Notes: I went through many chapters of CYB to find reference material for this.
This chapter takes place during same time as the events in Gotham thus far.
Aburame Shimika adjusted her glasses with one finger, careful not to disturb the butterflies gathered along her sleeve or shoulders with the movement. Their work and their chakra tithe were both too important to waste a single sample or specimen through carelessness. They'd even gone so far as to shed their instinctual camouflage and most of their genjutsu defenses for the cause, leaving most of them a collection of mottled greens and browns in the brilliant Konoha sun.
Nearby, Jiraiya of the Sannin sketched his fourth attempt at the most complicated fūinjutsu array Shimika had ever seen. Butterflies marched up and down his back and rode in his hair, feeding chakra to him with each fan of their speckled wings. Like they had with other experts over the last few weeks, allowing each shinobi to test theory after theory and chase leads until their bodies gave out before their reserves.
They got to go home, if empty-handed and exhausted.
Shimika had no intention of leaving a task unfinished. Even if they scoured the areas where Gekkō Keisuke and Gekkō Hayate were last detected for the rest of the year, Shimika would patiently facilitate this mission until they were found.
"Shimika-chan," Jiraiya called, "stand clear."
Shimika bowed and every butterfly in her control burst into motion, forming a loose perimeter a few strides from the edge of Jiraiya's work. It was five meters across and intricately detailed, but Shimika briefly lost sight of it as the butterflies alighted on every tree and bush and stone in the area. After a second to gauge her own optimism, Shimika just folded her arms together to wait.
Jiraiya wasn't the last resort. But, of the fūinjutsu experts Konoha could call on to find their lost shinobi, he was the only one who combined that level of skill, a lack of daily responsibilities, and no Tailed Beast in his body. He was also the most well-traveled, giving everyone's data a thorough review before tailoring his approach to exclude already-used methods.
The Inuzuka had already been pulled from the case. None of Fuse's dogs had found a scent trail past the exact spots in the village where the Gekkō siblings disappeared. Shimika's clan was the next on the list, in case whatever stole them had left a trace undetectable even to Inuzuka canines, but kikai insects had stranger senses still. When that search also failed to uncover anything, the Hokage set his students and sensei to the task.
Shimika's own best guess for a culprit was a hostile with Uchiha Obito's space-time powers, but saying so within her juniors' hearing felt cruel. She only told the Hokage her suspicions in the interest of uncovering every possible lead.
And then Hatake Kakashi once the follow-up meetings began.
There had been a lot of closed-door arguments since then. Shimika was only invited once, contributed nothing useful, and politely excused herself.
Shimika didn't have any especially strong feelings about Gekkō Keisuke at the beginning of their acquaintance. Even now, Shimika couldn't say she knew her kōhai well, but the girl was one of the most influential little prodigies in the last decade. Her team had retrieved the butterfly summon contract, joined the Hokage Guard, been responsible for the safe sealing of the Nine-Tailed Fox, and generally placed themselves between Konoha and danger at every opportunity. For these incidents and more, Shimika was grateful.
At the same time, she wasn't hurt. Not like the Gekkō siblings' teammates and friends.
Across the way, Jiraiya's chakra flared high enough to tempt Shimika's summons, and then died down again. There was quite a lot of chakra smoke. It felt like a waste.
Shimika waited for the cursing to start.
"Dammit, not enough information." Jiraiya waved the smoke away and peered down at the remains of his array. At least he was dignified about his failure.
The stone weight of disappointment at every failed search method piled higher, silently, in Shimika's heart.
She cleared her throat. "Jiraiya-sama, would you please elaborate?" Shimka had a clipboard.
While the butterflies whirled around them to devour the defunct detection array, Jiraiya got to his feet and sighed. "Sure, come on over. I think we can completely rule out a willing departure."
Shimika nodded along as she wrote. A butterfly alighted on her pencil and clung stubbornly as her fingers flew across paper. "Both Gekkō siblings exhibited no warning signs before their disappearances. We have testimony from all of their genin teammates and both Yamanaka Inoichi and the Fourth Hokage."
"Yeah, I know." Jiraiya held up a hand to fend off an argument. "I'm not doubting their loyalty. How the hell could I?"
That wasn't to say that some malicious gossips hadn't attempted to twist the story, but Shimka had witnessed Shiranui Genma verbally cut one such individual to pieces in front of a small crowd of chūnin. It was, in hindsight, as much a declaration of friendship and support as it was a warning against Maito Gai—also in attendance—intervening and breaking someone's nose.
Shimika didn't judge Keisuke for her jinchūriki status. No Aburame would. It was…simultaneously validating and infuriating to see many of the same ignoramuses who slandered Shimika's junior turn around and insist the Aburame should be "tolerated" for their utility. Galling, because there had never been an Aburame who put their ambition above the village's greater good. They were steadfast.
Shimika could survive wagging tongues. But she would happily find an excuse, like Gai, and turn a sparring match into a beating. People expected it less from an Aburame.
That was for later.
"Admittedly, if Kei-chan was going to run, her brother's probably the one person she'd take." Jiraiya took a moment to stretch, then looked at Shimika's clipboard. "All right, I have good news and bad news."
"Bad news first." Shimika knew how this worked.
"What happened here involved a type of energy that Kei-chan has never, to my knowledge, been recorded using." Jiraiya rubbed his chin thoughtfully as the butterflies swirled around them. "It's not her chakra, or anything from the Three-Tails. It's also not the same as natural energy as used by the toad clan."
Shimika frowned behind her high collar. Her kikai insects squirmed unhappily in her core as she wrote. While they weren't particularly picky creatures, it wasn't unreasonable to prefer an unflappable host.
"And whatever it was? Definitely foreign, which means someone just snatched our girl and the best hostage to use against her."
"And the good news?"
"I think I knew where we can look for answers." Jiraiya nodded to himself. "It'll probably take a while, and I can't take you along for the ride. Do you mind telling Minato on my behalf?"
"Obviously not, Jiraiya-sama." Shimika adjusted her glasses again. "I only care that our missing comrades are returned safely."
They were children, chūnin and special jōnin or not. They had people who cared deeply about them. In all senses but the strictest interpretation of the Land of Fire's laws, the Hokage had lost two members of his family in a single incident. Shimika, as withdrawn as she could be, wanted her village as whole as she could make it. There would be no more needless tragedies.
"Good. Well, tell him I'm off to see the Great Toad Sage and pick his brain. In the meantime, he should focus on getting some damn sleep so he looks less dead." Jiraiya paused. "Are you writing this down?"
"Yes, and I'd appreciate a signature to validate this statement." Shimika didn't make a habit of talking down to the Fourth Hokage, not like his teacher. She held up the clipboard.
"Right, I forgot how meticulous you are." Jiraiya signed with a flourish, like he was practicing his autograph. Once he was done, he stood back and gave her a thumbs-up. "Shimika-chan, try not to worry too much. You'll get wrinkles."
Shimika sighed. "Go, Jiraiya-sama. Some of us need good news more than platitudes and small talk." All of her summoned butterflies turned their wings at once, surrounding them both with the illusion of a thousand judging eyes. "We eagerly await your return."
Somewhat understandably, Jiraiya left rather quickly after that. As soon as he was gone, Shimika dismissed all of her summons but a hand-sized individual, and left it in a tree near the investigation site. Along with the dozen watching the road between the village and the training grounds, where young Hayate had disappeared, there was no more need for their powers.
Not yet.
Shimika fully expected to be deployed against this hidden enemy sometime very soon. Her hive stirred in anticipation.
Those who harmed her people deserved to die. If the enemy never found out what killed them, Shimika didn't especially care. Aburame sowed the battlefield for victory long before the fighting began, so that all outcomes ended in victory. Taking Konoha by surprise like they had only ensured their eventual demise.
In the meantime, Shimika went to go deliver a message. Tucking her hands back into her pockets, Shimika hopped toward the treeline and the quickest way back to the center of Konoha. The Hokage probably wouldn't appreciate the delay in going on foot—as opposed to sending a summon—but hope was a tricky thing and needed feeding. Shimika needed to work out her phrasing.
If, afterward, she went home and tracked down her tiny cousins to give them hugs and sticky honey candy to make herself feel better, at least Shino and Torune would never tattle on her. Their world was so sweet and simple and secure that it was a balm to the older shinobi around them, even if they didn't know it.
And if Torune did say something, well, Shibi should've known that Shimika was still vying to be the favorite.
"I already told you, making a blind jump with Kamui is far too dangerous. We have no idea if a living being could even land safely." Sensei had both palms planted on his desk, having shot to his feet at some point during the argument. "Even if he did manage to find them, the chakra costs of using Kamui that way are impossible to calculate without more data."
"And you can't get data if you don't experiment!" Rin didn't flinch when Sensei jerked his head toward her.
Obito backed her up instantly. "I can supplement my chakra with soldier pills, or with donations, or even with those summoned butterflies the Aburame clan uses. Kei and Hayate could need us right now."
Kakashi clenched his jaw against the budding headache.
Arriving back home from a month-long ANBU mission usually meant he could breathe for the first time since departure. But as soon as he'd arrived home again, Obito met him at his front step and crushed him into a desperate hug, smelling and sounding miserable. Kakashi's arms had coiled around him from sheer surprise before his brain caught up with the reflex.
"What—?"
"Kei and Hayate are missing."
Kakashi hadn't gone back to his apartment since then. Fuse couldn't even look him in the eye.
Instead, he and Obito were both benched until further notice, and they'd essentially moved into Sensei and Kushina's guest bedroom in the meantime. Rin stopped by often, after her hospital shifts, and all three of them became fixtures in little Naruto and Tatsumaki's daily lives.
Obito was maybe five seconds from being sent out of Sensei's home office to spend time with the babies until he calmed down. Kushina was waiting out there to make sure he listened, chains at the ready.
"Obito, you are also one of my students," Sensei began after taking a slow, calming breath. "I won't trade you for Kei and Hayate-kun."
Kakashi winced as Rin reared back like a cobra. "He wouldn't be risking—"
"We don't know that, Rin-chan." Sensei looked like he'd aged years in the last month, with deep shadows under his eyes and his normally-wild hair gone flat from neglect. Still, his voice was unyielding. "Until Jiraiya-sensei returns with more information, we will not throw caution to the wind and use ourselves as test subjects."
"Anything could be happening to them!" Obito stilled only when Kakashi laid a hand against his back. "Kakashi, what—?"
"Kei is alive." Speaking was—not easy, but Kakashi persisted. Thinking about the scenario scraped at his soul with cracked claws. "If she was, she told me Isobu would come back eventually. And he'd tell us what happened." Kakashi dug his fingers into Obito's sleeve, anchoring him in place. "It might not help us with Hayate, but it's something."
The fight went out of Obito's shoulders. "Yeah, I—I remember her saying that." Obito learned back into Kakashi's touch, already starting to list toward the wall. He'd been awake too long. "Shit."
"Language," Sensei scolded on reflex. "Just—not around the babies."
Then he sat down at his desk chair again and hid his own face in his hands. Guilt dragged them all down, but Sensei was the one who was ultimately responsible for Kei and Hayate's safety. That they'd been taken from the village was the ultimate nightmare scenario. Uncertainty was poison seeping deeper into them every day.
Kakashi could guess what was on Sensei's mind: Losing family, again, when practically half their lives had been defined by that fear. Kakashi could look at the scar his father's death had left behind, raw wound sealed by time and age and new love since then. But that was a parent. Parents left, eventually, if time was kind.
Because he'd been an orphan first, Sensei's defining loss started with Kakashi's father—a friend and colleague—and then his teammates, and then…
And then Obito. Whose disappearance kept them all neck-deep in guilt until his return. After, too, because there was a fracture in their souls where "you left him!" shrieked no matter how long they went.
Kakashi didn't know how cursed they all were to experience it all again, in peacetime. At home. Where they were all supposed to be safe.
Obito's breathing stuttered as his remaining lung capacity caught up with his feelings. He trembled and bowed under that weight.
Kakashi dragged Obito to the corner and practically pinned him there, against a pile of pillows and blankets ordinarily reserved for the children if they wanted to nap near their father. Or, given the way their lives had gone recently, in case Sensei needed the reassurance of looking to his immediate left and seeing his family safe and sound. Something crunched under Obito's weight; it sounded like a loose rice cracker.
"I can handle myself," Obito muttered, a token resentment bubbling in the back of his voice. It was somewhere behind the stress and grief and exhaustion.
Kakashi resisted the urge to punch him in the shoulder. Instead, he leaned the bulk of his weight into Obito's less-perceptive right side and said, "That's never been true." He tried to say it gently, almost like teasing, but his tone came out flat.
"Jerk." But Obito didn't shove him away.
Kakashi grabbed one of the soft blankets and settled it over Obito's shoulders.
Obito shuddered and leaned into the contact. Ordinarily, he'd have curled up in Rin's grip like a lanky stuffed animal, but the determined set to his jaw implied it was a deliberate choice to seek Kakashi instead. They'd never needed to lean solely on each other, not with Kei and Rin and all their friends around them, but Obito didn't seem interested in other options.
Teardrops landed squarely on Kakashi's shoulder as Obito dropped his head on it. Warm and cold sensation, almost pooling in the fabric of Kakashi's shirt.
Kakashi tilted his head slowly back. His stolen eye was mirroring its owner, even under his headband.
Rin, still standing dead center in the room and suddenly alone, ducked her head to hide the way her lip wobbled from Sensei's dull gaze. "Sorry, Hokage-sama. I-I shouldn't have shouted."
"If I blamed anyone for emotions running high, I'd never get anything done again." Sensei's gaze drifted sideways, as though he could see through the wall to his blood children.
It sounded like Tatsumaki and Naruto could feel the rising tension in the house and responded the only way they could: by crying. They were in good company.
"I just—I hate this. Being helpless every time s-something happens." Rin scrubbed harshly at her face. Her eyes were red. "I c-can't stand it."
"Better yell now to get it out," Kakashi suggested, still debating whether or not to loop his arm around Obito's shoulders. Obito could turn into a clingy octopus at the slightest provocation if Kakashi were Kei or Rin instead, but Kakashi didn't often initiate contact and didn't know if he'd be welcome.
And Obito mimicked a furnace at the best of times. There was a reason why Kakashi refused to sleep under the same blanket as him while deployed.
Sensei nodded in silent, total agreement.
"Even if I just want to scream?"
"Pick any room." Sensei held up a privacy seal between two fingers, dug out of some pile on his desk. He'd been frantic and unable to sleep last night and, as only a fūinjutsu master could, channeled that directionless energy into creation. There were spare utility seals all over the house by morning, in furtive little stacks.
It was painful how many habits Sensei and Kei shared.
Outside of this house, in the village proper—there was no space for this grief and worry.
In Konoha, Sensei had to be the unflappable Fourth Hokage. He could make some speech that might touch on the depth of his feelings and make his rounds of the village like the responsible statesman he had to be. Helplessness didn't suit that face.
Kakashi and Obito could be pulled from mission rotations until the Hokage changed his mind. ANBU or not, Crane or not, they were still shinobi in the care and keeping of Konohagakure and her canopy. They could take the time to rest. But past the Hokage mantle, there was a person who wasn't allowed that same luxury.
Sensei made do with shifts of Shadow Clones. It didn't help with his mental fatigue, but they were managing. At the same time, Kakashi wasn't sure Sensei dreamed anymore. Information from the clones would drown them it out.
"Go on, Rin-chan." Sensei's voice aimed for consoling and missed. "Take ten."
Rin bowed to Sensei once she had the privacy seal in hand. There was a look in her eyes that Kakashi didn't like at all, but Rin wasn't usually the reckless type. She'd find a way to calm herself down and come back, or Kakashi would send Obito or Kushina after her in ten minutes.
The quiet in the room wasn't quite oppressive as Kakashi leaned his head back against the wall and briefly tried to settle. Between Obito's sniffling and Sensei's careful, controlled breathing, Kakashi didn't have to open his eyes to know they were both safe. Their scents permeated the room, misery clear to anyone with Kakashi's nose. It was just—
Suffocating. Now that he didn't have the argument to focus on, that was the only word left.
Kakashi left the room five minutes later, after getting Obito a box of tissues and summoning Pakkun to stay with him instead. The scraping sensation in Kakashi's head hadn't abated with contact or warmth, so he didn't really have much choice but to get up and patrol the house. Bleeding off nervous energy through activity was the best he could do, since it didn't seem like he'd relax enough for sleep until he was exhausted.
Again.
Midway through Kakashi's circuit around the most heavily-warded building in the entire village, Rin emerged from one of the guest rooms with a grimace on her face and both hands in her hair to tie it back.
"I shouldn't have yelled like that when you were already stressed." Rin's shoulders rose and fell with her deep breathing. "Sorry, Kakashi-kun."
The fact that Rin had been so furious was more off-putting than her actual actions. When Rin got desperate enough, she would throw herself directly into the line of fire like she thought she was immortal. Kakashi only had to think back to the White Zetsu invasion to find a standout example.
"It's fine." Kakashi couldn't scold her for it. If her reaction was to lose her temper in grief, Kakashi's was to withdraw. "If you hadn't, someone else would have."
"Probably Obito," Rin agreed wryly. She shivered and clapped her hands against her tattooed cheeks, as though to snap herself awake. When she was done, shame clung to her face. "We're upset and desperate, but—but I wouldn't ever be that desperate. Sacrificing people isn't the way to go. And even if it was, neither of them would ever forgive us."
Kakashi vividly remembered Kei's reaction to what happened at Kannabi. Some nights, it was as though the entire incident was painted across the insides of his eyelids. With the Sharingan, it was nearly true.
Rin scrubbed at her eyes again.
There was a knock at the front door.
With Kushina and the kids out in the yard and unlikely to answer it, Kakashi glanced at the seals bordering the peephole. The black script hadn't changed color, so he stepped forward to check. With his left hand, he signaled Rin to stand back, just in case.
The person standing outside of the door was absolutely an Aburame, but their face was a little too covered to be sure.
Kakashi undid the chain lock and the seal attached to it, then opened the door. As soon as he did so, he registered the dusty, slightly acrid tang of agitated kikai insects. Past that, the smell of old hair gel and honey, along with the huge black shades, gave this particular individual away as Aburame Shimika. Her coat collar was high enough to cover her nose and mouth and her hair was flat, but there was no mistaking one of his Hokage Guard seniors for anyone else.
Especially not with a seal-script summoned butterfly in plain view, like a live hairclip.
"Good afternoon," Shimika said with a slight bow. "May I enter?"
Kakashi stepped aside, and Rin guided Shimika to the couch without hesitation. He shut the door and rearmed the defenses before joining them.
Rin didn't wait. "Is there any news?"
"Some," Shimika said in her quiet drone. She held up a hand to the side of her head and let the butterfly join a dozen kikai gathered on her wrist. "Jiraiya-sama sent me ahead and went to gather materials from the Third Hokage's storerooms."
"I didn't realize the Third Hokage would have anything helpful," Rin said, surprised. Her thoughtful frown was already apparent. "Didn't he hand everything over to the Fourth?"
"It's…more that the Fourth and the Third use different equipment and techniques for the same function," Shimika replied. The insects on her hand were walking in slow figure-eight formations, as neatly as brushstrokes on a page. "My understanding is that the Great Toad Sage brought such a device to Jiraiya-sama's attention."
Kakashi took a second to mentally flip through every unusual artifact he remembered seeing anywhere near the Third Hokage. The list wasn't long. For the most part, Kakashi took missions from chūnin desk officers during the Third Hokage's reign, and he hadn't spent a lot of time in that office without a specific goal in mind. Now that it was Sensei's office, the parts that weren't covered in reams of paperwork were meticulously childproofed, so nothing dangerous could end up in little hands if his family joined him at work. At most, there'd been…
Oh. "Do you mean the crystal ball he used to have?"
Rin's expression was blank with confusion. "Wait, the Third Hokage had a crystal ball? Why?"
"Sarutobi-sama preferred to use it as a focus for the Telescope ninjutsu." Once again, Shimika's seniority came in handy. The Third Hokage hadn't been known as "the Professor" for nothing. "I believe the Fourth Hokage prefers using a network of fūinjutsu across the village as a passive monitoring system instead."
"He does," Kakashi confirmed.
"Then hopefully this method will patch one or two holes in our security."
Shortly after that, Kushina came back with a mud-covered child under each arm, hauling her gardening team off to the bath. She nodded to Shimika as she went and asked Rin nicely to make tea, which she did after only a little rummaging around in cupboards.
Kushina rejoined them twenty minutes later, with her son on her hip and with Sensei and Obito trailing behind her. Obito was carrying Tatsumaki. All of them spread out across the kitchen and the living room, and they'd even turned the couch around with the help of Kushina's chains.
"So," Kushina began, "I heard Jiraiya-sama is back in town again. Are we getting closer to having a plan?"
Kushina had been involved in most of the fūinjutsu research, but no one wanted to let her experiment too closely to the site that stole a jinchūriki. What if it turned out that the culprit had some kind of contract with the Tailed Beasts? Or could grab anyone, as long as they were close enough to the profile fit by either of the Gekkō siblings? Kushina chafed against the restrictions, but without any progress in any direction, the frustration couldn't find a safe release valve.
At least she mostly confined it to battling the mint trying to take over her planters. That curse was a blessing in disguise for providing a momentary distraction.
"Somewhat, Kushina-san," said Shimika. Since Tatsumaki was asleep after her bath, she concentrated on letting a handful of the chakra-eating butterflies dance around in front of Naruto's face instead, forming the shapes of common animals.
The toddler hadn't tried to grab at them yet, mostly because Kushina kept him squarely on her lap.
Kakashi hadn't known Shimika had any experience with children.
Between Shimika, Kakashi, and Rin, they managed to explain their suppositions so far: The crystal ball, Jiraiya's journey, and other possible insights into the nature of the crisis. They'd successfully ruled out most of the usual suspects just by taking into account the location and lack of other evidence. The problem was that the remaining list of possible kidnappers was short to the point of uselessness.
Kakashi certainly didn't think evil fake Obito was going to turn out to be the guilty party.
Luckily, Jiraiya arrived before they ran out of tea and had to deal with the tension mounting in the room.
"Well, this is depressing," was his immediate assessment, once he'd shucked his sandals and been given a mug of tea like any other houseguest. He clapped a heavy hand down on Sensei's shoulder before ruffling Kakashi's hair, and then poked Naruto affectionately on the nose.
"Jiji!" Naruto held out both his arms pleadingly. "Up!"
Jiraiya glanced at Kushina for approval first.
Kushina handed Naruto off personally. "Let me clear the table. I've heard you have someone to show us."
"You betcha."
With Naruto cradled against his chest and the rest of the house's occupants drifting toward the dinner table with various speeds, Jiraiya flicked a hand so a scroll case appeared from his sleeve. Popping the catch, he was already unrolling the storage scroll across the wood before anyone joined him.
Rin appeared with salt and pepper shakers to pin the edges down. Her shoulders were wound tight with mixed anticipation and dread.
Shimika had pulled all her kikai back under her coat, but she laid her mug and Sensei's across the other end of the scroll to keep it from unrolling too far.
Sensei, meanwhile, stole Tatsumaki back from Obito and held her carefully above the impending situation. She didn't notice, too busy sleeping and drooling at the same time. "Jiraiya-sensei, do you really think this will work?"
"It worked when the old toad did it," was Jiraiya's confident reply. He grinned, hitching Naruto a little higher against his shoulder. "And you can bet I double-checked before I ever thought about coming back home."
That sent a bolt of excitement through the room.
There was shouting that mostly hit Kakashi's brain as noise.
Naruto squealed just to show he was participating.
"Okay, kiddo, you've definitely got a set of pipes on you," Jiraiya said, leaning a little away from his grandson. "Anyway, yes, we did confirm that the pair of them are alive and active. Not captured by Kiri or wherever else was on the suspect list.
Relief wanted to take Kakashi's legs out from under him; he gripped the back of a chair in anticipation of a fall, but withstood it. Even if what came next wasn't a simple solution, it was better than what they'd had before. They could work with this. They could work with anything to get their loved ones back home safely.
Sensei sagged far enough that Shimika pulled out a chair for him. Elbows on the table, he said, "Show us, please."
Jiraiya thankfully didn't draw things out more. Instead, he handed Naruto—still gripping his hair—to Rin, then cut a tiny red line into his finger with the edge of a kunai he'd pulled from his sleeve. He pressed his hand down, to the seal, and his chakra briefly flared.
With a poof noise, a melon-sized glass orb sat atop the seal, balanced on a purple pillow. The pillow smelled like dust and cleaning chemicals.
"Jiraiya-sama, is there any way to teach us the relevant ninjutsu?" Rin asked quietly, leaning over the orb. Her distorted reflection stared back.
With his head still angled a little awkwardly to the side by a toddler's grip, Jiraiya nodded. "Obito-kun, if you don't mind—"
Obito's Sharingan was already up and spinning.
"—Good. That'll work." Jiraiya finally tugged his hair carefully free and smoothed it down as far as it'd go. Which wasn't very. He pointed an accusatory finger at Obito and then at Kakashi, who had pushed his headband up and pointed his half of the Mangekyō Sharingan set at Jiraiya's hands. "But I swear to every single god in this world, if you weasels jump into this without thinking or without doing a lot of trials beforehand, I will hunt you down and make you explain to Tsunade exactly how you lost a damn limb. Do you hear me?"
"I mean, I've already paid an arm tax once—"
"You shut your trap, brat." As Obito's mouth snapped shut and he scowled, Jiraiya crossed his arms. "This is not the time to get jumpy. You work your way up to human trials, with every reasonable precaution. Absolutely no Orochimaru nonsense. You know both of those kids would kick your self-sacrificing teeth in."
Obito didn't fully subside until Sensei shot him a warning look. Then the grumbling stopped.
"Okay. Now, let's see what the littler one is up to first."
Jiraiya's hands blurred through seals to normal eyes. The sequence turned out to be fairly standard, at least for upper-level ninjutsu: Ram, Tiger, Snake, Bird, Dog, Snake, Horse, Monkey. Not obnoxiously long, and the near-flat palms of the Monkey seal let Jiraiya easily pull them apart and slam his hands down on either side of the crystal ball once the string was finished.
The orb went opaque and white with swirling fog. After a few moments, it faded like steam above a boiling pot.
And there, in plain view inside the glass, was Hayate.
"Where the hell is he?" Obito tilted his head to the left, Sharingan spinning. "And—wait, where's he going?"
The tiny image of Hayate was peering over the edge of some metal catwalk, lying flat on his stomach to present the smallest target from the ground. He'd replaced some of his Konoha-bought clothes with whatever was local, going by the boots and mask, but Kakashi couldn't really see that many material changes to him otherwise. At a bird's eye angle, it seemed like he hadn't lost weight and was active.
Kakashi couldn't smell blood or fear, obviously, but when Hayate climbed to his feet, leaped, and made his careful way through a maze of roof structural supports—no, that was not an injured Hayate. He was actively observing someone none of them could see. And stalking them.
"He looks like he's on a mission," Kushina murmured. "But for what?"
As they all watched, whatever he was watching exploded. Hayate ducked behind a stretch of complex-looking steel lattice and then wound his way toward a wall.
Jiraiya made the Bird seal with his hands, and the view pulled back so that Hayate was a gray, black, and red blob amid what was clearly a darkened storage building of some kind. The lights below hung so low that only the ground floor was lit. As the view shifted, the crystal ball's view swung around behind Hayate until they could basically see what he saw.
There was someone standing there, wearing a red mask that encased his entire head and what looked like padded armor under clothes that looked foreign. Bodies were strewn here and there at his feet, amid pools of blood. No one else moved. There weren't any clear weapons in view, but angled tubes were held in dead hands like they could've been wielded before the owners lost their heads.
As they all watched, breath collectively held, the man cupped his hands where a mouth might have been if it was visible and…
Hayate dropped downward and landed in a crouch in front of him.
While the man gesticulated accusingly, Hayate stared sullenly back at him like he'd been confronted by an angry squirrel. A little surprised, maybe, but definitely not intimidated. Hayate even made a show of shrugging when the man tried to jab pointedly at the door nearby, then started to argue back.
"Who the fuck is that?" Obito breathed.
"Fack!" Naruto chirped.
Kushina sighed, gave her entire family a sweeping glare, then picked up both of her tiniest children and removed them from the bad influences. The fact that she didn't even scold Obito was a sure sign of how worried she was. She'd be on the research team for this task as soon the initial meeting was over.
"Whoever that is," Shimika said, adjusting her glasses as she peered into the ongoing argument, "he isn't afraid. I doubt anyone could call such a situation safe, but Hayate-kun seems like he can handle himself."
"And if they were outside, I'd have a better idea what to aim for—" Obito began.
"No," said Jiraiya. He made a cutting gesture with his hand. "We've gone over this. Once we have a better idea of what we're dealing with—"
"If," Kakashi interrupted carefully, "we think Hayate can handle this, let's check on Kei and then come back."
Jiraiya glanced at Sensei, who nodded, and then made the Dog deal with his hands.
In a room lit by a single bedside lamp, Kei sat on top of the covers with two supply scrolls unraveled in front of her. Across her knees, a clipboard pinned a section in place, and she wrote notes cautiously around the borders of her fūinjutsu work. The room around her was strung with privacy seals and security precautions that would cause most intruders to spontaneously combust on contact. It looked like someone's attempt to remove a ghost.
With explosives. Technically, a house couldn't be haunted if it didn't exist.
Kei took a moment to rub one of her eyes. There was an ANBU mask by her hand when she brought it back to support her weight, leaning to stare morosely up at the ceiling none of them could see.
If Sensei looked exhausted, Kei looked worse. Resignation writ large across her expression and her body language, even as she flopped back on the mattress and finally hid her eyes with her arm. It was not the persona of someone who had any confidence in their choices.
"Kei would never let Hayate go out alone with strangers," Obito said, scowling down as though he could send Kei a status report at will. Or demand one.
"I don't think we can get a wider view without drifting through the ceiling," Jiraiya remarked, "so I can't tell where she is, exactly. She is fine, physically, but that's all."
Kei, of all people, would never rest easy if her brother might need her. Which meant that, somehow, she didn't know what he was up to. At the same time, Hayate noticed Kei's moods faster than any other teenage boy Kakashi had ever met. If he knew his sister was in a slump, he'd have glued himself to her side and annoyed her out of it.
"They were separated somehow," Kakashi muttered. It was the only idea that made sense.
"Jiraiya-sensei, could you and Shimika-san track even a stranger like this?" Sensei asked, pulling the topic away again. When Kakashi looked at him, something hard and cold glittered in his eyes. "Like the energy that rook them?"
"If Shimika-chan's little monsters haven't digested every single bit, I don't see why not." Jiraiya held out his hand, palm-up. "Any of them hanging onto a scrap for dessert?"
Shimika placed a single butterfly in his palm. Its wings cycled through a variety of black and white patterns, then settled into something that mostly looked like an ANBU mask. Maybe Tenzō's old one, going by the elaborate markings around the eyes and mouth.
"A little foreboding," Jiraiya commented, letting the butterfly walk up his arm. Still, he made the Snake seal this time and pulled something loose.
There was a cavernous room backlit by green light in the crystal ball now, with figures dressed in black lining the walls like living ornaments. A man sat on what was barely not a throne, wearing a green cape with a collar high enough to reach his ears and twinned white streaks in dark hair that was styled halfway into horns. At his side, a dark-haired woman scowled imperiously down at a figure kneeling in front of them.
The current petitioner was a man in black robes that reminded Kakashi, bizarrely, of circus performers. There was enough detailing on the cloth and some strange headdress that it had to be some kind of costume. Thin hands clutched at a staff topped by a human skull carved from stone, and that stranger stayed bowed at the foot of the dais.
Whatever they were saying, no one could hear a thing.
"That one." Shimika pointed squarely at the supplicant. There was a noise under her voice; buzzing, like an angry hive, which she was. Four of her kikai insects were already crawling down her sleeve toward the glass. "That one did this."
None of them questioned it. If an Aburame was sure that their insects had locked onto a target, the only one who might be able to argue was a Hyūga. And only then if the target was literally right in front of them.
Sensei's chakra threaded through the room like a threat. Everyone's heads turned his way, as though pulled on invisible strings, and he steepled his hands in front of his face. "We have work to do."
Notes:
1. Shimika is the oldest current member of the Hokage Guard, being around thirty and having originally served under the Third Hokage. Personal pronouns: She/they. The primary user of the Butterfly summon contract, despite the instant competition between them and Aburame insects.
2. Naruto is two-and-a-half years old, and Tatsumaki is around six months. They are very tiny.
3. The fact that the Third Hokage canonically has a scrying device is one I am not going to let this series live down. The only listed requirements of its use are a) knowing how to perform the ninjutsu and b) being familiar with the target's chakra signature. That could have been so useful if anyone remembered it existed!
4. Thanks to ROOT/Foundation being dismantled early in the CYB timeline, Torune and Fu get to have childhoods.