This chapter is for Gabi and Tarani, who absolutely made my day with their reviews - XOXO VB!
- Full Marks -
"Tsunade-sama." Kakashi said, slipping in through the open window behind his Hokage's office desk.
"Absolutely not." Tsunade said, not even bothering to look up from her paperwork. She kept her head bend, scribbling something along the margins of an already marked up case report.
Tonight, the normally put together office looked like an exercise in futility; It felt like entropy was taking over. Stacks of paperwork and mission files dotted every available surface. Even as Tsunade closed a particularly thick file, an intern entered the disheveled office, bearing more to replace it in turn.
Kakashi knew her workload would only increase exponentially at the rate the world was going. It was an understatement to say he didn't envy her. He couldn't imagine a position more frustrating than trying to change the world through paperwork. Even as a child, the mantle of the Hokage title was something he'd held respect for, but never something he'd coveted for himself. He'd been happy enough to follow the rules back then. As an adult, he was better at bending them.
Which was why he was here after visiting hours: To ask Tsunade to bend the rules once more.
"You haven't even heard what I'm here to ask." He said, slipping his hands into his pockets and walking around to the front of her desk.
"I don't need to hear your bullshit out loud to know what you're here to say." Tsunade replied, waving the intern away with a nod.
The woman was a tall, pretty thing in her mid twenties. Kakashi watched her leave from the corner of his eye. Her face was distantly familiar… Had they gone on a date some years ago? If they had, she was giving him the cold shoulder now. He was notoriously terrible at returning phone calls, considering he didn't even own a phone.
"Every day you keep me on mandatory rest is another day our target's trail goes cold." He said, turning his attention back to his Hokage.
Here, Tsunade looked up at him, weary irritation heavy on her face. "Believe it or not, just because you've been sitting on your ass doesn't mean I've been sitting on mine."
With a sigh, she pulled a small key ring out from her robes and used them to unlock a lower drawer in her desk. "The day you were admitted to the hospital was the day I sent team Gai to track down your escaped attacker. I know your Ninken pack is unmatched when it comes to tracking, but so is the Hyuga boy. They were able to follow the trail to Grass country before it eventually went cold."
"Grass country?" he asked, confusion in his voice. "That…doesn't make any sense."
"I know it doesn't, which is why I need you fully recovered. Fully. Not half assed, not half cocked." She lifted an encrypted intel scroll from her drawer and placed it onto the cluttered surface of her desk. "To put it bluntly, the individual you described fighting was beyond the abilities Grass is capable of producing. I also don't like that their trail conveniently disappeared just over Grass's border."
"Did Team Gai find any hints that the individual might have doubled back after?"
"Read their mission report for yourself." She said, sliding the scroll across the desk to him. But when kakashi reached his hand out to take it, she pulled the scroll back, holding it just out of reach.
"Im giving you this information as an act of trust." She said in a dangerously low voice. "You are not cleared to leave the village. You are not permitted to act on this intel. This is to keep you in the loop, and nothing more. Break my trust, I break your hands. Am I clear?"
Kakashi gave her his best unfazed look. "Crystal."
With that, she let go of the scroll. He peeled it open, recognizing Gai's messy scrawl from the get-go. He skimmed through the meaningless travel documentation until he found the information he was looking for.
"How does someone just disappear like this?" He asked. "Unless the trail was a decoy all along."
"Grass is one of the allied nations. They have no good reason to be testing our military force. If they declared war on us, the trade sanctions River would impose on them alone could bankrupt their entire economy. All of this leads me to one conclusion…"
"You think someone is trying to manufacture a war between Fire and Grass." He finished for her. He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "It could be Akatski. Or Orochimaru...But neither of them would clearly explain what happened at the end of my fight."
"Walk me through it one more time, from the beginning." She said, gesturing for him to take the seat in front of her desk. It too was ladened with crooked piles of paperwork, so he sat on the arm instead of the seat.
"The nin I fought bore no headband or identifiable clothing. He was unregistered, if not a missing nin. Late teens, early twenties...He didn't even have a mercenary look to him. At first I thought he was an injured civilian, so I went in to assist. That's when his chakra flared, and he began attacking."
Here, Kakashi had to pause. "He...he was so fast, Tsunade. He nearly took my head off. He probably could have really hurt me if I wasn't already using the Sharingan. Our fight went on for twenty minutes before I realized he wasn't in his right mind."
"At which point, you switched from trying to kill him to capturing him alive."
"Which just made fighting him that much harder." Kakashi agreed. "As soon as I stopped striking to kill, his attack pattern changed. He went from using midrange attacks to trying to get as close as possible. I knew his goal wasn't to cut, but rather to get his hands on me."
"And then?" She prompted.
"And then I did something really stupid. I blocked a head strike with my bare hands, and he reversed my grip. His hold on my wrist was… inhuman. I broke one of his hands just getting a wrist free."
Tsunade sat quietly while he replayed the memory of the fight in his mine. She had heard this story twice already, but she was still trying to make sense of it. So was he.
"Once he made his grip, an ice cold numbness shot up my arm. Chakra started draining from my body. Then the young man opened his mouth, and… it was like he was fighting with himself. He begged me to put him out of his misery… and then his jaw unhinged itself."
Tsunade didn't so much as flinch at his description, but he wanted to go home and shower the memory from his eyeballs. The Sharingan could memorize a new jutsu like he was recording a blueprint of it in his mind… but it also made forgetting disturbing images next to impossible. For the rest of his life, his photographic memory would be able to recall the way the boy screamed, and everything that happened next.
"Something came out of his mouth. It was formless, like black smoke or fog. My normal eye couldn't make heads or tails of it, but the Sharingan could see it was made of Chakra. The thing had dozens of tiny mouths of its own."
He shivered at the image, the smoke-like worm twisting up through the mans unhinged jaw, his eyes rolling back into his head in agony.
"Suddenly, I was losing chakra fast. It felt like the blood was being sucked from my veins with a straw. I knew I wouldn't be able to save the kid, I barely had enough chakra to save myself. I opened Kamui and sent what ever that thing was into the next dimension. Its tail was still anchored inside the boys throat though… he was still screaming in agony around it. The smoke creature dragged his body into the void with it. I couldn't save him. I don't remember passing out, but I remember my head hitting the ground hard, right before I lost consciousness. That's when I saw the second figure standing in the trees."
He and Tsunade exchanged looks. This was the big mystery they could not solve. If his attacker had been Akatsuki, why had they not killed Kakashi when he was vulnerable? Why had they waited around for a full 40 seconds before his backup arrived to give aid?
It was almost as if they had waited for someone to come along and witness their escape. As if they had wanted to be followed all the way back to Grass country.
"You need me in the field, not bed ridden like some old man." He said, rolling the scroll back together.
"And you will be allowed back into the field once you've passed a physical readiness test." Tsunade's voice made her position clear. She would not bend the rules, even for him.
"Fair enough then. Let's go do one right now. I'm sure there's an exam room open this time of night."
Tsunade rolled her eyes and gestured her palms violently to the pyramids of paperwork around her. "Sure, because I don't have a hundred other pressing matters to deal with right now." But even as she said this, she pulled out a clip board dangling from the side of her desk. She flipped through a list of various names, murmuring a few of them under her breath.
"Dr. Shiho is out of town this week… Chisue refuses to deal with you again, but that one's your own fault…" She flipped to the end of the clipboard where she paused. Despite the strained air of the room, she managed a small grin. She looked up at Kakashi like he was an animal caught in her trap.
He felt like an animal caught in her trap.
"I'll tell you what, Hatake." She said, tossing the clip board onto her desk. It landed in a bed of documents with a soft thud. She leaned back in her oversized chair, crossing her arms, looking for all intents and purposes like a kingpin ruling over their drug domain. "I have a doctor coming in for a debrief tomorrow. If they clear you with full marks, I'll personally approve your active duty status."
Excitement welled up in Kakashi's chest. This was going to be a cake walk.
Civilian doctors were easy to sweet talk, and when they weren't they were even easier to intimidate. "I will respect my Hokage's orders. Which doctor will I be meeting with?" He asked, already packing his travel gear in his mind.
"Sakura. She's finally home." Tsunade said. "And I'll make sure she knows to give you a top to bottom examination. Nothing but the best for you, Hatake."
Kakashi dejectedly unpacked his travel gear in his mind. He didn't have time for games. He thought again about the young man he hadn't been able to save, and the dangerous monster that had been wearing him like a meat suit. There was a hollow ringing in his ears where his thoughts should be.
"I…will respect my Hokage's orders." He repeated. He rose to his feet, preparing to head back home. There was only one way he was getting out of this village and back to his mission. It meant he was in for a long day tomorrow of poking, prodding and exhaustive nagging. Even the thought of seeing his adorable student again after her long trip couldn't quite fix the apprehension in his chest.
"And Kakashi," Tsunade called to his retreating form. "Full marks."
It looked like the only way out would be through.