CHAPTER 8

VALUE OF LITERATURE

It wasn't the only time Inu or Sukea sat and ate with her. Sometimes he'd show up with food at her bunkbed in the barracks. Sometimes he'd pull her outside to go for a walk. Once he couldn't come personally, but a random ANBU stopped her. Their black sleeved arm and white forearm guard stuck out in the air before her.

Sakura was walking through the common room for the 100th time, folding pages she'd torn out of that Paradise book. Her little fingers tucked and folded the simple origami puppy face. The puppy's right ear had the words, "Hot breath on her neck". The puppy's left ear had the words, "Warmth tingling..." but the rest of those words had been scratched out by Sakura. She couldn't have them ruining her folded puppy. She didn't feel bad about tearing out the page. The Paradise book had been read so many times by so many people grabbing it out of the "literature" box Genma had found, she didn't think anyone would miss it. Who needed swooning and kisses anyways? Sakura nodded her head to herself as she thought this over and folded the last edges of the origami puppy face. She'd need to find a brush and ink to give it eyes and a nose, but it was already adorable. So distracted she didn't immediately notice the white armored arm or the serious panda mask staring down at her. When she did she blinked up at them.

"Ohayō Gozaimasu ANBU-san," The woman was so tall Sakura had to crane her neck away from those glistening wet, long legged black pants and lean to see the painted panda face.

There was no return greeting, something she'd gotten used to from a majority of the people here. It still made her sad, but she kept trying. Instead, something appeared in the woman's hand so fast Sakura didn't know where it'd been pulled from. The female captain held a book. On top of the cover it had a crinkled piece of paper with messy handwriting and a little face drawn. The note read, "Please give this to the kid. Thanks. - - Inu."

The female captain held it further, prompting the short girl to reach out for it. It was an old looking book.

She glanced back up at the panda masked woman in her white captain armor, recalling her conversation with Itachi. He'd explained their difference in armor. It had been one of the few long-winded answers she'd ever received from the 13 year old Uchiha. Prompted when she asked why his, "Armor was white when so many others here had black? And, and, well wouldn't black armor help you blend into shadows better?" So she knew the white armor meant this woman was strong, a good leader amongst other elites, she'd been recognized for it.

Sakura held the book close, happy to bits that Inu had thought enough about her to give her a book not from the cast off ANBU box of literature. She was so happy she was a bit late to reply. Panda was already leaving. Sakura hadn't even said thank you or gotten a chance to ask the only female ANBU officer (she'd seen) all the questions she'd been building up in her mind. With so much free time with little else to do she had a lot of questions. She couldn't miss this. Sakura didn't know when, or if, she'd ever see Panda in the Common Room again.

Upon seeing the woman about to leave she rushed two steps forward, placing herself back within the woman's sight. She'd learned weeks ago not to touch any of the ANBU without warning. It made them react poorly. Only one weapon had been drawn so far and that one had been caught by another ANBU before it could hit her. Sakura was getting better at not startling them. So she just ran forward to block the captain's path.

She bit her lip then blurted, "ANBU-san your armor is white."

The woman stopped. The tall, so very tall captain looked down at the question. Their head and panda mask tilted. Sakura, who had been practicing her patience and information gathering skills on the ANBU members, now understood the power of a statement and patience. After she stated the obvious she waited just like Ino's dad had waited in the interrogation. Eventually the woman in white armor spoke.

"Yes."

Pleased her use of the interrogation technique worked Sakura prodded, "So that means you're strong enough to fight off any enemy nin you attract away from your team."

It was a summary of Itachi's explanation. His justification of his armor was all about the brain tracking easy to see targets. Nothing screamed target like a reflective white surface on a dark night. He went on and on about how the human eye worked for calculating distances. It was kind of boring, but she wasn't going to tell Itachi that. Not when she'd finally found something he cared about. Panda mask woman seemed to respond well to her summary anyways.

"Yes."

The woman's tone had become clipped, irritated, the girl realized. Sakura hurried along with her request. She really, really wanted to know what the female captain had to say. She was stuck here and she needed more to practice on than healing Genma's cuts and scars from training. It was so boring and this woman was so cool. Sakura couldn't help the way her eyes got big nor how she blurted out the request she'd been holding in.

"So you must have had to train a lot to build up your muscles and chakra that much. Do you have any tips?"

The woman's fingers stopped twitching towards her kunai pouch. It was much nearer to Sakura's eye height and the concentration of the woman's colors had been flooding down to the fingers. At this last question they eased, returning to a more normal flow. The panda masked captain looked from Sakura's face to the book she clutched to her chest.

"I'll write some down for you."

With that statement the woman shunshined away. What remained were a pair of bloody prints from the captain's sandals. Sakura realized that glistening wet look of the woman's black pants and sandals hadn't been water, but blood. She stared at the red tracks. Her grip on the book became tight, her wide eyes now moved from this one bloody set of sandal prints and shifted to the trail of blood the woman had left behind as she'd crossed into the common room to deliver the book as Inu requested. Sakura's eyes stayed wide as she calculated how much blood must have been soaking that fabric to still be seeping down. Enough to make each of those steps leading through the common room.

Sakura swallowed and stared at the red tracks. Panda, she decided, was as scary as Shisui and Itachi. More so, as no matter how good the teenagers were they didn't have the ruthless presence of that veteran captain. Her skin crawled.

Sakura clutched her book and hurried back to her room. There, sitting cross-legged on her bunkbed she put the book on her lap. It's spine creaked with age. The pages had long ago darkened to a deep yellow. The book fell open to a heavily creased part of the spine, laying open there as if it'd been read hundreds of times. It opened to a chapter on the basics of fūinjutsu symbols, theory behind space and time, and how short range transportation formulas like those utilized in generic shunshin techniques could be expanded upon for long range transportation of goods and people.

She flipped to the beginning of the book. The bold title printed on the otherwise blank yellow cover read, "Academy Year 4: Wartime Supply Chains by Senju Tobirama". An interesting title, Sakura mused. Although she was confused why she'd never heard of it before, not seen it on any of the booklists posted in the school office. She fingered its ragged and cracked spine, before flipping it open. Just inside the old cover she read the messy name. Her eyes widened. There in faded, old, hand stroked kanji was a name she'd only ever heard about.

"Namikaze Minato Year 4"

This book was worth a million Paradise books. Her otousan said people pay ryō for rare things. It really might be worth a million, maybe even millions of ryō. Written by the second Hokage and used by the fourth, practically a Konoha secret. Her hands shook. The book belonged to the fourth Hokage as a child. It'd been his when he was just a ninja in training. Her fingers carefully brushed over Namikaze Minato's name.

To the silence of her room she asked, "Who is Inu?"

He hadn't seen the girl in days. He'd been too focused on sneaking around the Uchiha Compound at night tagging the undersides of benches and window ledges with seals to sense a particular chakra signature and trigger traps. The key to a space time ninjutsu user was to let them get confident. Let them think they could enter the area freely with the assurance no one would be able to hit them if it came to a confrontation. The key was to not hit them at all.

Kakashi was a tracker and lures had always been his strength, something he'd hardly had to work at. It's why they'd pulled the orphan out of the academy and stuck his nose to the ground in a bloody mess. He'd been tiny, precocious, and those Chūnin and Jōnin they stuck him under reasoned if he could trap and kill a squad from a distance, then they'd use that. However, his traps hadn't had any finesse. They were bloody and physical and left everyone dead. That was until Namikaze Minato, on a return mission with his jōnin squad, had walked into the trapped field and dismembered bodies the tiny six year old had left. Minato, Jiraiya, and Kushina were all seal experts in their own right and when they'd found him covered in dirt and bits of the people he'd blown apart with rudimentary explosive tags, they not only escorted him back to the Chūnin who was supposed to be watching him but they made it clear he was being reassigned, effective immediately.

His traps were better now. He was going to catch that user of the space time ninjutsu and he was going to take him alive. Every person needed chakra. Not a single nin stayed conscious once you drained it. An experience he knew to be highly uncomfortable and distressing.

It was a blessing having Itachi and Shisui's team assigned as they could work on the actual outer wall surveillance while he set up the seal nodes. His fish net would alert him when the unauthorized presence returned. He wasn't going to let Shisui or Itachi or any of their family get into an even worse situation. After he'd sensed the signature and their emotions twice already, surveilling the area around the Clan Head's house, he wasn't willing to let it keep happening. The Uchiha may be upset and on the edge of making a major mistake, but they were part of this village. A founding part who'd invested decades of their lives to protecting and serving it. An assassin sneaking through on his watch over them was unacceptable.

The next time he did see the girl it was only for a few minutes. In which he'd been informed from one of his clones that Shisui hadn't shown up with her dinner. So when he had a moment he sent another clone with food. It was taking a toll on him. She took one look at the clone holding the food out to her.

"Inu is that you?"

"I'm a clone of Inu."

She nodded her head. Then queried, "You sound tired. Not quite there and your colors are fuzzy around the edges. Have you, the real you, not been sleeping?"

"Not well, no. Boss wants to make sure his team is safe."

"Just don't forget they need you too. If you're tired that won't help anyone." She then looked around and pulled a squished bit of paper from her bedside table. "This is Chibi Inu. I made him for you."

"Ah."

"See even clone you is tired. You should take Chibi Inu's advice and sleep more."

The clone ruffled her hair. He smiled down at the child. The expression hidden behind his clone's hound mask.

"Don't worry about stray puppies. You can't take them all in."

She groaned, "My okaasan said the apartment is too small. She made me take the last one I found to the Inizuka compound. The families who lived there all had stripes on their faces. And they had so many puppies! I bet they'd feed you and make sure you sleep."

"I can sleep when I'm dead," His words came out so casually, with such expectation, the girl beside him stopped smiling. He turned around to find her white knuckled hand clutching the folded paper dog. The clone held out his hand to her, waiting for her to take it or to give the Chibi Inu she'd made for his boss. Boss told him to spend time with her in the Common Room and make sure she ate the food he brought. She hadn't done either so far, leaving two of the clone's mission objectives unaccomplished. He kept holding out his hand. He would complete this mission for his boss.

Finally the clone asked, "What's wrong?"

"Why do you talk like that? Like you don't matter."

He didn't have an answer.

"You're not allowed to die. Not as Inu. Not as Sukea. Not as anyone else either. You have too many people who care about you."

"Oh?" He was still holding out his hand.

She took it. It was stronger than he expected from someone so tiny. If she pressed any harder she'd pop the clone.

"Ya. Me. Or didn't you know?"

She stormed forwards. Stomping with heavy steps that sent light tremors through the concrete floor with each impact. She dragged him forwards and the clone let her.

She said it bold as brass, but inside Sakura had been fretting. Besides her parents, she'd never told someone she cared about them before. No one had ever asked her either. Yet Inu had shown her more of his faces than any of the others had. He didn't just stop by and offer her food or suffer her presence. He cared. It was strikingly obvious in everything he did. She couldn't help not care too.

She hoped it wouldn't scare him. From what little she'd learned about the ANBU people, she knew two things with a gripping certainty. One, they were terrible at talking to people. Two, they were skittish. She had to tread carefully in everything she did and said, less they poof away from her.

Shisui hadn't shown up again. The boy's team informed Kakashi of the repeat absence when they showed up to report for their scheduled surveillance of the Uchiha compound. Kakashi, who'd just worked 8 hours himself waved off team Ro and stated he'd fill in as captain. He reached for a soldier pill, digging around his pouch till he felt the bottle of them. He watched team Ro disappear through the trees, leaving Shisui's three teammates standing around him, waiting for his plan on tonight's surveillance op.

It wasn't as easy as it had been. Not with the unauthorized visitor, their clear ninjutsu skills, and their impending assassination attempt. The foreign nin had been returning on a predictable, weekly schedule to observe the Head House. However, Kakashi knew the next visit may be the one they acted.

It was the worst time for Shisui to be falling apart. If Kakashi wasn't so glad the boy hadn't offed himself yet, he would have been annoyed. He just didn't have it in him to be annoyed, not when the concern and anxiety for his little otōto got worse with each slip the boy made. The weight of it settled on him, making Kakashi more exhausted than he had any right to be.

He'd have to follow protocol and report it. Mouse would be informed. Missing ANBU members was never a good sign. Shisui might be pulled from the roster. It might be good for him. It might not. The lack of structure would have killed Kakashi in his place, the threat of taking ANBU out of his life had jostled him to get it together. Should Shisui be kicked out and sent to a program with the mind healers? Would the mind healers reduce the underlying cause of depression? Kakashi doubted it. Shisui's problems were so different, prolonged, and hard to solve. Life had beaten him down. Fixing that wasn't going to happen just by talking about how hard it was and sending the boy back out there. Kakashi closed his eyes, the action and the emotions he couldn't keep off his face hidden under the mask and ANBU standard ops henge.

He thought the boy might do well being captured by Mouse, being metaphorically chained to the Commander's desk with a pile of supply order forms and paperwork. It'd done Kakashi a world of good. Maybe it'd help Shisui. He'd facilitate anything promising to help his otōto. Anything. Especially something so easy as talking to the Commander and covering some of the boy's mistakes. So Kakashi worked Shisui's shift, again. He would have to make another clone and make sure the pink haired girl was still getting fed. He'd made so many to cover for Shisui lately he had to be careful not to lose track of the tasks he'd set them on.

Kakashi continued to cover more shifts. Well aware each time he got closer to the line of overworking and stretching him self thin. Each time he stopped just short of that critical point Kakashi knew was his limit. He wasn't any use exhausted. He wouldn't put his teams at risk. There was a line and he wouldn't cross it.

He remained tired, but not exhausted. Still functional and quick thinking, still mostly full on chakra each shift he started. Naps and soldier pills had gotten him through worse situations. This was safe and comfortable in comparison. Not healthy, but Kakashi knew he could maintain it for a month or so before it started to drain him completely. Hopefully by then this would all be fixed. He had to keep hoping.

The night the foreign nin was expected to return, that same day and time they'd observed the Head House each previous week, he had the three members of Shisui's team as well as team Ro scheduled. They would appear to patrol as normal in case the nin was watching. This particular shift Kakashi had to be extremely careful and quick. He used his sharingan twice to finish the net without getting caught by the compounds dōjutsu users.

He wouldn't have even considered doing this tonight if he didn't have Shisui's team in addition to his own. Only he did have them and so he was going to trust them to watch his back while he finished this nasty job. It wouldn't be pretty for whoever got caught in the trap, but someone with chakra wafting such malcontent near the Uchiha Clan Head's house wasn't deserving of gentle treatment. So Kakashi was a bit vindictive while tailoring the last of it. The sharingan use allowed him to do it and do it in record time, his teams watching the outskirts and waiting as backup all the while. He popped another soldier pill to refill the heavy chakra drain from his left eye, but the trap came together so beautifully under its scrutiny.

Always staying out of sight and using a dozen other high level stealth techniques, he finished and retreated before the Uchiha chūnin guards passed this part of the compound. It was a long shift, but the net was done. The trap ready to trigger on his command regardless of where he was, so long as he kept the remote controller seal inked on his arm, the trap and net would remain connected and feeding results to him.

Exactly 39 minutes later his fish net across the Uchiha compound alerted the return of their unauthorized chakra signature. A presence heading fast towards the Clan Head's house, Kakashi waited till the assassin reached the perimeter then fed chakra into his remote connection, triggering the trap and the nasty chakra eater seals he'd placed there.

With coded hand signs to the three people on Shisui's team he ordered them to continue their outer surveillance. Then he went to the area his own team had been hiding this shift. With Genma, Yūgao, and Tenzo following he led them around the Uchiha chūnin guard patrol and dropping into the near deserted gardens. By the time they arrived to the trap outside the Clan Head's house it was 22:30 at night.

There laying in the middle of his trap they found a nin slumped in an awkward angle, as if his legs couldn't hold him and he'd passed out before he realized he was falling from the roof. He wore a black cloak with red clouds. Kakashi's sharingan eye blazed, cataloguing the features and chakra signature permanently in his mind. Using it so much was going to give him the headache of his life later, but they'd caught him. While he bent to examine the man and remove the foreign nin's weapons the rest of his team spread around under the Clan Head's House, just out of sight from the guard patrol and ready should anyone wander over to this section of the walled off gardens. Kakashi's sharingan eye found four hidden weapon stashes, five scrolls, a storage container, and a strange ring emitting chakra. He pocketed it all in a storage scroll of his own. His head was beginning to pound. Sharp pains shot deep into his skull. They grew worse due from prolonged use of his left eye and the shooting sensations grew sharper as the pain began to spread.

Just then a hawk landed on the branch above him. A summons to the Hokage's office. He stared up at it, his pounding head getting worse. Then he looked back down at the foreign nin. Those features which had been so familiar. Where had he read them before? Then it clicked. The memory of a past report he'd seen while the sharingan was active. It came back to him, crystal clear despite the six years which had passed.

The foreign nin's face remained covered by an orange mask, a mask which wouldn't have been so unique if it weren't for the odd single bar opening of an eye slit. Kakashi's sharingan burned the image into his head. His gaze narrowed and stared at the image. That mask was eerily similar to one reported on the night the Kyūbi attacked. The exact same description which the Hokage's on duty ANBU team recorded. The orange masked man who snuck into Kushina's hospital room and released the Kyūbi from its weakened seal. The same sharingan eye which controlled the Kyūbi and convinced the chakra presence to wreck the village which had been keeping it prisoner. The one who'd gotten the Uchiha in trouble and placed under investigation 6 years ago.

Kakashi couldn't blame the Kyūbi. He could even empathize. He could however blame the orange masked shit who set an enraged being loose on a largely civilian population. He removed the mask just long enough to see the features of a disfigured Uchiha male and slap an extra chakra suppression seal on the nin's forehead. It'd keep him unconscious till Kakashi, the Hokage, or the ANBU Commander removed it.

Kakashi glanced up at the hawk still waiting for him. The movement sent another stab of pain through his head. His stomach lurched with a wave of oncoming nausea. He swallowed, mentally preparing himself to shunshin into the ANBU bathroom stall directly under the Hokage's Tower. The one reserved for any of the four people scheduled to be guarding the Hokage tonight.