. His screams turned to gurgles then silence as the ninken fell on him.
Yugao and Sugaru came to Kakashi's side as they headed back towards the forest. They were silent for a while, and he could the pack snarling over their carcass as they disappeared into a puff of smoke. All that was left was the sound of the wind howling over the hills as the group entered into the tangled cover of the trees.
While Kakashi preferred silence during the end of missions, he spoke to his subordinates. "You didn't do too badly."
"I'm sorry he got away from us the first time," Yugao said. "We would've had him but he used some kind of explosive tag in conjunction with the snow and blinded us."
Kakashi shrugged. "It's why I stayed behind. I figured that he would prioritize making it to his destination over trying to fight us. If we'd all been together, maybe he would've escaped for good. Regardless, the mission was a success and neither one of you got yourselves killed. That's most important."
The Sharingan read the small twitches in their faces. Shock, he thought. Perhaps they had expected a harsher rebuke for potentially letting Mohō escape or a little more callousness regarding whether they lived or died. It's what came with the reputation he had. He had earned the moniker, "Cold-Blooded Kakashi" because he never hesitated to kill the enemies of Konoha and used his dogs to eliminate any physical evidence of the village's presence. But, there was another that he knew his fellow shinobi whispered into their sake glasses when they spoke of him.
Friend-Killer...
When he'd returned with the bodies of his teammates Obito Uchiha and Rin Nohara within a year of each other after missions, the conspiracy had been that he would do anything or sacrifice anyone for the sake of his assigned objective. Kakashi didn't mind that the cursed nickname had stuck. It was one that he embraced because it kept most people that didn't already know him from trying to get close to him. It still hadn't dissuaded Yugao and Sugaru from volunteering to serve beneath him. He was sure that their loved ones probably called them fools if they knew or were alive.
A pang of pain hit Kakashi's chest, a wound still fresh as it was seven years ago. He remembered the promise he made to Obito has he lay dying in his arms.
"I'll protect Rin," he'd said. "I promise."
Obito had given him his Sharingan as a gift to help him fulfill that vow, but he had been unable to save Rin from himself when she'd jumped onto his Chidori for the sake of the village. Kakashi didn't know what hurt more, the knowledge that there were those who didn't believe him or that it was by his hand that she chose to die. He only found solace now in the fact that the people that he cared about now were strong enough to not need his protection. All except one.
"Wait," Kakashi said, removing himself from the trance he'd been in the past few minutes they'd been traversing the winding branches. "I need to confirm something." Yugao and Sugaru stopped ahead of him on thick tree limbs. The purple-haired girl's dark brown eyes gazed at him quizzically.
"Did we miss something?"
Kakashi pulled the scroll from his pouch and didn't look back at his team. "No, just making sure that we retrieved the right thing from the body." He unrolled the paper in front of him and began to skim. The information in the scroll was innocuous enough and largely inaccurate, mentioning that Konoha's shinobi teams were preparing to coordinate an attack to Kumogakure's north, something that was impossible without initiating contact with whatever foreign powers occupied those lands. It didn't make sense. But, his Sharingan revealed something else. As Kakashi continued to read, he saw that some characters had been written in ink invisible to the naked eye. Ink infused with chakra.
It was dense enough that his Sharingan could only perceive a partial message but what he did see caused his heart to stutter in his chest. The hidden message he saw mentioned a fuinjutsu seal and gave a name.
Kushina Uzumaki...
Kakashi's mind began to race. When the mission had been given, the Hokage had assured him that the information inside the scroll was inconsequential. If that was the case, why did it have anything to do with his sensei's wife, especially a message hidden from everyone except something with eyes as perceptive as a Sharingan. There'd been no intel given about someone in Kumogakure with the Uchiha clan's kekkai genkai and this gave Kakashi pause. Mohō had been terrified to see him, and he thought it was because he either knew who he was or feared that he was an Uchiha. But now, his fear made sense. A former agent of Root attempting to deliver information that only a Sharingan could see. Two questions entered Kakashi's mind.
If he hadn't truly meant to deliver the scroll to Kumogakure, then where was he going? And, what role did Kushina have to play...?