Chapter 47: Caring

Minato followed him to the floor, crouching next to him while Axel just tried to focus on breathing. Again. This was happening far too often. He cupped his hands to his face, his unsteady exhales warm on his palms, and reminded himself that he wasn't dead.

There was a tingling sensation across his shoulders, yes, but he wasn't dead. He couldn't even tell if he was just imagining that feeling or not.

"I'm not dead," he said aloud. "It could have… but it didn't, right? It won't."

"It won't," Minato agreed, softly. "Like trying to drown a fish."

Axel snorted, finally lowering his hands to give his friend a sardonic look.

"Okay, I admit—not my best metaphor." His expression went a bit unfocused, casting about for a better comparison. "More like… trying to splash water on empty air, or catch light with a butterfly net. You can try, but nothing's going to happen."

As he continued to ramble, trying to clarify his various comparisons and not doing a great job for any of them, Minato herded him over to lean back against the side of his bed. Axel slumped gratefully against the furniture and his friend, still a little dizzy. The support—both literally and just being there for him—meant a lot.

And, even if Axel couldn't follow the more complicated chakra-science Minato seemed incapable of fully explaining, it was reassuring that he was so convinced that there would be no effect. He'd have to ask for another summary later, when he was less overwhelmed and had a better shot at understanding anything.

Then something in his friend's metaphors clicked, abruptly, and his entire thought process promptly fell headlong down a cliff of random connections to land squarely on an outdated meme.

"I don't run Doom," he murmured to himself, feeling a sort of unhinged laugh rising in the back of his throat.

"What?"

"I don't run— It didn't work because I don't, can't, uh…" Axel shook his head, giving it up as a lost cause. "Sorry, explaining would take a while, and I can't even think of the words right now."

The important take-away, for him, was the understanding that the seal was essentially an incompatible software—the fact that he's something of a chakra non-entity means the seal literally cannot run on his physical system. He's safe.

For a given value of 'safe'.

Safe enough.

Dach insistently nosed at his hand until he started scritching behind his ears, then settled to lean against them both. It was grounding.

Axel closed his eyes, letting himself relax slightly. The persistent apprehension of the past however-many-days had certainly not been helped by this fresh surge of seal-inspired anxiety, but he decided that, since he was apparently safe right now, it was alright to run out of energy to care.

It was like a weight had finally dropped away, though admittedly not entirely: more like it had fallen from his shoulders into his hands, but things felt much more manageable all the same.

"So…" said Minato, breaking the quiet, "you two are on speaking terms now?"

Dach snorted. "You're making it sound like we were fighting."

"It wasn't— I was… You know what, let's just move on." He coughed, embarrassed. "Axel, I have your things back at my apartment. In case you were wondering."

"My things?"

He didn't bother to open his eyes, but he felt his friend nod. "Yes, the backpack you had, with your stuff inside. I found it at the bottom of the stairs, and figured it'd be best to remove them." Minato cleared his throat again. "On that note, do you know why… That is, did they know, er, that you—"

"You can say he's from a different world," yawned Dach, "I already guessed as much."

Axel did open his eyes at that. "You already— you guessed it?" Even with all of his anatopistic tendencies, coming to that conclusion wasn't exactly easy. "How?"

Minato held his hands up, defensive. "Look, I didn't tell him."

"But you thought it," said Dach.

"That doesn't—" He shook his head. "You can't hear what I'm thinking, Dach."

"I have very good ears."

It was kind of hilarious, seeing Minato have to pause and consider whether or not the dachshund could actually read thoughts. Dach couldn't, of course, but the fact that 'mind reading dog' could even be a possibility was still wild to consider. And admittedly, Axel was a bit glad to see that he wasn't the only one sometimes caught flatfooted by the twists of the world.

At least he had a good excuse, being very much not a native to the often-crazy common sense of this reality. Telepathic dogs didn't seem like much of a further stretch when a talking dog was already unbelievable from his starting point.

"But, seriously." He had to know: "How did you guess that?"

"Well, my first theory was the same as his," began Dach, gesturing up to Minato with his nose. "It might be basically unheard of, but it really wasn't too out-there to assume that you were from outside the Elemental Nations."

Minato grinned and bumped their shoulders together. "Maybe not in the way we were thinking, but supremely true nonetheless."

"Then, last week," the dog continued, "I heard from Akaiko that you two had some kinda important talk, and Axel was planning on telling people something. Then, next day, he's kidnapped." He gave another canine shrug. "It had to be over something big, and I didn't think just being a foreigner would quite cut it."

With a smile, amused but definitely skeptical, Minato asked, "So your explanation jumped to alternate worlds?"

"As a joke!" Dach justified, mirroring his amusement. "But then, well, a lot of things started to make sense if I thought about it that way. I decided to roll with that explanation unless proven otherwise."

"That would have been a bit embarrassing if you were wrong."

"…Yes."

"Actually," a few lines late, perhaps, but Axel really had to clarify, "while true, that didn't really… well, I wasn't taken because of the world thing. It was because of a side effect. Or a side effect of a side effect."

"A 'side effect'?" echoed Minato.

"Of not having chakra, I mean." He reached up and rubbed at his shoulder. "You know how it… makes some things not work?"

"Chakra-carried techniques, like the seal now or that one time with killing intent," he listed, fingers twitching like he wanted to list off more examples. "I suspect you're immune to most genjutsu as well, since it would be hugely inefficient to try and target the nerves without going through the chakra system…"

Axel nodded. "I don't know exactly what, but I guess they found something else that didn't work and it, well, they didn't like it."

"Something else…" Minato repeated to himself, thoughtful. From the look on his face, he was going through a list of any and all techniques he knew of that would both have the potential to fall flat due to a lack of chakra and cause enough of a stir to necessitate kidnapping a civilian with no hesitation.

Then his eyes widened, having landed on a possibility—or perhaps possibilities—that stood out. Whatever he'd thought of, though, he didn't share with the rest of them.

Purposely dropping his hand back into his lap, Axel finished, "So the timing was just a coincidence. I was not taken for my… past. My source?"

"'Origin' might be a good word for it," Dach offered.

Axel nodded, and he had already added it to his mental dictionary by the time he processed how backwards the exchange was. He knew less of the spoken language than his dog. That's… weird to consider.

Before the conversation could continue, they were all distracted by a rather loud noise downstairs. It sounded like somebody tripping over (almost) everything, which would have been more alarming if it wasn't immediately followed by an embarrassed one-word reprimand—"Obito!"—and Minato slapping a despairing hand to his forehead.

Axel grinned, pleasantly surprised. "Your kids are here."

"Certainly sounds like it," the ninja-teacher replied with a sigh and a small smile. "I'd best go check on them. Do you want me to…?"

The question drifted off, but it was easy to guess what Minato was getting at: whether or not Axel felt up to seeing more visitors. Good question.

He was tired and worn-out, more in a mental sense than physically, but… he really did want to see them. Exhaustion notwithstanding, he wanted to see all of his friends, to reassure them that he was alright. That he wasn't gone for good.

(He wondered, as he often did, how his sister and parents were doing—if everyone he had lost a year and a world away were still okay.)

"They can come up," Axel said, pushing himself into a sitting position that was a bit less of a drained slump. "How have they been?"

"Oh, well enough." As he got to his feet, he gave a wave so nonchalant that he was definitely overacting. "Breaking into empty shops, solving missing persons cases, you know how it is."

Axel blinked, then his eyes went wide. "They figured it out?"

The teacher-of-small-ninja smiled, proud. "We… that is, myself, Akaiko, and Kushina—we weren't having any luck tracking you down." He sighed. "You had been taken, and while we had our suspicions… no solid leads."

"You could smell it was wrong. Empty," Dach growled. "But it didn't go anywhere."

"Kakashi actually found a piece of your vase—you know, the one you kept by the register in the shop?" At his somewhat befuddled nod, Minato quickly finished, "Well, long story short: the team brought it to our attention, which finally led to some evidence, and we all got you home."

There was another round of not-quite-yelling from the ground floor.

"I can tell you more later, if you'd like," a long-suffering sigh, "but I should probably go get them now."

The ninja vanished out the bedroom door.

Axel rested his hand on the dog's head, halfheartedly listening for whatever Minato was saying to his students. He couldn't hear much more than tone, even though they weren't trying to be quiet. From what he could tell, they sounded… relieved.

Perhaps he shouldn't be so surprised to know that the trio of young ninja had been worried about him. After all, he worried about them often enough—a natural consequence, given they would be getting into state-sponsored troubles at the age of far-too-young.

But beyond moral hang-ups about literal child soldiers, Axel did care about them as individuals. He'd certainly spent enough time with them, serving as a mediator during many homework sessions. Things could get… tense, even at the sort-of neutral ground that was his kitchen table, and he'd gotten to know them fairly well thanks to all of the bickering and name-calling he'd had to diffuse.

Minato had his sympathy; if that's what they were like working on math, he could only imagine what throwing physical stunts and ninja magic into the mix would do. And all while knowing that training was the foundation that would determine outcomes of life or death situations far too soon…

There wasn't anything Axel could do but hope they all stayed safe.

It was kind of ironic, then, that he was the one who had ended up in trouble. Apparently he simply has an unenviable knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"You know," he began, addressing Dach as much as he was just talking to himself in the otherwise empty room, "I was thinking about telling the kids, too."

Dach blinked up at him, ears quirking forward in a canine version of a raised brow, but he didn't say anything. He was content to let the lull settle between them, either out of not-talking habits or simply because he could tell that it was a topic in need of a bit of quiet consideration.

"About where I'm from," Axel continued. Even just considering the idea was making him tired, but he pressed on. "This was days ago, but at the time… I figured, if it went well with the others, we could bring them in on it."

There was a pause as he took a deep breath, still working through the thought. Dach tilted his head, an invitation to continue whenever he was ready.

"Well, they're here now. We're just missing Akaiko and Kushina."

"And they'll probably be along soon enough, if you decide to tell everyone," the dog finished. "…Are you sure you want to add that, on top of everything else?"

No, not at all.

In fact, he'd been second guessing telling people since he first made the original decision, back before all this kidnapping crap chucked his plans into a (literal) cell and threw away the key. But his reluctance now was mainly a matter of emotional energy: a lack thereof, specifically. Though honestly it would make a fantastic distraction, so it probably balanced out in the end.

"Maybe," allowed Axel. "Probably. It's just… no, nevermind. I want to tell them, but you're right. Would it be too much?"

The dachshund snorted. "I'm not sure there is a good time for revelations about separate universes."

True, it's not as though there's an established protocol for that kind of thing.

And he didn't want to muddy the waters about the kidnapping. Axel was certain—or as certain as he could be, given the kinds of people involved—that his background was still unknown to his captors. It was related, of course, but his personal history was not, in and of itself, the reason he had been taken. Although his being a foreigner was why he'd been under observation, technically, and it was functionally why he lacked chakra, which was how he'd caught the attention of the ninja in his house that morning.

But then again, it would be hard to try and explain why he'd been targeted without going into the fact the he has no chakra system and, in fact, no chakra at all. Talking around things felt like more trouble than it'd be worth, but explaining everything was sure to spawn countless follow up questions.

"Well." Dach's voice was gruff, but the effect was somewhat ruined when the dachshund let his head settle comfortably against Axel's knee. "We'll be here for you."

As if summoned by the warm sentiment, there was a knock on his window. On the frame, specifically, since the pane was actually still pushed up. Crouched at the opening, long red hair a bit crazily disheveled but broadly smiling like she didn't care, was Kushina. And Akaiko, only visible as a waving hand with the rest of her no doubt clinging to the wall out of sight: the window was only so big, after all.

"It's good to have you back, ya know?"

Even if it was a bit cliché, Axel couldn't help but reply with: "It's good to be back."

The two new arrivals clamored through the window, Kushina joining him on the floor while Akaiko opted to sit on the desk instead. Neither looked at all worn from the rush to his house, naturally, even if they were frazzled in that ran-all-the-way-here manner.

"And here's this, by the way." Kushina took something off her back, plopped it on the floor, and pushed it his way. "Minato was looking after it for ya, figured I'd bring it along."

Axel held his backpack—his backpack!—almost reverently. He'd wondered about it once or twice (or a lot of times) while he'd been in that concrete cell, torn between worry that it had been taken alongside him and worry that it had stayed and been taken by whoever was investigating things. Though honestly he hadn't been sure that someone would be sent to investigate.

It had been a relief to know Minato had gotten there first, but actually having his backpack in his hands made it real. He could feel the stiff side of his laptop through the fabric.

(It was, as ever, the only things he had left of home.)

"Did you know my dog can talk?" asked Axel, apropos of nothing but the desire to distract himself. And maybe he was stalling a little bit, whatever.

Kushina glanced to the dog in question, brow raised, and then back. "Uh, will you be mad at me if I say 'yes'?"

"I knew," answered Akaiko, smile sympathetic but unapologetic. "It's—"

He didn't know what she'd been about to say, because at that moment Minato and his trio of students came into the room and things suddenly became very busy very quickly and he couldn't quite keep up. Axel would consider himself largely fluent in the language, in all cases except when six people are rapid-fire interacting.

They evidently had a lot to say, but all of it was going over his head—both literally and figuratively.

That six dropped to five when Rin split off to join him and Dach as a side-line spectator, though whether she retreated in order to get away from all the talking or in a ploy to sneak in a headstart on any (friendly) interrogation with him was unclear. Probably some combination of both.

Well, turnabout is fair play.

"Did you know Dach can talk?" he asked again, employing the same ice-breaker question because he couldn't come up with another one on short notice.

Rin, too, looked between him and the dog before replying. "Not for sure," she hedged, "but I did sorta guess as much. Kakashi probably knew, and Obito almost certainly did not."

Well, she already preempted his follow up questions.

"I didn't even know dogs could talk," he admitted. Though he really should have: there were definitely scenes in the anime with talking animals, after all, but he'd assumed that was more of a special trick with summoned animals specifically.

"Ninken tend to stick with shinobi—I remember some of the civilian kids at the academy were surprised, too. Not by much, though." She gave him a thoughtful look. "Where did you say you were from?" By that glint in her eye she definitely knew something was up. Equally certain was the fact that she didn't actually know what that was, but she really wanted to find out.

"Talking animals were… are…" Language issues aside, he was never sure whether he should use present or past tense when talking about his history. "No talking dogs. Some talking birds, kind of. And as for where I'm from—"

Suddenly, Minato sharply clapped his hands twice to get the group to quiet down. Axel was struck by the inane realization that he'd had teachers in school that used that same trick: apparently it works on ninja, too.

"We're all glad he's back," he said, hands still clasped together. "But we should tone it down a bit, alright? Let's not overwhelm him!"

"Too late," Akaiko snarked.

An apt observation.

"And I'm probably about to make it worse."

The group of ninja turned to him at that, curious and maybe a little bit worried by his tone, and Axel felt the decision to tell them settle in his gut with a heavy certainty.

"Do you remember," Axel began, being very particular with his words but still sounding a little uncertain, "that before all this, I said… asked for everyone to meet, because I had something to say?"

As sharp as he is, Minato immediately saw where he was going with that. Blue eyes wide, he delicately asked, "Axel. Are you sure?"

He shrugged, still watching the others for their replies.

"I mean, yeah, I remember," answered Akaiko, nodding. "And admittedly, I am curious. All things considered, though, I think we can wait. You don't need to stress yourself more right now."

"I have no idea what you're getting at," Obito said loudly, arms crossed.

Rin, rather pointedly, looked between Minato and Kushina… and Kakashi. Her teammate, notably, glanced away. "Some people seem to have an idea about it."

Wait, hold on, how did Kakashi—

"I think," Kushina cut in before his thoughts could completely tangle, as bluntly to-the-point as ever, "it's a good idea. Sharing might lighten the load, ya know?"

The group of students all shared looks—or at least, two of the trio stared at the third with an almost suspicious glint. Kakashi didn't seem bothered, beyond a long-suffering sigh that made it quite clear he'd become used to such looks.

"I've said it before, it's his choice to share or not," he said, and even with the mask it was clear in his expression that he wasn't budging on that.

Axel couldn't help but shake his head, bemused. "I would… it would be good to know that you are aware of the… circumstances. Plus, if I put it off until tomorrow," he said, with a tired sort of smile, "I'm worried something else will come up again."

Dach pointedly set his paw down on Axel's foot.

Plainly following a very similar thought process as the dog, his tone made sharp with promise, Minato said, "If you get snatched again, I swear I'll—"

"It's fine," Axel emphasized, cutting in. "I'm fi…" The word drifted off, as he couldn't really get himself to believe it, and he pivoted to: "here. I'm here, and I also don't want to go anywhere."

Maybe that wasn't completely true either, in a sense. If he could go home—could go back to his family in his proper world—he knew he would, even if it would hurt to leave behind the friendships he'd made. Stay or go, there would be loss. It was inevitable, unavoidable. He couldn't help but want to see them again.

But it was true enough, for here and now.

And—here, now—he should start explaining.

"First of all," he began, to try and head-off any misconceptions, "this was not the reason I was taken."

"Even though it totally would be enough of a reason," Kushina tacked on.

Ignoring that, he continued with his long-story-short; though trying to keep it on the short side of that range was hard. Axel explained his lack of chakra—the actual reason he was kidnapped—and things got a bit sidetracked when Rin excitedly made the connection between that and the fact that her healing jutsu hadn't worked. He mentioned how he had been found in a forest outside a small town, injured after being hit by a truck, and there was another aside as Obito got distracted by the concept of a 'truck'.

And then he told them about where he was from, before all of that. With short sentences and shorter explanations, but hopefully enough that they knew it was real.

"That's about it," he wrapped up, taking a deep breath. "I just… got knocked out of my world and into this one."

Akaiko, who had been leaning back against his desk, dropped down to the floor beside him and set a hand on his shoulder. "…I can't decide if this makes the ghost forest more or less unsettling," she muttered to herself, and Minato nodded in commiserative agreement.

Axel had no clue what that sentence meant, and had to wonder if he had once again mistranslated something.

"So… any questions?"

The answer, as it turned out, was an emphatic 'yes'.

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Finally, they get a chance to talk!

I would have gotten this out yesterday—which would have been in August, if just barely—but alas, a late-night headache prevented me from doing the final read-through. Still, I do plan on getting a chapter of Under the Veil out this month too. Fingers crossed that the words don't traffic jam in my head like this chapter did!
Less clear on whether I'll have a chapter ready for October for either, but we shall see.

As always, thank you so much for every favorite, follow, and review!

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