"Odessa" by Aesop Rock ft. Dose One
"The Revenant" by John Luther Adams, Sigur Ros, Mark Hannah
...
Nostalgia
...
The air was damp, melting with heat. The crawling stench of dried blood, salty and cloying, was hard to ignore. It seeped and mingled, twisting with the acerbic tang of sweat that hung like a vapor over the arena. Sasuke reclined in his seat, picking at the foam that spilled from his armrest. His dark, impassive gaze drifted.
It was safe to say that none of this was going as expected.
The stoic-faced youth buried his fingertips; pinched, twisted the foam. Crossed his legs.
He watched from the corners of his eyes as the small band of kunoichi he'd marked earlier, with the intriguing-if borderline idiotic-facial tattoos sauntered into the building. He noted how they made no effort to disguise themselves as civilians; as if the fluid syncopation of their movements weren't indication enough that they stemmed from a different breed. There was a hazy percussion of acknowledgment that rolled through him as their chakra signatures reached out and brushed his. Scanning. Calculating.
A tepid smirk quirked the corner of his lips as he noticed how one of their auras blazed just the slightest bit cooler, the faintest edge cloudier than her squad-mate's teketsu.
Interesting.
He filed this information away like he did all things that rang with the barest timbre of fragility or weakness. With clinical detachment. Much like the methodical furrow of searching fingertips as they reached for the the next accessible shelf, the nearest jut of reachable stone in the climb of a sheer cliff face.
The kunoichi split ways, wafting like tendrils of smoke through the open spaces in the crowd. His thoughts dipped, shifted.
The screaming had stopped.
Now, there was only the lulling chatter of the eager audience; the occasional jeering roar as a bet was made or small fight broke out-and the steady, unaffected pulse of his own heart.
Yet, it was relentless; repetitious: that jarring spiral of agony, that honest reverberation that echoed in his ears like the howl of a creature gone savage. It was unimaginable, ludicrous even to think that Kakashi could make a sound like that. It didn't-
"Ah!" Sasuke hissed suddenly as white-hot pain ripped through his pinkie finger.
Surprised, the fastidious Uchiha looked down at his hand. His aristocratic features shifted into an expression of vague puzzlement.
He'd shredded the armrest to pieces. Hurt himself by continuing to claw the already stripped foundation.
A tiny bead of blood swelled from where the nail had broken. It swelled and then spread, stretching a dark crimson line down the middle of his finger. It dripped.
Kakashi.
Unbidden, the man's name surfaced. With it swung a barrage of memories, thick and perplexing. Sasuke blinked.
And saw the silver-haired ninja's dim look of surprise as he stepped into their classroom on that very first day, so long ago now; only to have Naruto's sly chalkboard eraser plonk off the top of his head in a spray of dusty powder. The bland, cynical drawl of his voice; so much deeper than any of their instructors at the academy. Colder, too. He could still recall how their new sensei had stared at each of them in turn as they introduced themselves, how the piercing grey of the man's only visible eye didn't seem to match the dopey, half-awake slant of his eyelid. Everything about the man had been shaded and impossible to dissect; useless to try and understand. Like throwing kunai at a target that would somehow always deflect it right back at the last possible second.
It hadn't taken much for Sasuke to spring at him that first day of training, thrumming with killing intent; nor any day after that. In fact, it'd become as natural to him as breathing, as familiar as the walls of his empty little apartment at night or the tiny indentations that were molded to the shape of his feet in the cushy inside of his sandals-The surprising weight of the Copy-Ninja's bandaged shins and forearms as he redirected, blocked, sometimes choosing to simply absorb the Uchiha's furious jabs, kicks, and punches. How, with just a look or subtle intonation, the man could cast even the most cavalier of men spiraling in a loop of damning internal self-vexation.
He'd become used to the man's listless slouch. That characteristic, almost shy concealment of pale fingertips inside pants pockets or beneath the armpits of a faded green jonin vest. How he always chose not to sit with them when they ate during missions, as if it were the most natural thing to do. The way a very strange, somehow cavernous look would slide into the man's cloudy iris at odd intervals; and their words would seem to bounce off him then like brittle grains of rice. As if he had suddenly fallen somewhere very deep, very secret within himself.
Sasuke kneaded his forehead.
He could remember an endless scroll of mornings; pale and sunny, chill and dreary, spent waiting. Fuming. A hazy enmeshment of nights spent loosely sprawled out beneath the double-blanket of his bedroll and Kakashi's silent guard. The sudden and pinning fascination he'd felt their first winter as a team, when he 'd noticed the fine ghostly plumes of breath that'd steamed, hanging in the air, through the seamless pitch of the silver-haired man's mask. How he'd thought, briefly and childishly for a rare moment that, if he could just stare hard enough, he could somehow read the shape of the inside of Kakashi's mouth there. And promptly feeling disgusted with himself for even speculating on such a thing.
The thing was he'd often been tempted to like Kakashi. Truthfully, for a fairly long while he had wanted very much to look up to, admire, and even respect Team Seven's jonin sensei.
The only problem was that Kakashi Hatake had this truly unique way of making things consistently difficult in that regard; on what some might consider an exponentially inclined basis.
His reflective, mirror-like stare. The way all questions and criticism always seemed to eddy off him like stone redirecting water in a stream. The way he'd smelt vaguely of dog, and some elusive spice that was halfway between cinnamon and clove; a pale woodsy sort of scent that summoned the fantasy of strange, silently looming trees with long silver branches and papery silver bark that peeled away-through only the bluntest of strikes, again and again-to reveal the sticky amber heart buried beneath. It was the arid, sun-bleached musk of ozone that'd settled like a fine, invisible powder over the flint-eyed shinobi from an endlessly elongating line of chidori's that'd burnt into flickering life over his palms. The smell of a creature that spent more time outside the walls of human comfort and companionship. Often, the Uchiha had thought the silent stare of night, the muted skin of rocks, or the dry whisper of wind sloughing through the leaves held more in common with the aloof, cryptic shinobi than he ever had.
And there was that small matter of Team Seven's jonin sensei continuing to breathe, day in day out, while the transcendent power of the Sharingan continued to rest inside his very skull.
Sasuke's recollections smoldered. That's right. He hated Kakashi.
The fact that he'd ever been forced into a position where he'd had to put his trust in a man who'd committed a personal atrocity against his own clan... The Uchiha shook his head quietly. It made him feel sick.
But...
He couldn't equate the recurring image of the pale monster that'd lunged for his jugular with... his old jonin-sensei.
Sasuke tugged at his collar. Sweat had begun to smear a ticklish lick down the nape of his neck to just between his shoulder blades. Against his will, memory raised it's cratered head. Beckoned. Sasuke clenched his eyes shut tight.
And saw Kakashi's solitary grey eye staring straight back, less than a hands-breadth's from his own.
From this close, Sasuke could make out the overlapping splashes of moonlight and sea that seemed to mesh together in astral symmetry within the obscure depths of his sensei's dark eye. He stared. Hard; tension knocking through the strained capillaries in his temples. Willed, begged his Sharingan to work.
"Focus, Sasuke."
Exhaling with forced steadiness, the genin squinted. His hands were clasping his knees, already slick with sweat. The longer he stared at Kakashi's eye-his eye. Not the one he'd stolen from the Uchiha... It was disorienting. Kakashi had a microscopically fine freckle on his bottom eyelid.
For having the majority of his face covered, the prestigious jonin was striking; if unconventionally so. Sasuke couldn't remember seeing that oblique, sylph-like shape framing anyone else's eyes in all of Konoha. His teacher was the last of his clan... Just like him.
The Uchiha wondered where the Hatake clan had originated from. If it had been land that was white and snowy, like the Copy-Ninja's pale hair.
"You've activated it once. You can do it again."
The low rumble of Kakashi's voice angered him. It was frustratingly level, gentle even. What Sasuke had come to silently identify as the man's "Sensei voice" in his innermost thoughts.
He hated it.
And Sasuke hated that he hated it.
Huffing out a slow, controlled exhale from his nostrils, Sasuke closed his eyes and attempted to regather his thoughts. It was so hard to focus when practically everything about the person sitting across from him, bony kneecaps nearly brushing his, made him want to shove them from their precarious seat. He wondered what would happen if he did.
Sure, the finely-tuned jonin would catch himself, no doubt dish out some grueling punishment.
But... would it hurt the Copy-Nin? Would something inside the man's apathetic slouch tighten in stinging remembrance of this rejection every time he looked at Sasuke?
Something about that sounded strangely appealing.
As a genin who'd just completed his first C-rank mission (which had turned out to be more of an A-rank, really), it was a simple fact that his instructor was the sole source of pain, governance, and occasionally savage retribution in his life. Sasuke tried not to simmer.
"Ready?" The man was saying, "Try again."
Sasuke sighed. Gathered himself, brow ticking slightly. Pressed the cold tips of his middle and pointer fingers to his temples. Drew in a steadying breath.
"Good."
Deciding to ignore the nasty impulse to tell his own teacher to shut up, Sasuke opened his eyes with a flash of withdrawing black lashes and widening coal orbs. He stared into Kakashi's uncovered eye as forcefully as he could muster.
The Copy-Ninja stared back at him enigmatically. There was no detectable expression in the outline of his masked lips, set in their natural half-pout that could have hidden anything, and he knew the man's silver brow to always have a bit of an upturned slant to it anyway... What was Kakashi thinking?
They'd been sitting like this for hours. Perched high up in the secluded branches of a tree skirting the clearing of training ground 9, the distant clash of ringing metal drifted up to them from Naruto and Sakura sparring heatedly below. Sasuke resisted the urge to shift his weight, already feeling a keen ache in his nether regions from straddling the wide branch they'd been sitting on in the same position for so long. Kakashi was sitting the same way, but his legs were longer and they dangled over the sides of their roost loosely. Sasuke's brow ticked-Surely all blood-flow to the jonin's legs had stopped by now? He couldn't be the only one uncomfortable here.
"Really, I'm flattered."
His sensei's dry tone jolted him out of his reverie. And then.
"My eye is up here, Sasuke."
Shaking himself, the genin swiftly realized that he'd been staring vaguely down at the man's crotch.
The Uchiha's eyes widened. He jolted stiffly into an upright posture, heat cresting his cheeks. He wasn't-No.
"Shut up." he said reflexively, then froze. He tried to look into Kakashi's eye, helpless not to look for the anger he expected to be there. But the iron flatness of the jonin's gaze seemed to burn him with it's emptiness. Sasuke looked somewhere to the left, crossing his arms, and grumbled a loose apology under his breath.
This was stupid.
He saw the Copy-Ninja's shoulders slump a little in his peripheries. It was hard to identify-he couldn't tell if it was out of exasperation or an expression of gross discomfort.
Kakashi sighed. An edge of the man's deep voice colored the exhalation, and it was just a small noise so it shouldn't have stung so much. All of a sudden, at the barest admission of disappointment from the slouched Captain of Team Seven, Sasuke felt himself grow angry. If the man didn't want to be here, why was he making Sasuke train like this at all?
Something deep in the pit of his chest stung, but he'd never call it hurt.
"Sasuke-" his teacher started.
"You shouldn't be teaching me this." The raven-haired boy cut him off with a cold mutter.
Kakashi said nothing. He simply leaned back a fraction, regarding him with that stony, unreadable stare.
The Copy-Ninja crossed his arms. Blinked.
Sasuke felt his face contorting into a sneer, so he pretended to scratch his nose and looked down sharply.
"What's wrong?"
The man might have been discussing the weather. The black-haired boy battled a sudden eruption of anger, knowing it to be irrational.
"Nothing." he said, trying to mimic the Copy-Ninja's detached tone, "Can we go train with the rest of the team now?"
The masked shinobi continued to sit in silence. A passing cloud peeled back from the sun and illuminated patches of his rambling locks in fiery, blinding white. The man was said to be a genius. From what the Uchiha had seen of Kakashi's fight with Zabuza, the Copy-Ninja was unarguably one of the elite.
Even if his fame was all due to the offensive appropriation of the god-like power of his clan... Surely the man could see what was wrong without needing it to be said? The Uchiha couldn't be more unimpressed.
Kakashi chose that moment to pull out his favorite, blaringly orange, outright galling past-time. Sniffed. Thumbed a page.
Sasuke's icy gaze was lost in the furious slitting of his dark lashes. He had been wrong, Kakashi wasn't stupid-he was omnipotent in his cruelty.
"Something you feel like talking about?" the man drawled.
The Uchiha resisted the urge to swing at him. There was something incalculably horrid about conversing with someone who's nose was buried in a porn novelette. It was at complete odds with the blunted, yet unmistakable tenor of warmth that hovered like an unseen current beneath the dry words. As if they were having the most companionable of interchanges.
"No. Sensei." Sasuke pressed the word like he was talking to a dog, "There's nothing I feel like talking about."
"Ah."
He knew he should just leave it there, but there was a cold incalescence building under his shirt's wide collar. His hands bunched into fists over his thighs and he fought valiantly for a dense compression of seconds.
"It's not like you're the best person to talk to anyways." he heard himself say.
"Mm," his teacher nodded sagely and then blinked one of those slow, owl-like blinks. His silver brow arched and then skewered. The Copy-Ninja leaned forwards, squinting at him, "Oh, hold on, were you saying something?"
Fury erupted like molten lead, that boundless reservoir of pooling rage that seemed always to be just under the surface, just waiting to be tapped.
"Typical." he spat the word quietly. Rolled his eyes over the tickling pressure that'd begun to spread through the bridge of his nose like he was about to sneeze-Only it was worse. Infinitely worse.
He crossed his arms again, seething the longer the silence stretched between them. Well, were they just going to sit here, up in this fuckin tree all day?
"Idiot." he muttered harshly under his breath, knowing full well that it would be as clear as daylight to the older shinobi. The man had eerily keen senses. A fact that, more often than not, only served to make him all the more infuriating.
Sasuke waited for his sensei to say something.
Something in Kakashi's eye could have flickered, but it might have been the shifting of the light over the patterned fronds of the leaves. He seemed to take in his student's hunched posture reluctantly.
And then Kakashi's cabalistic gaze slid somewhere smoothly elsewhere-somewhere just to the left of Sasuke's shoulder. The Uchiha stiffened, gritting his teeth. Something about his teacher's sudden refusal to look at him smarted like a fresh wound.
"I know I'm not the one supposed to be teaching you this..."
The masked shinobi breathed. Whatever words the Uchiha had been about to say evaporated. He was distantly aware of his body, as if his consciousness had somehow retracted into the coldest corner of his being.
"It should be someone from your clan." Kakashi's velvet voice was muffled. It made him cringe to hear it. He was painfully aware of the gravity of some obscured, carefully arranged, emotion in the man's tone. And all of a sudden he wanted the Copy-Ninja to stop speaking. Ice trickled a jittery line in a thin dash down his navel. Sasuke felt as though an enormous, passing entity had tumbled through him.
"Itachi."
"Don't." He whispered, petrified, "Don't say his name."
And then something horrible, something truly rotten happened.
Sasuke started shaking.
"Don't..."
His hands were squeezing his knees, hard enough to bruise, but he couldn't stop. He felt keenly each individual fracture as something entombed deep in his core cracked. The tiny pieces dropped, landing on the surface of what could have been a lake of shadow that had stretched out to fill the empty parts of his body.
Sasuke shook. He imagined several different ways to kill the tactless, rigidly collected man before him.
The Sharingan would be the first to go.
Kakashi merely continued to look at him. Silently appraising. As if he hadn't just uttered the name of Sasuke's older brother. Who-The Uchiha struggled to contain the acidic wave of vitriol that scraped up the back of his throat.
Failed.
"Kami! What is your deal, Kakashi-sensei?" Sasuke hissed, slapping the flat of his palms on his knees. A horrible dampness had begun to curdle in the crooks of his rapidly blinking eyes. He tried to stop, he really did...
"Aren't you the adult?" the pale-faced boy ground through clenched teeth, "You're supposed to be the one who knows what to say. You're the one in charge! You-" the Uchiha groaned, one small hand fisting in his hair and then dropping to his thigh with a dull smack, "You're a horrible teacher. A-"
"Sasuke." The silver-haired man's voice was a low, purring threat. Sasuke didn't listen.
"-Sometimes I don't think you care about anyone but yourself!" he heard himself throw the proverbial dart from what felt like a great distance, "You just want to get us out of your hands. Pass us off to the jonin exams. You-We don't even know you!" he exploded, hand gesturing incredulously, "You're such a terrible liar, sensei."
Kakashi's jejune eye widened. The black-haired genin couldn't stop.
"We're expected to follow your every command, but you're just a faceless pain in the ass!" he panted, "Are you so scared of us dying that you don't want to let us know anything about you? Real testament to your teaching skills, sensei."
The Copy-Ninja said nothing. Then.
"We are close Sasuke." he gave the boy a sharp chipper smile that Sasuke could tell was fake even through the mask, "Look, our knees are almost touching."
He nearly did shove the man off the tree branch then. Except, to his horror, sharp pinpricks of heat had begun to cluster in the tight space behind his eyes.
Oh no.
Kakashi's grey eye tightened.
And then the sole of his sensei's sandal slammed down onto the top of his foot. Hard. Sasuke slid sideways with a yelp, too startled to catch himself with his other leg, and fell.
"Ahh-huh?"
The jonin's narrow foot had swung mechanically into place at the last possible second, locking against the rigid flex of Sasuke's own foot in an impossible hold. The Uchiha gasped, dangling, arms swinging over his head uselessly. Roughly four hundred feet above the ground. His vision tunneled and contracted. Tiny, coin-sized versions of the tops of Sakura and Naruto's heads bounced across the freshly-shaven grass below.
"Hey!" The weight of pooling blood in his face was a blossoming pressure, "T-the hell!"
He resisted the urge to twist and turn, cruelly aware of how even the smallest of twitches would send him plummeting. His heart drummed in his ears. How had he allowed this to happen?
"Let's get one thing straight."
Oh no. Was he seriously about to give him a lecture?
"I'm not Uchiha. I'm not your mom, I'm not your dad; not your father's grandfather's uncle's sister's nephew's second cousin twice removed."
"You-my what?" Sasuke sputtered.
"But, I have a Sharingan." Kakashi continued unflinchingly, "And, you need someone to teach you."
"I never asked-"
"No one does." A naked harshness chilled the man's tone, and Sasuke was explicitly horrified to see three sparkling tears drop sleekly through his outstretched fingers then, "This shit just happens."
Sasuke drew in a shaky inhale. The muscles in his foot and leg were starting to cramp. Kakashi went on. Relentless.
"Right now, I'm what you've got. You and I both know you are going to need your Sharingan, that it's crucial to your development as a ninja. Now, I'm not supposed to tell anyone this but the chunin exams are going to be hosted in Konoha this year. You're not training with the rest of the team right now because, until you can manipulate it at any moment like you did with Zabuza and Haku-you're not ready."
"I don't-" The genin started, enraged.
"What." And the masked man's voice was low, cutting, "You don't-"
Before Sasuke could blink, he suddenly found himself swinging through the air again. In a casual movement that was frightening in it's blade-like precision and strength, the Copy-Ninja tossed him with a kick of his sweeping leg back into the exact spot he'd been sitting in. Sasuke curled over the branch, gasping into the whorled, scabby bark.
-"Trust me?" his teacher finished.
He looked up through the feathery pitch of his bangs. Kakashi was sitting exactly as before, shoulders canted back against the aged trunk of the tree, distasteful choice in literature blaring orangely between them, legs spread carelessly. Only the unmistakable softness of the man's slowly blinking eye gave off the slightest impression that he had been paying attention to what'd just been said between them at all.
"-Aaand, I'll be taking those. Thanks."
Kisame plucked a man's roasted nuts from his hands as the man sidled awkwardly by them, tip-toeing uncomfortably as he attempted to cut across the aisle. Sasuke blinked, rapidly coming back to himself as his teammate popped several into his mouth with a splintering crack. Kisame grinned, having slipped into the raggedy seat beside his at some point during his recollection.
The unlucky man gawped at the hulking swordsman, quickly seemed to decide that he wasn't all that hungry after all, and proceeded to rapidly continue his mincing crab-walk away from them with sweating, rather alarmed features.
"I love it when they pale like that." Kisame guffawed around a mouthful of nuts.
Sasuke rolled his eyes.
"Anyway, I had a feeling-" Kisame crunched, lidless eyes gleaming sideways at him, "You'd wanna see this. For... personal reasons. And all that gushy sentimentalism you have."
The young Uchiha simply looked at him.
"Hey." The tiny scattering of scales along the man's brows seemed to flash defensively as the bulky Akatsuki member froze suddenly. He sniffed, slitted irises pinning fiercely, "Are you trying out a new cologne? Something smells awfully..."
Sasuke said nothing, skin tightening in a prickly crawl all over his body.
"Delicious..."
Kisame's dagger-like gaze marauded the stiffened figure of his fellow organization member. The Uchiha slowly lowered his bleeding finger to his side in what he hoped passed for a seemingly casual motion. Sat on it.
"Don't be ridiculous." He said, sweating faintly. Kisame sniffed, a somewhat mystified look curdling between his fin-like brows, before shrugging and diving back into his captured nuts.
Rust-hued lights flickered and dimmed suddenly before flashing back on again. There was a swelling roar of approval.
The match was about to begin. Low chatter, humming with tense energy rose and fell in waves throughout the crude, sweaty amphitheater. Hoots of excitement and cackling laughter flared. Someone spilled their drink in the row behind him.
Eyes widening slightly, Sasuke jerked his head to the side, narrowly avoiding a wave of frothing alcohol.
He stared at the blue-skinned man beside him flatly.
Kisame offered him an apologetic grin, or at least what an apologetic grin might look like on the blue-skinned man's face. It was sort of hard to tell when he was using a cocktail umbrella to pick his teeth.
"Don't give me that look. We deserve a night off." the Monster of the Hidden Mist growled, reclining with an exaggerated sigh, and crossed his legs, "Anyway," he brandished the tiny yellow umbrella at Sasuke, "Look. The show's about to start."
What a stupid waste of time.
Sasuke felt a sudden prickling along the back of his neck. Ever so slightly, he shifted in his seat and caught the gaze of one of the tattooed kunoichi from across the apitheater. She held his gaze for a breath, then looked away.
So, like that huh?
There came a low, rolling metallic reverberation. It swept through the cramped enclosure with a bone-humming resonance. Conversation and laughter dwindled. A silence so empty, so thin it seemed to constrict in ravenous anticipation, unrolled. Sasuke held his breath.
There were so many things, so many other, very important things they could be doing right now. The fractured bed of his pinkie nail throbbed.
Another liquid peal of metal rang. Tremulous.
Again. Again-A steady, sonorant beat began to pulse, drumming gravely.
Fire sputtered chokingly into life. It splurched, flickering into vibrancy with a dry cough of heat. Tossing flames sparked, twisted into a dancing ring around the cage in the center of the arena. In the dark depths of the Uchiha's obsidian gaze, the flames wound and burst; an effigy of light and rollicking shadow.
The heat was incredible.
On the far side of the arena, twin black-painted metal doors swung open with a booming clang.
Sasuke's eyes widened.
The floor seemed to flex, shuddering as the bone-vibrating jounce of slow, elephantine footsteps rolled into being somewhere behind the shadowed entrance.
A low hum of appreciation spilled over the crowd. With each gargantuan footstep the metal frame of his seat twanged faintly beneath the Uchiha's fingertips.
"Ho-ly shit." Kisame's lidless eyes seemed to widen. He leaned forward in his seat, razor-edged teeth shattering nuts everywhere, "The man's a monster."
As strange as it was to hear a man with gills call someone a monster, Sasuke couldn't help but agree.
For what stepped out of the shadows, bald head tossing, couldn't possibly be a human being.
Lumbering just short of ten feet, the pale eyed giant growled and spat. Slab-like muscles flexed, popped, and rolled beneath vein-mottled skin the color of cold stone. The cords in his neck stood out like iron bars, his hands like heavy spades. Perhaps, Sasuke reflected through a mild sheen of horror, the most gruesome of all was the man's face: pinched, glistening under the claret stadium lights; the grey flesh of the man's upper lip had been torn completely off.
The end result was a macabre pastiche of a skeleton caught in midst of the terrible process of diverging itself from the titan's ragged visage.
"Be-he-moth! Be-he-moth!" The crowd chanted. There was the accompanying march of stamping feet and the crystal pop of beer bottles shattering underfoot.
"This should be interesting." The Uchiha breathed. Kisame smirked.
Sasuke watched the scarred creature trudge mightily down the uneven steps toward the hellish cage. Three of the curiously tattooed kunoichi accompanied the monster, seemingly as his escort. Sasuke watched as the one in the back with acidic green locks several lengths shorter than his own stalked silently down the steps whilst the other two flitted about, blowing kisses and tossing their hips at the wild, cheering crowd.
"Put your hands together, we've got a special treat tonight folks." a remarkably dry, female voice hiccuped suddenly from the loudspeakers, "Right here at your very own, uh you get the point just buy some fuckin' candy okay? Brought to you by Shinobi Geriatrics and-okay who the fuck is gonna need that?" There was a drunken roar of approval, "If the blade doesn't catch us, I think we all know most of us are going to die of kidney failure or syphilis anyways."
"Syphilis! Yeaahh!"
Someone in the crowd cheered.
Kisame choked on a handful of nuts. Sasuke had to pummel him on the back. Semi-digested nuts rained in a viscous spray all over the blonde sitting in the row directly before them. They both froze.
She appeared to be completely oblivious. The two Akatsuki members shared a look of somber agreement, and then turned away simultaneously.
"Hey, hey," the mordant woman on the loudspeaker seemed to be addressing someone backstage without realizing she was still being broadcast, "You put some special juju in that booger-sugar?" she sniffed once, speakers rattling deafeningly, "My lips feel like boat rudders and I think I'm peeing... Oh, spunk my trunk and call me Agnes-uh... Your man, the Behemoth..."
There was a slight pause, wherein some of the audience clapped hesitantly.
Several loud percussive beats, one eardrum-bursting ring later, and a new voice bustled onto the scene.
"Oho-kay, ladies and gentlemen our sincerest apologies. Apparently someone thought it was bring your child to work day." he laughed smoothly, "And now, everyone throw your mitts together and give a warm welcome to the new kid on the block! He's someone I guess you could say," there was an overt pause, "we've all heard a lot about, heheh. You may wanna strap yourselves in for this one, folks, word on the street is he's got a bit of a temper."
Chains clinked from the side of the stadium. Sasuke swiveled in his seat, hands flying to his ravaged armrests.
And was for a moment blinded.
In the merciless afterglow of the razing caustic light, the hazy silhouette of a man was drawn.
Four of the kunoichi with the silvered crowns were circled about him, their hands raised. Poised. They moved with him in a tight, guarded formation.
There were no words to encapsulate the symmetry of motion evinced in that liquid stalk. It was alien. Primeval.
Hatake.
"Prepare to meet," the announcer's voice husked, "a man who's left his humanity far, far behind..."
The figure began his descent.
There was a hush, an invisible flex of tension that sifted like rainfall. Tension knotted the stadium.
The man who Sasuke had once called sensei was hooded by a thick burlap sack. It was ratty and dirt-clotted. His arm were shackled to the elbow against the sinewy curve of his back. He wore only a pair of loose trousers, low-slung and tattered about his hips. They ended just above the hard rise of his calves and seemed to have seen better days. Bloodied bandages, dusty and stained, sheathed the man's narrow ankles and wrists.
Sasuke stared.
"And traded it in for something..."
There was no mistaking that civet grace, that glacial intent. What didn't mesh with Sasuke's recollection of his old sensei was the litany of beading welts, weeping cuts, and the rash of thundercloud bruises that were daubed across the man's pale skin like the errant brushstrokes of a child. Sasuke absorbed it all numbly. As if from the muddied flux of a half-wokendream.
"Primal." The annoucer was saying, "Something more-"
Kakashi stumbled, veering to the side abruptly. One of the kunoichi, her hair magenta-tipped and pinned with an array of tiny clips that matched the steely shimmer of her tattooed temples, lunged to intercept him. Sasuke's eyes widened. And he watched, a surreal sensation of tunneling disbelief flattening him to his seat, as Kakashi ducked. The bound man lifted one leg in a very natural, almost lazy half-skip-and then proceeded to flip, bagged head looping inches from the ground as his lithe body twisted. In a liquid, moderately hypnotizing pattern of motion, the Copy-Ninja landed; but not before catching the back of the kunoichi's neck with one scissoring thigh and bringing her crashing face-first to the steps.
The woman's pink tresses jerked as a loud crunch echoed through the building as her neck snapped. Silence whooshed over the crowd. Kakashi crouched over her, bound, panting. His face was still obscured; a mystery even in the face of such brute lethality. The corpse's booted beet jilted, pattering a garbled rhythm over the wet stone as her sisters looked on in horror. Stopped.
The shackled man rose. The rosy hue of the spotlight smoldered down upon him. There was a simplicity, an ineffable patience in the calculated deliberation of his movements that was just as recognizable to Sasuke as it was terrible to behold.
And suddenly he knew then that whatever stood defiantly before him, before them all now; it had been a part of his old sensei all along.
He'd caught glimpses of it. Before...
In the stiffening of a spine by only the barest of degrees as a hand loomed closer for a friendly pat on the back. The white-haired ninja's tendency to cloak himself in silence, even to the point of worsening a situation. The way, during any spare moment, the man's uncovered lid would inevitably begin to droop; as if remaining awake were simply too much of a burden.
Sasuke was brought back to the present by a dreadful, distinct scream.
Less than a hands-width away from the silent horror himself, a man seated directly beside the fresh corpse of the fallen kunoichi let out a dazed sort of moan. He began to scramble backwards over the people in the row of chairs behind him. Low murmurs began to buzz, filling the room.
"Get him to the cage!" One of the kunoichi bellowed, her thick brows drawn beneath a ruler-straight fringe of glossy blue locks.
The nearest kunoichi dived, fingers weaving-and had to duck as the sprawled weight of her dead comrade was catapulted towards her with a battering roll, interrupting her jutsu. Her bobbing, pastel lemon curls tossed as she slung a volley of shurikan. And then the captured Copy-Ninja was upon her. She stabbed at him with a kunai, yet-bagged, tied, and dressed in more injuries than clothes-Sasuke saw the flicker of dread in her eyes even as she swung.
Kakashi seemed to slide backwards; intuitively dodging the shurikan, side-stepping the searching blade of her kunai-and then dropping nimbly through the three other kunoichi's charged at him, dancing like underwater snakes through the sticky, electric air.
"And," the loudspeaker buzzed, "it looks like the show's started a little early tonight."
There was a terrible, drunken shout.
Sasuke watched as two of the kunoichi's hands twisted into a matching seal. A metal barrage of screwing vines, barbed and glinting under the dry red lights, shot out from the center of their chests, swooping towards Kakashi. The thorny chains flickered, zinging as they whipped about the cuffed ninja's knees. Kakashi's back arched in pain and he tried to stagger, but fell-Rolling seamlessly over his bruised-looking shoulder, and lunged back to his feet.
Only to be slammed mercilessly right back onto the hard floor as the blue-haired kunoichi's foot made contact with the side of his face. She snapped her knee. His feet slid out from under him and his body followed his head as it crashed to the stone steps. The same ones he'd used to kill the woman's friend.
The crowd went mad.
Sitting stiffly, back squashed to the greasy cushion of his seat, Sasuke felt himself grow cold as everyone around him seemed to jump in unison. Kisame was cheering.
"Ladies and gentlemen..." The loudspeaker announced gravely.
And then Kakashi let out a sharp, surprised note of unguarded hurt.
It was buried beneath the deafening babble of the audience, the sound of clapping and laughter, but Sasuke still heard it. And, in a bizarre flash of memory that was not his own, but a captured shot stored by the secret inner workings of his Sharingan on that very same day Kakashi had been helping him learn to activate his own. He saw arms, just an edge thinner, a shade paler than his own, dart forwards, trying to catch a blue mug before it broke. The flecked, oily surface of the cup shattered, exploding over the polish of a kitchen floor Sasuke did not recognize. The hands he was seeing were small, a child's. He watched as they fumbled with the jagged slivers, trembling anxiously over the broken ceramic and Sasuke felt a hot flare of panic spill over him-but it was not his feeling. It was Kakashi's.
Superimposed over the scene playing out before his eyes under the carmine glare of the stadium lights, Sasuke watched the abducted memory unfurl.
He looked up through the silver-haired ninja's eyes as the soft tread of feet alerted them to another's presence. The bare soles of Kakashi's feet vibrated at the padding approach and shame blistered through the recollection. It was an acute thing; strangling.
Sasuke's fingers curled over the tattered scaffold of his chair as, less than several arm-lengths from him, the blue-haired kunoichi ground the stabbing crux of her heel into what could have been the Copy-Ninja's temple or chin. Kakashi made that sound again, the one that didn't sound like him. Like he'd been flayed somewhere he'd never been touched before. And-
-Through the glimmer of anamnesis settled over his vision like a second skin, the Uchiha felt the scaly prickle of hot, itching pain as the Kakashi in the memory moved, trying to gather all of the jagged mess in his hands. The boy's breath shook.
The kunoichi's heavy brow was smooth. She looked down at the bleeding man beneath her foot. The bow of her lips curled. She spat.
"I give you..."
The creeping puddle of garish red had begun to spread from the magenta-haired ninja's dented cranium, still propped stiffly into the unforgiving, ninety-degree angle of the step. The blood seeped. It burgeoned and lapped at the Copy-Ninja's bagged face, saturating the grainy canvas.
It began to choke him.
The audience cheered, ecstatic. The sound of their hooting voices echoed off the walls of the dingy enclosure in a deafening roll.
"Ohoho," Kisame grinned with a shivery shake of his shoulders, "That is a nasty lady."
Sasuke glanced at him askance.
And saw the Yondaime Hokage, through the captured memory of his former sensei, staring right back. The man's lean face was bright with alarm, his blue eyes wide with worry.
"Woah," Kisame seemed to mistake Sasuke's intense stare for something else. He patted his body for a moment, as if trying to hide it from Sasuke's piercing gaze, and then chuckled, "Sharingan activated much? Like what you see."
"Kashi..."
The Fourth's voice was so gentle it was painful to Kakashi, who never knew what to do when people spoke to him like that. The blonde man knelt, knees dipping to the floor beside the boy. A sense of fragility and helplessness so great it made Kakashi's knees quake blustered through the hazy recollection.
In real time, the black-haired Akatsuki member, marked the progress of the Copy-Nin as the three kunoichi dragged him towards the flaming cage in the center of the room. By now the audience was cheering riotously.
"The one..."
Inside the narrow confines of the cage, wreathed in hungrily tossing flames, the Behemoth paced. Swung his meaty arms. Sweat cascaded in a oily sheen down towering creature's pitted, pebbly skin. The giant let out an equine snort of dispelled air and rolled his enormous shoulders. It took him a mere four paces to cross the length of the cell.
Sasuke heard Kisame rustle into a more comfortable position in the low, squashed seat beside him.
"Don't do that." The Yondaime said softly, a sad sort of smile crossing his face, "Look. You hurt yourself..." And, the tanned fingers of the Hokage folded over Kakashi's. Blood dripped from the fragmented shards of broken cup clutched tightly in small, pale hands.
The three other kunoichi, who'd come out with the Behemoth, joined their sisters. Now, the majority of the Copy-Ninja's svelte body and legs were enmeshed in a flashing cocoon of barbed wire.
"The only..."
With each step they passed, there was an adjuvent hitch of breath jarred from Kakashi's lungs as his unprotected ribs crashed into the stone stairs again and again. There was a callous crop of laughter from the audience. Sasuke's chest tightened. The announcer clicked on the mike again, and said simply.
"Wolf."
...
...
"I've known Hijame since I was a little kid."
Naruto's sky-blue eyes swiveled to the reluctant expression sagging the face of the rogue-nin they'd captured. Yori, he'd introduced himself with a timid blush. A low fire danced and sputtered between them, smoke rising and trickling like silk up through the fronds of River Country's fecund, rubbery-green underbrush. Sai and Pakkun sat against the cushion of their travel packs, forming a little horse-shoe around the flames. Sakura looked up from a short distance away, where she sat sharpening her tools perched in the ropy limbs of a gnarled tree.
Ever since failing to rescue Kakashi at the riverbed, and for all intents and purposes allowing their jonin-sensei to be kidnapped by a murderous Rogue-Nin, Sakura had been a little... Removed.
"We grew up on the streets of Suna, my brother and I." Yori whispered into the gently fizzling rain, "It was after the Third Great Ninja War, and there were a lot of us. Orphans, I mean."
"I remember we used to dig through the trash bins behind the courthouse. That's where we lived, Iokua and I. We used to gather as many scraps and tatters of paper as he could and used them to insulate us through the night." Yori paused, and explained, "Suna gets dangerously cold at night. The heat and the lack of cover could kill a strong man during the day, but when darkness falls that's when you really need to be careful. All the poisonous reptiles and hunters of the night are out, prowling. Looking for a tasty treat."
He looked up at Naruto then. Something in the boy's bright hazel eyes burned to look at. At first, the Jinchuriki couldn't make sense of it. Yori spoke again, and Naruto's azure orbs widened.
"Hijame was our leader."
The emotion glittering from those almond-shaped eyes was something Naruto had never seen before. Not in all of Fire Country, not in any of his missions that took him outside of it. Never before had someone looked at him quite like that... The blond-haired teenager blinked. He knew the word for this.
"Our protector."
Despair.
...
...
"You cold-hearted bastard." One of the kunoichi breathed into his ear. Kakashi didn't know how he could even hear her through the roaring of the crowd and the blood-thickened cloth of the bag swaddled over his head. He was having trouble breathing it was so hot and musty. The nauseating smell of copper flooded his nose and mouth. He jerked in their chains, but only succeeded in tearing the lance-like spikes deeper into his skin.
The gong-like reverberations of the drumming beat had picked up their pace. They stratified into something harsher. Wilder. He-
-Had... Had he just killed Sakura?
Kakashi struggled to inhale. He could feel the blasting heat of fire as he was herded up a rickety flight of steps. It pressed against the tangle of spiked chains curled about him, giving a sickly torridity to the metal digging into his flesh. He could only remember seeing a flash of pink hair through the slim gap under his bagged hood when it'd lifted from his shoulders for the barest split of a second as he'd flipped through the air.
He didn't want it to be possible. But Hajime had captured Naruto, Sakura, and Sai. He'd heard them screaming... Tried to save them. What if-
Sharp fingernails dug into the bare skin of his shoulder. The voice behind him hissed.
"You killed Hana."
Under different circumstances he might have cried in relief. Whoever Hana was, she wasn't Sakura.
The wicked chains of the kunoichis' intricate binding-jutsu withdrew with a snap. Kakashi fell again, white spots bursting through the darkness of his vision as a feeling like raking flames raced in a multitude of directions over his body.
He screamed, teetering on the brink of consciousness for a fragile moment.
"Die." The command was whispered against the sweating skin of his neck like a kiss, "At the hand of the Behemoth."
The constricting hold of the metal coiled tightly above his elbows was unclipped. They fell with a metallic clamor to the podium beneath his bare feet.
The grainy netting of the sack was torn from his head. Kakashi had to blink several times as the full radiance of the glaring crimson stage-lights beamed down on him. He panted, blood dripping down his body.
The crowd absolutely thundered.
Kakashi shook his head, squinting hazily through the sweat-dampened tendrils of his grey hair. His Sharingan had been swaddled closed with a wrap of dusty bandages. His wrists were still cuffed behind him. He swung his vision through the tall, snapping flames ringing the cage before him. The kunoichi behind him pressed her palm to the dip of his back.
Three of her friends swung open the door of the cage. The rusty chain-link rattled. And then, all of the Copy-Ninja's attention was latched onto the hellish smile of the man standing in the opposite corner. His white hair lifted with the subtle straightening of his spine, and he wasn't ready for this-He couldn't do this anymore-He-
The woman's nose prodded the inner folds of his ear, and he could feel her smirk on his jaw. She whispered, almost sweetly, before shoving him into the cage.
"Like the animal you are."
The door swung shut behind him.
...
...
"None of us knew what he was planning until it was too late."
Sakura frowned at Yori. He was sitting next to Pakkun, arms curled around his knobby knees, hazel eyes soft and distant as he stared into the twisting flames.
"It had been my brother's idea to disguise ourselves as Suna's black-ops." he said, "It was Hijame's to use it as more than just a cover for small robberies or skirmishes with other gangs."
"Gangs?" Sai asked, looking up briefly from his sketchpad.
"Like those groups of people who wear orange vest and walk around the village spearing trash?" Naruto broke in with a puzzled blink of his blue eyes.
Sakura threw a handful of leaves at him. The Jinchuriki caught several in his mouth and fell over, spitting ferociously.
"Ahh! Sakura..."
"Shut up, I'm trying to listen to the story."
The boy's startled look of hurt stung. But was swiftly cooled by the numbness that had seemed to have replaced her insides ever since she'd watched Kakashi's limp body tumble over the waterfall.
"You can't be alone on the streets." Yori explained generously, "There's too many... It's too dangerous."
He picked up a stick. Prodded it into the embers with an absent twist.
"He started to rent out our services. He was a brutal fighter and never lost to anyone, so by the time he'd made the decision to start expanding we already had a bunch of members." the curiously freckled boy paused, the corner of his mouth pinching, "I don't remember when we started dealing poison. But, I can still remember the funds were enough-so much more than we made pushing weapons or drugs even-my... my brother had enough to buy me a small cake for my birthday."
Sakura looked away, embarrassed by the tears that pooled in the rogue-nin's eyes as he spoke of his only family. She didn't want to feel bad for him.
"But it wasn't enough. Not for Hijame."
...
...
The man's fist collided with Kakashi's face with all the force of a swinging boulder. His nose broke, hot blood gushing. The splintered hot ache spread like water from the center of his face. The impossible heat from the dancing fire licked the unprotected skin of his shoulder as he fell, grinding down a chain-linked wall, tearing his skin even more.
He rolled.
And just missed being disemboweled by the Behemoth's booted stomp. He landed in a slide on his knees. Stared up into narrow eyes that were yellow and gripped in the purple-blue spread of broken blood vessels. The tattered skin clinging to the skeletal grin pulled back even farther.
The crowd surged, whooping.
...
...
"He started attacking actual Suna operatives. Stealing their missions and techniques." Yori murmured softly, "The Kazekage was furious."
An errant raindrop splatted coldly on Pakkun's nose. He snorted, ears flapping, as he shook his head.
"Let me guess," the dog's deep voice growled, "he used the One-Tails."
Yori looked up into the sky. Pakkun recognized the tunneled look in his eyes. He'd seen it enough in the face of the lonely man who owned a contract with him. Nostalgia.
"Hijame..." Yori said, "He knew. Word had reached him of the Sand's new secret-weapon. A Jinchuriki."
"Gaara!"
Naruto cried out.
Sakura brushed a strand of bubblegum pink hair behind her ear; tense. A chill wind had begun to sing through the misty night air. River country rustled it's thick leaves, chirped, flapped, and shrieked with a lilting avian cry around them.
"He laid a trap." A glistening tear slipped down the boy's unfreckled cheek, "But, it wasn't for the One-Tails..."
Sakura spoke, going against her previous decision to remain utterly silent.
"What?" She slid down from the branches of the tree, "What do you mean it wasn't for the One-Tails?"
Yori turned to her then. It was the first time he'd managed to do so without a blush. His face was pale, his swimming green and yellow eyes so tired-looking he could've been an old man.
"It was for my brother."
...
...
He had no choice.
Kakashi ducked the Behemoth's fist, swerved to the side of a knee that'd hoped to pin him in the range of the fire. Slipped on his own blood that coated the floor of the ring like a sticky sheet. He caught himself on one knee-Only to feel one of his teeth be jarred loose, clattered around the inside of his mouth when the giant's knuckles scraped his jaw.
His back smacked with a sound like the collars of his ninken jingling as he was tossed through the air into a metal pole dividing the cage wall. The audience boomed approval.
"Be-he-moth! Be-he-moth!"
And then he was choking. The enormous, sweaty paw of the man closed around his throat with terrible, crushing strength. Kakashi's teeth bared in a ragged scream, but no sound could escape the tight circle of the mammoth's fist. The fire that circled the fighting ring caught suddenly in the loose material of his pants. It wrapped over his leg, spreading with horrific speed.
Kakashi thrashed. The pain was unthinkable.
His feet were lifted. The air was thick with the smell of his own flesh burning. The Behemoth's wide, lunatic stare bored into his own.
"Be-he-moth! Be-he-moth!"
He had... no choice.
His vision skated. The chains were a white heat against his back and his lower half was cloaked in snapping fire. Kakashi's unbandaged eye fluttered. His left shoulder spasmed, the bone rolling in it's socket as he struggled not to let the blackness close in.
The Behemoth's horrific face was less than an inch from his. The Copy-Ninja's fire-engulfed feet dangled.
The crowd roared. The booming reverberation of the gongs layered, trebling a feral beat.
The shock of the creature's lipless mouth clamping down on his collarbone, and viciously gnawing him with a nightmarish chew of his fangs-it was enough.
With a loud, slicking noise Kakashi's left hand was suddenly wrenched free of his cuffs. The skin that ran the length of his forearm tore upwards like wet paper. Blood splattered and the fire dissolved it with a sparking hiss.
He swung his arms around the monster's neck. Caught the cuff in his left hand. Tatters of his own skin wrapped in a bloody smear over the iron made it almost impossible to hold. And then, his scorching body pressed tightly to the Behemoth's rock-like torso, Kakashi pulled his hands together with all the strength in his body.
...
...
"He leaked false information to the Kazekage. Saying that he'd be in a warehouse near the outskirts of Suna, making an exchange."
Yori swallowed thickly. He looked down at his knees, and the feathery tumble of his russet hair fell into his eyes. There was something about the set of his lips, the slant of his cheekbones, that made every emotion on his face seem like a it was another skin. One he wore too tightly.
Sai's impenetrable dark eyes flitted over the boy's delicate features. He flipped a page in his notebook, paintbrush skating an erratic dance over the parchment without tearing his eyes away.
"And it was an exchange." Yori whispered dully, "My brother for Hijame..."
...
...
Sasuke didn't notice the man who'd slipped into the chair next to him until he spoke.
"Like what you see?"
The Uchiha struggled for a moment to tear his eyes from the burning man in the center of the arena. He had to turn his head to look away.
Hijame smiled at him. There was a knowing look in the man's cold golden orbs that sent Sasuke's skin prickling. He said nothing, turning back to the fight. The crowd tossed and fell around him like the rippling waves of a small ocean.
...
...
"RUAAAHH!"
The Behemoth roared, dropping Kakashi's neck and reaching for his own. The fire had spread to the giant now. He pummeled the ninja's silvery head.
In the incalculable micro-edge of a second, the Copy-Ninja swung onto the Behemoth's back. The monster bayed with fury, and jumped backwards, smacking the pyre that was Kakashi up against the chain walls. Again. Again.
He tossed his head. Huffed once.
And then fell. The two bodies, tangled in an embrace ensconced in flame, were too much weight for the erected cage. With a eardrum-piercing metallic squeal, the wall collapsed outwards and they were flung to the dirt in a tangle of charred metal and wreathing flame. The cawing voices of the ecstatic crowd melted in his ears.
Kakashi's dark eye shut.
...
...
...
Placenta.
~Mintflinty