I'm more disciplined now. Giving myself deadlines now. This is september's. Dull-sounding 'Hooray'. 'sigh' why is change necessary? Why can't I just be lazy all the time? Why do i have to work to get what I want? Basically, I'm growing up.
This world is very cruel, and yet very beautiful. Mikasa Ackermann
If i can't do, it I'll die. If i win, I live. If I don't fight, I can't win. Mikasa again. Its a sad day when i draw my inspiration from a manga character, but if it's Mikasa I don't mind…
Anyway, I've always found it strange that stats in terms of chakra are reduced to child levels (or they say they are before unleashing ridiculous techniques) in fanfics. I mean, it's a combo of phy and mental energy but you can't say the mental energy is the same right for the character who retains all his memories and experience, right? Especially if the mental energy is made more potent by meditation right? I use it here to get away with a few multiple chidori.
A lot of this story is actually planned out in my head actually. I'm always thinking of things I should or could do with this Kakashi but I was always too lazy to type it down.
Well not anymore! I hope… but i have deadlines so it should be fine, for anyone who's still reading this story. And I'll try to play this more to Kakashi's strength with all his amazing ninja trickery and it won't always be… 'just another m*****f****** clone, b****!'
So, enjoy the story.
Chapter four
The pulp mill which was the location for Kakashi's impromptu mission was an old, sad abandoned thing in the far corners of north east Fire country, with its chipped bricks, dirty, and in some cases, broken, windows. Three massive chimneys stood in different parts of the factory complex, relieved of the task of releasing black fumes back into the atmosphere but it only made them look all the more lonely and depressing, guarding a ward that was more or less dead.
It had definitely seen better days though. Politics and back-door dealings (not really concerning the pulp mill) had come to a conclusion with an unknown ninja putting a permanent stop to the previous owner's activities by way of a poison. It was an abused and overused joke among the nobles of fire court that said assassinated noble loved tea so much, it killed him.
It was mentioned freely too. It said something about your popularity when your death was turned into a joke.
The pulp mill was soon abandoned, the workers moving elsewhere and the mill neglected like a banana with brown spots. Now anyone who was interested in it just had to imagine the costs of reinitiating the pulp project and the interest would fade like a bad dream.
Squatters followed, a ninja or two had used it as a hiding place when escaping pursuers. Gatou who apparently had some business in the land of fire, had made it his sort of secret hideout. After that, well...not many had the balls to approach a fortress with recently fitted alarms and usually filled with guards who would probably rip out those balls if they caught you.
Luckily tonight was somewhat different, as Kakashi counted only fifteen guards and not the army Gatou usually had with him.
They surrounded him right now, as he sat on the floor of Gatou's office, covered in blood, the bodies of two other bodyguards next to him.
"Damn! Is this all?!"
"Yeah boss, you said we're flying under the radar right? Gotta keep outta the notice o' them Konoha ninja."
If you're wondering why the thugs are not laying into Kakashi right now, it's because of the neat ninja trick called the transformation technique. The thugs were staring at a short, fat, dishevelled little man in a blood soaked suit and not a thirteen year old silver-haired ninja. His imitation of Gatou's voice was near perfect. If they touched him though, this little charade would collapse only slightly faster than the amount of time it took to fill him with sharp pointy objects.
'Gatou' gnashed his teeth. "Screw it, we're gettin' out of here."
"Boss, jus' give the word. E' can' hide forever, this assassin. We'll look fer him, find 'im and wrap 'im in his intestines." the first thug who spoke up said. This one wore a dirty white gi whose sleeves had been torn off. Unkempt hair hung loosely around his face and his beard was growing something fierce. Bloodshot eyes told stories of the drink he had consumed this evening and looking around his companions had partaken in the festivities too. The others were much the same; rejects of society and prime examples of unwashed humanity. Kakashi/Gatou almost gagged from simply being surrounded by them.
"Shut up!" he said to silence the shouts of approval, "we're leaving and that's final. I ain' gonna stay in this death trap any second longer than necessary. Now listen up! You're all gonna surround me, 360 degrees! I wanna see your backs everywhere I turn. We move like that until we get outside alright?"
"Bo-"
"No boss! No buts either! You guys wanna see any of my money, you follow my orders got that?! And gimme some room you bastards. You smell worse than a week-old corpse hidden in fresh horse shit."
So far so good. Kakashi dared to glance at the desk, where the real Gatou was safely tucked under. He nodded to the men and his 'escape' began.
They moved out in the formation that Kakashi/Gatou had ordered. Outside the office though, was a hallway that was too narrow for three men to walk side by side. They compromised by just covering in front and behind their boss, which suited Kakashi just fine.
The alarm screamed into their ears, a constant reminder to the men to keep their guard up. Kakashi saw the way they clutched their assortment of weapons tightly. Their attention was focused outwards. The last place they expected an attack was from behind.
Perfect, just perfect.
Kakashi/Gatou snapped his neck in preparation. Things were about to get very messy.
2
The immediate space around him was immediately filled with smoke, a result of his transformation coming undone.
His fingers blurred and he cursed when he felt them slide against each other in a horrifically wrong way when he formed the. No time to stop though. He would have to pray for the best results possible. His palm slammed against the floor and the stone around him came alive.
The men around him were just reacting when the jutsu's effects appeared. Stone spikes speared into the air, emerging from the stone floor, tearing through skin, flesh and muscle while crushing bones. All of a sudden it was raining blood in the narrow hallway, while screams of pain and agony made for a horrific replacement for thunder.
Kakashi's jutsu made the hallway unstable, and this resulted in its unexpected collapse. The floor crumbled and gave way and they were falling now, ninja and dismembered limbs of ninja and dying ninja, into the main room of the factory filled with row upon row of pulp assembly line and illuminated by fluorescent bulbs hanging in pairs from the ceiling..
Kakashi landed softly, lightly side-stepping falling rubble. The chakra flowed like a raging river into his left Sharingan eye. The dust that was now filling the room was not an obstacle. He could see humanoid figures glowing with chakra.
Frankly it could have been much worse. His jutsu had backfired after all. The spikes farther away from him had been blunt and moved with lesser force making them non-lethal and easier to dodge. Eight people were still standing, or picking themselves up. They were yelling in rage, crying for blood, promising all manners of obscene deaths once they caught him.
Except one.
This one already knew where Kakashi was.
The smoke parted in front of Kakashi like a curtain, split by this rogue ninja's sword and aiming to go right through the copy nin's head.
The silver haired boy was saved by taking an immediate step back in a quarter-turn, and the blade only barely cut his shirt. He swung his own blade, hoping for a quick kill, but the rogue was fast, his sword swift, parrying Kakashi and attacking with such ferocity that Kakashi was flung back through the air by a blow so strong, this body was not equipped with the weight and strength to take it.
The sounds of combat already reached the others and they were already reacting. A rogue was already behind Kakashi to intercept him with his bare hands. Kakashi showed him his mistake when his body twisted in the air and his blade sang. The man's arm was shorter by a hand in a single moment and Kakashi's foot slammed into his face in the next.
Using his head as a launching pad, Kakashi leapt into the air, sheathing his sword before he did so.
A ninja met him in the air, one who was as wide as he was tall, looking like he was all fat and and no muscle. However, he definitely had the weight to stop Kakashi's forward momentum.
The muscles surrounding Kakashi's sharingan stretched, making the eye bulge outwards as Kakashi. The fat rogue did not even think about it, not even recognizing the danger of letting his own blood-shot eyes directly meeting a Sharingan user's gaze. Those eyes immediately rolled up into his head, his body going slack mid-air like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
A moment later Kakashi reached the man mid-air, grabbed him on both sides of his head and twisted his own body over the fat man's with a chakra-enhanced flex of his muscles.
The man's body twisted too, but his head and neck definitely moved faster than everything else below the shoulders. A nauseating crack permeated the large chamber. The silver haired boy pushed off the fat man.
As his body traced an arch over their heads, his hands dug into the kunai pouch and came out with three kunai, each between his knuckles. His hands flashed this way and that, taking out the fluorescent light bulbs one by one until the large chamber was nothing but a dark void that swallowed everyone.
A large full moon hung in the night sky outside but today the weather was on Kakashi's side and the moon's light was stubbornly impeded by clouds.
The Hatake landed on the floor and rolled to a spot he knew was under a part of the assembly line to catch his breath. So far so good. That entire confrontation right now had taken around ten seconds from when the first one attacked him. Of the eight, one was dead while the other screams' were just starting to die down. The blood loss from a severed hand would do him in soon enough.
"Fuck!"
"You little shit!"
"You think we're scared of a little darkness!"
"You think you're safe like this! Just wait till I get my hands on you, you little punk!"
Like the ninja he'd been trained to be, he examined his options, examining their chakra figures, noting who he could take down and how.
He checked his own chakra supply. It definitely was not what it once was, or perhaps, in a manner of speaking, it was what it once was. The point was that he had to be extremely careful. It began to flow through his chakra coils picking up speed until Kakashi could almost feel his body hum.
The copy nin came to a realization.
Maybe not too careful though. Chakra was a mixing of physical and mental energies. While this body was that of thirteen year old, his mind was most definitely not. He had a better understanding of chakra, an understanding that could only be forged by years of use and meditation. His mental energies from a mature and experienced mind was a game-changer, creating a difference in ability far different from what he had expected.
It was like a grand chessmaster who did not even need half of his pieces to defeat a lowly green beginner.
Unlike someone with bad chakra control who's chakra was simply sluggish, his at the moment felt fluid and light. He felt like the walls of a dam that were too thin to do their job properly. A single crack and it would burst out of control.
He would have to concentrate though. A small mistake like with the earth flow spear jutsu might fail to incapacitate a target and even worse leave him open for even half a second. For a ninja, even this low bunch, it was all that was needed.
Blue wisps danced around his blood-soaked fingers. The Hatake would make this work.
Enraged voices continued to pierce the darkness.
"I'm going to find ya, ya little punk and none of is gonna be happy when I do."
They were stalking about now, kunais, knives, swords and other weapons raised. They could barely see each other. The one whose hand was cut off was already unconscious, death not far behind.
"Fuck this," one said and his hands went through some hand seals. His hand lit up, tongues of flames curling around it. his vicinity was illuminated by a warm glow...that was immediately snuffed out when a kunai sped through, taking his hand with it.
Cries of alarm echoed in the room and everyone's hearts started to beat a little bit faster.
"Shit, we can't fight him here. It's too dark and he's seeing us somehow!" This rogue began to move in the direction he knew was the exit, sword held out like a charm to ward off danger.
He made it two steps before his senses flared warning him of incoming danger. He was going to slash his sword in the direction he knew it was coming from when a terrible sound filled his ears, as if a thousand chirping birds were storming through his head. Crackling blue light illuminated grey hair and a Sharingan for the second it took for his head to detach from his shoulder.
The others recoiled. They'd seen it happen. Seen it happen in that one bright and loud then, he was gone again, the darkness swallowing them before they could blink.
"Shit...Shit! Where is he?"
"Here," the voice was immediately followed by the screech of a thousand chirping birds, but both sounds definitely did not come from the same place. The voice came from the left but it was a man on the right who had his heart pierced by a hand encased in lightning.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…" one of the four left began to chant. He footsteps became quicker, more careless. His back bumped into someone.
"Got you!" he heard someone say, and his eyes grew wide at the implication of those words.
"Wait! Wa-!" He screamed in agony as the kunai bit into the arm he had raised. "Fuck! You fucking idiot!" he said when he found his words again.
The other rogue was about to retort that he couldn't fucking see anything when all of a sudden he could see everything because of a crackling blue light. He saw Kakashi upside down in the air between them, spinning, and the arc his hands traced as the digits cut through his neck and his 'comrade's' neck like butter.
The Raikiri was cut off again and Kakashi melted into the darkness.
Only two left, the ninja Kakashi had crossed blades with first and a hulking brute of a ninja who was probably eight feet tall.
Kakashi stalked towards the brute, his next target.
A fireball cut through the darkness moving slowly and the whole room was bathed in a bright orange glow courtesy of the smaller ninja. Everything was illuminated. Even Kakashi.
The big guy did not pass this chance and saw him right away. The distance between them was swallowed and a huge fist was suddenly on its way down to meet Kakashi's face. Kakashi dodged, but the brute caught him by the face with his other hand with a speed that was almost unreal.
"Wha' av' we got here eh?" The brute smiled, revealing a ghastly smile full of gaps and rotting teeth.
Plan B then.
His chakra flared, signalling the paper tags he had placed everywhere he could think of to do their job.
The walls and ceiling were for a moment blindingly bright with the flare of explosions, showering them all with heat and debris. The brute got the worst of the shrapnel and Kakashi counted himself lucky the brute was such a good shield.
Surprise and pain painted itself all over the brute's face and he took his eyes off Kakashi for a second. The boy palmed a kunai immediately and stabbed it into the brute's wrist, pulling a pained yell from the man's mouth and forcing him to let Kakashi go.
The silver haired nin backflipped just in time to avoid the large slab of rubble that fell on the brute.
Navigating his way through the falling debris, amidst the deafening thuds and bumps, something flashed on the edge of Kakashi's vision. His sword was in his hands, blocking the over-head swipe that forced him down to his knees and crunched the floor beneath his feet.
This was the other rogue and his face showed the maddest of grins.
A man of few words it seemed, for he only said, "let's go," before their swords were blurs of steel with sparks flying between them.
The moon finally peeked through the clouds as if it itself, like Kakashi's people, wanted to evaluate Kakashi's performance. It's silver light shone through the gaps in the collapsing building, as two shinobi danced around each other among falling rubble that threatened to crush them with the slightest misstep.
Kakashi weaved and ducked around the man, jumping here and flipping there trying to move away. He had the Sharingan and the eye memorized everything it saw. He'd seen a lot of moves so he knew what worked best with his smaller body. and with every second that this man pushed him he got more and more used to this body.
This rogue was skilled though, giving as good as he got and even better. Kakashi placed his sword to his right, but the block was not strong enough so the blade bit into his bicep before sliding off. A kick to the chest sent him sliding back over the floor to a gap in the wall. This newly created gap overlooked the lake outside the factory. In fact the raised floor dropped directly into the lake.
There was a loud grunt and Kakashi looked to his right. What he saw made him take a step back in shock.
The brute still stood, holding the massive piece of debris over his head with vein bursting effort if the expression on his face was anything to go by.
And then he chucked it straight at Kakashi, and it moved faster than it had any right to. Kakashi did not have time to think. The grip on his sword tightened and the blade was encased in lightning chakra, an extension of his original jutsu.
He swung the blade down, from heaven to earth, creating a blue arc of electricity that met the boulder barely a metre from him. A second later Kakashi was left unharmed while two halves of the boulder splashed noisily into the lake behind him.
It was a herculean feat Kakashi had pulled off, but that did not earn him any point with the rogue ninjas. The swordsman was in front of him barely a moment before the splash died down.
Kakashi using one hand slashed diagonally with the lightning encased blade, but the swordsman lifted his foot and kicked Kakashi's wrist sending the whole sword-bearing right arm back. Kakashi lifted his sword again, and was denied again when the swordsman's other foot met Kakashi's chest sending the Hatake crashing onto the surface of the lake.
He bounced a few times, before the chakra collected at his feet and he was standing on the water. Kakashi wheezed painfully. This was not going well, not well at all.
3
The other two joined him on the water's surface and were stalking forward to finish the job when they all noticed something strange.
Mist.
It snuck its way over the water's surface and curled up their bodies. In seconds the forest surrounding the lake was gone from the vision, hidden by curtains upon curtains of the unnatural mist.
Kakashi felt its cold moist fingers snake over his skin and felt a shiver race its way down his spine. If this was a Konoha nin coming to his aide, could he focus that killing intent on the rogue ninja? He did not exactly feel safe.
One of the rogues spoke, but Kakashi could barely see the man, he could barely see a foot from his own nose.
"This is definitely your killing intent. Whatcha doing this for, eh?! ZA-"
The next word was cut off abruptly, but it was followed by the sound of two small splashes. The killing intent flared suddenly.
"You motherfucker! What are you doing?! Fuck, st-"
Two more short splashes.
The cogs in Kakashi's mind moved. He knew this killing intent. Experienced it so intimately that what he felt now went beyond deja vu. This raw fear that ate at your insides until all you thought of was the sweet release you would feel when your head was lopped off your shoulders.
If he remembered correctly, the time to duck was…
NOW!
The large executioner's blade sang, cutting shaving milimetres off his hair. He rolled away and brought up his sword in a defensive stance, breathing deeply so that the thrill of so narrowly avoiding decapitation faded away. His Sharingan swerved left and right, but the ocular jutsu could not pierce the haze of sick purple chakra that only appeared as mist to the normal eye.
"Impressive," the disembodied voice of a man he once faced in battle spoke. "Not many ever know just when I'm coming."
"So where are you from brat? Konoha? I see that Sharingan, but I very much doubt you're an Uchiha seeing that scar. Those pricks would rather die than give someone their eye."
It was Zabuza. It was most definitely Zabuza. The revelation did not exactly make him feel safer though. He remembered how deadly the demon of Kiri was in his element. As a master of the hidden mist jutsu and an expert in sneaking up on ninja even while lugging around a gigantic sword, Kakashi was, as they say, out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Now that he had dodged once, Zabuza would become a fucking ghost so that Kakashi would not feel him coming. Any jutsu he tried would require hand seals and that would give Zabuza the opening he needed to attack. Moving blindly was an even worse plan.
His next jutsu would have to be timed perfectly. Fast enough and creating a big enough distraction that Zabuza would be open to direct eye to eye contact.
"I guess it does not matter, you're dying here and now. I'm not mad that you killed those guys and I'm not mad you killed Gatou. All I know now though is that its gonna be a helluva' lot harder to get the money he promised me, and that pisses me off. You will compensate me though, because I'm sure someone will pay a pretty penny for that eye of yours."
Kakashi hands blurred, rushing as fast as he could through his handseals, praying he did not make a single mistake because here it would definitely cost him.
But he did not even get to finish.
What happened next, Kakashi only witnessed because he had the Sharingan, otherwise he simply wouldn't have comprehended it. Ninjas' perceptions were already enhanced, especially when the chakra sped through their body in a high tension situation. The Sharingan took that a step further, slowing time to a crawl in their eyes, even at only two tomoe.
In an instant, the explosion of some invisible force blew back the mist entirely. The mist licked at his skin and then so suddenly it wasn't.
In the same instant he saw Zabuza to his right, just as he remembered him, revealed to him in all his demonic glory, his stance wide and his sword already in mid-swing. Reflecting later on the moment, Kakashi gained only more evidence on the difference in physical capabilities between an pubescent boy and a mature adult. He would never have made it in time, he was too slow. As an adult, the odds were much much more favourable but now, his head would have just joined the long list of others that the executioner's blade had separated from their bodies. If not for what happened next.
The force that blew away the mist now exerted its effect on them. The single epic picturesque moment was shattered when both shinobi were suddenly flying though the air like rag dolls, with the speed of a homerun-hit baseball.
Veering from each other, Zabuza splashed hard on the water. Zabuza bounced to his feet on the water's surface while Kakashi angled his body and dove into the water like a speeding bullet. He came up a safe distance away from Zabuza and from the new threat that had so dramatically announced its presence.
Another ninja had joined the fray, the second Kakashi had met that was about the same height as he was this eventful night, standing with one hand held out and the other holding a long spear with a very large and pointy spearhead behind him.
A blank mask covered this one's face and interestingly enough a black beret sat on the crown of his head. It was civilian fashion that was catching on, but ninja and civilians practically shared different cultures.
Kakashi saw the dark sleeveless flak jacket and came up at a blank. No headband and a flak jacket he could not identify with any ninja village he knew. However the equipment this ninja sported was definitely top of the line. A dark skin tight top was worn under the slim-fitting flak jacket whose sleeves barely went past the elbows. The ninja wore fingerless gloves, with an armguard fixed to her palm that stretched past the wrist for a few centimetres.
Hatake then noted the curve of that body and immediately realized it was a girl.
But rather than her femininity, Kakashi was much more interested in that shockwave technique she had just used. It had felt similar...too similar. But it could not be that jutsu. It was ludicrous to the point of fantasy that someone else was capable of that technique.
He did not even want to dream of the implications.
There was a slight splash and the water rippled beside him. Kakashi's 'overseer', the child anbu who had explained this damned 'mission' to him a while earlier now stood beside the silver haired boy.
Bathed in the glow of the low hanging full moon, Kakashi seriously and honestly deeply contemplated if the mysterious woman was dumping all this crap on him on purpose.
end chapter
Hope you enjoyed the chapter.