Kakashi has an A-rank mission to Earth. Leaf needs the Earth Daimyou's first-born son (Ootomo) dead. He's pushing for war with Fire to retake land taken in the third shinobi war, and is gathering strength as his father's health wanes. They don't want him killed, they want him to die.
(When dealing with Daimyous, it is a subtle but very important distinction.)
Ootomo will be travelling to a country villa in three days, under reduced guard. It is not a done deal, but it is the best shot they have. They need a ninja who can vanish from the complex without a trace. Conveniently, only Cloud know that the Hiraishin lives again, and they've never been big on sharing.
One of his kunai has already been left half a day's run from the villa by an Anbu team who will be assassinating a critical merchant target in the capital. When you're killing a Daimyou, it pays to be cautious. They are operating under the assumption those Anbu have already been made, and they need to be loudly somewhere else on the night of the Daimyou's firstborn's death.
For the first time since he left Anbu, Kakashi will be operating under transformation and a self-immolation seal, triggered off of the loss of that transformation. Even if Kakashi fails, he needs to have never been there. Knowing that your life rides on your ability to keep a jutsu up for five days straight is never a pleasant experience, but there are times when it is necessary.
This time, it is necessary.
Kakashi lived through the third shinobi war.
He has no interest in seeing the fourth.
He leaves tonight. Three days to case the villa, two days to kill the target, and then no days to get back. The Hiraishin is convenient like that.
He's asked Guy to train Sakura in his absence, on the condition he'll agree to three challenges upon his return. Don't be fooled by Guy's nice-guy smile.
When he knows he has leverage on you, he'll milk it for all it's worth.
So right now, he's going to get Sakura to introduce her to Guy in person. When tagging in a sub, it's fairly critical to be there yourself to make the handoff. It lets the student themself see the trust you have in the person you're handing them off to.
...or at least that's what Guy's telling him, and considering he intends to lean on Guy more extensively to push Sakura's taijutsu abilities now that she no longer balks at the concept, he's doing as he's told.
Sakura is at the Hyuuga compound, because apparently she has enough good will with Hiashi and the elder council from the Itachi and Tsukasa incidents that when she wants a playdate with a Hyuuga member, she's allowed to have it in their precious compound.
Kakashi entered it for the first time to see Toumi. He has worked with twelve Hyuuga over the last decade. Gone drinking with them, saved some of them, fucked a couple, too. No dice. First time he entered it was to take Sakura to see Toumi.
Sakura, at ten, has already been inside the Hyuuga compound more times than he has. Considering Sakura's newfound politics, however—this is not a good thing.
He can hear her yelling from the gate.
"He's torturing Neji!" she is yelling. "And this isn't the first time—he does it all the time! Every time Neji so much looks at a main house member, he tortures him!"
Kakashi does not body-flicker into the Hyuuga complex, because that is a very good way to get yourself killed. Kimiko's ordinarily flat expression is a bit panicked.
He doesn't think he's ever had a Hyuuga that happy to see him.
"Kakashi-san," she says, "please, come quickly."
Kakashi arrives to find Sakura glaring at a main house member (Higura), her face twisted in hatred. The main house member, in comparison, is much more subtle in his hate. Nothing more than a burning in the eyes and the barest twitch of an eye.
The looks of the Hyuuga around the courtyard are uncomfortable, but he does not see the recrimination he would expect to see, if Sakura was lying out of her ass. Higura, on second look, does have the kind of face you'd expect to see on a child-torturer.
"You're a shame upon this village!" She spits on the ground in front of him. Then, in a lower voice. "You're a shame upon your clan."
Kakashi catches Higura when his temper breaks and he surges forward, tossing Higura back to where he started from. Sakura looks completely unrepentant.
She looks furious beyond what Neji was able to drag out of her by mocking and belittling her. She looks furious beyond reason.
Angry enough to not realize that she is hurting Neji with every word out of her mouth. In the corner of his eyes, he can see Neji, kneeled on the ground, hands shaking.
Kakashi pushes the anger that sight raises in him into the ice bucket in the back of his mind, and takes ahold of Sakura by the shoulder.
"Sakura," he says. She looks up at him, and some of the fury drains out of her face.
"Sensei," she says.
"We need to go."
Sakura's face twitches, and then she smooths the fury from her face. She turns to Neji, and helps him to his feet.
Kakashi glances at the gathered Hyuuga who had stopped to watch the commotion out of the corners of his eyes. This is not the first time this has happened, although it is the first time Sakura has been this inflammatory. It says something about Higura's status in the clan that Sakura keeps getting allowed back in the door.
In the last two months, all whispers of A's speech have died away. Another InoShikaChou attempt on the Hyuuga curse seal, dead on the vine.
It is because he is looking at the lack of reaction in the Hyuuga around him that he does not see Sakura go for the kunai.
Higura takes it to the shoulder, and staggers.
"Neji is one hundred times the ninja than you will ever be," she hisses, and there is no blind fury in her eyes, just cold hard hatred as Higura's mask breaks, and his face twists with white hot fury.
Body-flickering into the Hyuuga compound is a death sentence, but body-flickering out of it is occasionally required. Neji is going to have a very long, no-good day, but there's nothing he can do about that.
"What was that?" Kakashi says, setting Sakura down outside the walls of the Hyuuga compound.
Sakura takes a deep breath, and looks up at him. The cold hardness she had directed at Higura he finds now directed at him.
"Someone had to."
"That doesn't help anyone," Kakashi says. "Do you know what Higura is going to do to Neji because of that?"
"Then what was I supposed to do?" she yells at him, the cold hardness breaking away into that same fury that had overtaken her in the Hyuuga compound. "Let them keep torturing him and treating him like trash?"
Kakashi resists the urge to take a step back.
"He told me about what you said," she continues in a hiss, mask falling back into place. "That you could have helped him, but you didn't."
Kakashi opens his mouth, but finds no words. Sakura vanishes into a cloud of petals, Gamami tumbling to his feet, glaring full force up at him before vanishing with a poof of smoke when she is resummoned.
What.
What is he supposed to say to that?
Actually, Neji just assumed that, I never said it.
Or maybe.
Being angry about it isn't going to fix it.
Or even.
Some things you just can't fix. You have to wait, pick your moment. Let people get hurt, and let them die.
Somehow, he doesn't think that will convince her. If only everyone underwent Anbu training, he can't help but think.
That cold, hard calculus of how to weigh odds and risks when the balances were weighed in human lives and how to stand by and do nothing while people died when the odds didn't justify the risk.
Don't die to save one person when if you live, you could save fifty more.
On second thought, maybe the world would be better if less people went through Anbu training and not more.
Kakashi sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Maybe encouraging her friendship with Neji had been a bad idea. Maybe everyone's got it right when they avoid the Hyuuga like the plague.
If you can't compartmentalize properly, you can't touch them too long before you either go evil or crazy.
With a second sigh, he teleports to his seal in the third training ground.
Sakura is already there, Gamami resummoned in her arms. She's a little bigger now, longer than Sakura's arms, overflowing a bit on both sides.
She is not a beautiful creature, and this is not her best look, front legs dangling, belly overflowing.
The death glare, admittedly, doesn't help.
Sakura's green gaze snaps to him with a glare to match.
So this is still happening, then.
Joy.
Guy, who had probably been hiding in the bushes somewhere, comes crashing down beside Kakashi.
"Eternal Rival!" he crows, voice at the top of his lungs because he has no other volume, "I will of course care for your student while you were away on your very important—" he pauses, realizing that Kakashi's mission is intensely secret "—Vacation!"
Sakura's gaze snaps to Guy, and he can see a smile flicker at the edges of her mouth before she remembers she is still angry at him.
"I appreciate that, Guy," Kakashi says, patting him on the shoulder. "Sakura—"
"Okay," she says. "Bye."
Kakashi lets his anbu mask fall.
"Well I'm not leaving yet, Sakura, so you're going to have to suck it up. This is Guy, Sakura. He's the best taijutsu master in the village."
"You flatter me, Kakashi," Guy bellows, his cheeks faintly pink.
"He'll be working with you on the same exercises I've been working with you on," Kakashi finishes.
Sakura glare breaks.
"Don't you care, Kakashi?"
Kakashi takes in a deep breath, and then lets his face soften as he sighs.
"Um," Guy says, standing kind of between them, looking intensely.
Kakashi ignores him with the long practice of having known him for his entire adult life.
"Yes," he says. He crouches in front of Sakura. "But there's nothing I can do."
She frowns, and he sees something a lot more concerning than fury in her face.
Pity.
"The Hyuuga clan is powerful, and people have been trying to change their house system since the village's inception, when they used the blanket respect for pre-existing traditions to hold on to that seal. All attempts since then have only earned their ire"—Sakura's lips twist in something like a sneer before she pulls her face back under control, because she doesn't know how easy it is to die when the Hyuuga want you dead—"and gotten branch house members killed."
Her face softens, and she nods.
"Okay, Kakashi," she says, and there is a moment in which the look in her face is not disappointment or fury, but simple disdain. The look he gives to rookie genin and chuunin, when he's pressed into letting them on his team. Then it's gone, and she nods.
Guy claps her on her shoulder. As they spoke, his face hardened briefly when he realized what they were talking about and now it's softening once more.
"It's hard, but we're ninja," Guy says, giving her a thumbs up and his nice-guy pose. "We don't just barge in through the front door—we wait until the time is right and then we strike from the back."
Sakura looks up at him, and slowly a smile crawls across her face.
"And when the time doesn't come?"
"We're ninja," Guy says. "You set their house on fire."
Guy has never been Anbu, and if Kakashi has his way, he never will be.
Guy backs away from Sakura, checks with Kakashi, and then spreads his arms.
"Let us begin your training, then, Sakura! We'll never be this young again, and if we let this opportunity slip, we will never get it back!"
"O… kay?"
Guy evokes that reaction in people. Kakashi backs out of the clearing, and leans back against a conveniently placed tree. To his surprise, Gamami follows him, leaping up onto his chest, and then crawling up his chest to his shoulder.
She is not a light creature, but thankfully, Kakashi is a ninja.
"Come at me as you would your direst enemy! Imagine I am Itachi! Do not worry about injuring me!" Then, because under that bravado, he's actually a bit of a dick (he and Kakashi get along for a reason), he says, grinning, "You will not."
Rage flashes across Sakura's face as she draws two kunai. She throws one at him while she vanishes into a cloud of flower petals.
"Wolf," Gamami says (Kakashi's not 100% sure she knows his name), as Guy easily dodges the kunai, then blocks Sakura's kunai when she appears in its place and tries to drive her kunai deep into his right shoulder.
"Toad," he says, because he's petty like that, as Guy drives a fist into Sakura's exposed side. She barely blocks it, and explodes backwards into a cloud of flower petals.
"You use non-lethal attacks, even when I have told you to treat me as your direst enemy!" he bellows, because she could have just as easily gone for his brain stem. "You truly embody the Spirit of Youth!"
One day, Kakashi will get Guy to tell him what, exactly, he thinks that word means.
"Could you have done something for Neji?" Gamami says, and, oh, he sees how it is. Neji gets his name remembered.
He turns to Gamami as three Sakuras appear before Guy, who, because he's a truly unreasonable human being, does what the byakugan could not: he identifies the true Sakura in an instant. She takes the blow to the shoulder, sprawling across the ground, leaving a trail of flower petals in her wake. She's gone before she comes to a stop, and Guy knows that, even though he doesn't look away from where she lies on the ground.
"You must strike with more youth! I do not feel your heart and soul behind your attacks! If you do not believe you can strike me, you never will!"
"No," Kakashi says with certainty and the benefit of hindsight.
Gamami glares at him. "You plead impotence," then with a mean little smirk, she continues, parroting Guy behind them. "If you do not believe you can do anything, you never will."
Guy and Kakashi will never see eye to eye on that particular topic.
Sakura commits fully to her next attack, raising a hand to block Guy's counterattack, and putting her full weight behind the thrust of her kunai.
"Yes!" Guy crows, kicking her back across the clearing. "Just like that!"
"What is your investment in this, toad?" he asks.
"The seal that has been placed upon him, it reeks of corruption. Mount Myouboku does not tolerate such corruption."
He looks down at her as once again three Sakuras appear around Guy. He dispels all three clones with a motion, blocks her kunai strike, but his counterattack blows Sakura into a cloud of flower petals instead of landing. He snatches a kunai out of the air, throws it over his shoulder at the kunai that is coming at him from behind, and kicks Sakura full in the chest when she appears from a petal behind his left shoulder.
"Mount Myouboku has never attempted to interfere in such matters before," he says, thinking of Jiraiya, and of Minato, and of Shikato Naro, and of Dan Katou.
"Our summoners study under us, but they are not of us," she says.
Kakashi wonders if Gamami is the toad who has spent the most time in Leaf in all of the village's history. He's pretty sure Sakura doesn't even unsummon her to sleep. (He can't imagine what it must have been like for Gamami, in that month that Sakura lay in a hospital bed, Gamami left alone in a land that she probably only barely knew.) Gamami has grown to maturity—and she is a fully grown toad now, despite her size—in Konoha.
A child of two worlds.
"Are you going to do something about it?" he asks.
"Yes," Gamami says, no hesitation in her tone. "Will you?"
That's a hard question. "If an opportunity presents itself."
Gamami gives him that same look of disdain that he saw for an instant in Sakura's gaze, but she has the subtlety of a flying brick to the skull and an attitude to match, so she gives it to him nice and long, so that he knows exactly what she thinks of him.
"So not unless you are forced to," Gamami says, turning her face and belching a ball of oil two feet in diameter at Guy, giving Sakura a window when Guy has to scramble a bit at the unexpected attack from the galley to get close enough to cut a single line in his flak jacket.
Guy punches Sakura literally into the ground, while laughing and—
"Excellent job, Sakura! I can feel the strength of your Youth!"
Gamami looks back at him.
"You are strong, Kakashi, but your will is weak," she says, leaping to the ground and drawing her knife.
Her words bite and not without cause. He thinks of Hiashi looking so nobly pained over suffering he has caused by his own hand, raising not a finger to solve the problem, because he is too weak willed, too scared, or simply too corrupt. Probably some combination of all three.
Gamami comes crashing back out of the clearing and into a tree not too far from him, but doesn't dispel, which is really something considering the strength behind Guy's kicks. She sticks to the tree and leaps up into the branches, vanishing into the leaves as Sakura draws Guy towards the edge of the clearing.
It is something to consider. Maybe Kakashi needs to evaluate the risks he's willing to take, once again.
When he returns from his mission, he'll meet with InoShikaChou. Their motives are far from pure, but they are better at this than he is. With him at their disposal, maybe they can bring about some change. He's got at least two favors over the Hyuuga, and just because he doesn't know how to use them doesn't mean they won't.
To be Anbu is to have ice in your blood, know when to let people die now to save people tomorrow. To be able to evaluate risks on the fly, change the mission as you deem it necessary. But it is also to know when to lean on those smarter than you, plans broader than you, and give yourself to them as the sharpest weapon you can be.
That fucking toad.
How the hell had Sakura ended up with a toad willing to stunt their own growth, just to stay by her side?
The caravan rumbles along the rocky road, two miles away from Ootomo's country villa. It passes over a particularly rough bunch of rocks, and no one notices its new passenger, flashing into existence over an unremarkable rock, with a very particular seal carved onto its underside.
That rock will be gone by morning.
Kakashi, wrapped in a lightning veil—because when you're killing an heir to a Daimyou, you can never be too careful—slips a seal from his pocket, two sealing sheets stuck together—one with Kakashi's fang burned into it, covered by a second, an inch square of solid seals. Kakashi touches it to a wood slat on the underside of a caravan. He touches a finger to it, and the seal activates, the surface of seal rippling as it changes color and texture to match the wood around it. The caravan bounces on another pothole in the ground, ten more feet down the road, and Kakashi vanishes once more.
The two Rock jounin guarding the supply delivery that is two days ahead of Ootomo's arrival never so much as twitch.
Kakashi re-appears, thirty miles inside of Fire territory, in Base 93. There is no tracking element to the seal he placed, because tracking seals can be detected.
If someone is looking at the underside of the caravan when he appears under it, the mission is burned. He goes home, and they come up with a new plan. He is not looking at the villa because no veil is strong enough to be invisible to all eyes.
Kakashi is plain, brown-haired and green-eyed. It is the most common phenotype in Rock, and ideally, they blame Ootomo's political enemies if they find him. He checks his transformation, checks his self-immolation seal, and settles down to wait.
It will take an hour for the caravan to reach the villa, another two to unload it.
Kakashi waits two hours, and then he re-appears under the caravan, once again wrapped in a lightning veil. No one is looking at him, so the mission is still on. He stays completely still, Sharingan active and chakra in his nose and ears. They are inside the gates, not twenty feet from the main villa.
Bad operational security. They should have never let the caravan this close, just so the civilians could get the job done faster. Bad for them, good for him.
Kakashi, shins stuck to the bottom of the caravan, places another seal on the smooth earth beneath him. A touch, and it is invisible. Kakashi reaches up and removes the seal he had placed on the caravan.
He waits for a single full round of unloading from the caravan, then re-adjusts his expected unloading time down to an hour and a half.
He waits one more second, extending his limited senses as far as they can go. Three ninja on the walls close enough for him to sense, which means—he does the mental math on his sensing radius—eleven ninja on the walls around the "villa". (Daimyou take their security very seriously and with good reason.)
He can sense three more ninja in the complex itself. He's got a good half of it in his range, but they're not placed at even intervals, so it could be anything from just those three to something like twelve.
Rock is a small village, so the last spy reports had them at thirty-four jounin, nine special jounin, fifty-something chuunin and over two hundred genin. Two jounin on the caravan is already a substantial portion of their jounin force. If he was running this operation, he wouldn't put more than a third of his jounin out of the compound itself, and hoping for incompetence in your enemies is a good way to get killed, so Kakashi would put their jounin count between five and seven, with the commander still in the compound.
That's Daimyou numbers, not heir numbers, which means the situation is worse than expected. The danger of an eminent coup is substantial.
Kakashi spends another moment evaluating the chakra signatures around him, looking for any he recognizes. He gets nothing—all the Rock jounin he's fought are dead—and disappears once again. He appears on a tree half a kilometer from the road. He removes that seal, goes to the road and removes the seal he left on the underside of a rock, and returns to Base 93.
He re-applies the chakra suppressing gel. It burns like a mother-fucker, but lets him get almost all the benefits of full chakra suppression without entering full chakra suppression. To Konoha's current knowledge, Rock has no ninja capable of sensing Kakashi's presence through the gel, so long as he replaces it whenever his chakra usage burns through it he'll be undetectable. The more jutsu he uses, the faster it burns.
Un-applied it glows like a fucking beacon under a chakra sense, but thankfully, the Hiraishin lets Kakashi keep it out of enemy territory, and in a chakra-sealed room.
He waits for three more hours, enough time for the caravan to clear out for sure.
He returns to the compound, once again wrapped in a lightning veil. Directly in front of him is a Rock chuunin, staring straight through him. Kakashi begins the Hiraishin and moves not an inch. The chuunin walks forward, and Kakashi teleports away the moment before the chuunin would have run straight into him.
He spends a moment in Base 93, going over the Sharingan's perfect memory of the chuunin in his memory. Gaze unfocused, no surprise on his arrival, no hesitation as she stepped forward. He could have done that as a chuunin, but most can't.
He's in Fire and could return to the village, but this is the kind of mission that requires a singularity of vision, not decision by committee, not to mention Kakashi's current face must never be seen anywhere near the Fire Country. He is the sole commander of this mission and with the knowledge that the heir has at least five loyal jounin, the about one in four chance he's been made doesn't justify burning the mission.
He flashes back, and is alone. As he chambers a Hiraishin, just in case, he looks over the walls, and finds all the ninja with their back to him. No one is watching the inside of the compound. The chuunin that walked through him is at the wall, replacing a jounin who had been there when he had hidden under the caravan.
Chakra gathered around his feet, Kakashi walks without sound and without raising dust over to the wall of the compound. He applies a seal to the wall, smooths it into brick with a touch. The inside of the compound is quiet.
He flashes back to the seal he has left in the open, removes it, and flashes back to base 93.
He re-applies the chakra-suppressing gel, wincing at the burn, and flashes back to the wall of the villa. No one is looking at him, and Kakashi circumnavigates the villa. He finds no open doors, but one window open on the second floor.
Chakra on his hands, Kakashi climbs the wall, stopping every step to check if he's been made. He reaches the window, and finds the opening fuzzing with a protection field. From another pocket, Kakashi draws out a tiny envelope and slips his seal into it, then stops and extends his senses outward.
No ninja in the hall—closest ninja two rooms away. Kakashi waits. The ninja remains stationary, chakra flow steady and even. Possibly sleeping.
Best chance.
Kakashi places the envelope on the window sill, and slides it into the protection field. The envelope burns away, but the seal remains intact, and he can feel no ninja come alert as alarms blare.
He waits another moment, then teleports to the other side of the window, taking the seal from the sill, placing it quickly against the wall, and activating it. It patterns into the flowers of the wallpaper, and then he teleports away.
After a re-application of the chakra-suppressing gel, he returns to the hallway and creeps along the carpet to a door with no chakra signature behind it. Another glance up and down the hallway, and he opens it and slips inside.
Closet, perfect. Judging from the dust, not one that is in regular use.
Careful not to disturb the dust, Kakashi applies a seal to the corner of the closet beside the door.
They have no map of the villa, so he'll have to map it out himself.
Joy.
Two trips back to Base 93 for more chakra suppressing gel later, and Kakashi has completed his map of the house. He has confirmed the ninja count, has counted out eight jounin that match faces in the Bingo Book, not including four chuunin that the Leaf ranks as jounin-equivalent. Five in the compound, including the two that were watching the caravan, three asleep and two awake, and then three on the walls.
The main hall is dressed out in suspicious levels of finery, five bedrooms unguarded but decorated very particularly, matching five of the most prominent noble houses in Earth.
They had been wondering why Ootomo would leave the capital. He's known to be paranoid to the point of insanity, and Fire was trying to find ways to kill him in the bulletproof castle that the Earth Daimyou has before they received word of his upcoming trip here.
Now Kakashi knows.
The coup.
It's happening here.
This was accounted for. Under ordinary circumstances, if he's made, run. They can try again. If, however, he determines the coup is imminent, he's under different orders.
Kill everyone.
Kakashi would like to avoid that. He could take out Ootomo, and he might—might—be able to take the five nobles, but he definitely couldn't take out or even escape from eight jounin. His Hiraishin is faster, but he is not yet Minato.
It would be a suicide mission.
One, he finds, he would be willing to undertake, if it became necessary. He has left a letter to Sakura, Guy, his jounin comrades, and the Hokage. He has willed his father's scrolls to Sakura, and Minato's Hiraishin scroll to Jiraiya, to pass on to Sakura when she isn't likely to kill herself with it. His affairs are in order.
It would be a good death.
He would, however, much rather live.
Kakashi has applied a seal under the bed and to the wall behind the door of every bedroom, on the off chance Ootomo's protection detail manages to talk sense into him and gets him to not stay in the room that is obviously his. Kakashi has never had luck with that, though, so he's not holding out hope.
The room that is clearly Ootomo's is currently guarded by a jounin and one of those chuunin who should be a jounin. He suspects that the room itself is guarded by yet another protection field, of the kind the whole house is wrapped in. He's watched a single shift change, and there is no moment when the room is not guarded by two jounin-class ninja.
They never enter the room, they just stand vigilant guard outside it.
Fuck Ootomo's paranoia.
Fuck it to hell.
Kakashi returns to base 93. The Sharingan is good at getting one person under a genjutsu, but betting his life on the other ninja not noticing their partner is under a genjutsu in the time it takes for him to move on to them is not something he's interested in doing. There's a reason other villages' counter-Uchiha tactic is "never be alone".
However, tomorrow, Ootomo leaves the capital. It's an eighteen hour trip when operating with a civilian. If Oomoto is paranoid enough to put two jounin on his supply caravan, he is paranoid to put at least that many around him in transit.
If he has other jounin in reserve, then, well, Kakashi is just going to have to risk it.
That's his window.
And so Kakashi sits alone in a chakra-sealed room in Base 93 for just under a day, before the signaling paper under his hands flashes purple, informing him Ootomo has left the capital. He gets maybe four hours of sleep, which is more than enough. He re-applies the chakra-suppression gel and checks his chakra reserves—one hundred percent.
He teleport to the villa, and—jackpot—finds it light five jounin and three chuunin-who-should-be jounin. He creeps to Ootomo's room, and finds a single jounin and the chuunin who looked straight through him when he first arrived.
Lucky break.
The jounin is Mako, of the Gentle Fist. No Byakugan, but no less deadly for it, according to the Bingo Book.
The chuunin isn't in the bingo book—the only evidence of her rank is her flak jacket.
Kakashi runs over everything he knows about the two, checks his lightning veil, then checks the position of any nearby chakra signatures. He takes a deep, silent breath, then catches the jounin's eye with his sharingan. She blinks, and the genjutsu is complete. She will see an empty corridor, the door closed behind her, for the next two hours. He turns to catch the chuunin's gaze, and then he has them both.
He stands out of sight, waits to see if the genjutsu will hold—it does.
He steps out before them, and neither move. He slips a seal into a field-breaking envelope and steps up to them. He studies both faces, ensures that they see nothing, then steps past them to the door.
It is sealed closed, with no opening for the envelope to be slipped in.
He sets his hand on the handle, and it turns easily under his hand. He pauses, waits. No alarms go off. He releases the door, and it opens in, into the protection field crackling before him. He tosses the envelope into the room, and it burns away, leaving his seal to fall to the ground, untouched. He teleports in after it, sliding the door closed behind him as quietly as he can.
The clack breaks Mako's genjutsu regardless. He breaks the genjutsu on the chuunin as well, places the seal against the wall beside the door, and then vanishes as Mako pushes the door open.
He waits in Base 93, heart pounding, and re-applies the chakra-suppression gel as he waits. He flashes back to the closet after five minutes, and stands, perfectly still, mapping out the villa as best he can.
It's still. He hasn't been made. He lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
He returns to Base 93 and then waits an hour, regardless.
At the end of the hour, he slips back into Ootomo's room, places a new seal under his bed and then one on the wall behind his dresser, just in case someone thinks to replace the bed. He then goes through the villa, while the guard is reduced, and removes every seal he has placed except the ones in the closet and the bedrooms.
He needs to have never been here. Nothing can be left behind.
He returns to Base 93.
It takes sixteen intensely boring hours for Ootomo to arrive, and then another two for him to finish his dinner and retire to his chambers.
The bed is replaced. The wall is not.
Three jounin guard his room, but none enter it with him.
Kakashi collects all of the seals he has placed in all of the bedrooms, and then flashes back to his closet. He takes a deep breath and removes the seal from the closet door.
He teleports to Ootomo's room, and Ootomo looks straight through him. Kakashi slips an earth privacy seal from his pocket, and places it across the doors.
He catches Ootomo the moment before he screams, hand clamped across his mouth, arm tight around his neck. After a moment of struggling, Ootomo slumps, unconscious but not dead. Kakashi places a hand against the back of Ootomo's neck, and sends a jolt of an unconsciousness jutsu through him that will keep him unconscious for what Kakashi needs to set up.
Kakashi undresses Ootomo, carefully folding his clothes on the chest at the end of his bed, perfectly centered and perfectly straight. Ootomo is known for his fastidiousness in all things.
Then Kakashi jerry rigs a noose out of sheets, messy and imperfect. He ties it just as messily to the bed post, and then slips Ootomo's head through the noose.
If you want someone dead and disgraced, accidental suicide through auto-erotic aspyhixation is a good one. Kakashi turns out the lights, scratches Ootomo's neck with Ootomo's own nails, has him bite the inside of his own cheeks, then pulls him firmly against the noose until his heart slows, and then stops.
He never wakes up.
Kakashi stands at the foot of the bed, evaluates the scene he has created, and nods. It is not beyond doubt, but it never could have been. There will be enough doubt to prevent martyrdom, and enough shame to weaken his allied noble houses.
Kakashi removes his last two seals, and vanishes.
He arrives at Base 93, carefully removes his self-immolation seal, and strips his clothes off. Then he gathers the mission scroll, all of his clothes, and every object he took with him to Earth in a pile and burns them. He seals them and all of the smoke he has created into a second storage seal and then burns it too.
Kakashi walks to the wall, and tears the seal from the wall that keeps the door closed, notifying the team of cleaner ninja outside the door, two chuunin and a genin, none of whom have been read into his mission, that his mission is complete. They do not know who he is, and they will not see him.
He has five minutes.
He goes to where his things are gathered, puts his clothes back on, and reties his forehead protector back onto his head again with a sigh.
It's good to be a Leaf ninja again.
He looks around the room that has been his world for the last three days, and then vanishes.