Nostophobia
:fear of returning home
A throbbing flash of fire and air goes off inside his head. There is exploding shrapnel in his eyes and Neji screams because of it. The pain bursts through him hard enough to shock his nervous system numb, rip maliciously through into the back of his optic nerve, dig into the back of his eyes, gush into his brain and threaten to burst out his skull. All he can think is how it's never hurt like this, how it feels like there are spider web fractures spreading though his skull. His thoughts slur together in an animal panic of instinctive pain and reactive horror and fuckjustturnitoffbeforeIcan'tbreathe –
Kabuto has his hand over Neji's forehead; glowing bright green, smelling like crushed aloe plants and looking down at him through the bright white glow of his spectacles. The soft neon lime of his chakra turns the snow of his hair a mossy color, makes his skin a sickly marine hue. Neji can feel the cool penetration of chakra pushing into his head, forcing its way through the lines of ink and old anchoring points like roots thrusting into soil. It trickles like sea water into him, invading the network of his chakra system in an injection of ice, dousing the fire in his blood and in his brain until he can finally think and...it's worse. It's so much worse.
"Kabuto…stop."
"Relax, Neji-kun."
"No. Stop now."
"I'm afraid not."
Another spike of chakra, acrid and alive, burning through, and Neji screams. The restraints are unexpected and terrifying and he wildly throws himself against them, bucking and writhing with animal desperation. He slams back against the stiff examination table cushion, kicks and yanks violently as straps and buckles dig in at his wrists and elbows. The Yakushi shoves his head back, presses a palm of hot medical ninjutsu into his brain and into his belly and a fresh scream works out of him. The heat spreads inside him, like an unnatural infestation of ivy coiling into his guts and laying down baby shoots of itself within his stomach. He can feel it taking root inside him and it's unbearable, he can't even move. He can't even breathe.
Worse, there is something writhing inside his skull. There is a living thing, a fucking tentacled invertebrate slithering through his brain, coated in gasoline and burning a path of fire through his gray matter, coiling behind his eyes and his thoughts and all he can do is scream.
"It's okay, Neji-kun. Just think about something else. I'll be finished soon."
"Get it out! Get it out of me!"
"I know what it feels like, but you have to bear with me. Neji! You can't move. Your juin seal is still active."
"It's inside my head!"
"It's the Cage Seal. It's degenerating. You have to let me stabilize it."
"It's inside my fucking skull! It's in my eyes!"
"This won't work. I'm going to try a fuin before the damage progresses any farther."
"Kill me."
"He's going into shock," Kabuto tells someone coolly, pinning the Hyuuga down. "Fetch a sedative."
"Kill me!"
"The pain is making him psychotic. Hold his head."
"Please, just get it out! Just tear them out! I'll do anything! Just make it…"
- - -
The rain finally stopped the first of February. It had rained all through December and the end of January. It hadn't snowed this year, but in Konoha snow came only sparingly and as a surprise to those who lived there. The weather, so quick to turn to the heat and humidity so familiar to it, had grown balmy and warm already and a sticky thickness hung in the air. It made heavy clothing unbearable and missions to cooler climes of foreign countries increasingly sought after. Much had happened in those past four months, enough to warrant the notice of just about anyone.
Akatsuki was on the move, it had been said these past months. ANBU Intel from all countries pointed to some shadow faction ten ninja strong and constantly in motion at the fringes of Fire Country attention. There had been fights, they said; earth shaking, sky moving battles in the deep wastelands, and in the far oceans, and the ice caps of the northern regions. Battles fought between great monsters – living mountains of ice and fire and earth and chakra that moved the continental plates of whole countries, or so they said – and men garbed in cloaks of red cloud and shadow. The monsters vanished, one by one from the rumors of their lands and Akatsuki was always on the move.
Tsunade had been content to let them work their scheme, keep an eye out lest they choose to involve themselves with her own Hidden Village, or finally make their move on the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, their own Number One Hyperactive Ninja. Uzumaki Naruto had returned to Konoha in late June. Jiraya's return had provided some relief; just the knowledge that the Hidden Leaf was once again populated by two of the Sennin eased the anxieties of all Konoha shinobi.
And then the Kazekage was taken.
Naruto, in fine form as always, was in the thick of it. Tsunade drank more than she probably should have given the circumstances and deployed what remained of Team Guy to aid Team Kakashi in the mission to rescue Wind Country's beloved leader, jinchuuriki, the Godaime Garra of the Desert. Konoha had no shinobi to spare during this crisis; almost all the Akimichi and Nara clans had been deployed on various guerrilla missions again the Rock. The Hyuuga were spread thin watching the country borders and maintaining inner-village security. The Aburame, Inuzuka, and Yamanaka clans had been dispersed on various assignments through out the surrounding countries. Jounin were in and out of the village quick as they could be patched up, paid and redeployed. ANBU was busy was the rumor. Though doing what, no one but Tsunade-sama herself could say.
Konohagakure had only just now recovered from the disastrous conflict three years since with Orochimaru, the one-man genocide, murderer of the Third, traitor to everyone and everything the Leaf had ever known. Their walls were only just now rebuilt at last to full strength. Their economy pulled from the brink. Life returning to normal. They were only just now able to move against Akatsuki and Tsunade had waited, impatient and irate, for the day to come. Had waited the better part of three years to have a standing army strong enough, black ops intricate and secret enough, young clan geniuses mature enough to finally act.
Konohakagure had been very busy these past four months; there had been no time for anything.
It had been one-hundred-eighteen days since Hyuuga Neji took his last mission.
It wasn't a stretch to say only a handful of people took notice. By people, of course, the entirety of the Hyuuga branch must be excluded, as their grievances have never counted for anything much in Konoha.
- - -
The thief came in over the east wall, throwing himself up the stucco and over the top in a single soundless motion. He landed in the head house gardens and entered through one of the side doors, moving through the halls with the self assurance of one who knew exactly where he was going… who'd been in the Hyuuga head house before, probably knew the location of the cookie jars, toilet paper and creaky floorboards. He moved silently, stopping only once as someone inside one of the rooms stirred briefly. Then he quietly tossed himself through a high window, diffused the chakra seals that locked it with soundless ease and slipped inside.
Hiashi let the thief do this without raising the alarm because he wanted to know what he was after.
He watched as the thief entered the Hyuuga records room, watched as he ignored the jutsu manuscripts, the medical files, the secrets and the sacred sealing scrolls and instead went straight for the clan's history archive.
He scanned the shelves briefly, grabbed a single scroll cylinder from the rack – he checked its date briefly – and strode out into the main courtyard where ten of the head family's finest Juuken watchmen waited for him. He did not seem surprised nor, most importantly, alarmed. He wore traditional black shinobi attire, no body armor, weapons, or hidden summoning scrolls. No shuriken, no kunai, no garroting wire, or blast notes. He was completely unarmed. The only holster he carried was a tube of stiff leather strapped between his shoulder blades and it was into this carrier that he slid the single scroll he'd stolen and snapped the clasp. Then he walked out to meet them.
The thief's chakra flow, to Hiashi's knowing eyes, was clean and bright; slightly too complex for Hyuuga tastes, but wired through his body in such a way that the Hyuuga head felt the growth wasn't…natural. He wore a black face mask across his lower face. His eyes were hidden in a secondary swath of dark sealing cloth, knotted in a neat ribbon of inactive fuinjutsu script – the kind that made it impossible to track chakra coils through – as though there were something underneath that needed binding.
The thief shifted and raised his hands in a posture remarkably like Juuken. He held himself too loosely, his hands too relaxed, his balance off-kilter, but it was a close mimicry, enough to be insulting. Several of the Hyuuga gathered stirred in disbelief; glancing discretely at one another (that being a Hyuuga specialty) they wondered at the impudence of this burglar.
Then, without preamble, he threw himself at the first three Hyuuga nearest him.
If they were suspicious that he happened to pick the three strongest first, they didn't show it.
He ducked the first flurry and deflected the next with a one-handed sweep that knocked Hyuuga Haruki's arms wide and opened his guard to a rib-crushing axe-kick. Haruki absorbed the blow, but the force knocked him back. Hiashi frowned. Losing no momentum, the thief flipped forward, somersaulted into a whirlwind spinning kick. He missed, landed, and hooked his foot around Hyuuga Hyromi's ankle, yanking him off his balance. The three Hyuuga swarmed him and he met them with skill equal to the task. Like a cat as much as a martial artist, the intruder lashed out with a bewildering blend of taijutsu styles. The previously off-kilter set of his stance became a strange fulcrum on which he spun, whipping his body into a furious halting rotation that never ceased to flow, to shift from one stance seamlessly into another, reversing out of a poor position and into a counter.
In the course of less than sixty seconds Hiashi had seen at least four recognizable schools of martial art, slip sliding one to the other with as much warning as whiplash; one style was undoubtedly that of the Gentle Fist. His hands flashed in a blurring wall of defensive deflection Juuken one moment, the next he'd back-flip and whip his heel into someone's jaw, grabbing the nearest Hyuuga and throwing their face into his knee with bone shattering force. Then he was back to his variation Gentle First, spinning and bending like an optical illusion among the flurry of chakra laden hands, slapping them away like paper airplanes in the air around him. He used no chakra in his blows, only the katas, but that did not unmake its effect.
Namely, that Haruki and Hyromi were being completely neutralized by this crazy cocktail mix of fighting styles.
In the end, they both fell victim to some shish-slash, 360 degree spinning kick that caught the brothers simultaneously under the chin and sent them crashing into the buildings around them. Hitomi came at him then; arguably one of the best Juuken users in the head family, she was even capable of the Hakkeshou Kaiten and often it was her task to keep even Hiashi on his toes from time to time. Her milky eyes flew wide, however, when her opponent met her hit for hit with one-hundred-ten percent pure Hyuuga-style Gentle Fist. He was fast. He had no fear of the hissing flares of chakra in her hands.
Finally, after a fifteen-second run where neither of them made any progress against one another whatsoever, she withdrew. To anyone outside the Hyuuga clan, she might have appeared unfazed, to Hiashi and the other Byakugan users, she looked completely floored.
"Hiashi-sama," murmured Hyuuga Hebi softly from his left. "This ninja…"
"I saw."
The thief didn't wait for the next salvo; he leapt up the side of the nearest building and darted away across the roof.
"Follow him! Don't let him escape!"
As one, the Hyuuga took off after the intruder, hurdling up and over the roofs and vanishing over the walls of the estate. Through the Byakugan, the intruder's chakra burned phosphorescent bright, like a motion-blur of neon leaping and bounding across the flattops of Konoha. Beside him, Hiashi could hear the voice of Hyuuga Hebi radioing the alert to HQ. Hebi was a branch family active, a ranking jounin and had once been plied for ANBU by the Sandaime. He was denied the position of course, dark ops being too far outside Hyuuga authority and too far within the Hokage's personal command, but he served just as effectively within the clan. Hiashi relied on him to be competent and he seldom failed to be.
"Hiashi-sama, I've raised the alarm." Hebi drew even with him, eyes cast out, Byakugan active. While the man lacked accuracy in his Juuken, his eyes had an impressive range, one that matched most head family members. He was no doubt watching the outcome of the chase. "They've deployed a jounin."
"A jounin?" Hiashi inquired sharply. "They are aware that our best shinboi are already on missions? We could only spare Hitomi and our security squad."
Hebi didn't look away from the horizon. "Apparently, the copy-nin happened to be coming in from a mission."
"Ah. Well, then."
- - -
"Do you know the story behind the Cage Seal, Neji-kun?"
Takon was sounding particularly pleased with himself today and that alone made Neji suspicious as hell. Among other things, the white-haired replicator had established himself an unbroken reputation for being completely apathetic to everything and everyone with the sole exception of whomever he was presently tormenting. To those people he paid the most special and intimate kinds of attention, the kind of detailed delight Ibiki would have attributed to 'a natural' in his profession. Neji had seen his share of 'natural's from the Sound. Kidomaru had been one. Kabuto another.
Kabuto had his own particular brand of manipulation, however; an opaque and utterly inscrutable kind of verbal hypnotism that worked and dealt in subtle devastating currencies of suggestion and self-doubt. The physician made you feel naked and dissected and laid wide open; like he was inside you or had been there, seen it, taken some pictures and been unimpressed. He made you think he knew you. The greatest mentalist Neji had ever met and it was the doctor's calculated logic that paralyzed him so fully
Takon, however, was none of that kind of subtle. He was a manipulator, yes, but he worked with the more malleable and tangible materials. He handled blood and bone and bodies; sculpted the thing he wanted to affect from the fears, facts, and many faceted fallacies of the men and women he worked with and Neji had observed even Sasuke to give him a kind of penetrating look of loathing above the usual. He had a knack for putting a finger on exactly what it was that made others bare their teeth or recoil into themselves like poked snails into their curlicue shell.
"Well? You were spouting off all that history to Mai. Do you know it or not?"
"Every Hyuuga is taught the history of the seal."
"That's a bit fucked up."
"Be quiet, Takon."
The Sound-nin grinned and leaned down close to his ear. "I'll bet I know the real story behind your Cage Seal. Where it really came from."
"Fuck you."
"You know, you've got a bit of a foul mouth on you, Hyuuga. That's not very dignified for a noble clan born brat."
"I repeat, fuck you. Are you going to be this persistent all night or will you shut up long enough to get this mission done?"
"Tell me your version, Hyuuga and I'll tell you mine. Let's see how they compare."
"No. I'm not playing into your game. I'm more than aware of the fact my clan lies. It's part of who and what we are and don't act like you know something about us that I don't. You're not one of us."
"I don't profess that I am, little one," said Takon, all honey smooth and sweet as formaldehyde. His smile was a silver bright, Cheshire crescent cut. "But don't you wonder who it is I am? Not who I'm not, that's a very easy thing to decide, what I'm not. But what I am is far more interesting, least far as you and I are concerned."
Neji didn't remember his hand jumping to the Sound-nin's jugular or summoning the dose of wintergreen lethal energy to his fingertips. He didn't turn his head to meet the other ninja's gaze, he didn't need to anymore, true Hyuuga habit. "I do not care."
"You do." Takon pushed his hand down gently. "S'why I'm telling you. Didn't you wonder? An ability like mine, why you'd never heard of it."
"Not in particular, no."
"Bit of history. Two clans in the Wind Country, before it was ever the Hidden Sand. You talked about them. Two clans the Hyuuga destroyed, just them by their lonesome standing in the fire of that hatred and that holocaust. We have the complete records, my clan. By which I mean I have the records. It was me and my little brothers till you and yours killed them as children, but that's a bit of history we don't need to review. What's very important to remember, what applies to you, is the measures that your clan took…" Takon's smile was cloying, ginger. "Do you know what a Hyuuga Hawk is, Neji? A Nightingale?"
Neji didn't look up. Takon crouched close by, fiddling with a stray kunai, thumbing the edge.
"Not terms a third generation Hyuuga would know," he said, "given what history you've been fed, what discourse they've marginalized to have their peace. A Hawk is a soldier, Neji, the best kind of soldier because they have nothing to lose. True believers. I never saw one, but the stories my elders used to tell, ah…you'd think they were ghosts." Takon flipped the kunai spinning. "In those days, the Nightingales sent their Hawks and we died. Simple as that. Given, so did you, but not in so great the numbers we did. It was, point of fact, a brilliant strategy. More so even after the war."
"I don't know what you're –" Neji began, but Takon cut him off.
He shoved his palm into Neji's collarbone, against the lines of the Serpent Seal. The pressure sent an instant and indefinable tremor of sensation through Neji's body. Like a wash of marbles was bumping down inside his skeleton, or his skin was retightening itself around his joints and muscles. Then he shoved his chakra into the Leaf-nin.
The cursed mark roared to life and Neji slammed backward, gasping and gritting his teeth to keep the raging swarms of synethensia from bursting out of him. There were…feelings, impressions of pain, of pleasure, of pressure, of pins and needles, poison, paralysis and all rushing him in uncoordinated droves of confusion. Every muscle in his body was seizing up. He was doubled up on himself, his breath bottled and blockaded up inside his chest like the best secret in his dystopia of pain-but-not-exactly. Then it stopped and his muscles melted beneath his skin and he couldn't see straight because his head was just spinning, reeling, launched out into the stratosphere of his awareness.
Then it stopped and he was on his knees, hair hanging and pooling on the floor beneath his face, gasping into the stone.
Takon was flipping through his manga again. Volume three of the Tengu Myth series.
"Of course you don't," sighed the jounin. "You're a half-breed genetic fuck-up son of a meat shield branch house member. Why the fuck would they tell you anything?" He sighed and left Neji crouched there. "In fact, I'm through. You finish the mission. You're just another suicide bird, after all."
- - -
'God, I hate the Rain.'
"Kakashi-san."
'It never fails. No matter how many water proofing jutsu I use, somehow the ink will always run.'
"Kakashi."
'That page was a particular favorite of mine…'
"Kakashi, you bastard, there's an enemy-nin attacking the Hyuuga estate –"
"Well, that's not very smart of him…" muttered the copy ninja absently.
"– and he's beat the shit out of their security squad."
The damp jounin looked up from his slightly water damaged porn and eyed the messenger – a very somnolent and grumpy looking Genma – as though he'd never seen the man and was trying to decide who'd let him into the check-in lobby. Ten minutes ago, he'd finally arrived at this check-in lobby; a goal he'd worked very hard to accomplish without putting anymore of his life, limbs, or reading material at risk. Two weeks ago, he'd made an effort to point out that a mission of this particular caliber would probably be best left to some more deserving member of ANBU – "Like one that's not retired for example." – maybe several of them, a team of them. Just not him by himself right now, thanks.
Tsunade just gave him a look, the kind known to splinter men's souls (Kakashi was okay, his soul was of a particularly hardy sort) and told him if thought there was someone else more suited to an A-class reconnaissance mission deep into Akatsuki infiltrated territory then he was free to make a list and hand them the mission specs. Then she'd emphasized the danger in which he'd placed himself by unearthing a particularly large bottle of hard sake, popping the cork at his head, and drinking more than most of it in a single go; effectively ending the argument. Not even Kakashi dared a drunken Sennin, no matter how severely she chose to fuck with his weekends.
Genma had yet to remove himself and the two ninja stared at each other across the puddle of Rain Country water that Kakashi had managed to hike with him (all three gallons of it in his uniform the entire way from Kirigakure, naturally) to Konoha. If the agitated clicking was any indication – and it was, Genma rolled the sebon with his tongue when on edge – the special jounin was looking for some kind of immediate reaction. The younger man blinked. Genma chewed his senbon furiously. Kakashi, after some consideration, lowered his book to his knee and gave this some thought.
"Oh, you mean –?"
"Go, you lazy fuck!" Genma snarled.
Kakashi sighed and handed the ruined volume to the irritable shinobi. "Hold this. I'll be back in a minute."
"Ugh."
Despite himself, the poison specialist was trying his damnedest not to look embarrassed as the copy-nin took off and left him with a wet smut novel. Shiranui Genma, to those that knew him well, was amiable and generally easy-going. To those who delighted in bugging him – i.e.: Hatake Kakashi – he was foul-mouthed and terse to the point of monosyllabic (save for those especially wordy gouts of scathing profanity, in which case he became absolutely and spectacularly long-winded, poetic even.) That Kakashi had elected to torment Genma out off all the available ninja was something of an office mystery and no one could come up with a defendable reason why the two didn't like each other. Probably for the best.
"Hatake-san." A Hyuuga leapt over an adjacent roof and drew even with him. "The thief is unarmed and carries a clan scroll from our vaults. He's overpowered several of our better available fighters. His taijutsu seems to be his specialty; designed specifically against the Juuken style. His live capture would be best if it can be managed."
"Chakra capacity?"
"Nothing extraordinary. But nothing to scorn either."
"He's unarmed. Really?"
The Hyuuga gave him a look to suggest to him the level of his incompetence and the copy-nin sighed. Quite simply, it was just not going to be a good night tonight. He gave the Hyuuga instructions to keep his men back, a terse salute, then snapped under the threshold of perception to overtake his quarry. Kakashi hooked his trajectory around the ninja to appear suddenly – and, yeah, pretty damn impressively – in front of the intruder who pulled up hard and leapt back with an unmistakable ripple of surprise running through his body. The copy-nin waved.
"Yo. I hear you're stealing things," he remarked conversational-like. "'Fraid that's not 'zactly kosher."
"You," said the intruder, in the husky, slightly muffled voice of a young man, "are supposed to be in the Rain. You weren't here ten minutes ago."
Kakashi shrugged. "I got back early. And that's a very interesting trick. How did you know I wasn't here ten minutes ago?"
The thief backed up, braced, then Body Flickered. Chakra swept through his left eye and Kakashi tracked the substitution; a reverse teleportation, the thief doubled back, finished by shooting off in completely the opposite direction than the one he'd first set off in. There was a hint of genjutsu in the move, a flicker of hallucinogenic light and motion to make anyone think they'd spotted the real thing streaking off in yet another direction. Tricky fucker, he'd give him that. Nevertheless, Kakashi's fist nearly plowed through the thief's head when the copy-nin matched his move and cut him off at the pass two roofs over. The kid hissed, kicked back and reverse tumbled down the side of the clay-shingled slant before catching himself and flipping adroitly back to his feet.
"You," said Kakashi to the startled intruder, "are not faster than I am. That move belongs to someone far better than you."
The thief took his advice by attacking him.
Curious as to what kind of style had the ability to neutralize Konoha's secret white-eyed human weaponry, Kakashi let the intruder engage. He hit him at speed, a flurry of fists that melted into thrown elbows, vital-strikes, then spine-shattering spinning kicks that ripped the air in two with their passing, tearing holes in the atmosphere. The Sharingan picked out the camera flash flickers of his hands as they knifed toward kill points, tracked their reaction times as they swatted his blows away like fruit flies. It was a tricky style to be sure; Kakashi hadn't seen anything like it before. Through the Sharingan, the thief moved in strategic patterns of the erratic; one moment free-fall tumbling, dropping like a ragdoll into a sloppy somersault, tripping and stumbling forward through a half-drunken slip… only to immediately launch out the momentum of his roll into intricate champloo-style Juuken.
'He…moves a bit like Guy.' A blow sliced past Kakashi's cheek, ripped a tear in the cloth near his jaw line. 'But that's not the trick. This one has an ace. You don't attack the Hyuuga unarmed without an ace.'
The copy-nin disengaged and leapt back, hands flashing through a series of signs. The resulting jutsu had the effect of warping the clay shingles under the thief back to their slick water-liquid state, slithering amorphous tentacles closing over his ankles and sucking him down, hardening instantaneously back to fired stone. The kid twisted once, the clay shattered as if set upon by a firecracker, and he launched into another spinning kick so wild, Kakashi threw himself wide because his Sharingan was telling him – 'Clever fucking brat.' – that it was coming from three different directions. He landed free. The thief landed on his hands and knees, crouched there like an animal and lifted his head sharply.
"That kind of attitude is bound to get you killed and not in a nice way," Kakashi warned the thief laconically, brushing clay off his vest. "Now why don't you hand over the Hyuuga's stuff and surrender?"
The thief made another break for the village wall but Kakashi was there instantly. Stopped, the thief threw himself into a fast-forward serpentine attack, punched through his defense and plowed a knee into the Leaf-nin's face…only to meet a shell of mist and chakra that exploded into smoke. The real Kakashi reappeared behind the thief from the roof he'd actually body flickered to. It was impossible that the thief saw him coming, more impossible that he might sense all six of the kunai bulleting for his back, but impossible was shit because the thief half spun and swiped them away with his bare hand; kunai scattered as if blown off by an unseen burst of air. Kakashi blinked and decided that was a very, very interesting trick. He barely got over his surprise in time to grab the back of the kid's shirt and yank him back down as he darted away again.
"Ah, wait up."
The thief spun and took a swipe at his kidney.
Kakashi swatted the attack aside. "Stop that. Cool trick for a brat."
The thief tried to run, Kakashi blocked him, shoved him back.
"Wanna show it to me again?"
With more than some desperation the thief tried to run again, body-flickering through a cloud of Bunshin and darting for an adjacent roof…but Kakashi snatched his ankle and tugged him back like a jack-in-the box interrupted. (An arched brow: "Who the hell you do think I am, kid?") Finally, about the fourth time at this, the thief spun with a snarled "Fuck you, copy-nin!" abruptly switched stances and lashed an open palm at his throat. The Sharingan laid the danger bare in glowing hot nephrite, the thief's palms charged with vital fire seconds before knifing past Kakashi's ribs and exploding out. The force of the blow knocked him sideways, sent a burst of peppermint fire blossoming through the muscles under his right arm.
'And there,' thought Kakashi, 'is the ace.'
The copy-nin fissured into five Kage Bunshin, each of which unleashed a jutsu with simultaneous lethality – one a barrage of kunai, a dose of mid-level genjutsu, and exploding tags followed by a nasty Katon fire ball. Given those options, the thief threw up a single hand sign and the script across his blindfold burned alive, chakra flooding the lines of ink like veins of blood, a transfusion of energy that coiled back into some optical deus ex machine and without missing a beat the thief charged – fucking head on charged – the Katon and threw a chakra infused punch that blew it, the cloud of kunai, and all the exploding tags into oblivion and the stratosphere.
A rain of hot metal littered the rooftops. The heat charred the cloth from his wrist to shoulder, seared the thief's arm, incinerating the paper seal across his eyes to ash and for a split second Kakashi met his opponent's gaze – moon-bright disks of shattered mirror white. Pale irises cracked through, like some great internal earthquake had eroded and chipped the white enamel off a matte black undercoat. The copy-nin was struck first by the strangeness of that, of those broken mirror eyes, of their familiarity, and their engrained youthful terror. He was struck secondly – and perhaps more profoundly, by the realization that the kid's irises were spinning.
Like a broken mirror wheel.
Then the ace – the real ace – triggered. A burst of eye-to-eye doujutsu that Kakashi hadn't had reason to suspect lay behind that panic-riddle stare and a phantom heat ripped through the copy-nin's skull. Subtle warm energy inside his brain, like someone opening an oven behind his forehead and Obito's Sharingan suddenly, abruptly, went dark for the first time in twenty-six years. Later that night when the Hyuuga demanded angrily why he'd failed to apprehend the intruder, the disheveled copy-nin retorted very calmly:
"He had one hell of an ace up his sleeve."
And he decided he'd better have a chat with Tsunade-hime in private.
- - -
That night, in the east base of Otogakure, a white-haired Sound-nin waited patiently for the return of a slightly charred, black garbed shinobi who appeared soundless as a disgruntled shadow and strode past him. Takon grinned crookedly at the injured assassin.
"So, what's the verdict?"
Hyuuga Neji threw the sooty scroll at the other ninja, not looking at him.
"They lied to us."
He vanished inside the compound, darkness engulfing him as he did.
"Again."
Author's Note:
Lordy lord. It's been a while and this shit's getting real. Anyway, I've just started college and classes are now kicking my ass up and down the boardwalk. Love to Lellian for editing. Love to you lovely readers. Reviews spur me on through adversity so be kind and leave a friendly (or unfriendly) word to two. Toodles.