Notes: Good grief, did I say the chapters before this fought me? No, this one fought me. Four months is some nonsense.
A fair chunk of dialogue toward the end between Jason and the Joker is pulled from the Under the Red Hood movie. Until Obito interferes, at least.
"Was that everything?" Rin's voice was a bare whisper as she finished her work. The Zetsu head she'd twisted off, oozing white goop, hit the floor with a sound like an overripe melon. The most neutral way to describe it was "squishy."
Kakashi didn't have to see her face to know her brows were pinched in purely professional distaste, likely because of the way the Zetsu's last-ditch attempt to mimic her appearance. The false hair would slough off soon. The tattoos on the fake Rin-face melted away even as they both watched it collapse under its own mass.
"There's no more movement. Just twenty-four bodies from the swarm attempt." Kakashi wrenched his katana free of his two kills, having leapt from a Shadow Clone ambush and skewered both while Rin and his dogs picked off enemies in the tight corridor. While tallying up the number of washed-out corpses sprawled here, he said, "Pakkun?"
"The only chakra left is from us and Kei." Pakkun rubbed at his face with one paw, smearing yet more Zetsu residue across his fur. Kakashi had never asked how it tasted, but all eight of his dogs were owed cleanup and pampering after this. Pakkun loved his bubble baths.
"Hey, you can leave a little of the cleanup to me." Rin clapped her hands together, condensing just enough water from the ambient moisture and Kei's leftover ammunition to clean her gloves a little. She left the Zetsu blood spatter otherwise untouched—a good plan, at least until they could find a place to strip it from their clothes.
Or burn them. The clothes and the source of contamination could go on the same pyre.
Pakkun declined this generous offer after sniffing Rin's hands. Kakashi silently agreed with him.
All the while, Kakashi kept his katana unsheathed. Once that exchange was over, he led Rin and his well-exercised pack to the core of the infestation. The bodies made a macabre trail leading from the central pit in frenzied pursuit. No one could miss it.
According to Kei's interpretation of the information they'd gathered earlier, the enemy's choice to provide nests for the Zetsu to congregate made the disposal process marginally less of a concern. Local property laws reduced the chance of local interference. And so, stealthily killing all the occupants of a building and then destroying the evidence was less complicated. In convenient but depressing news, any civilian caught near the area was likely in no state to protest. The stench of dirt, rot, and blood was never coming out of the walls.
The butterflies arrayed here and there, having led the charge, feasted on the corpses in little rippling clumps as their wings fluttered. The patterns on them shifted in the still air. They seemed unperturbed, aside from giving Kei a wide berth when she fought.
"I think that went well," Rin said into the familiar quiet of a dead battlefield. There was some semblance of peace when nobody was left to make untoward noises, eerie though it was. "What do you think, Pakkun-chan?"
"Good enough." Pakkun shook himself, speckling the wall and floor nearest him with white.
Kakashi was familiar enough with the ghostly silence to hate it on instinct. Even when it represented a completed mission. Rather than dwell on it, he said to his dogs, "Perimeter check. Go."
A quick sequence of barks later, and the pack was rushing off again.
Kei's plan for the assault was simple. To keep the Zetsu clones from scattering and blending in with the populace, she sent Kakashi's dogs with barrier and suppression seals around the perimeter. Once they'd isolated the Zetsu-infested building, Kei headed inside and ripped off the suppression seal she placed on herself for the approach. The resulting carnage was entirely indoors.
And both invisible and silent to outside observation. Even the last few stragglers hadn't entirely understood how quickly it all happened before Kakashi, Rin, and the dogs cut them down.
Kakashi mostly let Kei's vendetta lead the way. At this point, she'd long since earned the privilege to express her frustration through fire and melee combat. A month's worth of pent-up violence went quite a long way when the source was an S-class shinobi.
Right on cue, Kakashi, Rin and the dogs emerged from the entryway into the main floor. The concrete was covered entirely in water, draining steadily downward into a massive clawed-out pit undoubtedly dug by a jinchūriki's angry paws. Kei stood atop a pile of at least a hundred Zetsu corpses in variously recognizable pieces, masked face angled up toward Kakashi and Rin as they peered over the edge.
"Feel better now?" Rin asked, dropping onto her heels at the edge of the depression. "Less stressed?"
"It was cathartic. In a visceral way, if you can use that word without any identifiable guts." Kei took a moment to judge distances, then hopped from the corpse pile to the lip of the pit without missing a beat. There was Zetsu residue visible against her dark clothes, like globs of caulk. "But I wouldn't call the job done yet. There were cameras."
"Did your seals cut those off?" In Kakashi's experience, it wasn't like Kei to forget about such a basic security feature even when planning to leave no living witnesses. Granted, most of the missions that required a fighter with her strength were hopelessly overt even before she deployed, but still. It was uncharacteristic.
"Yeah. But they'll notice losing the signal. There's no disguising that something happened." Then she raised a hand and waved it in a vague circle at their surroundings, icily dismissive. "So we might as well clean up."
Kakashi glanced from Rin to his dogs, then made a dismissive gesture with his left hand. With Pakkun in the lead, they hopped out of reality and into white smoke as they followed summon-only pathways home. They knew the way. Humans were the only ones who seemed to really get lost.
"Do you think Obito's had a night like us?" Rin wondered aloud, even as she waved goodbye to the summons. Her smallest scorpion summon, Mitsuba, waved its thin stinger back and forth to mimic her.
Once the smoke had cleared, Kakashi said, "Doubt it."
Kei sighed as though her soul was on its way out. "We were doomed the second Rin said that."
"Hey!" On Rin's shoulder, Mitsuba mimicked its master's performative offense by clacking tiny pincers.
Resting her hand against the forehead of her mask, Kei just groaned, "Get out the explosives."
Before the mission, Kei explained that the month of boredom and endless frustration had borne fruit. There were, unofficially, enough explosive tags spread among the members of Team Minato and in her little brother's pockets to flip a bijū on its back. Not that Isobu or (either) Kurama would ever allow them to test that limitation. She'd also made a wide variety of utility arrays for quick-deploying nets and poisonous smoke, in case the goal was something nonlethal. Each member of the team also carried a corpse storage scroll, just in case.
Aside from the very occasional missions supplied by Kushina, it was probably the best any of them had been armed in months. From what Kakashi understood of the city, this was a strict necessity, akin to packing food for long deployments.
Rigging the building to collapse on itself was the work of only a few minutes, given all the work they'd already done to destabilize it. While smashing Zetsu clones into support beams and columns didn't ordinarily damage them, Kei had not been gentle with incidental targets. The only reason the roof hadn't already collapsed was because no one bounced off vital structures in the rafters. There was no special effort to preserve anything.
And it didn't even exhaust half of their explosive supplies.
Once their remaining team members gathered one street and two rooftops away from the gutted warehouse base, Kei snapped her fingers with a burst of chakra that sparked the paper array in her hands. A second later, the flashes of exploding tags and seals lit up the windows, joints, and seams of the warehouse. Gray dust and smoke flooded the area, only to be stopped dead by the iridescent bubble-barrier put in place before the attack even began. Debris filled it like dye in water, but still the shield didn't give. Not even sound escaped.
After some consideration, Kakashi thought it looked like the result of dropping an explosive in a fish tank, if the tank survived and all the drama happened ten times faster. The force of the blast being bounced back onto the initial impact zone likely pulverized anything that survived in the first place.
When they uncapped that mess, it was definitely going to form some kind of strange debris cloud. Unlike last night, no rain meant none of the industrial particulate would be suppressed.
"Kei, do you ever think you'll be assigned to demolition missions again?" Rin asked, pulling her hood up and sequestering Mitsuba around her neck like an armored collar. "You've gotten better at it."
Still in the process of picking Zetsu goo out of the treads of her winter boots with a kunai, Kei said, "Knocking down buildings is probably safer with normal workers. Fewer explosives."
"Clients mostly pay for speed." Rin sat down on a scrap of tarp left over from their prep work, lowering her profile. "Do you think they might save money if they spend thirty workers' pay on one special jōnin? I haven't done the math on field work recently."
"It depends on the material, the size of the work area, and the timeframe." Kei shook her head slowly. "I don't think I'm ever going to get used to following butterflies for precise directions."
Normal butterflies—or moths, come to that—had impressive olfactory systems for beings with no noses. Plenty of insects in their mold used their antennae for exploring their environments, focused mostly on food or mates. Shimika's butterflies seemed to eschew the latter in favor of hyper-specializing in devouring other creatures' chakra without pause.
In a city like this one, a thousand times more developed and disgusting as Amegakure, Kakashi and his dogs had to bow to their superiority in pinpointing Zetsu clones. The insects suffered no distractions.
"I'm just glad Shimika-san's partners don't care if they die." Rin lifted a hand to her half-hidden scorpion, allowing a claw to pinch her without comment. "It's a little callous though."
"At this point, the only reasonable explanation is that they're somehow siphoning all of the chakra they eat back to a collective stomach." Kei paused. "Actually? Someone should look into that."
Kakashi turned from Kei and Rin's quiet conversation and turned his masked face into the wind. His ANBU mask had subtle modifications to keep it from interfering with his scent tracking skills, while not destroying its defensive and disguise value, and he caught a familiar scent on the wind. Sniffing a few times, he turned his head a little to face the impending confrontation.
Thwip!
Kakashi waited. Given the options when Akaboshi had plans elsewhere in the city, the lack of cape noises indicated only one possible suspect. He didn't need to draw his sword on this one.
Nightwing climbed over the edge of the roof, plucking his hooked anchor out and winding the cable back into its launcher. As he crossed the roof, weapons still stowed, he bobbed his head a little to acknowledge Kakashi's presence and grinned when Kakashi nodded back.
Kakashi wasn't sure why; Nightwing was a local expert, but that extended exactly as far as Kakashi's team allowed. When Nightwing passed him, Kakashi placed another few security seals around the meeting point, to discourage any more interlopers from arriving with the illusion of an empty roof. On the other hand, that might encourage one of the ones with capes, whose habits Kakashi didn't yet know.
"I don't know if I need to ask," Nightwing was saying as Kakashi returned from his loop around the building, "but…I assume there was a reason for that."
Ambiguous phrasing aside, Nightwing looked in the direction of the still-domed warehouse and stuck a hand out to indicate where his attention had gone. Kakashi supposed the smoldering bubble of ruined architecture was a good enough reference point for anyone who wanted to start a conversation.
"One reason, as ordered." Rin reached into a pocket and produced a…shape. It was best described as "inoffensively lumpy," which meant there was likely something terribly wrong with it. She tossed it underhand to Nightwing.
Who caught it, grimaced, and refused to drop the white-splattered package out of sheer stubbornness. He held it in one striped glove, turning plastic over in his glove while squeezing experimentally. Then: "If I open this, am I going to see a bunch of Zetsu fingers?"
"I know heads are more traditional because people tend to only have one," Rin said in a bright tone, which was the exact same way she lied, "but I didn't think your people would be that interested in an accurate killcount."
Rin was doing this on purpose. While confirming a target's death in the field was a necessity for ANBU missions and most of Kei's more generally destructive record, Konoha's authorities preferred not to take trophies. Heads were acceptable, when prepared properly, but a fūinjutsu specialist could easily make an entire corpse portable. Hunter-nin destroyed their targets' bodies in the field, through a combination of manual and chemical options, if they couldn't be dragged back without putting the team at risk.
A medic like Rin, though? Rin never did that. Her missions were a handful of deployments in a medical capacity, keeping her mostly inside of Konoha and in the hospital's orbit. Her excursions to field hospitals stopped after the war.
Rin carried ingredients she usually made into soldier pills. She pre-weighed and measured everything, rolled it into individual doses, and then molded things into "fun" shapes. Hearts, teeth, ears, and fingers included. Obito enabled this understated prankster streak like he did everything else. Kakashi suspected she was understimulated—somehow—and bored medics were more difficult to steer than ninken.
Nightwing muttered something to himself in his other language, drawing a snort-laugh from Kei. While he eyed Kei with an expression bordering on disappointment and threw Rin's "reason" back to her, he actually said, "What happened here? In your own words."
"We scouted the location of a Zetsu infestation, sealed the area, and eliminated the targets," Kakashi replied, because Kei wanted to keep some kind of open line of communication between all parties. "No more human lives were lost."
Nightwing's expression went grim. "You think they've been…feeding on people here."
"Yes. The site was beyond salvaging." Kakashi took pity on him, just a bit. Enough to explain his reasoning, at least. "No bodies were intact enough to recover." Using the word "bodies" for some of the remains they found was over-generous. "Even if we had the resources to identify every person taken, replaced, or eaten, the answers make people less secure, not more."
Nightwing glanced between the unhelpful Kei, happily stonewalling Rin, and said to Kakashi, "Keep going. I'd like to hear it."
I don't think you will. Kakashi didn't have to see Kei or Rin's faces to know they agreed.
"Your city has several million people." Kakashi guessed that, but no one sprang to correct him. "If you told them that their new enemy is a self-replicating, shape-changing hive mind of beings that eat people, how well do you think they'd react?"
"Badly," Kei said. They'd had very long meetings in Konoha about this exact topic in the immediate wake of the October Tenth attack. The last thing their world needed was yet another war with an even thinner veneer of legitimacy.
"So badly," Rin put in, though she hadn't been a participant in those discussions.
Between Shimika's butterfly summons and the occasional dead drop, there was no way Team Minato could stop now. Coordinating attacks on enemy bases was already difficult before the unwilling world-shift. With the city's population density, the lack of logistical support, and the sheer threat presented by the Zetsu clones' behavior and biology, this was a nightmare. And yet, they couldn't leave the threat unaddressed.
Kakashi didn't know how best to articulate that to a foreign authority, which was yet another reason why Sensei was the Hokage and Kakashi wanted nothing to do with the hat.
Nightwing held up a quelling hand. "You're lucky that the city is writing off 'freak sewer mutant' attacks after a decade of getting used to people like the Ratcatcher and Killer Croc. But I'm not arguing that your decisions here were wrong. I got the lecture, and the introductory skirmish with the usual near-death experiences, and I imagine you've all more used to fighting them than I am. Half the effectiveness in my job is from knowing who to call on for expert advice. I get that."
Correct.
"But you have to understand that flattening part of the landscape is going to raise some eyebrows around here. Questions that are already going to be linked with your identities even if you're not remotely from around here." Nightwing flicked a hand up and tapped the edge of the mask over his eyes. He didn't truly sound upset, just more exasperated by the entire situation. "With that in mind, are you planning on hitting any other locations in Gotham?"
"We had a list," Kei said, crossing her arms over her chest, "but we're open to collaboration on the next one."
That was news to Kakashi. He nodded along anyway.
"Should I take this," Nightwing said, with another pointed wave at the swirling smoke trapped behind Kei's barrier seals, "to mean that you're continuing the trend from—" And the word Nightwing said next was in his own language, which didn't help. From context, though, there were only so many potential suspects.
"The middle island. They call it 'Midtown' when speaking to other locals," Kei supplied, when Kakashi and Rin both looked to her for an explanation. The word sat better on her tongue. "We killed the Zetsu nest there last night."
"Oh, I guess so?" Rin stowed her supplies and her scorpion with a puff of smoke. "From what we understand, there's only one nest per island, so we're actually about two-thirds done with half of our problem. Two-sixths, then, assuming that the enemy also requires three attempts to completely uproot."
"I have some doubts about your math," Nightwing said, "but I'll accept the invitation." He spun around on the spot, showing off the new weapons arrayed between his shoulder blades, including the blue-striped batons he used to such limited effectiveness last time. He also wore a more complex-looking belt, with a few new attachments that linked to the rest of the harness. It was the exact motion of a circus performer showing off their costume, only nothing twirled or jingled. "This time I came loaded for bear."
Kakashi assumed that non-sequitur meant something to Kei, whose language skills were a keystone for this mission.
"I don't know what that means, but sure! I suppose we don't know if bears are a reasonable threat here," Rin replied for all of them. She was just happy to find another person to inflict her biology knowledge upon, going by the way that Nightwing looked briefly puzzled by her response. "It's always better to have what you need than to need something and not have it. Especially medicine, or weapons."
Kei shifted from foot to foot, just enough that Kakashi noticed. "Then should someone…carry you, Nightwing-san? So you can keep up with us."
At least Kakashi didn't have to say it. While he'd noticed, the importance of each "vigilante" lacking chakra and the subsequent basic training only affected their threat ranking in Kakashi's view. When it came to treating the locals as allies, the math flipped and painted a far bleaker logistical picture. Constantly needing to compensate for a teammate's weakness was no way to conduct a campaign.
"I have transportation." Nightwing tossed her a small device that blinked, then handed one to Rin and Kakashi with much the same air as Sensei did when it was time to distribute Flying Thunder God kunai. "And now you have trackers."
Kei tucked the device away immediately, then handed Nightwing one of her shield talismans in exchange. "In case you need it. It's pre-armed."
"And I activate it by…?"
"Stick it on the ground and it makes a five-meter barrier, centered on the seal in a sphere. Peel it off to deactivate it." Kei considered. "Try not to catch anything hostile in it with you. It'd be a cage match, and a small one."
"Noted. Well, it wouldn't be the first time." Both for being caught in a barrier, and…?
Kakashi had questions.
Rin did not. "Good! Just don't die."
"Kirin." Kei sounded exasperated.
"It's okay!" Nightwing assured them both, "I'll take it in the spirit it was meant."
Despite Nightwing's light tone and attitude, he still wore the attitude of a commanding officer surrounded by genin over his shoulders like armor. He moved constantly—a little sway here, tapping fingers there—and Kakashi was certain the man hid frustration behind a smile like a professional actor. It was the easy, perpetual activity of someone like Gai; the constant, perfect kinesthetic awareness a lifetime of training earned. None of that brightness made Gai less a jōnin. The same principle applied to this man, Kakashi thought.
"Out of curiosity," Rin said, after a couple of seconds, "how old are you?" She'd canted her head to one side as though a similar assessment occurred to her, and now it was a question of bothering people until answers spilled out. "Your people do go out of their way to treat us like children."
"Classified, actually," Nightwing replied without missing a step, turning to leave the roof and locate "transportation," which was probably loud and irritating like everything else in this city. He did a backflip on his way out.
Kei scoffed behind her mask, but didn't demand an answer for Rin's sake.
Once Nightwing was gone, Kakashi nudged Kei as he tucked the allied tracking device into his pocket. In an undertone, he asked, "How old?"
"Can't be more than mid-twenties," Kei muttered, barely audible under her mask. "Definitely not older than Sensei."
Not that Kakashi knew precisely how she came to that conclusion. Sensei didn't act like Nightwing, but Sensei also bore heavier responsibilities. Such as parenthood. Not that older shinobi lost the capacity for joy, but…no. Change the subject. "Your assessment of his reliability?"
"Exemplary, for someone with no powers. But if you grade people based on their influence, Nightwing is an S-class threat." Over Rin's startled noise, Kei explained quietly, "He has strong bonds with literally hundreds of other heroes, powerful and not, and I think most of them would get into fist-fights over who'd get to be his emergency contact. If he called, they'd come running. Or flying. Or something."
Kakashi felt his eyebrows rise. Given how Kei talked about other people in this world, the only kinds of beings who'd give her pause were likely in the same weight class as Isobu. The only opponents that gave her pause had to either exploit her known weaknesses or happen to be preexisting S-class threats. Which meant that someone as well-connected as the Sage…wandered around at night chasing petty criminals, without any kind of armor. There were so many things wrong with this picture that Kakashi needed to make a list once the mission was over.
Rin's frown was audible as she said, "So, if he dies, we're dead. If we don't get out fast. That's a downer."
"Maybe." Kei sighed, sounding like she needed a vacation badly enough to contemplate just walking into the harbor—even this one—and not walking out until the shouting stopped. "This was less complicated before all these people got involved."
"Less fun, though."
"Hey."
"You were climbing the walls." Rin paused, clearly recalling the hours of stockpiled Kei footage where she barely moved inside her borrowed apartment. Looking at it made Kakashi's heart hurt, so he tried not to watch as much as the analysts did. "Actually, no, your brother was. Literally. Look, less complicated situations also mean you were making less progress." With that, Rin headed for the edge of the roof and peered over it until she waved down at an unseen observer, presumably Nightwing.
Kei muttered in the local language and a rude tone before flicking her white-stained hood up to cover her hair again. It had fallen back during the fight. Then: "Let's just go."
Kakashi nodded, stepping away to begin the next leg of their journey. Below, a local wheeled thing—a "motorcycle," which Kakashi couldn't hope to pronounce—started with a dull roar. It appeared the tracking devices were functional after all.
Kakashi wasn't sure if he hated that or not.
The issue wasn't that their two factions couldn't work together. All of them were cross-trained in a variety of tactics meant to adapt to circumstances, including having to work alongside allies of convenience. As long as everyone cooperated to achieve a goal they all wanted—the utter destruction of Zetsu clones and successful exfiltration to Konoha—they could tolerate each side's quirks. Kakashi didn't particularly care for restrictions imposed on how they could achieve said goals, but they could at least all agree to minimize civilian casualties and confine violence to the enemy. Disdain for the city environment aside, no one here had really done anything to Kei or Hayate that would provoke retaliation.
The Zetsu army and their local allies were busy being a glaring exception, which was why they were dying as fast as Konoha forces could manage.
By all accounts he'd heard so far, Kakashi's team had mostly succeeded in forging local bonds. Kei fought alongside both Akaboshi and Nightwing on separate occasions without a single untoward swing in either direction. In turn, Nightwing offered her help and housing. And even before that, Akaboshi went to absurd lengths to shelter and provide for Kei's little brother, which was the part she inevitably cared about more. Likewise, a junior member of the Bat-clan had defended Kei from a targeted poisoning attempt by the enemy, and both Gekkō siblings paid that debt back by medically intervening (with extra steps) to save his life. Shortly thereafter, Tsuruya saved yet another Bat-clan ally with Obito's help, and Obito escorted everyone back and forth to facilitate group cohesion.
Everyone lived.
By Kakashi's tally, Konoha was ahead by a few points in the race to save everyone from horrible deaths. Formal allegiances had been built on less. A lot less, in some cases.
And yet, there was a threshold of trust simply absent that made judging the situation difficult.
Part of the problem, Kakashi figured, was that the Bat-clan held a collective wariness of strangers that bordered on something usually seen only in shinobi villages and the Land of Iron. When Kei had thrown their true names in their faces, she'd dumped oil on that ember. Kakashi wouldn't have done the same—mainly because he couldn't—but admitted his role in pressuring Kei's use of the extreme option in the privacy of his mind. She'd avoided answering their actual questions by essentially tossing an explosive tag into their social dynamic.
It was a tried and true Kei tactic for emotional confrontations. Sometimes, Kakashi wished she would do that a little less.
Even for Rin, whose missions rarely took her so far afield that this kind of fraught international cooperation was her sole responsibility, had given Kei a severe look upon realizing the impact of that exchange.
Kei cooling off with Hayate and Obito seemed like a safer survival scenario at that point.
Akaboshi also represented an unstable element in this scenario. While Obito—and Kakashi and Rin and Kei and Hayate—had all determined Akaboshi was a loose member of the Bat-clan, this label seemed lost on everyone else. It seemed less like they were a coherent faction and more that, somehow, Kakashi's team now collectively occupied some demilitarized zone between the two camps without having noticed the moment they were collectively forced into that role. They were the sole lifeline from one group to its rogue.
But that rogue rose to the occasion when Konoha needed him.
By all evidence, Akaboshi was a snippy, dramatic asshole who was not shy about employing violence in the field. He could be dangerous, as demonstrated by his activities all across the city, but that was not nearly the dealbreaker in a social context for shinobi as it could be for civilians. People like Kei—especially jinchūriki— struggled constantly between the need to be seen as powerful without crossing a threshold to "active threat," but Akaboshi had skipped that dilemma when he snatched Hayate from the jaws of death. None of Kakashi's teammates quite knew how Hayate managed to worm his way through Akaboshi's prickly persona, but he had. He treated Hayate like a favorite younger sibling and the rest of them as tolerated extensions of that relationship, to varying degrees, and could be nagged or bullied with no real consequences.
However, this relationship did not extend much into his own clan. Akaboshi helped Robin and Spoiler, the youngest known members, but did not extend any courtesy to the others. And that was putting it kindly.
Somehow, Kakashi didn't think forcing the entire situation into coherence would be as easy as shutting everyone in a room until they either made up or killed each other. First of all, that would make at least half their respective groups sad. For another point against that plan, it would take too long. Unviable.
He'd come up with something else if needed.
It was almost ten minutes later—or one bridge and an entire island—before trouble made itself known. Not in a way that disrupted their immediate surroundings, like a nearby explosion or a Zetsu barricade, but Nightwing jerked his vehicle to a skidding stop under a concrete over-road bridge and started talking to something in his helmet.
"Genbu," said Rin, last in line and first to turn back when the machine noise stopped. She cupped one hand to her ear, holding out her other arm to ask for patience. "Hold on."
Kei turned her way. Team Minato all had shared earpieces, but they were not on the same signal as Nightwing's, and Obito's was effectively out of range if he was in Kamui instead of the real world. Her earpiece wasn't buzzing. "Something wrong?"
"Nightwing-san has a radio call." Rin paused to listen and make hand signals to their new teammate's location. Then she raised a hand to her ear. "I think Akaboshi-san just went loud. Seiryū? Come in, please."
As though on cue, all three of them immediately heard Obito's radio-garbled voice say, "I hear you, Kirin."
"Did something just happen?"
"…You could say that."
"Status report. Now." Kakashi was in no mood to deal with the inevitable back-and-forth.
Apparently, Obito was. "Well…"
Due to resources Akaboshi described as "the usual attention-seeking mind games" and Hayate called "clown magic," the Joker's freedom culminated in a blatant ploy for the entire city's focus. On Akaboshi's "laptop" computer, which sat on the low couch table, the three of them watched the police rush to confront a man who'd already driven a long haul semi truck into the guard rails of the bridge, scrambled out of the cab, and started grandstanding on top of the trailer. He'd done something with a fuel canister that Obito vaguely recognized as being for cars, then hurled the red container off onto the road.
Between the angle of the camera and the Joker's blatant lack of appropriate weapons, Obito came to the dismal conclusion that the man was, effectively, holding an unknown number of hostages. Walking along the top of the trailer, the uncannily Zetsu-like man gestured and spoke to the police cordon that had blocked off the bridge's car lanes in both directions, and no one shot him.
Even though they definitely could. There were twentyish years of stolen assassin-memories griping about it in Obito's head, and his very own homegrown instinct was to put a kunai through the guy's face from thirty paces. Or maybe set him on fire, if the hostages were considered either expendable or actual targets, independent of the Joker's presence.
The Joker was right there. Practically begging to be splattered across the immediate landscape.
Come on, people. Obito didn't have the words to describe his disappointment in everyone involved.
Though… maybe there was some kind of trap he wasn't seeing…
"So, high or low?" Obito asked instead of complaining, turning his head away from the laptop screen to catch Akaboshi's eye. He spoke in English because Hayate was not invited to this party in the slightest and therefore didn't need to be included. "I think you could pull off both entrance styles."
Well, if Obito was being generous. A straightforward, head-on ground approach worked fine for people like Kei, who could shrug off every attack thrown her way for tactical and demonstrative purposes. Sometimes she drew all of the enemy's attention so the other members of her team could take the longer, safer way around and flank them. It was practically her job.
Even theatrical, heavily-armed Akaboshi preferred stealth. Already going toward his hidden gear compartment in the hall closet, Akaboshi replied, "High."
Obito couldn't resist. Over his shoulder, he quipped, "Got it, boss." In the moment, it felt a little weird to go for oyabun or okashira with someone maybe a year older than he was, so maybe the foreign word felt less loaded.
Hayate made a face at Obito for the secrecy.
Obito stuck his tongue out at Hayate for that. He was going to stay out of danger, no debate allowed.
There was a deliberate not-sigh from Akaboshi's direction, and then a red object sailed across the room and over the couch into Hayate's waiting hands. "If you're gonna call me 'boss,'" Akaboshi said over the sound of moving cloth and his armor's strange panels sliding against each other, "then you'd better upgrade your gear until you're not an embarrassment to Gotham's entire criminal underworld."
Hayate turned the thing around, revealing a red-and-black mask much like the one he wore while playing "Suzaku" in public. It covered the wearer's face from under the jaw to just above the browline, sealing with a rubber liner that made the device skintight with the assistance of two straps to go around the head. Given that Hayate's and Akaboshi's faces were different in nearly every aspect, the material was both flexible and a little tacky. The red lenses in the goggles reminded Obito of his orange set, but creepier on purpose. For intimidating people instead of just protecting one's eyes. It was kinda cool, not that he'd ever tell Akaboshi that.
"What's the big deal?" Obito asked, taking the offered mask and idly spinning it on a finger by one of the straps. "Need a more consistent sidekick uniform?"
"More like you need a better defense against Gotham's repertoire of chemical attacks. The kid already stole one." While Obito puzzled over the way "repertoire" registered in two new languages at once, Akaboshi went on, "It's rated against Ivy's poisons, Scarecrow's gas, and whatever the Joker dreamed up this week. And it has a tactical setting for night vision, thermal imaging—"
"Okay, okay!" Obito held up both hands in mock surrender. The mask dangled from one thumb. "You have better toys. Take the win."
It did raise questions about where he got the fancy stuff, but Obito was charitable enough to let it slide.
"It's not about winning." Akaboshi's voice was all metallic by then. When Obito craned his neck to look, the red helmet was in place and its spooky white eyes were lit up. "If I have to deal with being stalked by superpowered ninja brats everywhere, the least I can do is make sure doing it doesn't kill you."
Bullshit. Aloud, Obito said, "I'd call you overprotective if the city didn't suck."
"Now you're thinking like a Gothamite."
Akaboshi had accepted Obito's help getting to a good vantage point, though he didn't need it. Apparently, the hook-shooty things the Bat-clan used were good for finding the high ground and then using it to jump down on people's heads during an ambush. Not that Obito had any direct memories of just that, but Akaboshi was kind of bouncy for someone that tall while totally void of chakra, so it made sense for people trained like him to use shinobi tactics. And the guy whose brain Obito basically ate? Agreed with that assessment, even if Akaboshi seemed to prefer guns. That was two votes in favor.
What Obito's presence gave Akaboshi was a certain amount of scheduling leeway, since otherwise he'd have needed to leave the safehouse earlier to catch the Joker's last live performance. As it was, they arrived after the Joker doused people in "gasoline" and started demanding something about Batman.
And so, Obito sat on a flat-ish part of the steel underside of the big bridge, considering his options as his legs dangled in the void. Or the dozen-meter gap between the bottom of the bridge's support structure and the merciless harbor water below. Wind whistled through the hollows and ruffled through Obito's coat, threatening to toss him off at any moment.
But unfortunately for the bridge, the show was just getting started.
The downside of Obito's involvement in this production was the wait, like a stagehand for his cue.
Or—just a thought, obviously—he could go topside and just see what was going on.
Obito swung his legs idly. He'd already been waiting forever. Even if the timer in his mask's eyepiece said it was about thirty—no, thirty-five seconds.
Boring.
Obito grabbed a spar over his head, swinging himself toward the edge of the bridge to get a better look at the dangling cab of that stolen truck. One tire was fully past the guard rail. Smoke drifted up from the twisted metal snout.
Someone was talking up there.
After a bit of consideration, Obito slipped up through the solid bits of bridge—avoiding a very grumpy Hayate in Kamui along the way—until he was lying underneath the angled trailer and listening to people yell a lot. On both sides of the trailer were cars, showing very different views of the city's options depending on which way Obito looked. A dozen of the blinky-light police cars were on one side, while abandoned civilian vehicles were abandoned on the other. Two bright overhead lights confirmed that the—balloons?—overhead had their attention pointed perfectly to illuminate the primary target.
"This wasn't part of the damn deal, you freak! Get me outta here! Right now!"
Obito knew the accent—similar to the locals—but not the speaker. It probably didn't help that the sound was coming through sheet metal and that there were a lot of panicky voices inside the same container.
"I thought you'd enjoy seeing some old faces. After all, most of these guys used to work for you."
So that was what the clown dude sounded like in person. Kinda weird and raspy and not like someone Kei spent ten minutes lecturing them about while suiting up to go take care of the other threats. Mostly, he sounded like he needed a better sore throat treatment plan.
He probably wouldn't live long enough to use it.
Over a speaker, a totally different voice snapped, "Who's that? Get a light on him."
"Up there!"
Obito rolled out from under the mass of unmoving metal, opposite Akaboshi's view. Both of the spotlights lurched off the truck and presumably in Akaboshi's direction, because people always had to look at whatever might potentially kill them next. Not that Akaboshi went out of his way to kill anybody outside of his schemes, at least according to Hayate's version of events, but maybe he'd snuck one of the really big guns along in his jacket or something.
"Heeeey, look at you! Mr. Hood! Or do you prefer Red? You know, I used to wear an outfit a lot like that. Mine was more flashy maitre d' than motorcycle fetish. You kids today…" A metal flicking noise. Metal lighter, like Asuma carried. "I'm sorry, could you hold on? I was just in the middle of setting fire to your gang."
The most immediate voices should have been the hostages begging for mercy. They were quiet, though, like the conversation Obito had mostly missed was occupying all their attention, too.
"Go ahead. You think I care if that scum dies?" Then there was Akaboshi, wielding the audio output of his helmet like a weapon, very much not caring about them. Given the phone call earlier, it seemed as though he'd been waiting for an opportunity to throw his lackeys' leadership to the wolves.
"Don't know. I just wanted your attention."
Obito rolled to his feet and stepped back a little to eyeball the distance for his next jump. The top of the trailer was about four meters up, and Obito could see the clown's shadow move on the ground thanks to all the spotlight. He didn't even have to activate his Sharingan again to do that math. The target was well within reach.
What you don't know can still kill you.
"You've always had my attention. But what I wanted…" Akaboshi said, drawing out the suspense a little, "was an audience with you."
Case in point, Obito thought with a grumble. Like, yeah, he'd known there was a fixation in play, but really?
Oh, and another spotlight landed squarely on the man who looked the most like a Zetsu out of anybody Obito had ever seen. Very dramatic lighting, like the stars in a play, but it meant Obito slapped Hayate's little camouflage genjutsu onto his body to avoid being spotted.
In the tone of someone whose mental puzzle was finally taking shape, the clown said, "I'm sorry, that seems to imply that you organized this little clambake."
Obito wasn't completely sure he liked Akaboshi. Knowing the guy resented him for undisclosed reasons wasn't a great start, even if Obito had worked past worse. Such as Kakashi and Obito's old bitterness; even so, it wasn't the same. While Sensei played both peacemaker and disciplinarian, Obito never actually worried those fights would escalate. Kakashi was too well-disciplined, even at eight, to let that spill over into real violence. Obito didn't fear for his safety, or for Kei's when she stepped in like a mama tiger.
He did worry about that Akaboshi, but differently. Hayate liked the guy, and Akaboshi basically pack-bonded with Kei's little brother, but there was this…lingering feeling. A doubt or ten. Even if Akaboshi wasn't a direct threat to Hayate and, by association, the rest of them, that didn't really make his goals align with theirs. Something would slip.
"I did. Sure, I had lots of plans, but the endgame was getting Black Mask so desperate that he'd cut a deal. He was the only one with the connections to get into Arkham…" Akaboshi continued, with a note of anticipation in his tone, "...and get you out."
Obito suspected, just a little, that he'd found that weak point.
And now he was pretty sure if he just crammed the clown into Kamui and either let Hayate kill him or did the job himself, everyone would just be upset about it. Kei had said Akaboshi's grudge would override all else, but it seemed like any sense of self-preservation was sacrificed on the altar of drama.
"You can't. Trust. Anybody," grumbled a voice from inside the trailer.
Obito was briefly tempted to tap the steel to commiserate, but held back.
"So I've been bamboozled."
Obito didn't know what that last word meant, so he missed the next sentence puzzling over it. Some kind of slang term, maybe? The general tone of everything they'd said so far was mostly that pre-fight banter that could only happen during sanctioned matches like in the Chūnin Exams.
"I wouldn't undersell it," Akaboshi was saying. "It took a lot of work to bring about our reunion."
Fuck.
"'Reunion?' Have we met before?"
"Yes. We have."
Double fuck.
Kei needed to stop being right about guessing the interpersonal dynamics of people she couldn't have ever possibly met before. Or, if she was, at least shortcut some of this by intervening earlier and maybe slapping some of the participants upside the head a few times. Maybe shoving the clown guy off the bridge to his death would suffice now?
"Well, here's to warm memories."
And with that, the clown tossed the burning lighter toward his oil-soaked hostages. None of whom Obito cared for, but—
To hell with this.
Shattering the genjutsu more by accident than with real intent, Obito moved.
Leaping up and level with the drama in an instant, Obito snatched the dropped lighter out of the air with just two fingers. As the clown backed away from the interloper, Obito tossed the lighter to his right hand with a juggler's easy movements. And when the clown grabbed at it, spidery reflex showing, Obito spun out of reach without letting the man even get close to his trailing coat.
Obito held the lighter up as he spun away, as either a trophy or a confirmation that he wasn't threatening the hostages.
(Yet.)
And everyone was staring at him like they'd never seen a masked man pull off anything so graceful before. For shame, Akaboshi. For shame.
"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Akaboshi's voice hissed in Obito's ear. Notably, it was not done over the speaker system, instead over the comm connection, and in Obito's first language to make a point.
"Improvising!" Obito bowed to the clown as the guy managed to claw his breathing back, tucking the lighter into Kamui with one flick of his wrist. With a grin in his voice, Obito remarked in a passable imitation of Akaboshi's voice, "No kill-stealing, old timer. It's rude."
During the instant he'd gotten past the little rooftop vent, he'd spotted the charcoal, chin-blessed countenance of Black Mask and a number of other faces he recognized…less. Even so, if Hayate didn't want a word with them for those hired assassins, there was a decent chance Kei might. Maybe the kind of conversation that ended with a beatdown to match the one the bad guys' minions had already gotten.
Or maybe Obito would get the order in a few hours and take care of that loose end himself.
"Well, of the three of us here who'd lay claim to 'Red Hood,' only one broke down and went for it." The clown made a sweeping gesture, as though to account for Obito's entire being. Honestly, his voice didn't sound much worse with additional hoarseness. "I take back one mild criticism, Mr. Hood. Hell of a deal?"
What, because Obito actually wore a hood? ANBU coats came with them, were moderately armored, and kept the rain off his head. Obito went for the first comeback he could think of: "And this is coming from a man who calls himself 'the Joker' and isn't even funny."
Time slowed. And Obito's Sharingan was only partly to blame.
Rage crossed the clown's face, quick as a Zetsu changing forms, but any verbal retort was cut off by the scream of an overhead flying machine—
Which was broadly, artistically bat-shaped. Well, one couldn't criticize Batman for not owning his brand.
Obito dodged the mass of goopy white foam and the spray of poison from the clown's ornamental flower. Thanks to Kamui, he didn't even need to contort himself to do it.
Firefighting foam, said the ghost-memories of René the assassin.
And while the Joker tried to scrub the delayed counterattack of his failed murder plan out of his eyes, Obito put his existence a little lower on the priority list.
While, again, kidnapping the clown was not difficult, keeping him alive in Kamui for longer than the time it took Hayate to recognize him would be. Kei's adorable baby brother had already promised—and admitted—to his newfound ambition of decapitating the clown before he could threaten Akaboshi again. So, of course, that meant the two had to be kept separate for the whole scheme Akaboshi actually wanted to work.
So, Obito stepped back when a roped claw thing descended on the Bat-machine's second pass and snatched the clown away from him like a fish on a line. That the catching line thing swung right through his body felt more like an accident than an attack, so he let that pass with little more than mild irritation.
At least the guy screamed funny.
But he did send a pulse of chakra outward. Something big enough for a signal, which usually made people's hair stand on end if they stood too close to him.
Far above, Akaboshi's tiny shape leapt from the bridge tower onto the fishing line, slicing it through and sending both him and the snagged Joker careening toward the bay. At that speed, any landing was fatal.
A monochrome blur shot through the steel cables holding the bridge, warping a little as it maneuvered into the correct position to intervene. Once there, the wind whipped up into a gale that flattened buildings on land, twisting water upward and toward the falling men.
Wings extended and allegiances bared, Tsuruya caught them on the way down.
Sound hit seconds after Tsuruya passed. Wind ripped at everyone and made the police force duck and shout in bewilderment. The big spotlight balloons overhead wavered in the shockwave, disturbed, and Obito didn't see what happened in the darkness after that.
Instead Obito hopped down from the roof of the trailer in plain view of anybody, sighed, and waved to the police.
The cleanup was not supposed to be his job.
"I just need a word with Black Mask," Obito said to the first brave soul to approach. Not mimicking Akaboshi made his voice a little higher, but the mask muffled the effect.
Unsurprisingly, most of the people who crowded around him were police. They were pointing lots of guns his way, but Obito hadn't been impressed by their initiative with the clown and wasn't about to start now. Instead, he considered the idea that the Joker had booby-trapped the door, rolled his eye, and walked directly through the steel to have his conversation. He thought he heard confused stammering as he went inside, and a bullet ripped through the air about an inch from him as his eye adjusted to the sudden darkness. The thin sliver of light from the bullet hole was annoying at best.
The container stank of fuel, all the trappings of terrified humans, and maybe whatever was in the foam that had gotten through the closed vent. The various gangsters were hogtied here and there along the floor, generally looking terrified of what might come next after the evening they'd had so far.
Even so, Obito located Black Mask and strode over to him, leaning in with a deliberately calm, almost friendly mien. "Outside, there are people waiting to arrest you. Which is better than before, when the plan was to kill all of you for fun."
Black Mask stared up at him with impotent fury and fear racing through his warped expression. The white suit didn't suit him when everyone was covered in a mess Obito didn't want to identify.
"But if you think Red Hood and the Joker were the only ones who have a point to make, I suggest you sleep with one eye open," Obito said, not unkindly. He even circled his empty eye for emphasis before giving the man a mocking wave. "Good luck!"
And Obito dropped through the floor, through Kamui, and back onto the same support strut he'd ditched because of boredom.
None of that left.
The bat-themed flying thing zoomed back and forth over the water a few times, above and below the bridge as Obito held on against the wind. Given his dark outfit, he wasn't sure that the pilot spotted him the first time, but he was probably seen eventually. If Akaboshi's equipment could search for body heat, it made sense that someone who could make a custom flying machine would have the same technology.
Tsuruya was already gone, though; her role was to make sure Akaboshi didn't splat, not to stick around and get shot by weird things. Or anything. She'd probably poofed away the moment Akaboshi and the clown safely hit the water. Her skillset didn't include swimming while lugging an uncooperative captive out of the harbor, even if she was strong and could water-walk. There were limits to what she cared to do if Kei wasn't the one asking.
Obito wasn't worried about his own chances of avoiding trouble, as such. He didn't need to stick around to get shot either, and catching Akaboshi would take about ten seconds if he chose. Walking him and his captive back to the shoreline…a little longer. A little more annoying. Obito's interest in sparing Akaboshi the immediate consequences of his actions was limited, too.
But he was…probably supposed to keep that miserable jerk alive. Hayate really did like him. And Obito kind of wanted to know where the story would go next.
"I think Akaboshi-san just went loud," crackled in Obito's ears. "Seiryū? Come in, please."
Obito's mood immediately improved. Even with the tinny tones of the radio interfering, it was nice to hear Rin's voice. "I hear you, Kirin."
"Did something just happen?"
Obito leaned back to contemplate the road running above his head. He didn't click the line open until the Bat-plane thing had passed by for the last time and seemed unlikely to circle back. "You could say that."
"Status report. Now." Oh, good, Kakashi was on the line.
Apparently, Obito had some explaining to do. Hooray.
Notes:
1. Shortly after this, Obito learns the word "dirigible." And what a police blimp is.
2. While in the film, the Joker and Red Hood survive that fall from the Batplane without issue, they should've both been dead meat the second that line got cut. Water is not soft at that height. Hence, Tsuruya. Likewise, the Joker and Red Hood should absolutely not have been able to hold that conversation from, respectively, the road surface and tower heights of a suspension bridge. That's total nonsense even without active vehicle traffic.
3. In Gotham, there's a native ninja population (Bats), a migratory one (League of Assassins), and then an invasive one brought in by the migrations (Konoha). Ra's al Ghul would be furious to be compared to the kind of people who optimistically brought rabbits to Australia. He's still the kinda guy who thinks humans are a plague upon the planet (except for his devotees, obviously) because of environmental damage.
(You can basically imagine Konoha doing a collective facepalm at their kids' shenanigans by now.)
