Chapter 33: Taken

Something was wrong.

Dach glanced over toward the hole in the crumbling wall that led outside, opposite from where some of his pack were pawing through the gathered food. Of course, it wasn't really his pack anymore, as he had long since handed over the reins to one of the younger pups.

That didn't stop them from looking to him for guidance, though, and it certainly didn't keep him from looking out for them. He worried about them, sometimes. A lot of the time, actually.

But he had a home to look out for now, too.

Standing, he trotted over to the opening and peered at the scraggly training ground across from their hideout. Everything was quiet. Peaceful.

Then he heard a dull thock, kunai hitting wood.

There was a flash of silver hair as more knives were thrown at one of the target posts that hadn't been blown up at some point; Kakashi, he recognized, though he wasn't sure why the young shinobi had chosen to come all the way to the abandoned district just to practice.

The foreboding feeling still itched at him.

Miho, lying in a patch of sun just on the other side of the wall, quirked an ear his way. "What's the matter, Boss?"

"I'm not the boss anymore, haven't been for a while…" He sighed, shaking his head. "Whatever. How long's he been over there?"

She shrugged, sitting up and stretching. "A while now. He's been pacing a lot, too—think he's got somethin' on his mind."

Dach jumped over a stray brick, settling beside her to watch the boy practice. Two more kunai found their marks, chased swiftly by a third. The boy's accuracy was very impressive for his age, he noted distantly.

"…I think you got somethin' on your mind, too, Boss."

"I suppose." He was quiet for another long moment. "Something's wrong."

She huffed, but, after scenting the air a few times, didn't deny it. "I don't like it. It's like…" a pause, hesitant, and she finished, "like that night, but not as sharp."

That was not what he wanted to hear, even if he had been thinking basically the same thing.

Abruptly standing back up, Dach shook himself. "I can't just keep sitting around here, not when I don't know… What if…"

Miho joined him, and, after barking a farewell to the rest of the pack, they both walked back to the smithy—to his home. He had been away for only a few days, Dach tried to reassure himself. It was nothing he hadn't done before, to check up on the pack. Nothing unusual.

His human… Axel would be fine. He was just being paranoid.

The streets back were almost hushed, too still, but he couldn't quite tell if he was just imagining things. The unsettling smell—more like a feeling, really—seemed to get stronger as they got closer.

Please, no.

But Dach had already known the painful truth long before he nosed his way in through the back door. The wrongness hung in the air, like dust or shed hair, and it seemed to tickle his nose with warnings.

His home should never smell empty.

Or… emptied.

Breath catching as he was once more forcibly reminded of another building, months ago, with the same shivery bad-smell of wrong and loss and taken: the smell that was almost more instinctive foreboding than actual scent.

Heart feeling like it was torn between stopping or pounding a million times faster, Dach darted through the building.

"Wha— Boss!"

He skittered to a stop just past the kitchen, ignoring the way his claws were clattering on tile in a distinctly non-stealthy way. Dach couldn't bring himself to care. Everything was perfectly in order: from the floor to the shelves to the vase by the register.

Though something about that last seemed… off, somehow. Mismatched, perhaps, like scenting leaves in a pine forest.

But here, in the front room, something worse drew his nose.

If he hadn't known every smell in his house like the back of his paw, he might not have realized anything was amiss. Even then, had he not been in that building, where one child had been killed and another taken, he wouldn't have recognized that soft-bad nothing for what it was.

Nose on the floor, sniffing, Dach sincerely hoped he was wrong.

Even if he knew—knew—he was not.

Miho had followed him in, scenting the air again. "I don't like this, Boss." Her hackles were raised, on-edge, and she growled, "Not good, too quiet."

"I know," he said, grimacing.

Dach covered the entire building as quickly as he could, seeking any trace of his human—what had happened, or signs of where he had gone. Though the sense of wrongness persisted, hanging over him like a threat, he found nothing out of place. Everything was normal.

Axel… he may have simply stepped out.

Gone on a walk.

Left to run errands.

But the bad-smell seemed to settle behind his heart like ice, and he couldn't shake the instinct that said he needed to act. That something was off about this.

"Miho."

The larger dog glanced to him, attentive and worried.

"Fetch the police."

=X=X=X=

Minato was early—by quite a lot, actually. He wanted to be there before anyone else, in hopes that he could help his friend... brace for impact, might be the best phrase.

The revelation about the otherworldly nature of Axel's past might be a surprise, but the core of his story was still true, and still painful: he had lost everything he had known, and he'd been living under the weight of that loss for nearly a year. That's not something that can just be set aside, and while Axel may have never tried to hide his grief… he also never really worked through it. How could he, when the scope of what he had lost couldn't be shared without sounding crazy?

Thinking back—seeing how Axel had talked about his past so openly, yet with an almost reluctant caution—Minato wouldn't say he had ever lied, not even lies of omission. Similar, but not quite: it was more like… lies of scale.

To be honest, Minato was disappointed in himself for not seeing what now seemed obvious. And he felt frustrated, wishing that Axel had reached out to him sooner; he could have helped, if only he had known.

But then again, he was a shinobi. Minato could well understand keeping secrets, even from close friends.

And it's not as though Axel had reason to share. In fact, he had plenty of reasons not to; he might have been a stranger to this world when he arrived, but it wouldn't take much to clue him in that shinobi were dangerous.

So Minato could understand the choice to favor secrecy—even if, as his friend, he wished Axel's choice had been (or perhaps 'could have been') a different one.

He was still a block away when a large fluffy brown blur nearly careened into his knees. Minato dodged, naturally: fully out of impact range by the time the dog noticed and slammed on the brakes.

"Woah, Miho, what's the rush?"

"Sorry!" The dog spared him a glance, and froze when she recognized him. "Wait, good, you can help—" She winced. "No time to 'splain, Boss'll tell you— Bye!"

And then the dog was running again.

A sense of unease settled on his shoulders, as part of him recognized that she was headed toward the center of the village. The hospital and police headquarters were both in that direction.

He picked up the pace.

"Well," he murmured, trying to lighten his suddenly worried mood. "At least the building's still standing."

Dach was pacing at the entrance, his chakra churning with worry.

Now Minato was getting genuinely concerned. "What's wrong?"

"He's missing."

Minato froze, wondering if he had heard that correctly—and desperately hoping he that had not. "Missing? You think… Axel is missing?"

Did he—

No, he squashed that thought. Axel would not have run away from them. He was nervous and worried, but he knew they were trying to help. He wouldn't run.

(Would he?)

The dachshund nodded, glancing back to the house. "I sent Miho to get the police. He may have been taken."

"Taken," he echoed, mind racing ahead faster than he could put to words. "Like the children. But why him?"

Dach just led him into the eerily quiet house, saying nothing. Which was fine, since Minato was already putting the pieces together—scant few though there were, and already fading. In just a few more minutes, the trace slips of chakra in the air by the register would be lost amongst background energies.

"A jutsu of some kind…" he mused, frowning in thought.

"If it's like before," Dach spoke at last, "then it's probably something to mask that anybody was here."

Minato was familiar with that technique—or at least a similar one—but doubted that was the full cause; jutsu like that were light, and passed even more quickly. He wandered the store, looking for any other signs but finding nothing of particular interest.

Until he passed by the bottom of the stairs.

"Isn't this usually in his room?" he asked, crouching beside the backpack he'd almost literally stumbled across.

Dach nodded. "Stuffed in his closet, near the back."

"Odd."

Minato unzipped the bag, glancing inside to find the so-called 'laptop' Axel had mentioned as having pictures. There were a few other items, too—cords, pens, two other devices—probably all from his friend's original world.

"What's in there?"

"Things Axel wouldn't want us to go through without him," Minato answered, thinking of the police he could already feel at the edge of his sensor range. "I don't think he'd want anyone finding these. Especially not while he's not here to explain."

Dach glanced around, clearly on the same page. Unfortunately, the entire building was likely to be searched. There was nowhere to hide it away.

Sparing a second to consider what he was about to do—it probably counted as tampering with evidence, or at least withholding it—Minato picked up the bag. They didn't have much time before the police arrived.

But he only needed an instant.

"Be right back."

Minato flipped one of his Hiraishin kunai into the air, then vanished.

He appeared in his own bedroom, underneath the seal he had inked onto his ceiling. In the other room, he felt Kushina's chakra swirl in surprise—no doubt noticing him pop in—and he called out a quick explanation.

"Sorry, I'm in a rush!" Hurriedly stuffing the backpack under his bed, he spared a second to check that it was sufficiently hidden. "Axel's missing!"

A spike of surprise and worry from her, and then he was gone again.

Minato caught his kunai before it could hit the ground.

Dach looked a mix of skeptical and appreciative. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Not at all," he sighed. "I'll tell them if I think it matters to the case. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Either way, explaining now would just complicate things."

"Explaining what?"

Minato didn't answer.

The police arrived a few seconds later, and there was a brief flurry of activity as they both gave their statements: describing who they thought was missing, why, and the signs they had found. There was still enough dissipating chakra for the Uchiha policeman to notice, though not enough to determine just what it had been used to do.

While the officers checked through the house, Minato wandered his way back outside.

Now that he had a moment to really process, he felt… numb. As if nothing was real. He was no stranger to tragedy, he'd lost friends before. It simply was part of life, for shinobi.

But Axel should have been safe.

Dach followed him out, and the two stood in companionable silence for a long moment.

"Taken," he repeated again.

He hoped that was the case. And he hated that he did.

But the alternative was that his friend had simply left, running away from having to explain. He didn't think that was the case, but the insidious doubts kept creeping up in the back of his mind.

Because if Axel hadn't been taken, and really had run away…

He had to wonder if all of this was his fault.

=X=X=X=

It wasn't his fault he had overheard, Kakashi reasoned to himself, still trying to shake the persistent guilt-mixed curiosity from the brief conversation he had accidentally listened in on yesterday. He has better hearing than most, even for a shinobi, but he honestly hadn't meant to hear them.

In fact, if not on a mission, he usually did his best to avoid eavesdropping. Civilian gossip is no better than shinobi gossip, and, given they rarely bother looking underneath the underneath, actually tends to be far worse. He didn't want to hear the rumors and exaggerations.

After his… after he moved out of the Hatake compound, it just seemed like they were always talking about what had happened, and…

He didn't want to hear it.

So Kakashi got in the habit of not eavesdropping, if he could. Yesterday, he had tried to let the quiet sounds of their discussion in the other room fall into background noise.

But then…

(It was impossible. Improbable. But it did make a weird sort of sense.)

Frustrated, Kakashi threw another batch of kunai—four at once, this time—and once more tried to think through what he had learned. The knives thocked into the targets.

Other worlds.

Axel thought he came from some other world.

The generally easygoing, too-honest-for-his-own-good, naive civilian… was crazy enough to think he came from another world. It was unbelievable, contrary to almost everything he had learned about the man's character.

(But, another part of him murmured, it did fill in a lot of the inconsistencies.)

And more than that, Minato-sensei was crazy enough to believe him.

The nearly-inaudible question, the one that started it all, echoed back in his memory: "How far were you thinking?"

Kakashi threw another two knives, accidentally using more force than he needed. They went wide, missing his target on the pole by almost a full handspan, and he had to bite back a snarl at the mistake.

He was trying to distract himself.

It wasn't working.

Taking a deep breath to center himself, he finally allowed himself to face the fact that he had been trying to set aside.

Because he was crazy enough to believe it, too.

The idea was pretty far fetched, if not downright preposterous. People don't just… just slip out of their own dimension, or somehow trip and fall clear out of reality. He might not know what a 'truck' is—it sounded like one of those strange words nobody seemed to know—but he could infer that whatever it was didn't usually do that.

He'd only overheard a few sentences.

That shouldn't be enough to convince him.

Even if it did explain some of the weirder things about Axel: the strange words, for one, and his overall attitude about the world, for another. Minato-sensei certainly seemed to think it was possible, but it was still crazy.

He should need more proof than the claims of one person.

It was the reason he had come out here in the first place, to a training ground in the abandoned district just a few blocks from the smithy. After all, though he didn't know precisely when, he did know that Minato-sensei and company were planning on meeting later today.

Hopefully he'd get his chance to ask questions, even if he hadn't technically been invited.

"Other worlds," he murmured to himself, nearly inaudible.

With a quick glance to the sky, gauging how much time he had been practicing, Kakashi decided that it was probably time to head over. Even if they hadn't gotten started yet, he couldn't stand waiting any longer.

He gathered his kunai, and prepared for a leap up to the rooftops.

But something made him pause: an unexpected smell catching his attention. It was faded, mixed in with the plants and dirt and something else… porcelain?—but it was definitely there.

Fear.

Kakashi knelt, scanning the sparse grass at the base of the target poles. He scrunched his nose at the bitter-scared smell, now that he focused on it, and he zeroed in on what appeared to be a small shard of pottery. The piece was no longer than the first knuckle of his thumb, but just large enough to include a cut-off section of a blue leaf-like pattern.

It seemed somewhat familiar, though he couldn't quite decide if that was because of the scent or what he could make out of the design.

He turned it over in his hand, trying to pin down where he'd seen it before. One edge of the shard was smooth and polished, clearly part of the lip of whatever it had broken from: maybe a bowl, or a cup, or a vase—

A vase!

That's right, Axel had a blue-white vase patterned with trees. If this piece came from that, it would also explain the odd-familiar smell. Though… not why it was edged with fear.

Kakashi frowned, pocketing the small shard, and glanced around the training field. The tall trees around the clearing shifted with a gentle breeze, leaves rustling. Overhead, clouds skated across the clear blue sky.

How would a piece of that vase end up here?

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Time to pick up the pieces, and see where they lead.

Sorry about the delay! It was technically ready on the 15th, but it was a mess. I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong, though. Turns out some bits were in a weird order. Plus it was short: turns out I had somehow written the end of each section, which was why I felt like I couldn't add more.
Glad I got that sorted!

If you're interested, feel free to visit the Discord server to chat about whatever, canon or headcanon or fanfiction or anything else.
Here's the invite code: m3CFXnC

Updates once a month, aiming for the 15th.
Thanks for the favorites, follows, and reviews! Again, sorry for the delay.

As I mentioned last chapter, I've got a few comments on this. So here's my thoughts.
So I believe chakra is inherent to the Naruto world because it's stated (on the wiki, at least) that the God Tree feeds on natural chakra. That implies that chakra already existed on the world before Kaguya and the Sage, and that the fruit simply converted it into a usable form.
If there's something I missed that contradicts that assumption, please tell me: there's a lot of material in Naruto, so it's easy to overlook stuff. I mean, it's a bit late to change that assumption in my fic now, but I'd still like to know.

See ya on the flipside, everyone!