I do not own Naruto.
"Sorry for throwing a glass at you this morning."
Kakashi doesn't answer the civilian washing dishes at first, opting to continue staring ahead at the duo still at the table. Lien is peacefully showing Tenzo around the strange, unsettling room, showing off a television that looks a thousand times clearer and sleeker that what they have in Konoha's engineering department. Theresa is in a corner, studying another piece of tech that looks something like a computer, but sleeker and more adaptable in every way. Smaller, more compact, and a with more functions than he can determine from just observing the reflection in the glass behind her. And she just….pulled it out from her room, obviously not trusting the two intruders to be alone with the group, but unwilling to actively participate
It's been over two hours. There is no one he knows who can make a genjutsu last this long.
Sharingan didn't work, fluctuating his chakra failed, and subtly stabbing himself under the able just gave him a wound he had to hide. It's been so long, and nothing has changed. He thought this place would fade, and he would come to in the middle of an attack with the corpse of the woman on the ground, and a forlorn summon who may be specialized in genjutsu to put down.
Maybe he didn't think that. Maybe he just hoped.
The details though, the details of it all. At first glance he had disobeyed his own code, failing to really look underneath the underneath. He was too caught up in everything, letting the strangeness of the situation drag him under, and allowing somebody else to direct the flow of things.
Now he's reviewing everything. They didn't speak code to each other. They spoke another language entirely before they stopped. Thier mannerisms are strange, and one peek around the room tells him that everything else is as well. There are photographs on the wall that capture astounding detail, hanging on the walls as little more than errant decorations. There are books printed in characters he cannot read, made from an alphabet he has never even seen before. The clothes themselves are of a style he hasn't even heard of, let alone witnessed.
It's all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
"It's not the worst thing someone has thrown," he says eventually, still trying to observe everything and everyone, and being hilariously overwhelmed by the conclusion he's reaching. (The architecture is alien, an old farm house but so obviously not-)
Franky hums, rinsing off one of those strange pitchforks, and setting in a drying rack. She seems the most composed out of the gathered, other than him and Tenzo. It's impressive, for a civilian with no training.
"I know. I saw people throw needles and kunai at you not too long ago. And then I saw you shoot lightning at them," She tells him, dipping her hands back in the suds to pick up the plate. The soap smells bizarre to his keen nose, unwelcome and unfamiliar.
"Lightning Jutsu was faster that just throwing more knives back," he tells her, because that's no secret. It should be fairly obvious that jutsu is the the logical escalation to that minor skirmish.
She turns her head to him then, her eyes strange, and expression pursed. He's wary of her, of all these strange women. At least when she was a wolf, he had some sort of footing. Now, he's drifting, scrabbling for any kind of balance.
"Buddy, in this world, nobody can shoot lightning. Or fire, or any other element for that matter. In fact, nobody throws knives accept bored bikers and circus acts anymore either. And we definitely don't go around wearing light armor and painted masks in the middle of the night like vigilant assassins either. That only happens in Lien's world."
Kakashi withholds a breath, because maybe he could discount a few of those things, but not all of them. Not recognizing an Anbu is huge in itself, but throwing weapons sounding absurd? And the way she said assassins, as if it was a joke, and absurd idea at best.
Wrong, his mind tells him again, like a never ending loop. That's all he can think, apparently.
"Not Lien's world," he settles with, because the implications of the other things are enormous.
Franky huffs, turning back to her work. If he had to guess, he would call the menial task she's doing some sort of coping method. Something safe and routine to focus on in the middle of pure entropy.
"Was to us, for a long time. It was Lien's strange world that she dreamed about when she fell asleep, up until she started dragging us with, and now, bringing other people back," Franky says in a voice that is almost complaining, but not quite.
He turns his gaze to the short, slight woman in question, and he feels distaste well up on his tongue as she chatters to his kohai. It's an unpleasant change from the lingering emptiness that came before it.
"Lien seems to be…problematic."
"Family is family, and she's not too terrible," Franky replies.
Kakashi sends her a glance, noting the physical differences among those gathered. The three women are a study in contrasts, and her would have never guessed them to have any blood ties. It's one she must catch often, because she just shrugs.
"Me and Theresa are half sisters, and Theresa's dad is Lien's uncle," she explains half heartedly.
He hums in acknowledgment, because that would explain the gradient skin tones, from Lightning Country's earthen coloring, to almost Water Country pale. Relation by marriage also explains the vastly different physical shapes, and varied features. He only wishes he could get a clear answer on anything else.
"When you say dreams," he begins leadingly, hoping for anything that might be coherent at this point.
She finishes up the last of the dishes, and pulls the plug in the sink, thinking. He watches her lean against the counter and stare out the window absentmindedly, staring at the tree outside of it.
"I mean dreams. I remember when she first started talking, a little thing that wouldn't shut up. She used to babble at us about a Sage she met with ripples in his eyes, and land she watched become Iwagakure. We thought she would grow out of it, and in a way, she did. Lien stopped talking about it to other people after a while," Franky enlightens him calmly. "And she only told us because we made a joke of it. We have a dream interpretation book upstairs and everything."
Kakashi doesn't speak, because everything she just said makes him want to shout 'impossible'. The Sage of Six Paths is a myth springing from the origin of ninja itself, but Iwagakure was only founded around ninety-five years ago. The time disparity is enormous, and nobody just dreams themselves up another plane of existence.
"Apparently your cousin dreamed through our glorious history," he comments dryly, his head spinning.
"From what I've seen, your world is a fucking nightmare, not a dream," the woman returns, slowly turning to look at him. Her eyes are cool and detached, but there is conflict inside them. Fear and hurt mingling with a loss that was, and yet wasn't. "It's terrible and frightening. Last night I watched my family die a horrible, violent death, and you killed people without pause. You're sitting in my home in tactical gear, with a fucking sword on your back, and I hate it."
Kakashi forces himself to meet her hazel eyes, and he reminds himself that for all the level headedness she has displayed, she is ultimately a civilian. That she is, apparently, not used to this. More than anything else, he reminds himself that she is scared.
"Tell me how to get to Fire Country from here, and we'll leave," he says, because he will. He'll get up and go as soon as he figures out how to.
Franky laughs, a little loud, but not overly so. He'll give her this; she is the most composed of the group, but he thinks she may just be compartmentalizing at an incredible rate just to continue functioning. She's running in emergency mode constantly, and there's no surer way to burn out.
"Fire Country isn't any place I've ever heard of on this entire planet. You wanna get back, you have to wait for Lien to start dreaming again. That's the only way we travel."
Well then, Kakashi thinks sullenly, staring at his teammate, and said girl. Well then.
"-So this world doesn't actually have the same ambient radiation, or chakra, as you know it. If we anything at all, it's unusable to us. Well, most of us. There are Qui Dong masters and monks who have been recorded boiling water in their palms, or consciously controlling their heart rates and body temps, but no jutsu. However, theoretically speaking, since your body somehow produces chakra, you should be able to pull off small level feats. Just remember replenishing chakra will be an issue since you can't pull it from your environment, or rather, gather it from an foods as one might with ATP."
Tenzo blinks from behind his mask, trying, and failing, to come to grips with this whole situation. Everything has gone sideways in his head. This is not only outside his regular mission parameters, but also so far from what he expected it can barely be classified as real, let alone ranked. He doesn't think for a moment he can make this into a legible mission report. No matter how hard he tries.
"Also, I can't tell if your civilization is ahead of ours, or behind it. I'm not sure how long I've been jumping, but I'm fairly certain it can be contained in a millennium or so. The recorded history of this world, however, dates around five thousand years, and there are fields that study times before that as well-"
Five thousand years, echoes inside his head, rattling around again and again. That is...that is such a long time. Konoha is the oldest of the founding hidden villages, and it's only a hundred years old. The capital is maybe three hundred. Five thousand is….is...unthinkable.
It's like he's having a stroke. She's saying words, but only a spare few register. He can't stop trying to find the chakra around him, the chakra that is barely there at all, save for in the humans themselves. If he was forced to use a metaphor, it would be like seeing nothing but the dimmest blurs after having perfect vision. This world is hollow and empty, no matter it's five thousand years of recorded history alone.
"-not even getting into technology, or geography. Language is another issue, because yours seems to be something akin to japanese, which sprang from chinese, only I don't recognize your characters and the parallels are spotty at best. I mean, a japanese speaker might be able to pick up on the jist of what we were saying, but not entirely. Seeing how it should have evolved entirely different to ours, that's not that strange. Frankly, I'm surprised there is any likeness at all. In fact, I'm surprised there are any parallels, if we consider the multidimensional theory. Of course, the branching theory of the multiverse might work, but I don't see the divergence point. Unless it has yet to happen yet in this world," Lien continues, seated in the lotus position on the grass. It's the most he's ever heard her speak, and he knows she's making some sort of sense, but she's assuming he has knowledge he doesn't. Trying to work off a foundation that doesn't exist for him.
He thinks that may be the problem. Lien, from what he can see, is coherent to an extent. She is just working off of a system that relies on logic which bases itself in events and data that isn't universal. Or, unfortunately, data that may be trans-universal.
(Or not even real, if he ascribes to her theory that none of it works because it isn't real in the first place.)
"None of this explains anything," he interrupts, trying to focus on anything other than the weirdness of this all. Root conditioning didn't prepare him for this situation, and neither did Anbu training. He needs something to pull him back, an answer to any of this. "Why were you there at the lab? Why show up at the Root base? Why am I wherever this is now?"
Lien blinks, and her eyes slide off to the side. If he follows her gaze, he knows he will see senpai and the other two women, where they sit in awkward, stiff silence. His senpai is practically radiating unease as Franky tends to minor chores, keeping an eye on everyone as best a civilian can.
"All you know and feel is reducible to the actions of minute particles in the human brain, and has no bearing on the physical plain. However, if you follow that logic, you are trusting those same particles, and that same brain, to tell you it's false," Lien answers him.
"That's...not an answer," Tenzo retorts after a moment.
She nods, as if she understands his dilemma.
"And there it is. There is no answer. Some things are random, immeasurable and unknowable. Ultimately, I can only control myself as the forces of the universe enact themselves upon me."
He stares at her then, because that actually makes an astounding amount of sense, in one way. In another, however, if explains nothing at all. Essentially she's saying she's a victim of circumstance trying to make the best of things. Yet he knows that's not possible.
"You said you'd show me nowhere. You planned on bringing me here. That's not the forces of the universe, you did that," Tenzo accuses stiffly. He doesn't know her, not really. He doesn't know anything at all, and the more this situation goes on, the less he is convinced there is a solid foundation to know. The more he listens, the more it seems like chaos and madness reigning over what once was reality.
She smiles, and it's an enigma in itself. It's such an innocuous thing. A tiny grin on a small woman, but it seems disturbing to him. Unnatural.
"I did, but only by acting alongside the forces. I did not plan to die when I fell asleep last night. That was random chance. A random force that I took advantage of, because my consciousness was already leaving my body, and directing it was easy once my heart stopped," she admits readily.
Tenzo feels the stirrings of unease in his gut, because she's so callous about the death. So unmoved by it. He's seen chuunin who would react more than this civilian is.
"I'm learning," she says, leaning forward a bit so she's angled toward the sun, soaking up it's light like some sort of bizarre tree. "Ino showed me that minds can can ride the tides of the Dao, and tie together minds that feel familiar. I with some work, drag them across dreams. I just follow what calls me, like this body in this world. I know it so well, it's become an anchor."
His logical mind tells him that what she is saying is impossible, but the evidence before him tells him that something is happening. All morning he was shown wonders that should not exist. A television of astounding quality, used to entertain, inform, and market instead of spy. Animated drawings a people flashed across it's surface, and the women ignored it as nothing more than mundane. There was a phone, or something they called a phone, that fit into the palm of Theresa's hand as she called somebody to babble at in a strange, rhythmic language.
The machines they have, numerous and various in their design, are more than any common civilian should be able to obtain. The garden out front, sprawling and well cared for, teems with varieties of food he cannot name, and not a single tree in the forest surrounding the property looks familiar.
Don't even get him started on the vehicles. He's seen trains in Frost country, but never has he seen whatever a car is.
"In the end, nothing seems to have been explained," he redirects, feeling the conversation has somehow begun to turn into a twisting mess. A mirror of his life, perhaps.
She hums noncommittally, closing her eyes.
"I imagine it would be a difficult story to explain clearly. You cannot tell it, only live it."
Tenzo withholds a deep sigh. There's no way he can make this into a satisfactory report, as there has been no solid information gleamed. No way at all. He's not even going to try.
He gets up, hoping that if he moves far enough away from whatever anomaly Lien is, everything will start making sense again. He picks his way through the ankle high grass as the hot, humid temperature makes sweat bead underneath his armor, and makes his way to the veranda where his senpai lurks underneath the shadow of a sprawling vine.
With a dazed air, Tenzo comes to stand beside him, and their shared glance says it all. Neither of them has any clue what to make of the situation. There's no plan they can come up with, no action to execute. Only vast amounts of confusion.
"Franky says that we can travel back when Lien goes to sleep, but only then," Kakashi tells him, as if that is any sort of comfort.
"Lien...has many theories about everything," Tenzo offers back in return.
Kakashi doesn't answer, save to look at the woman who has gotten up from her seat in the grass, and wandered over to the garden. It seems household chores cannot be put on hold, even for the insane, and she stoops now and again to pluck a weed.
"Tenzo?"
"Yes?"
"Next time you have an imaginary friend, can you try and keep them imaginary?"
Tenzo doesn't dignify that with a response, only casting his commander a blank look. Frankly, he's not convinced that all of this isn't imaginary.
AN: This chapter is barely edited. If you see really big, obvious shit I missed, please tell me. I still have no beta for this, so all mistakes are on me.