"I Turn My Arm" by Twin Gazelle (Renaissance Man Remix)
"Gwezenn Ha Telenn" by Inqi-Teka
...
Nostalgia
...
Sleek lines of softly filtered light slid over the narrow bed like reaching fingers.
The frond-like blinds that dangled limply along the room's sole wide-paneled window swayed with River Country's slippery breath. From outside there was the gentle buzz of cicadas and the chirping swell of what could only be the lilting coos and warbling screeches of a thousand tropical birds.
The inside of the room was small and dim. The pneumatic wheeze of the ventilator and the fragile beeping of the heart-monitor seemed to be murmuring secretively in hushed discourse as a shadow fell upon the shaded window to the room's only door.
The silver, polished knob rolled smoothly, and Izanami slid in through the seam between the frame and the door and stepped inside. She shut the door behind her with a protracted, muffled snick.
Locked it shut.
A smug smile tugged a simpering pout from her plush, theatrically red lips. She posed for a moment of self-congratulatory appraisal, her icy blue gaze cutting a veritable dissection of the still and open figure lying swaddled and not a little pathetic in the billowing snarl of twisted, sweat-damp sheets.
Her head tilted; she looked down at the man who had once been known across the nations as the warrior who'd copied over a thousand jutsu.
You're mine... she thought, and swept the crimson lacquer of her nails through the tousled length of his silver hair.
"You almost died." is what she heard herself say.
Kakashi said nothing. His chest rose and fell. The moisture of his breath fogged the plastic cup of his respirator mask and then cleared. When the medical staff at the daimyo's palace had finally managed to stabilize him there had been a minor panic at how slow his resting heart rate was-Which quickly dissolved into awed fascination upon the discovery that his bradycardiac pulse was, for all intents and purposes, a byproduct of years upon years of militant endurance training.
Izanami's lips curled into a proud smirk. Thirty-seven beats per minute.
The man was positively savage. No wonder she'd picked him.
She traced the furry slant of his eyebrow with the pad of a thumb. Brought it back to her mouth. Tasted his sweat.
Now, why would you hide a face like that?
The back of her hand ghosted over one devastatingly soft, bruise-flowered cheekbone. Slid along the defined slope of his jaw.
And then she plunged the flat of her hands in a reverent collar about his neck. Wrapped her fingers around the slender warmth of him; felt the flutter of his pulse beneath her palms like a trapped bird.
Possession at last.
She imagined him waking, a gasp upon his pale, dry lips. How it would feel to have him writhe beneath her.
Not for the first time, either.
Oh, how often had she watched him, filled with a ever increasing fascination and unparalleled attraction, during that exhausting parody of a mission. Of course the entire thing had been a farce from the beginning. They all were.
Kakashi was simply the icing on the cake. The real fucking deal.
An S-Class Shinobi who, she'd done her research thoroughly, had already made the Bingo Books once under another alias long before being written down as the internationally feared Copy-Cat Ninja. She'd hunted down one of the sources through Hijame's connections to what she was starting to realize was an elaborately complex underground network of rogue ninja from every nation.
At the time, she'd been frustrated with her own infant beginnings of an underground, black-market slave auction and fighting ring. She'd already started the construction of a carefully secured arena for a Championship Competition and, for whatever reason she seemed to have already run through all of her starting funds.
Namely, her sickeningly naive and devout manchild of a husband she'd been forced to marry as a little girl. He had such a loose hold on anything nowadays thanks to his early onset dementia - it turns out that smoking willowsilk several times a day whilst maintaining a steady diet of alcohol and fish paste and crackers had it's negative effects after all - he'd hardly noticed when she'd set aside a small allotment from his retirement fund to fuel her night-time deviations. But, all the same, she hardly dared to hope one of his economic advisers, no matter how piss poor they were at their job, might begin to notice if millions of dollars repeatedly kept going missing from the treasury.
So, at Hijame's artful revelation that she was perhaps making a smaller profit because she was going after what one may consider a small fish. Shinobi she'd snatched up off the streets and thrust into her vicious game of violence and coercion, who had only lasted for a few fights before being killed or succumbing to despair and breaking too early. The problem was they never seemed to last long enough to really build a public following. She never got a chance to see her plans to fruition.
That was, until she'd heard tell of how Kakashi had made it into the bingo books at last. Apparently, he'd been on an undercover mission that'd led to his infiltration of one of the annual meetings between the creators of the Bingo Book. He'd killed the floorspeaker of the meeting in what the fidgety survivor she'd managed to isolate and interview could only describe as 'quite calmly and so smoothly that at first we all thought he'd killed old Daisuke by accident.' And then proceeded to shake all of their hands, take the lit cigarette from another member's mouth and place it in his own mouth through the fabric of his mask only to have it drop to the table between them all two seconds later, and shower them all with curiously soggy monopoly money.
Upon hearing the retelling of this riveting story, Izanami was positively infatuated. Confounded, undoubtedly, but without a doubt as soon as she'd heard of the Copy-Ninja she'd wanted him for her collection. And Hijame had been more than happy to oblige. He had, after all, been so sweet in his encouragement of the expansion of her efforts. He thought she had an 'inherent talent for the illegal', which she thought sounded quite sexy and mysterious.
Which is why, looking down at Kakashi's prone form lying helpless beneath the sheets just before her, she'd immediately begun to want him.
If she had thought herself uniquely sexy and mysterious, it seemed Kakashi had written the book on it.
How many hours, during their long and grueling trek from Fire Country to her homeland, had she evaluated his every movement. Weighing him, measuring him with her gaze to see if he could be the missing pawn to her schemes that could finally give her a chance at realizing her dreams of creating a lucrative underground business that would help lift River Country once and for all out of it's steep economic decline.
How ever did she manage to pull this one off-She already knew. The answer came in the form of one name: Hijame.
Izanami's loose choke-hold melted, her hands trickling downwards.
She caressed the newly-regenerated, raised flesh along his collarbone where the Behemoth had bitten him. The pale, brutal line of the scar that bisected his left eyebrow. She pursed her lips.
A broken nose. Seven fractured ribs, a dislocated shoulder; a hand and wrist stripped almost entirely of the outer layers of skin and flesh-And a hellish burn that'd cloaked nearly the full length of his body. Not to mention the motley collection of scrapes, cuts, punctures, and bruises the man had acquired through time spent with her fellow conspirator.
A horrific slew of injuries. Truly. Enough to kill a strong man twice over.
It intrigued her and gave his unconscious, finely muscled frame a new dimension. Something about seeing him so still, so helpless... It captivated her.
She ran an airy hand just over the faintly pink glow of medically-ninjutsu regenerated skin along one shoulder. A muscle in his arm ticked, but he continued to lie still.
She'd been attracted to his power. Of course.
To the way he always seemed to float, almost dancing; even in the absence of movement. His self-possession was an anomaly in itself. A commodity to be hoarded, exploited.
Ravaged.
Now, Izanami realized with a mild sweep of curiosity, she'd found another side to the famed Copy-Ninja which was far more alluring, more captivating than anything she could have previously imagined.
Kakashi twisted slightly in his sleep. There was an angle to the sealed line of his eyes that made him look trapped somehow; restrained.
Deftly, Izanami slid one fingertip purposefully slowly from a point in the center of his chest to a point that was too far past his hips to be considered his waist and too high up on his thighs to be part of his legs. The soft whisper of the trailing sheet followed her touch. And her carefully arched brows were lifted as the silky dip of shadows cutting hard lines along the definition of his collarbones was revealed. The ripple his lithe, powerful bare chest and abs.
She could almost make out a faint dip of unconscious submission forming between the man's silver brows.
the sheet down to his hips. Raised her carefully arched brows. The way the muscles in his toned stomach and chest would move slightly with his breath sent a flurry of heat coiling in the air between them.
"My, my..." she breathed and licked her lips. He was smaller somehow without the cover of a shirt, less bulky. Softer. And just the shade of warm paleness that seemed to dull the scratchy white of the bedsheets beneath him. Yet, everything about the man-from the lean, sensual lines of his face to the tight lace of woven muscle that made up his chest and abdomen-all was hard; defined. Utterly too touchable.
Oh, the things I would do to you...
A small peek wouldn't hurt. He would never know anyway. She swiftly succumbed to the delectable imagining of future interactions with the enigma, all the while knowing that she'd seen the most private parts of himself. He would be forever stripped in her memory, and it was something he could never undo. Something she could lord over him if need be.
She simply couldn't resist.
Izanami grinned. Allowed her fingertips to slide down that fine trail of fuzz that ghosted down the sleek line of his belly-the one that led to the most secret of places; like a path that was meant just for her. So sexy it hurt not to touch.
Kakashi's face was smooth, tranquil in a way she knew it never was in wakefulness. He looked impossibly young.
Corruptible.
He was hers-for the taking. Izanami leaned close, her black tresses pooling static curlicues across the pillows and his chest. She sniffed the tender patch of skin behind his ear, submerging herself in the surprisingly boyish smell of him that hung beneath the rioting scents of fear-sweat, singed flesh, and something oddly reminiscent of pine.
She wanted to slip into the bed with him. Taste his gossamer hair and cover herself with his skin.
But the daimyo had ordered an official dinner party in celebration of her return. Apparently, several months of expansive voyaging away from him was not enough for the political ruler to realize that their marriage was broken.
Had always been broken.
She wondered absently to herself what it would take to be rid of the feeble-minded old lecher who'd taken her hand when she'd been little older than a child. A thin smirk marred her deftly painted features.
Something tells me... She thought, and her hands moved.
The papery web of sheet clinging to the prominent rise of Kakashi's hips fell away like a sigh. It pooled about his feet.
Her eyes drank him in. Ravenous, reverent -And, it was a physical battle not to grab him. Pepper his healing skin with kisses. Drag her tongue across his silky flesh and squeeze him with all the strength in her hands. To crush him, crumble him into a raw, animal stripe of himself; a wanton creature held captive to her wants, her selfish fantasies.
Soon... and she breathed shakily, awed into silence at the sight of him lying so still and exposed before her. So powerless and bare. She wanted him...
But, she settled for a rolling scrutiny for now; penetrating every dip, every hollow of jutting bone and naked flesh.
The answer is just before me.
She hovered over him; her insides blistering with a rapacious sort of hunger. Her throat had gone dry, but she leaned closer still. Pressed the moist brush of her lips to the irresistible junction of his inner hip and thigh.
Kakashi gasped awake and jolted like he'd been stung.
Writhed.
...
...
It was too early to not know how many drinks she'd had.
Tsunade sighed softly, leaning into the window ledge as she surveyed the sun-glazed streets of a mild Konoha morning. Just another morning. She sniffed and unwound the silver clasp that opened the tall glass window. Plucked a half-smoked cigarette from the small dish set out on her office desk-an unfortunate, albeit necessary self indulgence-and settled into the narrow window ledge, slouching back against the frame, one long leg hanging feckless.
"He won't bite you, see."
The Hokage took a long, shaky drag. Expelled smoke in a plume of hanging frosted slate.
"You have to let him smell you first." Four year old Kakashi clasped her hand between his own small, pudgy fingers; led her palm to the growling dog's snout, "If he don't know you, he don't know he can trust you."
She watched a capering rabble of little children run by an old man passing below her in the street. A woman called out to another outside a small sweet-bun shop. They clasped each other's arms and smiled into each other's eyes. Laughing.
"Doesn't..." her dewdrop lips shaped the word, and she closed her eyes, leaning back into the ledge, "He doesn't..."
"Right. Doesn't."
The blonde woman shook her head, as if she could escape the buzzing swarm of needle-sharp thoughts that swirled inside her like a trapped hive. She looked to the sun, sliding like a hazy apparition through the pale whipped and purple clouds of the new day cresting the rise of the Hokage Mountain.
He'd always been such a precocious child...
"Tsunade-sama!"
The frantic keening of her assistant's alarmed voice rang from inside the stately office behind her. The Sannin didn't bother to turn her head. She sighed. Brought the glowing smoke to her mouth again; sucked in caustic heat and the stinging wash of chemicals.
"What are you doing?" Shizune cried, pawing at her elbow in dismay, "That's dangerous-Lady-Hokage!" she interrupted herself, eyes wide beneath the black fringe of her bangs, "Are, are you smoking?"
The Godaime said nothing. Merely turned to face the young woman; her face solemn like a wet stone. Smoke tumbled from her lips like the lethargic gush of a chimney.
"He knew he wasn't ready." She said after a time, the words stiff and angular in her throat, "The fucking brat knew..."
"Godaime-sama?"
The blonde woman raised her simmering amber orbs to Shizune's coal black ones. And there was such a frightening lack of animation, an undeniable look of deadness, to the Hokage's expression that the assistant gasped.
"T-Tsunade-sama!"
The blonde woman blinked slowly. Allowed her gaze to drift back to the cheery expanse of the breaking day outside.
So shiny and brilliant it was almost fucking mordant.
A passing breeze flicked teasingly at the loose tendrils of her sunny locks, scattering them in her face. She did nothing to fix them, simply bringing the barely shaking end of her cigarette back to her uncharacteristically pale lips. She continued to survey the day-
-As if nothing were wrong. Nothing at all. As if the odd, messy-haired slip of a boy who hid his corpse-like stare behind the skin of a mask like an omen - who'd somehow managed to worm his way into the hostile, guarded trenches of her desiccated heart and grown into a familiar, albeit markedly abstruse and bizarrely endearing young man before her very eyes... As if...
As if he wasn't gone-Taken.
Like chattel. For someone else's recompense.
Her. Recompense.
Doe-soft onyx eyes winced up at her, glistening with confused hurt. He tried to pull away from the grip of the unanticipated thorn-bush, his movements unfocused and wild with panic; every bit the thrashings of a creature new to pain. A baby.
He lunged from her when she reached for him.
"He..."
She shushed him, cooing softly in a voice she hardly recognized as her own, and picked her way through the voracious underbrush to the now crying child. Her long legs wobbled drunkenly beneath her, the slender post of one heel sinking deeply in the mud as she inched towards him. Tsunade cursed Jiraiya under her breath for shunting Sakumo's offspring onto her after tricking her into a tremendously unfair betting game-which, of course, she'd lost-with a deceitful bottle of The Akimichi's Rose-hip Nigori. Her favorite Sake.
Damn the bastard.
Now, she could add a collection of tiny punctures and scratches all up and down her feet and calves to the hangover she was sure to have... tonight? Shit, she should really remind herself to stop drinking so early... Tomorrow.
"Hey, hey, stop that." she called out when she saw him begin to twist about in a mad panic, "Stop! Moving'll only make it worse."
The Hatake brat staggered backwards, the hoary brambles meshed about his short legs. He tripped and fell directly into a thornbush behind him.
"Aaaah!" The poor child dissolved into hyperventilated sobs. Tsunade bit the inside of her cheek, cursing a little under her breath, and felt a vibrant stripe of worry dab through her. She hustled faster through the clotted undergrowth.
"Sh, Shh," she batted aside an overhanging branch as she reached Kakashi, "It's alright. I know. I know, it hurts..."
Kakashi let out a high, pitiful whine.
His dark eyes were wide, glassy with pain, and rolling about wildly in his pale, flinching face. It was almost more like the sound of a hurt, trapped animal than the cry a little boy would make.
Briefly, she recalled the way he'd simply smiled up at her when Jiraiya had dropped him off earlier - with an almost shy tilt of his head, both eyes curved so much they were nearly shut; all dirt-scuffed patches and childish dimples, lips drawn back in an almost canine-like open mouthed grin. The way he growled when she reached to rumple his wayward silvery-white locks, but would sometimes brush his shoulder against her leg as they walked as if he liked to remind himself that she was still there.
That she wasn't going to leave him.
"Hey, shh. It's okay. You're okay. Just don't-Don't move." Tsunade knelt down beside the trapped toddler, worry creased along her bejeweled brow, "Here. Let me get you out..."
She looked down at the barbed tangle of nettles lassoed around the child's shivering legs. He had a similar patch entangled thoroughly within the tufty mane of his pale hair.
"You just had to be wearing shorts, kid."
Somehow, she was going to have to find a way to pawn all the blame for this onto Jiraiya. The poor thing was a mess.
Sakumo would be out for blood.
Repressing a little shiver of her own, she set about carefully unwrapping one small, trapped ankle from the bush. His little jaw, scratched bloody on one side, quivered and - somehow, the fact that he still hadn't said a single word yet made the whole situation incalculably worse.
She knew he could speak. He'd been chatting up a storm, skipping along the winding forest path back to the Hatake residence nestled in the outskirts of the village; darting to and fro before her. Not unlike the exuberant rambling of an untethered puppy, she thought ruefully.
And, just like a puppy, it'd only taken a fraction of diluted attention on her part for him to tumble head over heels into what was surely the hoariest old thornbush in all of Fire Country.
Of. Course.
The Sannin sighed, pursing her lips at the knotted brambles. How had he managed to get it around his neck? She offered a silent prayer of supplication to the pagan goddess of weaving, Am-No-Tanabata-Hime, and tsked softly under her breath as she worked.
Kakashi flinched as she accidentally caused a deep-buried thorn to scratch him, drawing an angry red line over his dewy white skin. He whimpered, hopping on his one freed leg, and clenched his hands into fists suddenly in the long blonde spill of her hair.
"Ow! Brat!"
Very nearly clouting him over the head out of reflex, Tsunade's hand froze and her buttery gold eyes widened as the boy lunged for her suddenly. The White Fang's son pressed his tear-stained face into her neck and, tiny hands still balled excruciatingly in her hair, he tried to curl himself into her embrace with a shaky sob.
"H-Hey..." She froze, the earnest defenselessness of his touch piercing her like a heated sword through her breast. She patted the fragile curve of his trembling spine hesitantly, "You... You're alright."
Was... Was this what it was to be needed?
The toddler pressed into her arms, still half-caught and frantic for reassurance. Tsunade blinked around the downy fluff of unkempt, spiky white hair that tickled the underside of her chin.
"Everything's gonna be okay."
"Gonna be okay..."
"I've got you."
"I've got you..."
Shizune's uncertain voice filtered through the pang of her recollection.
"What did you say?"
Her assistant asked from just beside her, yet somehow the gentle pitch of the young woman's voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. Like the bottom of a well. Tsunade shook herself, running her polished fingernails messily through her bangs.
"Nothing." She said. And then, "He was the closest I've ever come to knowing what it felt like to be a mother."
Shizune's hand slipped from her elbow. She seemed to step back for an instant, blinking.
"Hatake-san?" The black-haired woman's voice was high. Surprised.
Tsunade sniffed again. Swallowed a lungful of harsh cigarette. Her vision was cloudy with unspilled tears.
"I never told him..."
And, how dare the day look so lively and promising? Didn't it know what she'd lost? The Hokage felt her eyes slide shut, blossoms of red and yellow fanning across the backs of her lids. She heard Shizune shift uneasily beside her.
"Tell him what, Hokage-sama?"
Tsunade leaned into the soft wind blowing against her tear-slicked cheeks. She expelled a long, breathy sigh.
"That he wasn't alone."
...
...
"I hope you rot!" Izanami croaked, manicured hands clasping her wounded neck as the daimyo's guards dragged her bodily back up the poorly lit staircase, "Good luck seeing the sun again, you fucking bastard son of a bitch!"
Kakashi, struggling to hold himself up against the damp, mildewed walls of the palace dungeons-and cling to the sodden corner of the sheet he'd just managed to snag before being yanked from his small room-at the same time, promptly failed in both respects. His weak legs buckled and, tripping over the thin cover, he crashed to the slimy puddle that was the cell floor.
He wanted to say something. He wanted to tear her goddamned face off and stuff it into her salacious mouth before setting her hair alight. On infinite repeat.
But all he could do was gasp. And cough.
His lungs felt like charred cinders inside of his chest. His head, squashed between what felt like thirteen invisible anvils. His battered body ached from a multitude of near-fatal injuries in a frightful cacophony of truly obliterating agony. Wan with blood loss and ringing with untethered anxiety - It wasn't often he found himself in such pitiful circumstances.
In fact, being the veritable personification of the living, breathing weapon that he was, it was less like often and more like never.
He never let another person control him, punish him like this. It was implausible, mind-boggling even. It made him want to rip his own hair out and bury his fingers deep in the cusp of his own eye sockets.
In short, he was a mess.
The Copy-Ninja sifted shakily from the icy pool of sludge on the floor, managing only to raise himself to his knees, and cradled the soggy expanse of the sheet to his chest. Somehow, out of everything that'd happened to him during this counterfeit mockery of a mission, this... this was the worst.
He wanted to still be asleep.
He wanted to be dreaming, taken somewhere far away by the inexplicable structures of his mind.
Hell, he'd even rather that he was caught in another one of those electrifying, heart-hammering nightmares he'd had ever since he'd been a small child that left him whining like some strange and wounded animal late into the chill of the night, his own voice wild and foreign to his ears and his skin sticky with tears and sweat. The kind that left him breathing raggedly, staring unblinking into the darkness for hours afterwards. Struggling just to muster up the will to fight to try to stay present and to not slip back into the endless loop of nightmares that was what he'd come to accept was simply his special version of sleeping; knowing all the while that his waking was just as much as an uncontrollable, chaotic hell as any masochistic fabrication his unconsious could whip up to haunt himself with during the night.
But this time it wasn't.
He was completely naked in a weird and scary place without even a toothbrush to call his own. The last time he'd shaved had been nigh on half a month ago, and yet just now he'd woken up with the dark grey scruff he'd been steadily cultivating out of boredom missing. Shaved clean. Gone. Without any conflicted goodbyes or neglectful remorse on his part. And, that wasn't to mention the truly disconcerting level of attention to detail that whomever had shaved him had exhibited through their very thorough rendition of a similar treatment to his nether regions.
It was all too painfully real. And not to mention silky smooth.
My, but didn't all the intensity of tactile sensation seem to heighten in the face of his newly acquired hairless... ness.
Somehow the fact that his body was reacting outside of his control, that there was a part of him that was undeniably aroused by the entire situation just made it all tremendously worse. It was like being in a poorly written version of Icha Icha. Where the protagonist is lured into prostrating their naked selves in a pure-hearted display of misplaced affection for a frustratingly attractive woman who then proceeds to steal from him and eventually enslave him without even a flicker of remorse. As well as potentially striking mortal blows to each of his young and brave and somehow, illogically kind students.
Kakashi knelt there for a moment, stunned at the discovery that he was in fact living some nightmarish version of Jiraiya's famous novelettes.
Hacking wetly into the crook of an elbow, unbandaged eye squinching, Kakashi wished fervently that she would spend the rest of her life sounding like a bloated pouchy toad. Kakashi groaned. Swayed dizzily. His head was swimming with fever. And it was desperately, bone-piercingly cold down here.
As the distant sounds of the stairwell door slammed shut somewhere above him with a resounding clang, he found himself hunching forwards. Wheezing. The bony ridges of his forearms sunk into the frigid, dark mud up to his elbows. Sallow tendrils of his unkempt and overgrown hair spilled over his face, dipping into the slime like the ends of a ragged paintbrush before his blurring eyes.
And suddenly, quite horribly-he became aware of the pressing silence. That gnawing absence of everything but the jittered tumble of his own dry, serrated breathing.
No.
No... He wasn't... He wasn't going to cry. That was perfectly... So ridiculous, he-Why would he-
A fragile whimper echoed achingly out into the darkness.
...
...
"Uhm." Yori squirmed in the frilly apron, "Are-Are you guys sure about this? I don't..."
Sakura shot him a stabbing glare from where she sat, looking down at him regally from the branches of a squat, gnarled tree. She was dressed in a sleek black skin-tight suit that made him blush and stammer to look at. The coerced rogue-nin looked away. It wasn't fair!
"Why do I have to be a girl!" he burst out, astoundingly hot in the face.
This was the worst. The worst.
"We don't want to risk any of your buddies from Hijame's force recognizing you. Problem?"
At the gravelly words of the small, impossibly deadpan little dog standing across from him in the shallow clearing, Yori paled. He still hadn't quite gotten used to the furry creature's ability to talk. Not to mention the lance-like sarcasm that accompanied the stout creature like a second skin.
Naruto, garbed in the same sleek and undeniably cool outfit as his female cohort, giggled impishly behind his hands.
Yori contemplated shoving a handful of dirt, soppy leaves, and twigs up the blonde boy's nose. Immediately thought better of it. He sat down gingerly on the damp, pebbly face of a boulder. God, he could feel everything. Why did anyone wear dresses?The oddly freckled boy moaned quietly to himself.
"Stop complaining. You look fine, princess."
Sakura's condescending reassurance slapped him in the face with all the aplomb of a freshly caught trout. Yori buried his face in his hands.
"Yes, what is the source of your lamentation?" Sai cut in adroitly from behind him, "Your effeminate facial structure and poorly attended musculature are perfect for disguising as a floozy maid-servant in the daimyo's palace. Your hair bow could use a little tampering though. Here, let me-"
Yori slapped the freakish boy's hands away from his head.
"No! Stop! Just-"
"It's hardly at the appropriate angle. You look far too coquettish."
The auburn-haired youth spun around, thin arms wrapped in a protective cradle about his skull. He stared at the bland-faced Konoha ninja in horrified outrage.
"Shut up!" he spat, blood pooling in his ears with a feeling like liquid fire, "You-You... Why the hell are you dressed as a maid? No one there has even seen your face!"
Sai fingered the lacy hem of his skirt-line demurely. He licked both palms and ran them in a smeary line over the oily length of his hair, which he'd parted smartly down the exact middle of his scalp.
"Nonsense. There needs to be two of us on the inside." he explained charitably, completely unaffected by Yori's fury, "Weren't you listening to our plan, Yolanda?"
The rogue ninja stiffened.
"Don't call me that."
Naruto guffawed loudly, leaning forwards to slap a knee in unadulterated glee. And promptly fell from the branch he'd been perched on with an unsophisticated crash into the undergrowth.
"Aaiieee!" He screeched, hopping, "Who put their kunai pouch there?"
Sakura stared at the blonde-haired knuckle-head.
"Those are yours, Naruto."
Blue eyes winced sheepishly. The Jinchuriki let out a small awkward sounding laugh and rubbed the back of his neck in a very Kakashi-esque gesture.
"Well..." he said clumsily, "So it is!"
Pakkun humphed. Rolled his eyes. Yori looked away nervously when the pug caught him staring.
Sai casually diverted his attention from attempting to straighten the hem of Yori's too-short skirt.
"How unfortunately forseeable of you."
Yori slapped himself in the forehead, inadvertently leaving the florid expanse of his excruciatingly uncomfortable thigh-high garters open to Sai's tampering.
"Eyahh!" he squealed without meaning to, shimmying out of Sai's reach reflexively, "Don't do that! Stop-" the young rogue-ninja curled his fingers in his feathery auburn locks in distress, "This is insane! Completely insane! You; you;" he jabbed an accusing finger at Naruto and Sakura in turn, "are thoroughly disturbed people." He whirled on Sai, hazel eyes wide with a dazed sort of baffled horror, and gestured helplessly with open hands, "And you!" he husked dryly, "You are fucking deranged!"
"Ah." The bland-faced boy nodded sagely in response and reached for a hidden item within his travel-pack. He bestowed it upon the younger male's spread fingers with an air of polite discretion, "I see what is happening. Perhaps you would appreciate one of these?"
Yori paled behind his freckles. He stared down at the hefty tampon lying boldly across the flat of his palm. Shrieked.
"HOLY-" he threw the feminine appliance wildly into the bushes nearby. Sai watched it go sadly.
"Why?! Why do you have one of those!"
Pakkun coughed uncomfortably.
"Uh, lads?" he snuffled, "Perhaps we could-"
"-Why for unamiable emotional discharge of course." Sai clarified, looking at the aghast rogue-ninja with not a small amount of judgement in his beady eyes as if this were commonplace knowledge.
Sakura's brow ticked, her fury palpably rising several notches from across the clearing.
"Sai..." She growled.
The artist looked up at her guilelessly. His long, tapered fingers were presently occupied with arranging the longer strands of Yori's reddish fringe into a fastidiously offensive imitation of a curlicue.
"Yes, your unseemliness?"
"-Get... back to... the... mission?" Pakkun trailed off with a resigned sigh.
"I am going to hurt you."
"Ooh!" Naruto crowed from where he was rubbing his perforated hiney joyously, "You've done it now! Sai, you-"
"Perhaps you would like one of your male cohorts to abet you? There's something unremittantly bilious about your countenance." He extracted another gargantuan tampon from the recesses of his pack, "Are you in need of an instrument of sentimental regulation as well?"
Yori watched in numb disbelief as the petal-haired kunoichi slung the entirety of her weight behind one petite fist squarely into the center of the socially defunct boy's face.
...
...
"What a haul, eh Hijame-sama?" The muscular man sitting beside the stoic leader of the Rogue-nin whistled, dipping his hands into the pile of tinkling gold and silver coins that were scattered across the scuffed wood of the low table.
"Mm." The dread-locked man hummed a noncommittal agreement. His mind was occupied elsewhere.
Somewhere, deep within the recesses of the daimyo's palace for instance.
He wondered if she was thinking of him too. Knew in his heart she wasn't...
"How are you enjoying your food, Sasuke?" He spoke absently to the silent youth lounging beside him on the loose pile of once-elegant throne cushions a lower-rank had set out for them earlier. Hijame swirled the clear liquid flecked with golden motes inside his glass.
"Is it to your liking?"
The raven-haired boy glanced at him. Blinked.
"Perhaps you'd prefer a drink."
Hijame reached for the full bottle placed in the middle of the table. Made a subtle flicking motion with his bejeweled fingers, and a lower-rank appeared at his side holding a small, crystal glass. Unconcerned by the thin lower-rank's barely perceptible shaking-they always seemed to tremor in his presence; like finely tuned instruments; they could sense the unbridled power in him-the brooding Rogue-Leader poured a sizeable amount into the cup. When he finished pouring, the young man set the alcohol before the Uchiha without needing to be asked, slipping back into the shadows silently.
The teenager merely shrugged. Accepted the glass.
"I mean it." the upper-rank exclaimed in a staggered sort of amazement, still huddled over the glinting pile of money,"None of our other projects have ever raked in so much. Wolf's been our best investment yet by far. Everyone and their grandma are paying gallons to see him."
Hijame frowned. Leaned back in his seat, the only stool amongst a horse-shoe of pillows, and reached into a pocket stitched into the inner-lining of his open-chested vest. He withdrew a small vial containing a waxy-looking glob of honey-colored oil. A small, intricately carved smoking pipe that had been fashioned from human bone. He set them both upon the table before him, thinking quietly to himself, and snapped his fingers.
Sasuke watched him out of the corner of his eye curiously as another of his lower-ranks materialized at his side. The young boy-he couldn't be older than ten-ground a vibrantly hued green, orange, and yellow plant between his fingers into the bowl of the pipe. Dipped his fingers inside the vial, extracting a hefty pinch of the sticky resin and pressed it into the pipe as well.
When the shaking little boy didn't retreat immediately out of the flickering amber light of the toasty flames set in the wide fireplace behind him, Hijame looked at the child. Raised a brow. Almost instantaneously, the brawny upper-level seated at his other side slapped the boy across the face, sending him flying bodily against the mantel with a startled cry of hurt.
The Rogue-ninja watched the corner of Sasuke's mouth pinch. Resisted the urge to smirk. Shook his head to himself and raised the icy stem of the packed pipe to his lips. The same lower-rank who'd provided the extra glass stepped forward again, lighting a match and dipping it into the bowl for him.
Hijame sucked in hot, tumbling smoke. Savored the murky warmth that lapped over the jaded expanse of his brain and dampened the alertness of his eyelids. He exhaled slowly in twin streams of milky smoke from his nostrils, relishing the buzzing sensation.
"Ah..."
There was no doubt about it. He was losing her.
Hijame rocked back slightly, allowing the drug to wash over him like a warm caress. Soothing his frayed nerves like a healing balm. Sasuke was watching him openly now.
He knew the signs of infatuation. Hadn't her icy blue gaze trailed after him with that same hungry narrowing of focus that had pierced him through like the red-lit blade of a freshly forged sword, still hot from the bowels of the smithy? That same, almost desperate magnetism that bled through her gaze whenever she looked upon Hatake now...
The Rogue-Leader inhaled again. Expelled a long plume of cloud. It hung before him in the air, slowly whirling; fading into the air.
He'd been a fool to believe she'd be his forever.
"You know him."
It was a statement, not a question.
Sasuke said nothing for a moment. Nodded. Hijame plucked up his glass. Pursed his lips over the rim. Slid his watery, bloodshot gaze over to the Uchiha smoothly.
"How."
The flames flickering softly behind them cast the teenager's defined features into sharp relief. There was a blank sort of absence there; a hollowness. The boy reached for his drink.
"How do you think? He has a Sharingan."
Hijame snorted quietly. Poured back his shot with a casual grimace and settled the now-empty glass heavily upon the table. Snapped his fingers. It was refilled instantly.
"That tells me nothing." He said, and turned in his seat to look at Sasuke evenly.
The ebony-haired youth was quiet for a stagnant draw of moments. His dark, heavy-lashed eyes pinned to the faded, dark wood before him. Inscrutable.
He lifted the small glass to his lips. Poured it back with marked slowness, allowing the stinging alcohol to seep through him before finally swallowing. He turned flat, unaffected eyes to the Rogue-Leader. Spoke with frightening calmness.
"I want his blood."
...
...
"What're you-Gai! This is a private meeting!"
Gai smiled sheepishly down at them from the gaping hole where the grate of an air vent used to be. He attempted to shrug but was impeded by the the constrictive barrier of the cramped opening he'd, in a feat of truly remarkable lunacy and determination, managed to wriggle through. Or partly through, rather... Only the top quarter of his bulging shoulders, his neck muscles corded and visibly straining with the effort of holding himself erect from where he jutted horizontally from the upper corner of Genma's garage-and his opalescent, contrite grin seemed to have made it through.
All things considered, Yamato mused around a now very necessary sip of beer, it was impressive.
"Oh hohoho." There was a distinct obfuscation coloring Gai's booming chortle, "My, my, but this is embarrassing!"
Several sheets of dust and plaster fell pointedly from the ceiling then, shaken loose by the man's thunderous laughter. A particularly thick clump cracked over the top of Hayate's down-turned head. The katana-user blinked his red eyes slowly, tendrils of murky smoke uncoiling in a slippery stream from between his lips, and looked up from the bong cradled loosely in his lap.
"Hey..." he coughed a little in weak displeasure.
Genma simply continued to stare at Gai in open-mouthed shock. That is, until Raidou helpfully pointed out the new location of said jounin's senbon. Which was, incidentally, burrowed deeply in the top of Genma's left foot.
"Uh, Genma..." Raidou leaned over the arm of the couch he was slouched on and squinted down at Genma's impaled foot. When the senbon-user looked at him, he pointed. Brown eyes wide, lips puckered innocently to hold back what was quite obviously a smirk.
Yamato and Aoba simultaneously took a quick, preemptive draw from their respective drinks.
Genma looked down at his foot. His mouth pursed, a decisively pissed off expression sliding across his tomboyish features. His left eyebrow ticked.
"Go-ohdammit!" he yelled in a building crescendo, pitch rising, "What're you doing here, Gai?!"
"I love it when he freaks out like this." Aoba whispered casually to Yamato, thumbs twiddling the controls of some blocky, relentlessly beeping device in his hands. Even through the man's dark lenses, it was clear his eyes had never left the small, blipping screen once. Yamato sighed quietly to himself.
There was a distinctive element of chill that was plainly missing here.
Namely one with a tell-tale, lethargic slouch and a whip-like, caustic repartee. And an appalling preoccupation for a certain illicit, orange-backed novelette.
"What's going on?" A muffled male voice issued suddenly from behind the taijutsu-master in a strained whisper, echoing slightly as if it came from somewhere further back in the vents, "Gai? Why did we stop?"
Hayate's watery eyes grew impossibly wide.
"Woah..." he began to look around himself at the cluttered garage as if he'd only just now realized where he was, "Is that... Iruka-sensei?"
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Genma began to gesticulate wildly, "What in the name of Kami's-"
"H-Hayate?"
Iruka's voice was faint and sounded vaguely ill. Brimming with a perplexed sort of dismay. Yamato fought the urge to smack himself in the face.
Truly, it was only going to be downhill from here. He tossed back his beer and finished it, reaching resignedly for a new one from the open pack on the floor.
"Not to worry my good school teacher!" Gai launched chaotically into deafening reassurance, "This is but a detainment of minuscule proportions! A-"
"-green, woolly vagina! You're in my fuckin' roof! Get out my motherfuckin'-"
"Genma?" Iruka piped up weakly, his voice drifting down fuzzily from the rafters, "Is that you? I-There's... I think you have an infestation."
Aoba chuckled, nodding once as if in acknowledgement of some carefully laid out inside joke. Yamato raised an eyebrow, glancing at him askance.
"Oh yeah." the man sporting the ever-present sports-glasses wacked the side of his gameboy fiercely, "C'mon. C'mon-Score!"
Yamato tossed back another frothy swig of beer and absently watched Hayate begin to tiptoe over to the nearest wall. He had to step over an awkwardly tall cardboard box and, stretched halfway across in a surprisingly flexible lunge, losing a shoe behind him in the process.
"Oh."
Hayate started shuffling then in reverse, holding himself aloft with his forearms, front leg still extended in an awkwardly controlled half-split.
"As I'm sure is most magnificently evident," Gai was barreling on stolidly, his cheeks puffing and his face and neck now growing quite red,"we have come to you under the most covert of volitions!"
"C-Covert? Covert?!" Genma stuttered, glitching with the efficacy of his rage. He stamped his injured foot unthinkingly, "There's a bowlcut where my fan used to be! And-Oh...That's not good."
Blood began to spurt fizzingly from Genma's foot in a crimson stream.
"Ohhaha, shit!"
Raidou, leaned almost entirely over the arm of the squashed, white and blue striped sofa, guffawed. He took a closer look at Genma's gushing foot and then jerked back, howling loudly into his elbow.
"Raidou." The senbon-user growled menacingly.
"Yoo! That is literally the third time you've done that, yo..."
Genma's hazel eyes tightened. Gai chose that exact moment to flatulate loudly with a drawn-out, tinny warble. Iruka shrieked and there was a maddened scuffle of tightly hemmed in bodies suddenly from above them. More dust and plaster fluttered to the floor belatedly.
"Dearie me!" Gai giggled timorously, his face contrastingly grave and red as a freshly peeled beet, "I seem to have broken wind. What an unfortunate-
"Guh-Gaiii!" Iruka's voice was markedly strangled, "How could you?! Euuagh! Is-Is that tuna fish? Oh my god. Oh my-"
Halfway across the broad surface of the cardboard box now, Hayate promptly lost his other shoe.
It dropped pathetically to the floor on the other side of the box before him.
"Oh."
"Get me out. Get me out now. Now!" Iruka was yelling, loud rattles and thumps clanging ominously from behind where Gai's pinched-looking face jutted from high up in the wall, just below the ceiling.
The Katana-user had begun to look around uncertainly, bleary eyes panning slowly back and forth between his two outstretched legs. Evidently, at a loss. The lanky teenager was now poised gracelessly, holding himself up stiffly over the inordinately tall box he'd been attempting to cross, both legs spread wide in a remarkably athletic split. Hayate coughed.
"Uh..."
Yamato drank his beer. And here. We. Go.
"Ah!" Iruka shrieked suddenly, and the sound of his scuffling grew tensely still above them.
Genma's blood continued to pump in a slippery arc onto the concrete floor. Raidou was laughing hysterically as the senbon-user attempted to stuff his gushing appendage into the other boy's face, chuckling with mirth as if he weren't in the process of bleeding out.
"Shut up, Raidou! You motherfucking armpit of a human being-You don't know shit! You-"
"Ahh! Get your crusties away from me!"
"Guys! Seriously!" Iruka's voice was louder now, thickened with a note of baldly distinct panic, "I-I think there's something back here!"
A loud chittering noise filtered down through the garage rafters at that very moment eerily.
"Shit." Aoba cursed under his breath as the screen in his palms flashed. Yamato looked over at him and saw that he'd only been reacting to having just lost his game.
"It knows we're here..." The schoolteacher hissed. "Gai? Gai?"
But the taijutsu master was too busy wincing in heartfelt sympathy at Genma's weeping foot. Which was currently slapping Raidou's laughing face rapidly back and forth in a spray of slinging bloody droplets in what was evidently paramount disdain.
"Now that is a fountain of a wound, my friend. A veritable fountain." The green beast shook his head in thinly disguised admiration.
"Uh oh."
There was a loud ripping noise from the corner of the room suddenly. Yamato whipped his head around to see Hayate gasping in faded dismay down at the gaping split that'd tore exactly up from the crotch of his pants. Everyone in the garage looked at him.
"Nice. Betcha-" Genma quipped. Before, quite unexpectedly and without preamble, he listed unevenly to the side and then collapsed on Raidou. Out cold.
Yamato felt his face harden into what was beginning to feel like a disappointingly permanent look of exasperation.
He was really starting to see why Kakashi always drank so much whenever they forced him to come out with them.
"What're you guys doing here?"
He resigned himself to being the solitary bearer of logic with a low sigh. Again.
Things really were less sane without the droll, tacky wit and unimpressed stare of the lanky, silver-haired ninja. Wait. Had he really just thought that?
It must have been longer than he'd thought since he'd last seen Kakashi.
The man was unarguably anything but sane.
"Why but for the pleasure of your-"
"Gai!" Iruka fairly shrieked, "English! Please! We don't have all fucking day! I-" and he let out a rather unhinged sounding giggle, "I am. Literally. Inhaling your ass gas."
"Rightly so!" Gai amended, bobbing his head in a stunted approximation of an apologetic bow, "We come to you all in hopes that you will be of like mind in that-"
There was another ominous, ringing chitter from somewhere up in the lofty rafters.
"What was that?" Iruka's frightened voice pitched, "Did you guys hear that? Genma..."
"He's sort of... Passed out." Raidou offered helpfully from beneath the senbon-user's limp, motionless form. There was a small puddle of life juice forming around the man's misfortunate, impaled foot.
Hayate chose that moment to twist about and suddenly lose his balance. He toppled over the side of the teetering cardboard box he'd been struggling to traverse, and fell backwards onto the floor with a loud crash. The back hem of his shirt caught on a nearby stack of boxes, yanking the thin, white fabric up to his elbows and over his face whilst simultaneously pulling them all down on top of him.
"Ow." Hayate's voice croaked dimly from beneath the clutter.
"We have only just become aware of a situation of most dire circumstance!" Gai relayed flamboyantly, "On this morn of-"
"-Kami on a fucking altar!" Iruka bellowed furiously, interrupting him, "Would you hurry it up?! There's something in here with us!"
"Very well." Gai acceded, "But I must say Umino-san, your language is alarmingly raunchy for one in the profession of nurturing younglings."
"Fuck my profession!" The schoolteacher all but shrieked, "I'm about to get gnawed to death by a squirrel that thinks it's a velociraptor! Breathing your stale-ass, smarmy protein shit-farts!"
"Heh. Shit-farts." Aoba threw in usefully.
Yamato pinched the bridge of his nose. Raidou was still laughing stupidly. Genma determinedly unconscious. Aoba was muttering to himself distractedly about spawn-killers, hunched over the beeping console clutched tightly in his hands.
"Uh. Guys?" Hayate's raspy voice was stifled by the small mound of boxes now strewn messily atop him, "Where am I?" And then, "Who turned the lights off?"
There was a pointed silence.
"Wait. What's happened to Genma?" Iruka seemed to just now be catching Raidou's words.
"He's fucking-"
"-When is he not?" Aoba cut in smartly and him and Yamato clinked his bottle against his in silent commendation.
"I became aware today after a brief excursion to the Hokage Tower, " Gai continued on, relentless, "of the plight of our dear friend and my fabulously eternal rival!"
"Wait, who's Genma fucking?" Iruka asked, clearly confused.
"Kakashi?" Hayate's buried voice piped up curiously from what sounded like a curious distance.
"Oh..." there was an awkward pause before Iruka offered bemusedly, "Congratulations, Genma? I thought you guys had already boned."
Raidou's reply was simply a boom of unrepentant laughter. Yamato rolled his eyes. Tossed back a long swallow of stinging alcohol with a poorly disguised grimace. Knew better than to try and promise himself not to torture his brain thinking about Genma and Kakashi having possibly fucked. Of anyone and Kakashi having possibly fucked...
His mind would inevitably take him there, no doubt about it-As soon as he found a glimpse of inner peace-thoughts he'd really rather not be thinking at all would trickle slowly in and he'd be helpless to plug the holes before he was flooded. Unbidden, flashes of Kakashi's bare face rocking back through slatted bars of shadow with a look of barely contained devastation-exposing the pale column of his neck and the rippling musculature of his naked stomach and chest by degrees-rocked powerfully through Yamato's overactive imagination.
He quickly finished the rest of his beer. Reached for another dismally. Great.
Now he was jealous of a man passed out in his own garage who'd dropped his own senbon into the top of his own fucking foot. And this not even being the first time either, apparently.
Thank you Gai and Iruka, he sulked inwardly.
A loud, sublimely chilling chitter erupted suddenly above them.
Iruka screeched, and then must have begun to thrash about madly because a frantic clamor of tinny thumps sounded from behind Gai's puzzled look of rapidly approaching startlement.
"Aaaaeeeeeh!" The chunin howled from behind Gai in unbridled terror, "What are you?!" Then, in a jumbled rush.
"Wecametogetyouguysbecausethatgoddamnedhatakeassholebastard-" there was a deep inhalation of breath, "-gothisdumbasscapturedbyafuckings-rankedcriminalmastermindofashitfuck!"
"Oh." said Yamato, generously, "Well, why didn't you say so?"
"Yes, Iruka." Gai chided sternly into the air, "Why did you not simply say so?"
Genma chose that moment to breach upon a loose, muddied sort of half-consciousness. He weaved a little as he pushed himself weakly up onto his elbows- remarkably failing to notice that in so doing he was crushing Raidou's still laughing face beneath his forearms.
"Huhh?" he exhumed eloquently, with a bemusedly dizzy look on his pale face.
"GET. ME. OUT OF HEREEE!" Iruka all but roared, and a fine dusting of displaced plaster sprinkled over everyone below at the sheer volume of his holler. Gai's face took on a strangely distressed slant.
"Uh oh."
"Guh-Ahhhhh! It bit me! Oh my-God!" Iruka yammered, and the entire infrastructure of the garage began to rattle and tremor.
"Aiiyahhhahahahh! So..So sharp! Ha-Hah!" Gai had now joined the schoolteacher in his panic, yet even as the unseen attacker clicked and tittered menacingly from somewhere in the garage vents-Iruka shrieking bloodcurdlingly behind him-there was something oddly cheerful about the man's agonized cries.
"Ohh! Hohoho!"
Yamato lifted his beer to his lips and forgot to drink it at the same moment as a warbling crescendo of a fart boomed ecclesiastically through the rafters.
Gai and Iruka shot forth from the loudly vibrating tunnel that was the garage air vent like they were inside some life-sized party-popper; a cloudful of soot and plaster drifted silently in their wake. They tumbled directly onto the mess of fallen boxes that covered Hayate's unmotivatedly struggling form.
"Ow." Hayate coughed dryly and then sneezed.
"Gesundheit." Gai quipped from where his front-half lay sprawled inelegantly across a scattering of boxes, his legs and backside protruding bizarrely into the air like the rigid limbs of some great, bulgy, somewhat sweaty cacti.
Iruka remained still where he lay, prone on the garage floor with his hands and feet stretched out far to the front and back, giving the impression that he'd landed in what was unmistakably a bellyflop. Yamato winced in sympathy. That was going to leave a mark...
"So," he started, feeling not a little out of his depth, "what you're telling me is... Something happened to Kakashi?"
"Yes." Iruka wheezed breathlessly.
Yamato frowned.
"And, you came here because you thought we might be the only people in Konoha who are either crazy enough," the wood-user glanced at Genma and then at the pile of boxes concealing Hayate's lamely struggling frame, "or stupid enough... To actually be willing to do something about it."
Gai beamed ebulliently and nodded from the mess of plaster and spilled cardboard boxes.
"That would be the case, yes."
Whatever Yamato had been planning to say next was then effectively drowned by a long, rattling bout of flatulence that petered off in the end at a pitch reminiscent to a small pet's squeaky toy. Iruka let out a strained, watery laugh that bordered on the hysterical. Yamato's brow set. He tossed his beer back and finished it in one go.
"Kami help us."