"Let me get this clear. We have to protect you until this bridge is built, or until Gatô isn't a threat anymore." Kakashi stated as they were all sitting in Tazuna's living room.
"Correct. But I doubt you can do anything. We have no money to get more forces around here, while Gatô controls the local underworld and can hire ninjas like the one we've fought."
In other words, the forces of Gatô had yet to be estimated. Kakashi didn't believe the word of civilians. To them, people like herself or Zabuza were attainable. The local city had no notable protection. They would just need a top dog or two, and local thugs, and everyone would get in line.
"I don't like the idea of waiting for Zabuza to attack again. They want to kill you because you're the only one with the knowledge of building bridges."
"It's a very big construction. No commoner can do that, alright." The man said.
"What I mean, is that it's not just a question of waiting for the bridge to be built. Even after that, it can be destroyed with explosives, or Gatô can still take control of it."
She remembered a similar mission. Three Genin placing charges to cut a supply road during the war. A dreadful mission, who's ghosts had decided to come and hunt her.
"Had I been in a better shape, and if you had paid the correct price, my answer would be to assassinate or incapacitate Gatô."
Team seven stopped eating and innocent eyes looked at Kakashi. Tsunami-San flew he room with her four-year-old son, and the elder man choked on a mouthful of rice. Kakashi gritted her teeth. She always forgot they were extremely young, and this mission had escalated quickly. She had not killed the demon brothers before her, and her combat against Zabuza had been rather cordial.
She would tell no word about why they were here and had been chosen. But the faster they went, the better it was for her sanity."I'm going to dream the entire world anew," he said. She did not want to stick around and know what it meant. And now that they knew she had caught his interest, there was no need to bring the kids into it.
"Listen kids, I'm not going to sugarcoat this. Our situation is bad. I send a message to Konoha, but it is likely that they either send no reinforcement, or that they come only by the time I'm recovered and Zabuza too. And in a week, there's no way I can put you up to par with Zabuza. I couldn't assess his help's number, but we're going to assume he's Chuunin level at least."
There was tension in the air. Kakashi had placed tags in different places in the house so they weren't listened.
"Our priority will be Tazuna's protection, since this is what we were paid for. But we can go above and beyond the mission parameters. I know you've been taught that the mission is everything. But I will tell you something else: those who abandon the mission are scum, but those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum."
"Well said, Kakashi-Sensei!" Naruto cheered.
"What do you mean we're going to go above and beyond the mission parameters?" Sasuke asked.
"That's what I'd like to know," Tazuna grumbled.
Outside the problem with the real/fake Obito Uchiha, Kakashi had taken a bit of time to discuss the matter of the bridge with Jiraya-Sama. They both agreed that the construction had to take place, in order to strengthen Konoha's holds near Kiri and better their economy. Besides, Gatô was only a civilian, his possessions would greatly compensate the rank up in their current mission.
"A protection against Chuunin and Jounin ranked ninjas is a B-Rank mission and should be carried out by a team of Chuunin. An assassination, and preferably a discreet one is an A or S ranked mission and will be reserved to special ops."
"Are we really talking of killing someone?" Sakura asked.
"He's a villain! He killed Tsunami's husband in a public place!" Naruto shouted back. "He should pay for his crimes."
"Murderers deserve to die." Sasuke decided darkly, and she knew he thought of Itachi-San.
Kakashi sighed and swirled the tea left in her cup. She didn't want to get them in that situation.
"Who deserves to die or not should not be our call. That makes us both the judge and party. But these difficult choices will probably part of your life as team seven. Given my own mission record, there will be high chances that our team will be given other missions like this one." Kakashi explained. "I am authorized to make that call for you, should the need arise. But this would not be fair for you guys. Therefore, I am laying out the different choices we have here."
"Either we continue the mission 'as planned'. We wait for me to recover, and there will be another fight against Zabuza and his help, and potentially other ninjas or thugs sent by Gatô. In this case we will have to divide our team, as I don't think Gatô will play fair. We need to keep Zabuza and his helped occupied, and protect Tazuna and his family, which will make four targets, and we are four. I know I can hold against Zabuza on my own, but none of you are strong enough to take on the fake hunter."
Sasuke scoffed, clearly thinking that he was strong enough for that.
"You should be humbler Sasuke. A Chuunin for Kiri will have better abilities than yours in all areas. He'll probably be a water user, and the humidity here will already hinder you, since you only know two fire-based jutsu."
"Hah! You suck Sasuke!" Naruto snickered.
"Don't be mean to Sasuke-Kun! Sasuke-Kun's too cool to be slowed down by this."
"Enough!"
Kakashi slammed her hand on the table, flaring chakra. This was for all this bickering she didn't like kids. They looked apologetic.
"Seriously guys! I'm trying to treat you as adults and you're being idiots." Kakashi huffed.
"Sorry Sensei." Naruto and Sakura said.
"I was out of line…" Sasuke bit out and crossed his arms.
"See? This is why I don't want to get you inside this story, but you chose to continue the mission back when we were faced by the two Chuunin."
"I held my ground against them!" Sasuke underlined.
"Wrong. You played solo and let a member of your team get injured. Had they been against you alone, you could have stalled them for a few minutes. There is something the three of you must understand. Ninjas play dirty. The more dangerous the mission will get, the more difficult decisions you will have to take. Ninja is not always about being a hero by rescuing a noble or protecting innocent people. But I digress. As I was saying, we can either follow the mission and keep protecting Tazuna and wait for Gatô to take his move. Or we can anticipate and make a plan to prevent Tazuna from being targeted. Gatô wants him dead because he has the skills the people here need to build this bridge."
"So, if we take Gatô out, the mission will stop?" Sasuke summed up.
"But do we really have to kill him?" Sakura asked.
"And what about Zabuza and the other guy? And the other men working against Gatô? They'll want revenge!" Naruto remarked wisely.
Tazuna was a bit bothered by the conversation. Kakashi thought it was probably because he had never thought he'd be talking about life and death with teenagers. Such was the world they lived in.
"If Gatô is not here, I don't think his men will stay much longer. And if they do not, I'd say the death of this slimy bastard will be enough to motivate everyone here. He's feared because people think he can't be touched."
"This is what I am aiming at. But that will work only if we work together. If we kill Gatô, and secure his funds, I expect that it will be enough to stir things here. However, like I said before, none of you have the proper training to perform this assassination, and my shape is not good enough to do it solo. So, if we do this, we'll have to work together as a team."
"I thought they were already too strong for us?" Sakura observed.
"They are too strong if we have to divide our efforts between fighting Zabuza, protecting Tazuna and protecting his family. What I'm suggesting, is to land an attack before Zabuza and I have the time to fully recover and eliminate Gatô. I want us to work as a team."
"Why are you telling us all this if you think it is better?" Sasuke asked. "Shouldn't this be your call?"
"I am asking you because this mission will probably change everything in your records, and especially yours Sakura."
"Mine?"
"Since you're not from a big clan, unlike these two, the expectations towards you aren't high. Most teams split up after the first Chuunin exams. But if the higher ups see that you can perform high-level mission from an early stage, they'll keep giving you these missions."
"Good. The faster I can get strong, the better it is for me." Sasuke decided.
"Me too! Me too! So, I'll be the Hokage in no time!"
Kakashi sighed. Who was she to take these children on the same path she had followed for years? Who was she to decide they could just circumvent the mission parameter by killing the other party? A lousy captain. That was what she was. An avenger, a future Hokage and a girl with no name. With this path, they would get blood in their hands in to time. Kakashi did not know about hell and good intentions, but the path for a better future had always been paved by corpses.
"I'm going to dream the entire world anew," he said. Would it help cleaning the blood on her hands? Would it prevent her to drag children in the mud?
There was a sniff of fear in the air. She looked at Tazuna's uneasy form and his blown eyes. With a sigh, she gestured to her team to leave outside. She was projecting a dark aura, her chakra singing darkly in her coils. She saw the flip flop of Naruto's Adam's apple, the tremble of Sakura's members and the hair raised in the back of Sasuke's neck. Dreaming a future for them, indeed…
"Do you remember what it felt to be in Zabuza's mist?" she asked eerily as they walked the misty banks outside the house, looking at them flinch with a clinical eye. "Do you remember how he spooked you with the stories of his graduation?"
The atmosphere was heavy. For better measure, Kakashi let her chakra impregnate the mist and thicken it and isolating them from the outside world. And when the kids stopped seeing her, and seeing one another, Kakashi took a few silent steps. She felt her Sharingan spin but held on. She was not going this little fucker sucking her chakra dry. She had a lesson to teach.
"Did you know your Sensei might be as bad as him?" she muttered and felt their hearts beat in their chest, fluttering pulses making the side of their neck tremble.
Because ninja life hardened Kakashi. And if life wanted her to care once more, then she'll have to prepare their little hearts for the hardness of ninja life. They could still choose to remain soft and innocent. She never could make that choice, but she could give it to them.
"I'm the one who taught your aniki all the manners to plunge a katana in a body." She muttered to Sasuke's ear.
"I held the heart of a girl in my hand, and I crushed it to save the village." She told Sakura.
"I fought a war alongside the Yondaime: he was the most efficient killer I ever seen." She told Naruto.
When she released the mist and the illusion, all three were shaking and crying, their hearts torn out. I saw betrayal in their eyes.
"I am far from being a perfect Sensei, and as you saw for yourself, I am not invincible. I will protect you and raise you to be better ninjas. But better ninja means killing people and getting stained." She told them. "Going above and beyond the parameters of this mission, means I will surely drag you on the same path I am. So, how we are going to handle this mission will be up to you."
"Kakashi-Sensei… That's horrible…" Sakura sobbed.
"You… and that man…" Sasuke muttered
"I… I will find a way! You'll see Kakashi-Sensei. When I'm Hokage…!" Naruto huffed, and she saw determined gleam in his baby blue eyes.
She was suddenly remembered of a younger Obito in his stance. He used to be a dreamer… "I'm going to dream the entire world anew," he said, but what did it even mean?
"Keep up with today tree walking boys. Sakura, you're in guard duty." Kakashi ordered with her best Captain voice, and her charges straightened. "We will talk later tonight."
Kakashi walked back to the house, straining against the sedate pace imposed by her chakra exhaustion. Ignoring the bustling of Tsunami-San around her house and the innocent games Inari started with Pakkun, she sat cross-legged in the house and started meditating.
She found the point where her breathing was just a lull, and she was floating between disparate thoughts. She felt calm, way too calm for someone who had just traumatized a bunch of kids. Was she a bad teacher for offering them that choice? Should she leave them ambling innocently in this pseudo C-rank with a Swordsman lurking around?
She was disgusting them from ever being ninjas. That is what she was doing! She wasn't offering them a choice between the light and the dark path; she was just slamming the door of their innocence shut. But what could she do? She was just friend killer Kakashi, a girl who got her best features from letting her comrades die one by one.
There was a man on the windowsill. She did not need to open her eyes to guess who that was.
He came here again? Well, she would let him look at her his heart content. Jiraya-Sama and Itachi-San wanted her to make him talk. She had to evaluate the threat he presented and apprehend him if necessary. Now that she called for reinforcements, she'd have to keep stalling this man.
He took a breath, as if he wanted to say something. She opened her eyes. Only his Sharingan was visible, his other eye was closed. The expression on his face was stricken. Somehow, it suited Obito better than the crazed smile and the blown pupils.
"Hey…" he said finally.
"Hey?" she replied a heartbeat later.
"You look…" he vaguely gestured at her body. "You look better."
"And you look more composed."
Neither was he crying on her, nor was he speaking about dreams. Even his voice sounded different. He closed his eye for a while and took a deep breath. He opened the same eye again, and it was just a dark Uchiha eye looking at her.
A thousand questions were dancing on the tip of her tongue.
"How?" was the one who made its way to her lips.
"I was saved by a tree." He replied.
"A... tree?"
"It's hard to explain…" he stressed. She half expected him to bounce on his feet. Obito would have done it. He had always been dancing around when he was struggling to explain something.
"Maaah, I'm listening." She said.
She should have been spooked. She should have been wary of him. But this one occurrence was so much more Obito-ish… (And she had a mission). So she shoved all her doubts in the darkest corners of her mind and tapped a spot near hers; Her kids were away, and none of the house inhabitants were about to come here anyways.
He sat by her side, too far to touch, enough for the heat to rise. His smell of trees and smoke and charcoal and roasted chocolate beans filled her nose. She could not help the flutter in her chest. She could not help the melancholia in her head or the tears itching in her eyes.
He was not looking at her. They looked at the fluffy white clouds gliding on the blue sky in silence before he decided to talk again.
"It's hard to explain… Sometimes it is a tree, and sometimes it is just an urge. Sometimes it is me, and sometimes it isn't…"
"I think you lost me here."
"Lost… That is the word. I'm… lost."
She felt the strange need to lean on him and place her head on his shoulder. Just like she had done when she was Mina the princess pouring her heart to an over friendly ninja named Obito.
"I…" she said after another silence and didn't dare looking at him. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry about what?" he asked, and his tone sliced deep in her heart.
"About Rin."
Her grey eye looked in his black eye. A bravado. She was shaking like a leaf. He had never seemed so serious, even that day he told her she had been worse than scum from abandoning Rin for the sake of the mission.
He tore away from her and sped towards the window. But as she thought he would fly away and never return; he took a sharp turn a crazy smile on his lips. His eyes were both open, irises surreal in reds and blacks and violets and stripes.
"Yessssss… What about Rin, indeed?" he stressed, and his voice send tremors inside of her.
Once again, she was unable to move, captivated by something in him. Something beyond her grasp.
"Don't we love Rin?"
Obito (?) glided towards her, and he crouched in front of her. Even like that it seemed to her that he was towering. Too dark and too tall. His silhouette eating the light. Cold sweat ran down her back.
He put a hand against the wall, backing her up. His uncovered face hovered near hers.
"Tell me…" he muttered, and his breath was brushing her lips. "Tell me about Rin…"
"I… I said…" Kakashi blurted. Her voice was so squeaky.
"Aaaaah, precious Kakashi, at loss for words. She knows nothing, does she?"
His voice floated sickly around her, reverberating against her bones. She hated how she felt, powerless and full of fears. What was he doing to her? His fingers ran down her hair, like he would with a wild animal.
"I have memories of you in this head. Kakashi the fearless. Kakashi the unattainable. Beautiful Kakashi. So strong, so independent… So fragile."
His fingers suddenly pressed against her throat, no longer petting her. Her pulse fluttered against the pads of his fingers. He flexed them, threatening.
"I could rip your throat, right here, right now. So, what about Rin?" he asked again, and she heard the hint of a desperate sob in his voice.
He frowned. Shook his head. Cleared his voice.
"Aaaah, better." He commented to himself, before focusing again on Kakashi. "Rin. We were talking about Rin. I loved Rin. But she's not there anymore. How about we dream her too? What do you think Kakashi?"
What the…? His crazy words rolled inside her. Dreaming the world? Dreaming Rin?
"We could… We totally could! I'll make sure to have a place for Rin when I dream the world anew."
Then, he seemed to notice that he was still holding Kakashi's throat and curled his fingers in the fabric of her mask. It slid down her face. He looked at her, like fascinated. In the red of his Sharingan, her reflection was frozen. As if she was outside her body again, she felt him approach her again.
"But for the meantime, you could be a lovely replacement…" not-Obito muttered against her skin.
His lips bruised her there, strong. Just on the juncture of neck and her shoulder. Right where he had cried before. His mouth was burning, sucking on the skin. He was devouring her. He nipped the abused flesh. His tongue left a soothing trail on her neck.
She moaned. She closed her eyes. And then…
"Kakashi-Sensei wake up!" Naruto yelled.
Kakashi blinked. She was sitting crossed-legged, her chakra reserves doing great after her meditation. She stirred. Had she been dreaming.
"What is it Naruto?" she asked, keeping her doubts and fears under a tight lock.
"I found an answer for you" he said and his stubborn tone was exactly Obito's at his age.
"Well, I'm listening."
"I don't want to put the team in danger by waiting Zabuza to be up again. So, because you said we lacked information and we should be independent and all, I went spying on them."
He… He what? She saw the rest of the team coming in the room and siding with the blonde. Had this been a team effort?
"You know these clones I made for the perimeter? Well, they found where Gatô was hiding. He's in a bunker, and he has two guys with katanas always with him. Zabuza and the other guy weren't there. These guys sounded like they are not even ninjas."
"Sakura a Genjutsu to sneak us in and we followed him. We saw where the others are hiding. There's like twenty people at best. They never saw us."
"So… if you're up for it, we could go above and beyond the mission." Sakura suggested. "It's not heavily guarded, and they are all cramped in the same common room. I mean, if you had a jutsu or something to affect all of them, and make them sleep…"
Kakashi blinked. They did what?
"Okay guys, I think we'll have a talk about 'going above and beyond'… But uh… Good job?"
Kakashi thought she had a team of heavy hitters and Sakura… But maybe she had been wrong? Slowly, she got her gears turning again.
"Okay, let's debrief in detail in the kitchen." She said with an assured voice.
If there was a chance they finished this mission faster and she could leave this place without seeing this creepy Obito, it was best.
As she sluggishly followed her little troublemakers, her hand flew to the side of her neck. She had a crick for meditating for so long. Yes, just in the junction of her shoulder and the column of her throat.
Way later, she would shiver when she saw the dark bruise marring her flesh.
Hey guys, thank you for leaving favs, follows and reviews!
I hope you like the story so far. Just to warn you that it's going to get darker and darker, and there will probably be even more confusing stuff and abuse.
Speaking of confusing, I'd like to hear about your theories on Obito (if it is Obito, of course).
See ya!