Chapter Four
"Hurry!" Minato shouted, trying desperately to pick up the lagging pace of the group. They ran headlong over the rough terrain, weaving between towers of eroded rocks and twisting boulders. The river had swerved north, but they headed west, counting on Gamashi's information that the town was less than an hour away at a caravan's pace.
In his arms, Kakashi's breaths were growing more erratic by the minute, and Minato could feel the burning fever through both of their clothes. His efforts to extract, or at least confine the poison with chakra, had been in vain.
He recognized that the unsettling feeling churning in the pit of his stomach was more than concern. He had lost sight of the Mists with no way of telling whether Jyakou had given up or was trailing them. His sharpened senses tingled with every sound and shift in the wind – waiting, searching, preparing for the worst.
He looked over his shoulder once, then again after a few paces, growing more impatient by the second. Obito and Midori were half dragging, half carrying Gamashi as he stumbled on, long out of breath. Minato stopped and doubled back. He wanted nothing more than to sprint ahead, but without a familiar face, there was no guarantee the town would help them.
"Obito, take Kakashi," he said, handing him the unconscious boy. "Gamashi-san, let me carry you. How much longer to – get down!"
He threw their client to the ground, instincts screaming as he spun and clashed a kunai against Jyakou's descending sword. He gritted his teeth under weight of the attack and pushed back against the bulging muscles along the Mist's arms and neck.
"What are you really after?" Minato demanded over the shrill grating of their weapons.
"I told you," Jyakou hissed, no longer showing any sign of mockery or brass. "The scroll. This has to be the one. You tried to trick us by having kids protect it."
"Do you know what it contains?"
"Don't take me for an idiot." The Mist leapt back, hands flying through a set of seals.
Without turning around, Minato gave Obito a push and marked his shoulder with a Hiraishin.
"Go, run!" he shouted. "Get Kakashi to the doctor!"
Wasting no time, Midori dragged Gamashi at a full sprint and Obito took up the rear with Kakashi slung over his shoulder. They hadn't gone ten steps before bullets of water tore out of the ground. The earth cracked and crumbled, sucked dry by the technique, but Minato harnessed the debris in an instant and erected a wall to fend off the attack.
As if anticipating just that, Jyakou vaulted over both the shield and Minato, bearing down on Gamashi in two bounds.
"Keep running!" Midori shouted. Gamashi choked and gasped but didn't stop – didn't look back.
Obito did. He skidded to a halt and put Kakashi down, then leapt forward to meet the enemy, catching Minato's eyes for a second over the Mist's shoulder.
Jyakou snarled and swung down his sword. Obito threw his weight to the right, pivoted as if to strike out with a reverse roundhouse. Minato used that instant to teleport to Obito's side and closed the distance between himself and Jyakou with a single step.
The Mist's eyes widened, but he was moving too fast, his momentum too uncontrolled to avoid the kunai that plunged into his chest at a deadly angle. Minato stepped back, leaving him to stagger and collapse. Gasping for breath, coughing blood, he still tried to crawl forward, his face a mask of desperate fury.
"I won't let the Leafs have it," he gurgled, stretching his hand toward Gamashi. "The Sanbi… is ours. No one… else…"
Minato froze, then immediately dropped down beside Jyakou and rolled him over. "What did you say? The Sanbi? You're saying the scroll contains information on the Tailed Beasts?"
Jyakou lips curled into a bloody grin even as the light in his eyes dimmed and life left him for good. Minato clenched his teeth and bit back a curse.
"Sensei?" Obito asked, his eyes flickering between his teacher and Kakashi's deteriorating condition.
Minato stood, not bothering to close the Mist's open eyes.
"Let's go," he said.
.-.-.-.
Kakashi rarely dreamed, but when he did, it was always the same.
It was night. The house was silent. His father sat in his room by the open windows, looking out at the moonlit garden.
"Come here, Kakashi."
Beckoned by the thin voice, a shadow of his father's usual strength, Kakashi padded quietly across the tatami floor and folded his legs under him.
"How's school?" Sakumo asked.
"I'm going to take the graduation exam next month."
"You're still four."
"I'm five, Father." His birthday had come and gone, but Sakumo hadn't spoken a word to him that day. He hardly spoke to anyone, now. Ever since...
"Forgive me, I was… preoccupied." Sakumo sighed and gave a small smile, half hidden within the darkness. He opened his arms. "Come here."
Kakashi frowned. "I'm too old for that," he grumbled, nevertheless rising and walking to his father. Sakumo's arms wrapped tight around him in a way he hardly ever did. Kakashi turned his head, confused and unsettled, but could only see his father's hair, silver in the moonlight.
"They say you're a genius, my son." Sakumo's words were only a whisper. "I couldn't agree more. Maybe… you'll be able to accomplish what I couldn't… because I was too weak. Grow strong, Kakashi, strong enough to complete your missions and not lose your comrades. Do you hear?"
He pulled back and cupped his large, calloused hands around Kakashi's face. His eyes were haunted. "Grow strong."
Kakashi pushed down the unease in his stomach. He would do anything to make his father proud.
"I will."
Sakumo let go and closed his eyes, turning back to the window. "Go to sleep now. It's late."
"Goodnight, Father."
When Kakashi woke several hours later, it was still dark outside. His stomach rolled. Bile rushed up his throat and he scrambled out of bed, alarmed. He knew he wasn't sick. It was something in the air. Every breath made him retch and gag. Stumbling down the hall, one hand pressed over his nose, he saw that the door to his father's room was still open.
Father would know. He would know what to do. How to make this sickening feeling go away.
But his father lay in a pool of his own blood and entrails.
Kakashi's legs buckled and he vomited into his hands. The acid choked him and tears broke his sight into heaving fragments of black and red and silver. He couldn't move – couldn't take his eyes off the sight in front of him. He stared and stared until the shudders slowly gave way to cold emptiness and a bleak dawn paled the sky beyond the gaping windows.
He would remember the smell of that morning long after he had forgotten what his father had looked like or the sound of his voice. The sweet scent of approaching rain mingling with the reek of ammonia. A bitter fragrance of tea gone cold and the putrid odor of leaking organs. All laced with the overwhelming stench of blood.
It was the smell of desperation, despair and mercy.
.-.-.-.
Kakashi stirred and slowly opened his eyes, the remnants of the dream still lingering like broken cobwebs in his mind. He lifted a heavy hand to his face and pushed the memories away. He didn't need the dead to remind him of how to live.
Shifting his hand, he found himself looking up at an unfamiliar, wooden ceiling. He could hear the muffled sounds of a meal, but the thought of food made him queasy. Pushing himself upright, he looked around. It was dark outside the windows. The room, faintly lit by a paper lantern beside the futon bed, was small and sparsely accented with two wooden drawers.
Looking down, he found himself in oversized pajamas rolled up to fit his limbs. His forehead protector, weapon pouches and clothes lay stacked beside him.
His remembered now. The fight with the Mist ninjas and Kuraba's barrage of shuriken replicas that had camouflaged the poisoned ones. He reached over to his left arm and found the wound tender and swollen under the bandages. His movements felt sluggish as he pushed aside the covers and stood up, but he was otherwise unaffected by any lasting effects of the attack.
Walking to the door, he pulled it open and squinted at the sudden onslaught of bright light.
"Well, look who's finally awake," Obito said.
Kakashi blinked as his eyes slowly adjusted. The room was small and artfully decorated in varying shades of granite grey. His team sat with Gamashi at a wooden table laden with plates and bread baskets. The air was thick with the smell of stew, laced with a refreshing whiff of citrus orange coming from the tray of teacups a round-faced woman was setting down.
Minato smiled. "How are you feeling?"
Before Kakashi could reply, Midori jumped out of her seat and slammed into him in a full body tackle. He almost tripped backward, finding himself in a choke hold, but there was no malice – only ripples of frustration and relief radiating from his teammate.
"You idiot!" she screamed, right into his ear. He flinched. "Don't ever do that again!"
"Do what?" he grumbled.
"Sacrifice yourself! You got hit with the poison when you pushed me into the water, didn't you?" Kakashi made no reply. Midori let go and glared at him for a moment. Then the anger fell away and she hugged him. "Thank you."
The words surprised him, but it was the embrace that made him stiffen and pull away, the dream still fresh in his mind.
Midori peered into his face, her brows furrowed in confusion. "Kakashi?"
"It's nothing," he mumbled, heading to the table.
"You feeling okay?" Gamashi asked.
"I'm fine." He turned to Obito. "How long has it been?"
"A day and a half."
Kakashi felt chagrined.
"We were lucky it was a common poison," Minato said, "and that we were so close to town. Several more hours and you would have died."
"I nearly had a heart attack running," Gamashi laughed.
"I'm sorry," Kakashi said.
The man snorted. "Sorry? You saved my life! By the way, meet my wife, Nanami."
"Nice to meet you, Kakashi." She was a woman of short stature, her brown hair loosely braided over one shoulder. A small dimple marked her cheek when she smiled. "You must be hungry. Let me get you something."
"Thank you, but I'm fine."
"Nonsense. You have to eat to get better."
"Kakashi won't eat in front of other people," Midori said, indicating toward the mask. "My bet is he has crooked teeth."
"Fat lips is my guess," Obito added.
Minato tapped his chin thoughtfully. "I'd say…"
"Sensei," Kakashi growled. His teacher laughed.
While Nanami went to make another cup of tea, the team filled Kakashi in on their encounter with Jyakou and what Minato had heard him say.
"Sanbi?" Kakashi asked. "The Three Tails?"
Minato nodded. "Gamashi-san allowed me to see the scroll last night. It was sealed with a basic fuuinjutsu and contained a report on a large sea monster with three tails sighted in the southern sea."
"But it was a civilian report, wasn't it?" Obito asked. "Couldn't it just be a fisherman's tale?"
"That's always possible. But the descriptions were detailed. Large, turtle-shaped, crab shells, spikes and three shrimp-like tails."
"What did you do with the scroll?" Kakashi asked.
"I replicated the seal and gave it back," Minato said.
"It's with Hiyashi-sama now," Gamashi said. "I had to hand it in or I would be have been killed, but we have a plan. I requested an emergency audience with Hiyashi-sama tomorrow and it's been granted."
"No civilian in their right mind should want anything to do with the tailed beasts," Minato said. "There's also the matter of the seal. It makes me certain there's a shinobi behind all this."
"From which village?" Kakashi asked. "Jyakou was after the scroll so it can't be the Mists."
Minato shook his head. "I don't know yet, but we'll find out."
Obito and Midori also shared what they had found about the town and its inhabitants. While the team had drawn outright hostile looks when they had first arrived, when Obito and Midori had scouted the town under disguise, the people had left them alone.
"Town is an understatement," Obito said. "It's nearly as big as Konoha."
"Guess who got lost at every corner?" Midori snickered as she drew a basic map of the area.
"At least I didn't get distracted by every sweets shop. I thought girls liked to diet."
Without a word of warning Midori flicked the pencil with her thumb and propelled it straight into Obito's face. With a strangled shout he threw back his head to avoid it going up his nose and promptly fell to the floor. Midori wasted no time pouncing on him.
Minato watched the scuffle in amusement before the seriousness returned to his expression.
"That's enough now," he said, "listen up."
Obito froze in the act of yanking Midori's hair while she tried to wrench the goggles from his face. At Minato's expectant look, she let go abruptly and Obito went down with a yelp as the goggles smacked him.
"Crybaby," she jeered.
Obito scrubbed the tears from his eyes and glared. "You little…"
"Putting aside the issue of the Sanbi," Minato went on, speaking over their final jabs, "I received a message from Hokage-sama today. Two separate Chuunin teams were attacked since we left: one at the border of Cloud Country and another at a sea port close to the Mist."
"Jaykou mentioned killing a team," Kakashi said.
Minato nodded. "I assume one of them was his doing. Sandaime's attempts at diplomatic negotiations have been completely ignored."
He turned his eyes to Gamashi and Nanami and regarded them sympathetically. "The Hidden Rock Village also broke the truce. They attacked a military base in northern Wind Country belonging to the Sands last night."
"What does that mean?" Gamashi asked.
"We're allies with the Sands, so that makes us enemies," Minato replied. "This is the last mission where we'll be able to help the people of your country."
The couple's faces grew grim with grief and bitterness. No one needed to state the obvious. Dark times laid ahead for every country, civilians and shinobi alike.
"But first things first," Minato said in a lighter tone. "We still have a mission to accomplish and it won't do if we all collapse with exhaustion tomorrow. Let's call it a night."
One by one they left the kitchen and returned to the guestroom where Obito and Midori laid out three more futons.
"You know, one day you're going to be demanding your own room," Obito said to Midori. "Just like my sister."
"Why? We sleep together outside all the time."
Obito stared. Then he whispered to Kakashi, "Is she really a girl?"
He got a solid blow from a pillow filled with heavy buckwheat hulls for that, knocking him flat on his face.
"Goodnight team," he mumbled without bothering to get up.
.-.-.-.
The moon was dyed red that night, casting an eerie light onto the deserted streets as Kakashi made his way across town. Slipping in and out of shadows, he matched crossroads and landmarks with the map Midori had drawn and noted the different routes that would lead to the lord's manor.
He dug his bare toes into the cool earth and cut across a back alley, scaled a wall and continued to the outskirts of town. Idly, he thought it may have been worth picking up his shoes at the entrance of Gamashi's house, but the window had provided a closer exit. Restless and reluctant to fall prey to further dreams, he had left his sleeping team and took to the streets to do his own surveillance.
With that done and the sun still hours from rising, he left behind the last of the houses and found a small stream flowing quietly along a dip in the earth. As if marking the border between civilization and wilderness, it was lined with neatly cut rocks on one side and cracked boulders on the other, disintegrating into a shore of unkempt rubble that stretched into the darkness.
Kakashi stopped and stood at the edge of the water. His eyes were drawn to the moon floating on its surface, broken and bleeding from the current's relentless pull. Trickling slowly, coldly, spreading its stain...
He didn't know how long he had stood there when someone's presence jarred him from his thoughts. He spun around, feeling a pebble fly past him into the river. Seeing who it was, he blinked in surprise.
"Obito?"
His teammate yawned as he navigated his way down the bank. "Is this officially night or morning?"
"Morning, I think?"
He grunted. "Too early."
"You didn't have to come out."
"Then you should have left more quietly."
Kakashi frowned. He hadn't made a sound. "Sensei woke you, didn't he?"
Obito grinned, sheepish but unapologetic. He held out a pair of shoes. "You forgot these."
"Thanks." Kakashi glanced at him again. "How did you find me anyway?"
Obito shrugged and sat down on the rocks. "Just a hunch."
Kakashi crouched beside him to pull on his shoes, and they were silent for a moment.
"Midori was pretty upset when she figured out what happened," Obito said eventually. "She felt responsible."
"Why? I only did what duty demanded. We're meant to protect the team."
Obito looked sidelong at him with an odd quirk of his lips that bordered on exasperation.
"It's not that you're wrong," he said slowly, "but I'm pretty sure you're missing a point there."
"Like what?"
"Like," he paused, scrunching his face in thought, "feelings."
Kakashi raised a silent brow.
Obito gestured vaguely with his hands as he groped for words. "Like a sense of friendship and… and love, and –"
"Love?" Incredulity joined confusion in Kakashi's expression.
"What I mean is," Obito huffed, "we don't protect each other out of duty. We do it because we care about each other. Because we want to, not because we have to. Get what I'm saying?"
Kakashi fell silent, laying out his friend's words and his father's side by side to compare. "It amounts to the same thing."
Obito gave a long-suffering sigh. "Only you, Kakashi. Look, the results may be the same, but we would feel better if you weren't just doing it out of a sense of duty."
"It makes a difference?"
"Of course it does."
The thought had never occurred to Kakashi. Then again, his father had put his life on the line for something he had wanted to do – a life he had lost in the end, perhaps for that very reason.
Kakashi knew the Shinobi Rules inside and out, and nowhere did it say to put a comrade's wellbeing above the mission. Yet that was what his father had told him to do, and dead or alive, whether he liked it or not, Sakumo's words – his will – were the rules to Kakashi.
There was also something oddly alluring to what his friend said. It was straightforward and honest, much like Obito himself. His words didn't close in on Kakashi – not like the suffocating walls that seemed to surround him whenever he thought back to that moment in his father's room.
"You need to come live with us," Obito said, pulling Kakashi back from his thoughts. "My family has enough emotions flying around to make you an expert on the subject."
"I'll just take your word for it."
Obito snorted. "You know my family doesn't think badly of your dad, right? It's not like you have a lot of things to move either, seeing as you dumped most of it already."
He was referring to the one and only time Kakashi had moved in his life. While news of the White Fang's suicide had traveled the village through whispered gossip, he had been systematically tearing down his family home from the inside out.
The mindless work had kept him grounded until Obito had shown up one afternoon, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to stroll into a disgraced ninja's home.
"I still can't believe you threw out Sakumo-san's sword," Obito grumbled.
"I kept what I needed. It didn't need that," Kakashi replied. It was the truth, and yet, he could still remember how heavy the White Chakra Blade had felt in the second before he had thrown it into the dumpster outside. It was a piece of memory he didn't need but somehow couldn't dismiss.
"You could have at least given it to Hokage-sama," Obito continued. "Or sensei."
Kakashi sighed. "Obito."
"What?"
"If you're trying to distract me from the fact that you stole another scroll from the library that day, you're doing a horrible job."
Obito sputtered. "It was borrowed!"
"Academy students can't borrow level B Earth Ninjutsu scrolls."
"I asked a cousin to sign it out," Obito admitted with a grudging twist of his lips.
Kakashi raised a brow, remembering quite clearly that Obito's stealing habits had continued up until their graduation day. "Why?"
"It doesn't matter," his friend replied, waving his hand as if to dispel the subject. "When did you master the Goukakyuu?"
Kakashi debated whether to press the issue, then shrugged it from his mind. "A few weeks ago."
"Damn, it was the one thing I had over you," Obito griped. "Midori's jealous too."
"She shouldn't be. Her element isn't fire."
"She wants to be an all-rounder like you."
Kakashi sighed. "She needs to stop being so competitive."
"That's what keeps her going," Obito laughed. "You gotta admit, a bit of rivalry is healthy for the team. Makes us stronger. It's going to take a hell of a lot, and then some, to beat us."
His grin was wide and contagious. Kakashi found himself wanting to believe in those words, telling himself it was possible, that he could – would – make it work. He looked up at the moon, whole and bright in the sky.
"You bet."
.LinSetsu.