Note: I think I mentioned this on Tumblr, but the last month was...busy. I either had no time to write or couldn't get into the headspace. So here we are.
"My name's Jason." Hayate heard the name, mouthed it a few times under the mask, and committed it to memory. And then, even past the residual panic and his wild heart rate, the next sentence registered. "When I was fifteen years old…I died."
Hayate watched as Akaboshi— Jason , a foreign name that somehow fit him—pressed the heel of his hand against his own chest. It didn't dig into the armor, but it was a clear self-soothing gesture even so. Not-real-don't-give-up coiled around Akaboshi's emotions as he tried to force his breathing even and slow again. It was almost as though the admission itself had cost him energy, or set off every instinct he had to run for the hills.
And behind all of that, hammering like a drumbeat or a heartbeat or both, was truth.
But that didn't make any sense. And not just because Hayate was coming down from his own burst of useless panic.
"You're alive," Hayate protested, immediately grabbing at him and digging his fingers into Akaboshi's covered wrist. The ridiculous need to keep Akaboshi from leaving still sent jitters through his limbs. "I can—" Feel you right here in front of me. As a whole person! "I mean, you're here."
"I'm here now. But for six months and…more, I was gone." Akaboshi's throat bobbed against his armored collar. "My whole life is divided into before and after, but for everyone else? None of it mattered."
Hayate knew that ninjutsu could do a lot of things that ordinary people never suspected. They basically thought of all shinobi techniques as "magic" and couldn't tell where the limitations were. Hayate's expertise began with swordplay and stopped somewhere in the near expanses of medical ninjutsu and genjutsu. He could use Lightning Release ninjutsu almost as fast as some jōnin, even if it was one of those things that cost him a lot of chakra and wasn't really that strong in comparison. He didn't dig into big clan techniques at all, except for what Kei's team offered during training. Even so, there were some rules.
Bringing back the dead was impossible.
And yet, Hayate couldn't tear his gaze from Akaboshi's sincere pain.
"Listen." Akaboshi's voice wasn't quite a plea. It was level, despite the heaving storm in his head. Behind that thin veneer, everything was turmoil. Dread-no-I-can-do-this echoed hollowly. "If you're gonna listen, just listen. Please."
Hayate bit the inside of his cheek, then made his decision. After a second's thought, he released Akaboshi's wrist and tucked himself into his side. Akaboshi curled an arm around Hayate's shoulders in what was clearly a gesture he wasn't fully used to, and Hayate was pretty sure he was the only training dummy for it. Between Hayate and Kei, touch always helped ground them, and Hayate was certain even that narrow experience edged out Akaboshi's.
Hayate suspected, even now, that the older boy had either unlearned or never known how to receive affection.
When was the last time he'd gotten a hug from anybody else?
There was a part of Akaboshi's personality—pushed to center stage by his Red Hood persona—that was brash, and independent, and dauntless. If he'd truly died, then Hayate thought he could understand where that fear-nothing attitude came from. What was left?
Never mind that Akaboshi, the person under the mask, definitely felt fear, and felt it now. The hesitation that made its home in him was nearly matched by Hayate's. Hayate didn't have to work hard to remember the last of Akaboshi's screaming nightmares, and it wasn't like his own hands were steady yet. The panic attacks weren't so unforeseen for either of them.
"There was a moment," Akaboshi began quietly, "where I genuinely thought I'd have a future worth working for. And then I got the starry-eyed wishing beaten out of me. Permanently."
A black tide of loathing rose beneath the self-control. Pity tinged it, faint as seafoam, in the instant before Akaboshi's grip around Hayate's shoulders transformed. Rather than mere acceptance that he needed human contact while facing his demons, this was a need for comfort. Clawing, desperate, akin to drowning.
Hayate grunted when his ribs got a little squished in the process. While no recompense for kinda-sorta playing up his distress while begging Akaboshi not to leave him and thus locking them into this conversation, he could take it.
"Sorry," Akaboshi managed, instantly releasing his grip. He twitched as though he still planned to vault his way off the exam bench and flee into the night. His emotions were a whirl of ugly regrets, shapeless but very real.
"You're not hurting me." Hayate snagged Akaboshi's arm and pinned him in place, refusing to let him run. A bluish spark ran down his arm and into the leather jacket as a warning tingle. "Just keep going."
Guilt bloomed as Akaboshi hesitated again.
It had the exact same tinge as Kei's did, but only under particular circumstances. It was the being-near-me-will-hurt-you dread from the immediate aftermath of that horrible October night, when some jerkwad tried to get in her face for being a jinchūriki and existing in public. It didn't matter that she was the one being insulted—the only thing Kei cared about was that Hayate might be caught in the crossfire. Akaboshi, too, thought he could ruin things by being too close or caring too much.
The joke was on them, though. Hayate could, would, and had gotten into fights for both their sakes.
And he'd do it again.
"I've never told anyone what happened," Akaboshi said, forcing the despair back in favor of iron control, "so I'm sorry in advance if it's—fucked up, or disorganized, or whatever."
Hayate nodded. He turned all of his attention toward actively listening, with both his ears and his heart.
"Okay. I…" The shape of Akaboshi's hesitation matched Kei's in strength, but differed in the details. Kei feared the rejection after her secrets were in the air. Akaboshi's was more fear that, whatever else happened, he'd exorcize the ghosts and find himself entirely empty. "I died. Guess I need to explain that."
Hayate took the sentence and held it up against the figurative light. Truth, but a hint of confusion. Even he doesn't know what happened. He stowed that away for the moment.
"Once upon a time, a boy walked into a warehouse in the desert." Hayate didn't have to be a Nara genius to be certain details were being left out. The names of countries didn't really matter. Akaboshi continued, "He—I—thought there was someone to save."
Just saying that much dragged dread-betrayal-grief to the surface again. Akaboshi spent so much time painstakingly explaining to Hayate—to no effect—why he, as a child, had no responsibilities other than to stay out of trouble. At fourteen, it wasn't like Hayate was much younger than Akaboshi admitted he'd been.
"But it turned out there wasn't. The woman who walked me in? Put a gun in my face and handed me over to my fucking murderer as a bargaining chip without so much as breaking stride." Anger led the way for grief this time, but it was a hastily-applied pressure bandage over resignation. "I didn't mean anything to her."
If Hayate transcribed the emotional throughline, like in an after-action report to Kei or a different commander, the outlook was bleak. Despair under all-consuming pain, as death approached. Whatever exact thoughts were going through Akaboshi's head, Hayate mostly saw a repeat of that night on the roof when he'd realized exactly how much future the older boy thought he had.
"How could I be that fucking naïve? She abandoned me once already. I should've never—" Akaboshi shook his head slowly, forcing his thoughts onto a different track. "It was a pattern, clear as day. Every parent I ever had, failed. Sheila just gave up before the first hurdle and set the bar somewhere in hell."
For a moment, the words didn't make any sense. Arguably less than the idea that Akaboshi had died and come back. "Your mother…?"
If Hayate's mother had made the offer—
Hayate swallowed. He'd grieved. His sister did, too, and then stepped up like she hadn't been half-parenting him all along. But if there was any chance he could have gotten Mom back, and all he needed to do was obey and follow her—
If Kei wasn't there, and his instincts failed, and a person he could trust implicitly handed him to a monster—
Akaboshi scoffed, vicious. "Only by blood. Skipped town and left me with my dad before I was a day old, after losing her medical license to either carelessness or incompetence. The cops were after her for negligent homicide." Akaboshi adjusted his grip on Hayate to be a little less crushing, and Hayate swayed numbly with the motion as he continued, "She thought I'd be a good bribe. Something to keep her blackmailer from turning on her."
"It didn't work." Akaboshi's remaining eye-covering mask hid some of the nuances of his expression, but his feelings were raw. Hate, despair, rage, helplessness. "The Joker tied her up and left her trapped just like me, just without bothering to break any bones first."
Realistically, Hayate's own mother would never have done that. It wasn't a fear he'd ever had.
"She was crying. Begging. Tried to get me to disarm the bomb or get us both out past that locked door. But I couldn't. Could hardly see by then, and my hands were fucked." Akaboshi lifted a hand to rest against his left side, as though startled by pain. It wasn't real in any sense— someone would have said something by now—but Hayate knew the patterns now. "All I could do was try to protect her anyway. And then, bang. Dead."
If Hayate's mother had been like that, Hayate would've died, too. He'd have died like a hooked fish on a dock, too bewildered to figure out what he'd done wrong before the club came down and crushed his skull.
Amid all of that, a name.
"Joker…" Hayate's voice was a serpent's hiss and the name sat strangely in his mouth. He stretched the last syllable until it almost rolled. "He's the one who escaped from prison?"
Akaboshi nodded. Hayate could hear his teeth grind, just a little, because the top of his head was against Akaboshi's lower jaw.
"My sister said I should run if I saw him." Hayate's whole body still felt a little numb as he imagined Akaboshi as a smaller kid, beaten bloody on the ground as a Zetsu mockery of a man closed in. Something in his chest burned at the thought.
"Sounds like something we agree on." Akaboshi's tone was biting, with that unhappy twist to his mood that accompanied most of the times Hayate mentioned his sister.
Why had she said that Hayate needed to run? During her rundown of all the city's villains, she hadn't named that white-faced man as one of the heavy hitters with superhuman abilities. Just as a murdering menace she wanted nothing to do with.
"Nothing good ever happens when the Joker is involved," Kei had said, barely half a week ago. The revulsion lingered in Hayate's mind even now, almost like a complimentary color alongside Akaboshi's hate. "Stay the hell away from him."
"She hates him, and knows that you hate him, and I don't know why the hell neither of you agree on anything when that much is already true." Wait, no, Hayate wasn't supposed to snap at anyone even if they were being ridiculous. He knew better than that.
"Maybe she knew there's no point in sticking her nose in Gotham business," Akaboshi suggested, acidly.
Screw "not getting in the way" and making excuses to his sister when the corpse turned up. If given a chance, Hayate would cut that man's throat and listen to him choke on blood.
"I could kill him for you." Putting the offer out in plain view was better than just vowing. It was a special trick to actually getting these tasks actually done. "It's only fair. He's earned that."
The rejection was immediate. "Absolutely fucking not—"
Against the pulse of revulsion-fear-no-way, Hayate snapped, "It wouldn't even be that hard!"
"That's not the point!"
Hayate bit his tongue to keep from arguing more.
"This isn't about needing help to keep myself safe," Akaboshi told him, even as he gave Hayate a quick squeeze. "I know damn well I could put a bullet in the Joker's head from two blocks away the second he showed his face. Through a wall, if I had to. I'd splatter his brains across the concrete and save us all some trouble." The words were accompanied by a floaty, distant satisfaction. Abstract at most. "But that's not what I want."
This time, Hayate waited for him to continue.
"The Joker is only one part of the problem." Akaboshi drummed the fingers of his free hand on his thigh as he tried to put his thoughts into words. The language thing probably made it harder.
It was the kind of nervous gesture Hayate never saw from him when the helmet was on; maybe it meant he was more willing to express himself outside of it. The Red Hood character was an unstoppable shadow who could run rings around everyone in the city. Akaboshi was a person. With issues.
Luckily, Hayate also knew him as a person who cared a lot and tried his best, and who'd done more to benefit the people in his territory than anyone else had for years. He was funny, occasionally arrogant, competent, and a bit of a weird mix of cynicism and idealism. He was also incisive, passionate, and deeply protective of whoever he decided earned his regard, and it all meant he was easy to talk to outside of his direct problems. And honestly, that would've gotten him a lot of points with most of Konoha even before he killed a ton of jerks who were after Hayate.
Maybe Hayate needed to bring that part up pointedly when he saw Kei again. She and Akaboshi were too alike not to get along once the big stressors were removed.
"The fact that he's still around, even after everything he's done to hundreds of other people, is a sign that the entire system of control and consequence is failing this city. If—If I had to die there, no matter what my choices were, then I should have been the last." Akaboshi cast a glance heavenward, despite the stained ceiling tiles in the way. "But here we are, still playing catch-and-release with a mass murderer who's just escalated since then."
"So, you want to prove that you're right?" Hayate asked. He bumped the side of his head against Akaboshi's shoulder, sort of like a cat. Harmless.
He hadn't realized, weeks ago, that trying to get Akaboshi to open up was going to unleash this much pent-up horror, but Hayate was too far in to turn back now.
"You make it sound petty," Akaboshi replied, but it prompted a low chuckle instead of anger. "Better a risky change than a constant death spiral. I can't give up on this place, Hayate. The people here deserve better than to circle the drain forever. And better my boot on the drug trade's throat than someone like Black Mask."
Hayate made a contemplating noise, but didn't share his thoughts immediately. It seemed like one of those times where asking "Well, what is your plan?" wouldn't go anywhere useful.
"And I thought, once I established all the groundwork, it'd—it could give me enough space to do what had to be done." Akaboshi sighed. His emotions stabilized once again, he delivered more of a quiet admission than anything. "But things got out of hand."
There was fondness there, so Hayate took a not-so-wild guess. "That was when you found me, wasn't it?"
"A little," Akaboshi admitted, because this was something he could approach almost honestly. Almost entirely without regret, as weird as it all worked out. "I was still following the plan while you weren't there. But it was…different, seeing you there waiting when I got back."
Probably a little like having a dog. Hayate's self-confidence didn't extend to believing he was that cute, so Akaboshi of a month ago probably cared about him more because he was a child and not because he cared about Hayate as an individual. At the time, anyway. Getting to know each other took time, even if Hayate did his best to be helpful and charming and maybe a bit like a lost kitten.
And now that Akaboshi did care, with a spark of gentle attention in his mind that was hard to miss, Hayate wanted mostly to keep that flame guarded against the elements. Safe under Hayate's care. The older teen had lived—and died—being on the receiving end of entirely too many betrayals.
It was still too volatile to touch.
"You said you were dead for half a year," Hayate said at last, concern finally kicked out in favor of curiosity. "And you just…came back. That's…"
"Traumatic as hell," Akaboshi offered, accepting the topic change in turn. "You can say it."
"Aniki…"
"Turns out burying someone in a casket two meters down makes escape one hell of an ask." Akaboshi shrugged, as though half his nightmares weren't undoubtedly claustrophobia incarnate just from that statement alone. That tendency to downplay his suffering wasn't new, and neither of them ever talked about hearing screaming during their odd sleeping hours. They both knew, and they both knew they knew, but discussing it? Impossible until now. "I don't…really remember most of it. It was just fear. All-consuming terror."
Fuck. "You had to dig your way out?"
"Not like there was a rescue coming for a corpse." And there was the pitch-black humor Hayate sometimes heard from Inoichi-sensei's teammates when all three of them were drinking.
Akaboshi shuddered, just enough that Hayate could feel it.
Hayate almost wanted to snatch his helmet and offer it back, like hiding both their faces would help distance them from this…stuff. Trauma. Other words that felt dangerous.
As it was, the waxy paper under them crinkled as they moved. The noise, and others like it, kept drawing Hayate back to practical concerns.
Hayate considered his options, feeling like he was navigating a minefield. "But…you just came back? How? Was there some kind of magic?"
"Dunno, kid. One day, there was a dead boy. And then, there I was again. Trapped again, but worse." Akaboshi let out a brief, cold laugh. It bounced off the busted-up old cabinets in the room. "If that's magic, I think I want a refund."
Hayate frowned. He chewed the inside of his lip for a moment while he tried to get his thoughts in order. Better to focus on the most important, concrete part. "But without it, you and I would never have met. I would've died in that warehouse before my sister found me."
Hayate knew Akaboshi's immediate reaction was to doubt—downplay the impact of a positive statement because it was uncomfortable—until he thought it over. Akaboshi spent so much time over the last month trying to get Hayate to stay in the apartment and out of trouble, he definitely knew better than to take that path.
It was one of those arguments that futilely ate its own tail.
Instead of admitting that Hayate had a point, Akaboshi dodged around it. "You don't owe me for that. Protecting you was the right thing to do."
"I don't think I would've done it." Hayate sighed as he let his shoulders sag. "Protect another kid, I mean."
Spoiler only counted so far, even though she acted like she only had a year on him, at most. The only reason Hayate bothered wandering the neighborhood enough to find her boiled down to luck. And butterflies. Aside from the fights with the armored guys and the Zetsu clones, Hayate avoided confrontation. If boredom taxed him too much to stay in that apartment, the least he could do to avoid raising his roommate's blood pressure was keeping his sword sheathed.
Sure, he sometimes stopped and had pantomime-heavy conversations with some of the working girls. But talking to people like Lili-san wasn't fighting, and sometimes it seemed like his mere presence amid the other red scarves made people feel a little safer.
"It's not your responsibility to get into firefights with gangsters for any reason," Akaboshi said, doing his best to sound stern even if he should know by now that Hayate didn't care about that. "I made the choice to keep this place safe, and I'll keep making that choice to step in. It's a volunteer-only gig."
That. That was an opening.
Kei knew things about Akaboshi that Hayate didn't. Somehow. She'd already known that Akaboshi hated the Joker. She navigated this world entirely differently than Hayate did, and that wasn't easily explained by any S-class secret Hayate knew. Even in that conversation with Nightwing where Hayate figured out Akaboshi's Bat-clan membership status—lapsed—her whole chakra signature just brushed off any surprise like it was nothing. Her face, at the time, was impassive. And yet, despite knowing that Nightwing took the secret like a stab, she'd left it unaddressed.
"He doesn't want our help," Kei had snapped the other night, "I can't dig him out of his own damn grave."
She knew, Hayate thought in wonder. How did she know?
Akaboshi, holding the title of "crime lord" aloft like a trophy, snarked at the Bat-clan and stories about them at the same time he fought conflicting urges of longing and abandonment. It was the same kind of feeling Hayate pried out of people like Obito, when he got caught off-guard by his complicated feelings about his clan.
The most explosive drama in the entire world was family drama.
So, Hayate tested the waters obliquely. "Is that what Robin is? A volunteer."
Another pulse of surprise at Hayate's insight later, and Akaboshi snapped, "Robin was a mistake. But I'm not letting this one die on my watch."
Oh.
It wasn't just that Robin was a child in danger. Hayate wore that particular qualifier like a flak jacket, putting him safely under Akaboshi's guardianship almost by default. It was instinctual and true and a reflex Akaboshi leaned into with his entire heart. A principle to stand by.
While trying to explain the city to Hayate—when they ran out of interest in subtitled movies—Akaboshi sat Hayate down on the couch and said that "Robin" was a title. It wasn't hard to get Hayate to pay attention then, since his leg still hurt and he hopped around the apartment like a concussed rabbit. He'd have listened to Akaboshi recite books in English just for the companionship and the noise.
The actual name of the kid under the mask didn't matter. Robin was Robin. Robin accompanied Batman. Robin pissed Akaboshi off by existing. Hayate was not allowed to go running around rooftops wearing a cape and mask. That was Robin stuff, and Akaboshi did not want Robin stuff within a kilometer of Hayate.
Hayate suspected even then that there was a deeper reasoning than "try to keep this child safely locked in a bubble."
The bigger issue was that Robin, rendered helpless, brought up every single trauma for Akaboshi because Akaboshi had been Robin.
And Akaboshi regretted giving Hayate that much information to work with. It was written all over his face and his feelings. Interrogation would be the proper shinobi response. Akaboshi braced for it.
Instead, Hayate closed his eyes and sagged against Akaboshi's side, curling his arms tight around Akaboshi's ribs, and said, "I'm so sorry you went through that, Aniki. It—you didn't deserve any of it."
Akaboshi's breath hitched, just for a moment. He tilted his head back as though to blink back tears that could hardly fall past his remaining mask, jaw working a little as he wrestled back control. After a delicate few seconds where neither of them moved, Akaboshi dropped his head atop Hayate's and squeezed him back.
Hayate vowed then and there that the Joker would never get near Akaboshi again and live.
The quiet only lasted until Akaboshi got enough of his voice back to say, "Thanks." Then he let Hayate go, so he could fiddle with his mask. The lenses shifted out of the way, revealing reddened eyes, and Hayate had already gotten a tissue for him before his brain caught up with his reflexes. "Oh, kid, I'm fine."
Hayate made a noise that was at once defiance and skepticism when he sat down on the exam bed again, with the goggles in his other hand. He'd perfected his back-sass years and years ago by listening to Obito come up with excuses for being late all the time.
"You're a good kid," Akaboshi mumbled, once he'd swiped at his eyes.
Hayate's activities and mission history probably filled a whole file somewhere with plenty of evidence to the contrary. Sure, Konoha standards let him run around as a moderately experienced chūnin with no commentary, but foreign powers? Most likely a flagged file. Especially in Sunagakure, after the Chūnin Exam fake bomb trick.
Probably better if I don't mention that.
Akaboshi activated the lenses of the mask again before he balled up the tissue and tossed it toward the trash bin. It boinked off the rim and then into the plastic bag liner. "So, now you know a few more things about me. Any questions?"
Hidden, Hayate scrunched his nose. That was…one way to put their mutual freakout session and the way that story flowed out. Like pus from a lanced wound. But since Akaboshi had asked… "I did have one."
"What about?" Akaboshi's expression wasn't nearly as confident, now, but he'd get it back.
"You said your real name at the start," Hayate said, picking at a loose thread on his sleeve, "but I didn't really get the feeling you wanted me to use it. Should I?"
Akaboshi considered this conundrum for about three seconds. "I've gotten used to 'Aniki.' You're fine, Hayate. Do what you want."
Good, because Hayate wasn't about to change his habits anyway. Not for a name Akaboshi apparently just…kept because of personal inertia. Maybe they'd come up with something different later. A new name that wasn't as bogged down by all that history.
And maybe Hayate could have come up with some kind of suggestion, if he had time.
Instead, there was a crash down the hall. Not like glass, but like floors and walls and doors and solid things that had no business breaking.
Akaboshi put his helmet on almost as fast as Hayate got the goggles situated on his face again. And while Akaboshi drew one of his guns—needed his other hand free—Hayate slid to one side of the door and pressed his hand flat against the stained wall.
Don't you fucking dare go first, Akaboshi's body language warned, even as Hayate completed the seal sequence for the camouflage genjutsu.
Hayate scowled under his mask and, once invisible, wiggled the doorknob in a warning.
"Hayate. No. If I hit you—"
"Just shoot anyone I hit first," Hayate suggested in his most cheerful voice. "Easy!"
"Wait—"
And Hayate kicked the door straight into a Zetsu clone's face.
Logically, to operate as the kind of terror of the night Batman aspired to be—with exceptions made for the existence of three whole Robins and a Spoiler—the first thing any aspiring vigilante needed to do was perform a resource assessment. To make a list and check it about a hundred times. One of the requirements for a small team's crusade against crime and corruption? Safehouses. Places to store resources in the field. Restocking points and locations where recovery was…less dangerous.
Kei had spent a couple of weeks in a Bat safehouse and never felt particularly like they needed the place for a pit stop. It was located too close to civilians to constantly risk themselves like that, and there was basically no modification of the apartment's dimensions. The only object of interest was Kei's presence. If they weren't visiting her, the Bat patrol routes never bothered to even approach that particular building.
And why would they, when Batman had gone out and built Batbunkers.
"You're making a face," Nightwing said in Japanese once they arrived, being escorted past biometric scanners and the kind of locks that slammed home with the force of bank vault doors. "I can just tell."
Kei flipped her mask upward from the chin, so it sat atop her head like a hat. She didn't bother to school her expression into anything other than what was real—exhaustion, mostly.
"Yep, that's a face all right."
While hiding them in urban environments precluded extensive basement construction—not to mention the noise involved—Kei noted the evidence of reinforcement in the walls, ceiling, and floor of the chamber. Unless it was rated for Kryptonians, Kei didn't especially trust it, but hopefully something designed to at least keep a Venom-enhanced infantry unit out might buy them a little time.
Going longer between Zetsu clone massacres seemed like a better idea for salvaging relations than…not doing that. Bad optics. It just put survival in question sometimes.
The actual furnishings of the place were sparse under the fluorescent white light. Most of the tables, chairs, and so on were probably ripped straight from a military surplus depot and painted black to match the Bat aesthetic. There was a curtained area that appeared to be a single-occupancy medical treatment corner, and there were a pair of corridors on the opposite ends of the central chamber, indicating what was probably a locker room and sleeping quarters. The kitchen area was sparse and utilitarian to the point that MRE boxes and a kettle being the main fixtures outside of a single-coil stovetop. Over in another corner, there was a solid-steel workbench kitted out with everything that didn't require a major ventilation revision, with little broken Batarangs piled up in one corner alongside some of their electronic guts. Someone had left a yellow utility belt hanging over the back of the chair.
Honestly? It was all a little depressing to look at. The place could use at least one artificial houseplant, just for the color contrast.
And then there was the lab equipment, which Batman had not skimped on. While Kei didn't recognize most of the machines, the computer in the middle appeared to be pure overkill. It was hooked up to basically everything else with hard point connections, including a microscope and some kind of machine with two more centrifuges than she'd ever seen in person. The screensaver was a Batman icon.
Couldn't criticize anyone here for falling short on branding.
Batman, the last one in the room and probably the oldest by about two decades, crossed the room and headed for the lab section immediately. It also put him in range of the computer screen and a blank spot on the wall that was opposite a ceiling-mounted projector. Wiggling the mouse revealed a highly organized desktop, with actual folders and stuff.
That…felt wrong somehow. Uncanny.
Maybe this was what happened when Oracle told people to get organized or fucking else.
He left a handful of sample bags and a test tube on the shelf there before crossing the room again, disappearing into one corridor.
"Debrief in five," Batman said over his shoulder, which was in far more pointed Japanese than was warranted by his rank.
Kakashi bristled at the tone, but was still following Kei's lead. He made no move to bow, but he'd also taken off his ANBU mask in the same manner Kei did. With his hood also pushed back by the motion, it meant that any observer could see about a third of his face. Despite that, it was pretty clear he didn't approve of much that was going on.
Nightwing glared at Batman's back as he passed, even before the clanking started. To Kei and Kakashi, he said in a much more conciliatory tone, "He'll get a new suit and we'll be able to actually explain ourselves after that. Is that acceptable?"
He was doing a fantastic job of not asking about why Kakashi had a weird-looking left eye.
"For now," Kakashi conceded. He heaved a quiet sigh, then turned toward Kei.
"I have half a dozen storage scrolls by now," Kei said to Kakashi. Nightwing's nonsense could wait until they'd done some actual work. "Did you bring any with you?"
After a little shuffling under his water-repellant mantle, Kakashi produced a pair of storage scroll cases marked with Sensei's personal seal. Held up in the harsh artificial light, they looked grubby and handmade and foreign. "Here."
Kei caught them when he flicked them up in the air, then made a beeline for the biggest empty table—the laminated map of Gotham's middle island didn't count. Someone had left a thermos pinning down one corner. Pushing it to the very edge of the table, Kei pulled off her left glove and picked apart the catches with her fingernails. Scrolls freed, she started unrolling them across the table's surface in such a way that only five seals were visible at once.
Kakashi pulled out another scroll—okay, so they had prepared for the trip—and started doing the same on the other side of the table. The calligraphy on this other scroll looked more like Kushina's than Sensei's or Jiraiya's. "You resealed the files?"
"Didn't have much choice," Kei muttered, while Nightwing crept close enough to peer down at their work. "We were packing when Robin showed up."
"To take the fight to the enemy." Kakashi rubbed his gloves together and speckles of dried Zetsu residue sprinkled onto the table. "You had a plan, then."
Kei shrugged. Something like that.
I still prefer the option wherein you and I transform in the harbor, attracting every enemy to our location, and pulverize them into a physical state suitable only for filter-feeding wildlife. It would be definitive.
And I'm equally sure that the Bats would be too busy calling in the entire Justice League to get our side of the story.
Spoilsport.
"And then you were attacked. There's that Gotham sense of timing," Nightwing concluded quietly. His escrima sticks were stowed in that holster setup between his shoulder blades again, which likely contained some kind of charging point. "Genbu-san, are your friends going to be able to find us here?"
"Yeah." Though Kei didn't elaborate on Obito's particular tricks, she did wait for Nightwing to finish muttering under his breath to add, "Do you have a VCR?"
Nightwing let go of the bridge of his nose and nodded. "On top of the DVD player."
"Thanks." And Kei pointedly did not look at Kakashi when she felt his chakra spark in confusion. She just concentrated on pulling her glove back on.
Konoha was, at minimum, forty years behind Gotham's technology. Probably more. It wasn't worth explaining in full detail until they had a group meeting that was entirely secure. Obito's Kamui seemed like the only place that qualified as "safe" these days, and Konoha wasn't even easily accessible on the other side.
Note to self: Figure out what the fuck they did to Kamui to get here.
Noted.
The second Kei found where the hell she'd stored that video tape, she poked the pad of her pinkie fingertip with a chakra scalpel and pressed the blood directly down on the seal. The tiny wound was closed before the first hint of smoke.
"Here." Kei tossed Nightwing the black cassette the second it manifested. "I have no idea how long it is."
He could figure out if the format was actually compatible with anything the Bats owned. While region-locking shit was more common in the age of digital media, there was a possibility someone had fucked up in the time-stream and made it that Betamax had won the home video system wars. Whatever the case, it was Nightwing's job now.
"I would estimate the runtime at about two hours," Kakashi offered, while there were some plastic clicking noises over Kei's shoulder. When Kei looked up, Kakashi seemed to be addressing Nightwing instead of her. Hooray for the slow cooling of tensions. "Nobody thought you'd be interested in watching yourself sleep."
Kei imagined a poor ANBU agent, somewhere in the depths of an Intelligence basement, trying to piece the film physically together. Probably more than one.
How would they know what was important?
Probably just went with what Sensei told them. Not footage of me or Hayate sleeping, but that…leaves a lot of potential options.
It wasn't like Kei had been entirely useless in Gotham. Just mostly. Passivity in shinobi wasn't punished outside of missions, though, and no one told Kei to seek and destroy until very recently. Even then, Sensei's directive was less "find this guy and wreck his entire life" and a lot more "if the opportunity arises to end the deadlock, do so." Unfortunately, knowing where the fuck the League of Assassins were launching their attacks from was half the battle.
"Do you have timestamps for anything?" Kei asked Kakashi aloud, since it seemed like the only thing that could help anyone stay organized.
Kakashi retrieved a slip of paper from his pocket before Kei even fully finished the sentence. "It's organized by the day."
"I'd ask how much trouble you could possibly get into when you barely left the safehouse," Nightwing said as everything powered on, taking the card, "but it sounds like one of those quality over quantity questions."
Fūinjutsu doesn't look like much more than note-taking from the outside, Kei didn't say. And you've probably already worked out how much trouble I can cause just by seeing this "hammerspace" power in action. After the Zetsu biology lecture, what exactly is going through that head of yours, O veteran hero in one of the most needlessly dramatic cities in the universe?
I find it suits this Red Hood rather well.
Ha.
All Kei said was, "Basically."
"There's no sound," Kakashi added, because of course Konoha's techniques had such a limit. When Nightwing glanced at him, Kakashi went on coolly, "Aside from chatter in the command chamber. Some of the terminology may be useless to you."
"Most security cameras in Gotham don't record sound anyway," Nightwing said amiably, and then the projector overhead lit up. "I'm sure we'll adapt."
On the plain white projector screen, someone had set up the camera in an ANBU-run secure materials basement. From the remnants of tatami mats on the floor and the higher dais where Sensei and Jiraiya were visible—if blurry—it might've been an old ROOT facility. Two masked ANBU and a couple of technicians in black Intelligence coats moved a huge crystal ball to the center of an array designed to project images. Kei could read the characters even in the shitty resolution.
Probably for the best that they got the camera running ahead of the potential explosion.
"It looks official," Kei said after a while. "This was…a couple of weeks ago?"
On-screen, Sensei handed control of the crystal ball over to Jiraiya and started talking with some of the other observers and Kushina, who was double-checking the fūinjutsu all over the chamber.
"Sensei asked us to take it slow," Kakashi said. He nodded toward Nightwing's back, eyes half-shut in his usual sleepy look. "We saw Akaboshi before we even found you."
"And…?"
"And he's been considered a non-threat ever since."
Kei covered her mouth to hide her shocked laugh. While Kakashi's chakra buzzed in a pleased way, she schooled her expression back to neutral before Nightwing turned around to see what the commotion was. In what was probably a failed attempt to distract him, she glanced down at one of the other seals available for unlocking. "Did you want the original paperwork, Nightwing-san?"
"Sure. Scanner's over there."
Great.
So, while Nightwing watched a very sped-up version of Konoha's forays into interdimensional stalking, and undoubtedly uploaded every single thing to Oracle via digital magic, Kei and Kakashi puzzled over the scanner attached to the printer as though they'd gotten mysteriously easier to use in the sixteenish years since Kei had seen one in person. Well, Kei poked it; for the most part, Kakashi seemed content to hover over her shoulder while she grumbled and otherwise pick his way through the room with the meticulousness of a man being paid to critique the aesthetics.
A simplified green icon—a woman's face topped with what looked like an exposed brain—pinged in the corner of the computer screen. When Kei dragged the mouse icon over to it and clicked, a chat window opened and promptly told her that, while Oracle appreciated her effort, scanning the pages into the system right-side-up required turning them the other way.
Kei grumbled, mostly to Isobu, but she did as asked. The only damage she was otherwise capable of doing to these computer systems involved blunt force trauma, so it was probably fine that Oracle had to walk her through things like a first-day intern.
"When did Kirin get her summon contract?" Kei asked, out of a need to fill the air with something non-classified. She felt Nightwing, Batman, and Oracle's presences like a constant grinding on her nerves, above the Gotham baseline of misery.
"Two days ago." Kakashi circled back around, coming to a stop just so he could drop into the spinning computer chair Kei had pointedly ignored. It rolled smoothly under his weight.
Kei stared at him. "And she just…went for it?"
Kakashi pushed the keyboard out of his way so he could lean his elbows on the desktop. "She told us a couple hours after she came back with a scorpion on her head. Admitted she was tired of being useless and didn't feel like we'd tested all possible avenues of rescue." Kakashi held up a hand when Kei whipped her head around to stare at him incredulously. "Kirin was the most aggressive advocate for this form of rescue mission."
"The kind where you do a blind jump between worlds with no way back?" Kei asked in her driest possible voice.
Kakashi nodded.
Fuck. If the list of self-destructive Team Minato members could have stopped at three—
Like teacher, like student?
Don't even, Kei growled at him. I've spent way too much of my life worried someone was gonna go and die on us.
Isobu charitably did not bring up Kannabi. Kei's brain did it for him, because it was a contrary jerk like that.
Kei hadn't stopped scanning while Kakashi talked, but this time she needed a moment to collect herself. To force herself not to imagine what might've happened if Rin landed with—for a terrible example—one of the animal clans that demanded human sacrifices.
Once the urge to smack her friend upside the head was gone, Kei just said, "Okay, I'll sit down and talk to her at some point. It—it wasn't Seiryū's influence at all?"
"No, he was shut down immediately." Kakashi noticed the tension easily, even if he was mostly looking past her. "My theory is she's been carrying this for years."
Of course. Why the fuck not. Kei resisted the urge to slam her head into the desk.
Rin's feelings made perfect sense. They made too much sense. She was the only ordinary shinobi among a team of titans. No Sharingan, no bijū, no bonkers levels of "talent" that turned challenges into stepping stones. In her position, Kei avoided the particular risks Rin chose, but it wasn't because she didn't want to be stronger. It was just that she didn't want to roll the dice and find out the hard way that her soul was best-suited for saltwater crocodiles. And then get eaten.
And Kei? Even then, when she did chase power, it was more out of honest anxiety than anything. And, for the most part, achieved through fūinjutsu. Burning the midnight oil, for years.
Anything that could drive away the image of Hayate's lifeless body on that rooftop, crows prying at—
Oracle's icon blinked away in the corner.
That was one option. "Oracle?" she asked, in English. She even changed the cadence of how she pronounced the codename. Kei didn't even need to glance his way to know Kakashi fully paid attention to the switch. "Do you have the time to confirm a rumor for me?"
That depends, the screen said. Tell me what you need to know.
Kei swallowed. "Does Black Mask have a bounty on my brother? He had one for Red Hood, or else those techno-mercenaries wouldn't have bothered coming to town."
It had stuck in her brain ever since Red Hood mentioned the possibility. Because of course that dramatic jackass could neither keep Hayate out of sight nor stop himself from yanking Black Mask's chain. She hadn't heard anything of it since, but with the Joker out of the box and Black Mask almost certainly responsible, Kei took the view that no news was definitely not good news.
Oracle's typing icon appeared, then vanished, then appeared again.
Wordlessly, Kakashi maneuvered around her so he could take over the scanning task. After watching her perform it some thirty times with his Sharingan, it was no wonder he could do so seamlessly.
Black Mask doesn't ordinarily post public listings easily traceable to all of his crimes. It's one of the reasons he hasn't been put away for the rest of his life, Oracle informed her, after a subjective eternity. Kei probably wasn't imagining the minor note of condescension in that plain black text. But the Fearsome Hand of Four weren't so careful with their internal communications. It lists a "Red Shadow" as a bonus objective. Still, no payout unless they brought down Red Hood.
If Kei had ever felt bad about trussing those jerks up for the cops to collect, the feeling was long withered.
It was at about this point that Batman finally emerged from his glorified storage locker in a new costume. With the armor and the gadgets, and whatever electronic stuff was in the cowl, Kei doubted that equipment change costed less than half a million dollars. If there was ever a man who had cash to burn…
Actually, now that she thought of it… Huh.
What?
I think Bruce Wayne's total wealth is more than the entire economic output of any three shinobi countries. Possibly all of them.
…And?
And nothing, I guess. Gotham's cursed shithole status remained uncontested, but it was still a modern city. If one could accept the possibility of space bugs occasionally invading the planet in an attempt to woo Superman, it was probably a better place to live than any Land of Fire backwater village just because there was a sewage system in every single town. The problems were totally different here.
Batman ignored both shinobi in favor of the film. In an undertone, he started asking Nightwing pointed questions about what he'd missed.
On the screen behind him, Nightwing watched Red Hood get stonewalled by Hayate. Or, more accurately, Hayate sat on that stained couch in Red Hood's apartment and gestured animatedly as the array of guns on the coffee table slowly reached alarming quantities. While Red Hood was maskless and arguing back, he never directed even a smidge of aggression at Kei's little brother. More…exasperated fondness, if Kei could read his body language.
That he would kill for your family is a point in his favor.
You aren't helping. Mostly because Kei couldn't find a counterargument at the moment.
But when Batman started asking pointed questions, Nightwing pulled out the timestamp card and handed it to him. A second later, Nightwing also relinquished the remote and let the man fast-forward through the footage. About thirty seconds after that, Ra's al Ghul—hard to miss the doubled white streaks and epic widow's peak—was on screen, ordering someone around.
Batman clicked something else on the palm-sized remote and the recording slowed back to normal. Maybe one or all of the Bats could read lips. Otherwise, it seemed pointless.
For all Kei knew, all balaclava-wearing counterfeit ninjas on the tape failed to survive the weeks between then and now. By now, she was up to, what, thirty people dead for being near her, despite her best efforts to avoid just that? Most of those deaths could be attributed to the shinobi on the tape, whose recorded selves were discussing something and becoming more agitated.
"Done," Kakashi murmured as he closed the scanner's lid on an empty tray. He shuffled the papers back into their original folder, using a loose binder clip to pin it shut. It went flying onto the planning table and landed perfectly between the two storage scrolls, disturbing neither.
"Thank you," Kei mumbled back, and didn't pull away when Kakashi briefly leaned against her side and put an arm around her shoulders. Even if she was in a terrible mood and not telling him all the relevant information, he forgave a lot. "Sorry I've been so…" Kei waved a hand vaguely. "Unhelpful."
It was comical how myopic being in Gotham made her. All she tried to do was hide. While she missed home and wanted to be somewhere other than the most cursed major city in the DCU, of course, Kei kept getting sucked into Gotham problems like it was a fucking black hole. The event horizon was a distant memory. The Zetsu clone army's presence now just confirmed that she'd passed the point of no return without ever noticing, and now—
Now the plan of just ditching these people to let them figure it all out was, uh, not going to manifest. For a couple of different reasons.
First, Zetsu clones were absolutely Konoha's problem where they and shinobi crossed paths. Though Amegakure also officially knew about their existence—an inevitability, given Akatsuki's involvement in the October Tenth incident—Kei agreed with Sensei's risk assessment and "classify everything" strategy.
There was no good way to tell people that an army of perfect shapeshifters existed alongside humanity without sparking some kind of massacre. Either of people who were scapegoated by their governments because the Zetsu clones's existence provided an excuse to purge dissidents, or of perfectly ordinary people doing something similar. Kirigakure already had bloodline purges in one timeline. Adding to the human cost of the shinobi system seemed…ill-advised. The future burned at the back of Kei's mind.
Instead, Sensei made elimination of Zetsu infestations a matter of ANBU concern—particularly in cases where Aburame with the butterfly summon contract could be attached to the teams. The butterflies found Zetsu clones' chakra so delicious that, when detected, the whole swarm would attack them to the exclusion of other targets.
In Gotham, the fact that Zetsu clones had chakra at all was probably the deciding factor. Eating ordinary people's life energy appealed to their appetites somewhat less. Even if there were some dead ninjas in the city morgue at the moment.
While Kei had no idea how these pasty bastards had made it here in the first place, the ordinary humans of this world didn't deserve yet another existential nightmare.
And second, the League of Assassins had somehow managed to drag Kei and Hayate here. Until Kei figured out how that worked and put a permanent stop to it, they'd never be safe. Especially since it seemed like it was a hell of a lot of easier to drag someone into this world than to punch a way through with power coming from the shinobi world.
Maybe Robin would write a thesis on that in a decade or two.
"Mn." Kakashi's remarkable patience with Kei's demonic blender of a brain showed through again. "Do you still have a headache?"
"I've had worse." Kei jerked her chin at the vigilantes still analyzing the film at a painfully slow rate, while not asking useful comprehension quests. She didn't blame them for not being able to tear their eyes away from their lost bird's unmasked visage while Hayate bullied him, but it still rankled. "Some of them even get up and walk around."
Kakashi let go of her to watch what they were watching. After a little time to think, he muttered, "Kei."
"Hm?"
"There's something wrong here." By way of elaboration, Kakashi reached into a pocket and produced the mask originally stripped off a League ninja, holding it close enough to his face to inspect the fabric and and drew a careful breath.
No, he sniffed.
"I didn't think Zetsu clones smelled strongly of anything." At least, Kei always thought they came across as vaguely fungal. Sometimes like rotting meat if they'd made a kill. Most of the time when she fought them, their smell was the least interesting detail amid the killzone.
"They don't, when disguised." Kakashi pinched the edges of the fabric with his gloves and stretched it out. "But this was from a human. He bled on the inside of the mask."
Well, we probably hit a real assassin in the face at some point. During the attack, Kei hadn't pulled many punches.
I think he has a point not yet made. Isobu's chakra gave her the impression of a cat leaning over her shoulder in interest.
"Along the eyes here, there's ink." Kakashi sniffed again, then handed the mask fully to her. Inside-out. "Ink and old blood combined, probably to write something. Almost certainly fūinjutsu. If there's any power involved, it's gone and I can't read it."
Well, no. The Sharingan only cared about active chakra use and flow. A corpse was a corpse was a corpse. And the ninja masks the League used were black, and most ink was black, too. That could make any strangeness in the enemy's equipment basically invisible—
"Nightwing-san," Kei said, raising her voice for the first time in a while, "do you have...um…" Lumi… Lumen…? "There's a chemical that shows blood spatter."
Nightwing's attention was on her from the moment she'd completed his hero name, thankfully. "Absolutely.. What kind of crime lab do you take us for?"
"I wouldn't know," Kakashi grumbled under his breath.
Louder than him, Kei said, "I didn't know if you just had crime data beamed into your masks. It might as well all be magic to us." Or residual crime drama knowledge. She strode over to the table alongside Kakashi, who cleared the storage scrolls away and took them for perusal at a later time. Spreading the mask out flat, exactly as Kakashi had handed it to her, made her just that tiny bit more thankful that her "superhero outfit" included full gloves.
The actual procedure for using luminol—Kei remembered the name now that she heard it again—involved dimming every light in the room so the glow would be at its most visible. While, obviously, both vigilantes had night vision whatevers built into mask and cowl, Kei and Kakashi did not. What they had instead were the Sharingan and a comprehensive fūinjutsu skill set.
And if the glow only lasted thirty seconds, oh well.
Batman ended up flipping the light switch. It conveniently put him as far from Kei and Kakashi as possible. Nightwing applied the chemical from a small spray bottle, though with as much bullshit tech was built into their headgear, Kei was pretty sure it was all to put on a show.
"Chemiluminescence," Nightwing said in English, with the lights off and the lenses of his mask doing…something. There were probably ten different cameras in this room, just so Oracle could keep tabs. "In case you needed a word for it. Anyway, mind the long-exposure cameras and don't move too much."
The bluish glow was hard to miss.
Kei ignored him in favor of staring at the fabric. While the characters had smudged, they were still legible enough. It circled around the eye slit like the rim of a pair of ski goggles, then wandered off around the temples and down toward the jawline before disappearing. Recognizable calligraphy the whole way down, then broken.
Recognizably part of a fūinjutsu array. It probably deactivated once the mask was separated from the rest of the outfit.
"It's probably too much to ask that you stripped this guy and stole his clothes as evidence," Kei said to Kakashi, as the glow faded and Batman switched on the light again.
Kakashi, who knew her too well, said, "We had to spare the public some horrors."
"True."
"I'd ask, but…" Nightwing began, allowing Kei the space to fill in the blanks.
Kei resisted the urge to put her head in her hands and do the usual mental coinflip. Laugh, or cry? On a remarkably steady voice, she explained, "Someone on this side—in the enemy's pocket—is a fūinjutsu specialist."
"Explain."
Thank you, Batman. Because Kei totally needed an excuse to word vomit in front of three people and cameras.
Four.
Your front-row ticket is mandatory and permanent.
Isobu sighed inside her head.
"Sealing techniques," Kei said in English, because a translation seemed courteous. Sadly, she couldn't whip out her brushes and blank materials for a demonstration and still keep to the rhythm of the conversation. Back in Japanese, she said, "With enough lead time, a fūinjutsu specialist can stow basically anything into an object. Or a flat array on said object. Including other, uh, spells." Kei drummed her fingers on the table, bracketing the mask with her hands. It helped keep her from giving in to the urge to rush off into the night after Obito and Rin, whose long absence suddenly felt ten times more ominous. "Whoever made this is the reason why I can't shake my stalkers. Seeing the rest of the array would just tell me the exact method."
Considering that upper-level fūinjutsu could summon a fucking shinigami, it was the next best thing to a catchall category. Kei, thinking genjutsu were a pain in the ass and better left to Isobu, wrote them in seals to use later because they were faster. They were practically one-hit KO stickers. Efficient and safe enough to use on cyborg ninja jerkwads.
Whoever did this work…disagreed. And it wasn't like Kei didn't know how to make her own tracking seals. She'd just managed to outlast or just kill every hostile fūinjutsu user she'd met up until this point.
Kei wanted their notes. And to rip off their arms so they could never do this again.
Speaking of— "Byakko, did Sensei have a list of critiques for me?"
There was a pause. Kakashi eyed both Bats like they weren't worth the security hassle.
"Byakko."
"For that coral sculpture technique, yes," Kakashi replied, like he hadn't needed to weigh his options at all. When Kei made a "gimme" motion at him, Kakashi rolled his eyes and said, "One, Kirin hasn't approved a second attempt. Two, Sensei is…disinclined to believe you'd be safe, and didn't send them along in the first scroll on purpose."
Yeah, well, Kei didn't plan to scorch her own chakra coils again, so it wasn't like she'd be reckless about it. Even if it did ensure a pest-free night, once. "No one even died last time."
"Not for lack of trying, apparently," Kakashi muttered.
"Including enemies, so yes, I was trying very hard."
To bore me, griped Isobu.
"We appreciate the effort," Nightwing said, and stuck the mask into an evidence baggie when Kei retreated from the table. "Though now that we're on the topic of nighttime strolls across city rooftops, I had a couple of questions."
Kakashi bristled beside Kei in anticipation of the lecture. It showed mostly in his chakra, though he didn't let it run free like Hayate did.
"As did I," Batman interrupted, finally looming properly over the other three participants in the conversation. "Given the evidence, it's obvious you've lied to us since the beginning."
Oh, so now he notices.
Kei drew herself up to her full height and prepared to argue, rather than flatly deny it or cower. It was clear Batman wouldn't believe her excuses now. "I'm a born and raised shinobi. Of course I'm keeping secrets. But I'm not interested in hurting you, or Gotham, or even anyone in it. I was always clear about that. Isn't that enough?"
"I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt—"
The hell you were, Kei thought.
"—but it's clear now that even within the context of your people, your story is a disjointed patchwork that flies in the face of logic." Batman leaned forward and his voice went even lower. "None of your comrades know Gotham and its intricacies like you do, Genbu. None of them are bilingual or familiar with American culture. And you know exactly who leads the League of Assassins despite their existence being regarded as a fringe conspiracy theory by most of the world."
…Shit, wasn't Ra's al Ghul supposed to be a businessman? Sometimes? She'd namedropped that guy practically from the start.
"Furthermore," Batman said like a death knell, "you know Red Hood too well for a newcomer who arrived after he did. Secrets you should have no way of knowing. What exactly are you still hiding?"
And Kei might have just shut him the fuck down, any other day. Thrown that she was keeping his secrets in his face. Flee amid the light of all her burning bridges.
But Kakashi was on her left, not immediately leaping to her defense. With his eyes in plain view and his chakra close enough to touch, he rested a hand against her bicep and clearly handed control of this interaction to her.
Not putting words to the curiosity and concern—which he definitely felt—Kakashi regarded Kei with a steady faith that made her feel two inches tall.
Her feet stayed on the ground.
Are we doing this? Isobu asked. He didn't even feel the slightest bit worried. Having known your secret since the day we met, I am not exactly unbiased.
No. But as the person keeping the secrets, neither am I. "Byakko, do you think…?"
"You have permission to speak freely." Kakashi shrugged, too casually. He knew her too well not to notice how cagey she wanted to be. "I'll be here. As always."
And here I thought I could take this to my next grave.
"'World's Greatest Detective,' huh?" Kei muttered, though everyone assuredly caught it. "Guess I can see it." She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. "But just so you know, Robin figured me out first."
Batman didn't relax, but he seemed a little less stiff. Marginally.
Maybe it was her imagination.
Kei wrapped herself up in Isobu and Kakashi's regard before saying, "Okay, so…"
Notes:
1. Hayate doesn't know about the two canon ways shinobi can revive the dead as actually-living people again, but in his defense, basically no one does. Putting aside the "zombie army" option, they're One's Own Life Reincarnation (Kishō Tensei) as used by Chiyo, and Outer Path — Samsara of Heavenly Life Technique (Gedō — Rinne Tensei no Jutsu) as demonstrated most famously by Nagato. Both kill the user, removing that get-out-of-plot-free card until the next time the writer wrote himself into a corner.
2. This is your periodic reminder that this story takes place BEFORE chapter 96-102 of CYB. Kakashi has absolutely no idea where Kei's information comes from, other than prophecy.