Chapter 8.

AN: this one is a bit short, but I assure you there will be more than enough for you to take in…

The cellblock was too narrow to fight in properly. Kakashi dodged the chakra-laden chain by flipping his body in midair, and landed on the nearby wall. He shifted his feet and leapt away to dodge the other set of chains, taking a brief moment to scan where the chains' owners were relative to him – one kunoichi at three o'clock, her blonde twin sister at seven – and whipped water from the old drains to lash out at them.

He landed with his back towards Sakura's. "Hey, be careful!" She said, clearly irritated; if she used her super strength here, she would collapse the entire prison on top of them.

He flashed her a grin and dashed towards one of the twin sisters. The water whip had left a deep cut through her biceps, sharp as a surgeon's knife but infested with bacteria (sewage water didn't get better with age). Her sister yelled out a proper war cry and came after him with those nasty chains whirling through the air. He felt the air distortion at his back and dodged with a quick step, followed by a bastardized shunshin that took him behind the injured twin's back. A punch to the back of her head sent her to her knees.

He took a step back to allow one of Shikamaru's shadows to race past him. In the dark, dank prison, Shikamaru sat at the center of the cellblock like a spider in its web, using the flickering torchlight to his advantage. He would catch his prey soon enough.

A few floors above, Yuugao was exchanging quick blows with her own opponent, the clash of steel on steel echoing ominously. Anko grinned at Kakashi as she ran past him and charged the remaining twin.

One of the Sound jonin landed and, in the midst of chaos, caught Kakashi looking at him. He swallowed visibly and would have bravely charged if Sakura's fist hadn't crashed into the side of his head at the exact same time.

In the center of the room, besides Shikamaru, Gaara and his siblings stood and watched.

It wasn't much of a match, as far as battles went – the Sound crew were wily and talented, but they weren't two Kage with their best jonin. Now that Kakashi's opponents were engaged elsewhere, he took the time to look around.

The second cellblock was identical to the one Yamada had shown him, with one exception. The remaining refugees stood huddled together in a nearby cell, staring wide-eyed at the battle. Their gaunt faces made them look like corpses in the flickering light.

The smell of blood penetrated the air. Kakashi had dismissed poor Botan the moment he'd smelled it. There were no corpses, though – it was too dark to see whether there was blood on the floor or whether it came from the refugees.

More Sound shinobi appeared from above, one of them almost crashing into Yuugao as they came leaping down.

"Incoming!" Kakashi shouted. Gaara and his siblings looked up. Temari stepped forward and hurled a massive gust of wind towards the newcomers. Yuugao dodged just in time by leaping into one of the nearby cells. The Sound shinobi smashed against the walls, some of them tumbling into the other cells. One poor soul was thrown up into the air hard enough to hit the ceiling, and came down screaming.

Even with reinforcements, this wouldn't be a very long battle.

Which made Kakashi think this wasn't very much like Orochimaru at all.

Gaara had evidently had enough of sitting on the sidelines, and rounded the Sound shinobi up with a few quick, decisive strikes of his sand. Over the years, enough of it had seeped through the walls and broken windows to give him a pretty good arsenal. They tied the others up with rope and Anko's steel wire.

Kakashi let out a sigh and relaxed his guard a little. "Phew. That was sudden."

"My instincts were right," Yamada said. "But we still haven't found my clansmen."

If they haven't been killed yet, Kakashi thought. Yamada's men were all young and inexperienced. This Sound group had consisted of veterans.

Kakashi sighed and called over Yuugao. "Is that all of them?" He asked, pointing at the prisoners.

Yuugao bent her head. "We think two of them might have gotten away, but they were both injured. I'm sorry. Kankuro-san has gone to look for them."

Kakashi bit his lip. "They probably won't get far, then. Gaara-san, how about we take care of those refugees, first?"

Gaara met his eyes meaningfully, and together they went over to the refugees.

Sakura kneeled next to the closest one, the only one who hadn't retreated to the back of the cell when they approached. This refugee was a woman in her thirties, so emaciated she probably couldn't have run even if she'd wanted to. "I think they're in shock," Sakura said. "Their chakra feels weird, too."

"Like the nomads'?" Gaara asked.

Kakashi hummed and, kneeling besides Sakura, brushed pale hair aside to place two fingers on the woman's forehead. She flinched away.

"It's okay," he said. "We're here to help." Her pale eyes stared at him uncomprehending, but she didn't flinch again when he carefully touched her forehead. He closed his eyes and focused on her chakra. She had a lot of it for a civilian, but it felt choppy and unfocused. "Can you feel my chakra?" He asked her.

She shook her head mutely. "Please… Please. They…" She said, so softly he had to strain to hear it.

"What happened?" Sakura asked." Why were they coming after you?"

The woman gave her a wild eyed stare before ducking her head down.

"We shouldn't overwhelm her," Kakashi said meaningfully. He pulled a ration bar from his bag, stripped it out of its plastic jacket, and offered it to the refugee. "Sakura, tell the others to round up some of our food and water, and offer it to the refugees. They look like they haven't had much lately."

Sakura nodded and moved away.

Gaara and Kakashi stepped away as well as the refugee choked down the bar. "It won't be easy to keep all of them fed on the way back to Suna," Gaara said quietly. "We'll have to hunt."

Kakashi nodded. Between their own team, the refugees and the Sound shinobi, they would have to escort at least thirty people, and keep them fed on enough rations for ten. "We can hardly leave them here to starve."

Gaara gave him a halfhearted smile. "Naruto would depose us both, if we tried."

"Hell, I would depose us," Kakashi sighed. He looked back at the terrified, starving civilians. "I'll admit I didn't see much of Orochimaru's work back in the day, but I've done some research since then. Of course it could just be shock, but it could also be he's been keeping them for so long that… Well. That they no longer recognize even kindness when they see it."

"Trauma?" Gaara said, and then nodded. "She did have that look in her eyes. Like she barely even understood what you were saying."

"She's seen things," Kakashi agreed.

"Hokage-sama, what are we going to do with the prisoners?" Yuugao asked, coming over. She had a few scratches on her arms, but they looked harmless.

Kakashi nodded at Gaara." This is your jurisdiction. Go ahead."

"Please start taking them to the upper levels of the prison, ANBU-san," Gaara said. Yuugao nodded and quickly recruited some of the others to help her. Turning back to Kakashi, Gaara said, "what's your theory?"

"That they must have something Orochimaru wants, or he wouldn't have gone to all this trouble. The real question is how the hell they escaped in the first place."

He looked back at the refugees. The woman had started to cry, slow, deep sobs wrenching through her thin body. The others were just as thin and weak as she was, if not more so.

Except... A boy of perhaps sixteen got up and knelt next to the woman to put an arm around her shoulders. He was as thin and dirty as the others, but his eyes were clear and lively. Kakashi put his hands in his pockets and allowed his shoulders to slouch a little as he approached the boy.

"Can I ask who you are?" He asked.

The boy looked a little startled, but unafraid. "You're the Hokage, aren't you? The others say Konoha is a beautiful place."

Kakashi blinked. "Yes, it is. I hope you don't mind if I ask you a few questions. Do you remember where you're from?"

"I'm from Grass Country. I don't know about the others. That's where we wanted to go, only he found us. So we went on towards the desert," the boy said. "My name is Shin."

"When you say he, do you mean –"

"Orochimaru? Yes." Shin smiled at Kakashi's startled expression, and tapped one of his ears. The tip was pointed and strangely long. "I can hear everything."

Kekkei Genkai. "So… You're all kind of special, aren't you?" Kakashi guessed.

Shin nodded. "We think he gathered us from across the world. Some of the older ones can still remember where they used to live. I can only remember the name of my country."

"He held you for a long time, then?" Gaara asked.

Shin's eyes flicked over to this new, strange person, and then widened in recognition. "You're the Kazekage." He looked between them and gave a startled little laugh. "I'm in high company. But I do not remember – my memory is not always good. He did things to me. There are gaps in my life I cannot recall."

Still, though. The boy was clearly intelligent, and if his hearing was as good as he said it was…

"I'm sorry. Is there anyone else in your group we could talk to?"

Shin grimaced. "You can try, but I don't think it will work. Just before you guys got here, they… Well, we all got a shock. The Sound shinobi found us yesterday, but we didn't know what they would do."

"What did they do?" Kakashi asked, and tried to sense the boy's chakra. He could barely feel it at all. Less of it than your average civilian. That wasn't natural.

Shin tightened his arm around the crying woman. "There were more of us at first. They started last night. They didn't stop until about an hour ago."

When Kakashi's group has arrived. One of the shinobi had to be a powerful sensor. "What's that they started?"

Beside him, Gaara beckoned Yamada closer and quietly asked him how many refugees there should have been.

"Thirty," Shin answered in his stead. There were perhaps eleven of them left, now. "They made the floor glow, and then they disappeared. It was like magic."

His eyes turned wet. "They took her baby," he said. The woman sobbed.

Glowing floors and stolen babies. Hmm.

"Was the baby special too?" Kakashi asked carefully.

"Very special," Shin said, his eyes serious.

"Did he want the baby most of all?" Kakashi asked.

Shin hesitated. "Maybe." He turned and looked at the woman again. "She's sick. Can you help her?"

Dissatisfied with this answer, Kakashi forced himself to take a deep breath and call for Sakura. She was checking the other refugees over, but she'd kept her distance to give them some privacy. Now she came over and carefully placed her hands on the woman's back. Her eyes widened, and then grew sad. She quietly shook her head.

Terminal, then. Whatever Orochimaru had done had already had its effect.

"I want my baby boy," the woman whimpered, unaware of what they are just communicated over her head.

They asked the boy a few more questions, but it was clear he no longer wanted to answer. His eyes kept lighting on the food and water, so they left him to fill his belly. Together, they filled Shikamaru, Temari and Sakura in on what they had found. Sakura got a little teary-eyed and went back to help the refugees some more. Kakashi could see here quietly talking with Shin, who seemed to be in the best condition of the group.

"We can't ask them to travel like this," Shikamaru said. "They're too weak, and we can't carry them all."

Kakashi sighed and nodded. "Let's set up camp. I doubt they'll be coming back anytime soon, so it should be safe."

Shikamaru nodded and went to inform the others.

"There's something odd about this room, though," Gaara said thoughtfully. "Oh, Ebizou-san. How are you doing?"

The old man shook his head as he approached them. He had wisely kept to the sidelines during the fight, but he looked tired anyway. "I am disappointed, but otherwise well. This place is much as I remember it – but it's no place to harbor ill, weak people. Something must be done, Kazekage. Yamada cannot go unpunished."

Kakashi hummed under his breath and put his hands in his pockets as he looked at his feet. He was perhaps a little bit too pleased to hear Ebizou say so. He blinked. There was something about the floor... What had Shin said again?

"We will deal with it when we get home," Gaara said. "First, I want to send a dispatch to the village. If a team could meet us halfway to the prison, that would already make things easier."

"The floor glowed," Kakashi quoted under his breath, still staring at the floor. As the others gave him curious looks, he grabbed a nearby torch and held it to the floor. Yes, he'd seen correctly – there were markings on the floor. "A seal," he said, alerting Gaara and Ebizou. The others were all too far away to hear.

"A seal? There was never a seal here," Ebizou said.

"There is now…" Kakashi crouched down and tried to wipe away the marking. "Done in blood, I think – which explains the smell."

"Whose blood?" Gaara asked sharply.

Kakashi shrugged. "We need more light in here."

Sakura and the others slowly but surely cleared the refugees out of the cellblock, carrying each of them on their backs as they leapt from floor to floor. With the area cleared, Kakashi used a couple of clones to hold torches for and see just how large the seal was. It was at least ten feet in diameter, more sigil than seal, and unlike anything he had seen before. He paced around the circle, pausing every now and then to inspect an element from up close, and slowly came to the conclusion that he had seen the markings before.

"Hiraishin," he muttered to himself. "Except it's not quite that, is it? It's not as quick, and it would've taken them hours just to create the seal. They'd probably have to bleed someone out entirely to manage."

Gaara eyed him uncertainly. "But what is it for?"

"Teleportation," Kakashi said grimly. "That's how they took the baby and the other refugees away."

He kicked at the seal. "This must be Orochimaru's newest experiment. But how the hell did he get his hands on his kind of sealing knowledge?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Shikamaru muttered, putting his hands in his pockets. He'd come to join them, the only one to notice something was up.

Kakashi ignored him. "This is advanced. I don't think they would be able to transport more than five people at a time, but that's still more than most villages are capable of. And where is he taking them?"

"I'm afraid I can't help you there – my knowledge of sealing techniques is limited," Gaara admitted. "Nor is there anyone in my party particularly knowledgeable."

"Us puppeteers understand sealing puppets into pockets dimensions, but that's hardly the same thing as teleportation," Ebizou said.

"They probably need several people just to activate this thing," Kakashi said absently, his mind working away at the problem and not really listening to the others. Two to activate it, or even three – but then they would only be able to bring two other people. They'd needed to transport thirty refugees, and they had managed about nineteen. A seal like this would likely take time to reload...

Unless they had figured out a way to transport more at the same time. His stomach twisted uneasily. He looked at the edges of the seal. "Pocket dimension seals…" He echoed, "like those?" He pointed out the circles placed at the edges of the seal, one in each width direction.

Ebizou looked at them. "Yes. You could use them to store items, or chakra, or even bodies –"

Kakashi crouched down to follow the line of one of the pocket seals, which ran down to the center of the seal. "The pockets fuel the seal… Fill up two of those pockets, and you only need one person to transport your prisoners. Ebizou-san, how many of those pockets would you say are still filled?"

Ebizou frowned and slowly circled around to inspect each of the pockets. He had to kneel down once or twice to sense them properly. "I would say they're all filled."

Shikamaru frowned thoughtfully.

All of them filled… Something about that nagged at the back of Kakashi's head. He looked the circle over again, and found the coordinates of the location where the seal would take people. Meaningless, without a proper map, and possibly encoded. Still, he stored them in his mind.

Gaara and Ebizou watched him with quizzical expressions, their feet firmly planted on the seal. Shikamaru was standing at the edge, one foot on the seal, one foot just outside it.

Four full pockets, only two of them needed to transport people... Two missing Sound shinobi... His eyes widened. Someone shouted, "now!"

Two of the pocket seals unfurled into people, bloodied and wild-eyed but determined – and then the seal began to glow, pulling his chakra down like Kaguya's gravity manipulation. There was no time to warn anyone. He couldn't even move his own chakra, couldn't send out lightning to stop the Sound shinobi –

But he could mess with the coordinates.

The last thing he managed to do before he was pulled out of the universe was crack the seal's coordinates in half.

xXx

Sakura stared down into the cellblock. She had just been on her way back from bringing one of the refugees upstairs when the entire building shook as if during an earthquake. There'd been a flash of light, and now…

"I – I don't get it," Temari said in a small voice. "What just happened? Where – where the hell did they go?"

Her voice rose in pitch and echoed eerily in the now empty prison. Kakashi-sensei wasn't anywhere to be seen, and neither were Gaara, Shikamaru and Ebizou. They'd vanished, just like that. On the floor, a large, complicated seal glowed gently like embers in a fireplace.

"That seal," she said carefully, "it must have – it must have done something."

"There wasn't one just now, was there?" Temari asked, her voice high and anxious. Her brother and boyfriend had just disappeared before her nose – she had to be terrified.

Hell, Sakura was.

She still herself and leapt down in a single jump, ignoring how it jarred her knees on the landing. She couldn't even sense their chakra. "We need Owl –"

As if she could read minds, Owl landed in a crouch next to her. "There was a large chakra discharge, just now. Almost like an implosion, first moving outwards and then – collapsing in on itself. Whatever happened, they're not here anymore."

There was a large crack running through the seal. Sakura stared at it. "And it's broken, isn't it? So we can't use it ourselves."

Owl nodded. "We have no way to find out what just happened, or what happened to... What happened to our people." Her voice was steady, but pitched higher than usual. The fact that Sakura could hear that at all indicated just how distraught the ANBU was.

Sakura bit down on her lip. Hard. For all they knew, Kakashi, Shikamaru and the others were dead, dispersed into the air. They could be breathing them – Sakura gasped and turned away. That was not a constructive thought, not in the least, so she have to ban it from her mind and think of something more helpful. Naruto would know what to do. He always knew what to do.

Except he was in here.

She breathed in deeply. "Owl, you're the highest-ranking officer we've got left. What do you think we should do?"

Owl looked fierce in the darkness, her shoulders tense and her mask featureless and threatening. If she was at all intimidated by being put in charge, she didn't show it. "First, we should finish Kakashi-senpai's orders. There's no point in running around and panicking without knowing where we're supposed to go. We need food and water, and the refugees need a break before they can go anywhere. We need to ask Sunagakure for help, too. And… And we need a seals expert."

AN:

So, that was probably a lot to take in. I hope you enjoyed it..? Don't kill me! You might want to count how many people the seal took with it, though…

Where do you think seal took them? Let me know!