After two hours of looking for Team Gai, Naruto gives up.

He should've given up much earlier, in hindsight. He should've given up after he went by the Mission Assignment Desk and discovered that Team Gai left for Kusa earlier this morning, and that they'll be out of the village for at least the next month.

He hadn't given up because he'd convinced himself it couldn't be true – it wouldn't be the first time adult shinobi lied to him just to spite him. So he'd spent a bunch of time frantically running around Konoha to see if he could maybe catch a glimpse of them somewhere. Gai kind of stood out, after all.

But he wasn't at the library, or at the Hokage Rock, or on any of the training grounds, and Naruto couldn't spot him through the windows of the Jounin Standby Station either. By the time Naruto confirmed that he wasn't at Ichiraku's either – which was already a long shot, since they hadn't really opened for the day yet – he felt so defeated that he just decided to stay there and wait for the pharmacy to open. He'd told Kakashi that he'd bring back meds and he'd intended to bring back something better, but going home with meds is still better than going home empty-handed, after all.

So he sits on a stool, swinging his legs restlessly and slurping a bowl of plain ramen. Ayame is the only other person in the restaurant; she's doing her chores, getting the restaurant ready for the day. Naruto keeps offering to help, and Ayame keeps kindly informing him that she wouldn't trust him to boil water, let alone to do much else. Naruto is eighty percent sure she only gave him the ramen to get him to shut up. Not that he minds it much. Ramen is ramen, even when served plain and with sort-of-rude intentions. Naruto is sort-of-rude right back and keeps stealing the tail ends of spring onions and radishes while Ayame is chopping them. She definitely notices, but she doesn't say anything and doesn't move her cutting board out of Naruto's reach.

He gets tired of being annoying on purpose after a while, though; with a sigh, he puts his chopsticks down and leans his chin on his hand. Ayame glances up at him from her spring onions. "Something on your mind?" she asks.

Naruto grumbles. "A lot."

"Is it about your friend?" she asks. "The one that was sick?"

It feels like it's been a lifetime, but it's barely been a week – Naruto had almost forgotten that Ayame knew there was someone he was trying to help, and also that she's one of the main reasons Kakashi survived his pneumonia. "Yeah," he says.

"He's not still sick, is he?"

"No. The meds helped. Thank you for that, by the way."

"Don't mention it." Ayame grabs a handful of radishes and starts to cut them into neat slices. "But there's still something up with your friend, isn't there?"

Naruto leans his cheek further against his hand. "A lot," he says again, his voice muffled against his hand. "He's not okay and I hate that there's not really anything I can do about it. I don't really want to talk about it, though."

Ayame hums in understanding. "I wish I had some advice I could give you," she says. "But my dad's the one with the deep wisdom, not me. Sorry."

Even the deepest wisdom in the world wouldn't be able to close Kakashi's wound and make him okay again. Only a medical-nin could do that. "No worries," he says with a weary shrug. "My friend seems to think that it'll all work out eventually, somehow, so I guess I just need to hope he's-"

Ayame suddenly looks up from her cutting board, distracted by something behind Naruto. Naruto turns around to look as well – at first glance, it seems like there's nothing there, but then Naruto notices a shape on the ground, obscured by the fog. It's moving towards them.

"-right," Naruto finishes belatedly. "Is that… a dog?"

A small brown-and-white dog emerges from the fog, shakes out its fur and urgently trots up to Naruto. Naruto stares down at it, fascinated. Animals don't like him very much. This might be the first time an animal has willingly come near him.

The dog sniffs at Naruto's sandals, then makes a little grumbling noise and bites firmly into the leg of Naruto's pants.

"Hey!" Naruto exclaims, trying to pull away. The dog doesn't let go. "Hey, what the Hell?"

With another grumble, the dog takes a couple of steps backwards, pulling Naruto's leg along. Naruto has to hold on to the waist of his pants to keep the dog from pulling down his pants.

"Stop that! Down! Sit!" Naruto tries, to no avail; he swears the dog shakes its head.

In the corner of his eye, he can see that Ayame is trying very hard not to laugh. "I think it wants you to come along," she says.

Naruto looks between her and the dog, then sighs. "Yeah. I'll talk to you later then, I guess." He gets down from his stool, careful not to step on the dog. He's exasperated, in a way. This clearly isn't a normal dog; his best guess is that it's Kakashi in henge-disguise, which probably means he couldn't stay at the apartment anymore for some reason. Naruto had sort of hoped that this morning wouldn't get any worse than it already was.

With a final wave at a very amused Ayame, he leaves Ichiraku's, the dog dragging him down the street by his pant leg. He tries to talk to the dog a couple of times, but the dog doesn't answer. Maybe not Kakashi, then?

He considers the possibility of this being a prank for a couple of streets, before he realizes that he recognizes this route. The dog is leading him back to his own apartment. Somehow, he has a bad feeling about that.

When the apartment building comes into view, the dog suddenly halts, digging its paws into the ground. Naruto almost falls over. "What're you doing?" he asks. "Did you change your mind or something?"

Hesitantly, the dog looks from Naruto to the entrance of the apartment building, and then drags Naruto into the narrow alleyway off to the side of the building. Once they're hidden behind a pile of trash bags, the dog finally lets go of Naruto's pant leg.

"What was that about-" Naruto starts, but he snaps his mouth shut when the dog finally speaks and interrupts him.

"I need you to listen to me," the dog says urgently, "very carefully."

Naruto stares at him. "Uhm." He narrows his eyes. "Kakashi-san?"

"No," the dog replies, and Naruto feels a bit dumb. "My name is Guruko. I was sent by Kakashi to find you." He shakes his head. "Doesn't matter. Listen. I can sense that there's someone standing guard at your front door – there might be more people inside the apartment, but I can't tell for sure. I think Kakashi is in trouble."

The hairs on the back of Naruto's neck rise. While he'd been running around Konoha and killing time at Ichiraku's, he'd left Kakashi to deal with trouble by himself. He'd left Kakashi to deal with trouble by himself while he was in a bunch of pain and feeling like shit.

He balls his fists at his sides. "We've got to help him."

"No, I've got to help him," Guruko says with a stern look towards Naruto. "Kakashi told me to keep you out of danger. I'm doing this by myself and you're staying right here."

"But you're just a little dog," Naruto protests. "I can help-"

"I'm a ninja hound and I'm older than you in dog years," Guruko shoots back. By the time Naruto has opened his mouth to argue, Guruko has already run off.

Alone in the alleyway, Naruto shuffles his feet anxiously. He can't stay here. He has to go help, no matter how dangerous it is.

He folds his hands into the long array of signs Kakashi taught him – he has to start over a couple of times because he messes up in his haste, but he eventually succeeds in concealing his chakra. Unable to stand still for even a second longer, he rushes into the apartment building, pulling out his kunai as he runs up the stairs.

When he reaches the floor his apartment is on, he's met with the sounds of barking and someone cursing loudly.

A tall man in shinobi uniform half-runs-half-falls down the stairs, Guruko biting harshly into his neck. Naruto has to jump out of the shinobi's path; as he does so, the shinobi topples forward and drops down the stairs, slamming face-first into the wall at the bottom of the stairs. He doesn't move again after that.

With a huff, Guruko lets go of the shinobi's neck and shakes out his fur. He scowls at Naruto and walks back up the stairs, towards him. "You were supposed to stay outside," he says. "I can handle this by myself. See?" He nods his head towards the still shinobi at the bottom of the stairs.

"Extremely cool," Naruto says, and he even means it. "But I think we should probably tie him up before he wakes up, and one of us is able to do that and it's not you."

With a grumble of "reckless little brat", Guruko allows him to tie the shinobi's hands and legs together with some scraps of fabric that Naruto cuts from the guy's uniform. As he works, Guruko cautiously explores the hallway. He returns to the stairwell with a bigger scowl than he'd had before.

"That guard was the only one," he reports.

Naruto tightens the makeshift rope around the shinobi's ankles. "That's good, right?"

"It's irresponsible, mostly," Guruko replies. "Whoever it is that's in your apartment, they either think they're invincible or they don't care that they could die." He shakes his head. "But I can't sense anyone's chakra in there, so I don't know anything else about them at all."

Naruto silently curses the chakra-concealing seals he and Kakashi had put up. "So they're cocky and probably dangerous, and we have no idea how many there are," he sums up. "Great. So what do we do-"

Guruko's ears twitch, and he bares his teeth. "Shh," he hisses urgently.

Naruto stills, raising his head to try and listen for whatever Guruko heard. There's a second or so of silence before he hears it, faint but unmistakeable – a far-too-familiar voice, crying out.

White noise replaces all thought in Naruto's head. He leaps up the stairs, rushing towards his front door. Guruko bites into his pants – clipping his calf with his teeth in his haste – but Naruto tears himself loose. He's being reckless, and he doesn't care. He could be running into a room with a thousand shinobi and he still wouldn't care.

He pushes the door open. He turns towards the kitchen, as though he instinctively already knew that Kakashi was there – and he stops dead in his tracks.

Through the doorway to the kitchen, Naruto can see Kakashi.

Kakashi, tied to a chair, blindfolded, limp, quiet, and covered in blood-

-and there's a shinobi standing over him.

"Kakashi-san," Naruto breathes, frozen in his shock, and he has no idea what exactly happens from that moment on.

Something snaps behind his bellybutton, a white-hot sensation that feels like his rage tore the seams of an organ. Immediately, his rage increases tenfold. His vision turns at once entirely orange, the color swirling and bubbling furiously.

He can feel his fingers curl into claws, his face twist into a snarl. A roar rips through his throat – a raw sound he's never heard himself make before, all traces of his own friendliness and excitability and optimism gone.

"Kakashi!"


In hindsight, Kakashi thinks there may have been a couple of seconds between the moment he heard Naruto snarl and the moment Kakashi managed to respond. It's hard to keep track of abstract concepts like time and chronology while his consciousness is threatening to slip from his grasp.

He knows, at least, that Naruto growls his name at some point. Noboru shouts, and a dog barks, followed by the tell-tale poof of a summoned animal disappearing. He also hears a squelching noise and the thud of a body hitting the floor.

And-

And he realizes that he can sense the Nine-Tails' chakra. Nearby enough to make his skin crawl, and to make his heart skip every other beat.

He has no idea of the order in which these events happen, or if they happen at all. His mind has been through a lot in the past half hour – he wouldn't be surprised if all of this was a product of his panicked imagination.

He's alert enough to realize that maybe none of this is real, but he's too out of it to believe that it is. "Kid," he repeats, because he cannot let himself consider the possibility that Naruto isn't truly here. That would be too cruel. "Are you there? Talk to me."

He can hear someone panting nearby – it sounds like Naruto, he thinks, though it's hard to differentiate between what he's perceiving and what he's hoping. No response follows.

"Say something," Kakashi tries, already out of breath. "Are you- okay? Naruto."

At his name, Naruto gasps sharply, and the near-suffocating feeling of the Nine-Tails' chakra abruptly lessens, but doesn't disappear. A few quick footsteps follow, and the next moment, the blindfold is pulled off Kakashi's face.

As Kakashi blinks against the light, Naruto wrestles himself out of his jacket and presses it against the bleeding wound in Kakashi's side. Kakashi collapses around his stomach with a choked groan, only held upright by the wire that still ties his arms to the chair. He hadn't realized, but his brain had allowed him to forget about the pain for a few blissful seconds, dazed from the blood loss and the fainting and the multiple near-death experiences as it was. It would've been nice if the sudden jolt of pain had lifted some of the fog in his skull, but it doesn't.

Naruto murmurs an apology, his eyebrows furrowed. There's still something wild about his face, something angry, his eyes wide and his upper lip pulled back into a snarl. This close by, Kakashi can feel the kid's agitated chakra prickle against his skin. He's panting through his too-sharp teeth like an animal.

"You're breathing really fast," Kakashi tells him in a whisper, and it's probably not the most important thing right now but it feels important to him anyway. "Did you notice?"

Naruto looks up at him, quickly returning his attention to the wound. "Pot calling the kettle black," he replies. His voice is rough, gruff, not the voice of a child.

Kakashi acknowledges his point with a half-shrug. "We should- probably calm down, huh?"

They have a little bit of time, he thinks; he can't sense anybody nearby, just a bunch of people on the street outside, moving away from them, which is weird but at least they're safe for now. Noboru is not a threat anymore – he's lying on the floor, not breathing, his uniform soaked with blood in the center of his chest. Kakashi didn't see how Naruto killed him, but he does know that the kid's kunai is lying in the doorway and that there's more blood on Naruto's hands than just Kakashi's own.

It worries Kakashi deeply, enough so that he can't seem to summon any worry about everything else. Naruto is upset and Kakashi doesn't want him to be. He's seen Naruto upset before, but never upset enough to unleash the Nine-Tails' chakra and kill a man with his bare hands.

Naruto is looking up at Kakashi again. His eyes are the wrong color, though it's hard to see when Kakashi's vision won't focus. He appears to be waiting for Kakashi to speak.

"Untie my hands," Kakashi says, "would you?"

Naruto looks at Kakashi's hands, and then at his own hands, which are still pressing his jacket against Kakashi's slowly-bleeding side. His frown increases. "Don't want to let go."

Kakashi really doesn't feel like arguing when his head feels heavy like this. "Just do it, yeah?"

With a grumble, Naruto raises one hand from Kakashi's side and snaps the wire around Kakashi's arms with his bare hands, which shouldn't logically be possible. Quickly, he presses his hand against Kakashi's wound again, staring down at it with a scowl. He's possibly breathing even faster than before.

Wordlessly, Kakashi raises a heavy arm and – slowly, making sure his movements are predictable – rests his hand on Naruto's head. "Slow breaths," he murmurs. "We're okay. It was scary for a while there, but we're okay. There's no point in freaking out, all right?"

Those reminders are just as much for himself as they are for Naruto. He's alive. Naruto is alive. Kakashi can still feel the ghost of his terror underneath his skin, but when he focuses, he can force his relief to overshadow it. Naruto is right here in front of him. The kid managed to interrupt Noboru before he could succeed in ripping Kakashi's guts to shreds. He's still in a lot of pain and in a lot of trouble, but things could've been a lot worse. He needs to remind himself of that, because if he lets himself freak out right now, that sure as Hell won't help.

The blood loss makes it hard to slow down his breathing, but at least he gets it slow enough to stop his heart from feeling like it's going to burst. Naruto leans his head into Kakashi's hand, and Kakashi rubs his thumb in slow circles, hoping that it'll help the kid calm down. Naruto's chakra feels like static against his skin and everything in Kakashi – both his instincts and his previous experience with the Nine-Tails – is screaming at him to run, is screaming that this is the monster that killed two people who were like family to him and that Kakashi should get away, but Kakashi ignores all of that. He can hardly bring himself to care, when Naruto is trembling underneath his hand.

Eventually, Naruto's breathing slowly calms down. As he gets his panic under control, his chakra calms down as well. The Nine-Tails' chakra disappears, his own chakra remaining neatly hidden underneath his chakra-concealing seal.

Kakashi hadn't even been trying to help Naruto get the Nine-Tails' chakra under control, but he's glad that it worked. He knew that the Nine-Tails' seal could loosen because of strong negative emotions, and thankfully, it just so happens that he knows a thing or two about handling strong negative emotions.

Naruto looks up at him, and Kakashi responds with his best attempt at a smile. "Feeling better?" he asks. Naruto's eyes are blue again.

Naruto's chin dips down in a hesitant nod. "What… happened to me?" he asks, his voice shaky. "That was- really weird. It feels like I passed out for a bit there, up until you said my name earlier." His eyes widen; "I lost sight of Guruko- Do you think he's okay?"

"Guruko's fine," Kakashi replies. "Judging by what I heard, he probably took a blow during a fight. Summoned animals can't stay summoned when that happens, but they don't get hurt, just like clones. He's fine, just home." He nods towards Naruto. "As for what happened to you… You released some of the Nine-Tails' chakra. It probably took control over you for a couple of seconds. Let's not dwell on that for too long right now. We'll figure it out later."

Naruto nods again, then chews on his lower lip uncertainly. "So what now?" he asks. "We can't stay here anymore, can we?"

"No, we can't." Kakashi's tone is grim. "My location's been compromised, multiple living shinobi have seen me in your apartment, and if anyone finds out that you killed a Konoha shinobi, then-"

Naruto's head whips around to Noboru's body on the floor, his face blanching like he's only now seeing the corpse for the first time.

"Don't look, kid," Kakashi says somberly. He leaves it at that; he could tell Naruto that Noboru wasn't a good person anyway, but he knows that that won't make it right. And he certainly won't tell Naruto that Noboru was a medical-nin.

Slowly, Naruto shifts his gaze back to Kakashi. "I don't- I don't-" he stammers. "I don't remember killing him- I just- I saw you and I saw him and I got so mad- and then I blinked and there was blood on my hands and you were saying my name- I didn't do it on purpose, I swear-"

"Slow breaths," Kakashi reminds him gently. "What's done is done. We can freak out about all of this later, but right now, we need to focus on getting out of here."

Naruto takes a breath and holds it, then nods. "We should- Yeah, we should leave."

As though to emphasize that point, there's a bone-rattling slam in the bedroom: the sound of the paper bomb at the window going off.

Naruto ducks instinctively; Kakashi's ears ring from the explosion. He grabs Naruto's shoulder. "Henge, now," he says urgently. Someone tried to force the window open – completely silently, and with their chakra signature hidden. Bad news. "That was an ANBU shinobi. We need to go."

By some stroke of miracle, Naruto doesn't ask any questions and remembers the hand signs for his henge. As he disguises himself as a girl, like they practiced, and unties Kakashi's legs, Kakashi tries to fold his uncooperative right hand into the dozen signs that are needed to hide his chakra signature and disguise himself. His wrist hurts more than it did before, so he's slow, but he manages eventually.

His henge is in place just in time – the ANBU emerges from the bedroom with a cloud of dust and smoke. Kakashi instinctively tries to get to his feet, expecting entirely that he'll have to defend himself, but the ANBU just pauses and stares.

"What the-" he starts, and Kakashi has the bewildered realization that he hadn't seen an ANBU this rattled since he was in ANBU himself. "Where's- the Nine-Tailed Fox?"

Naruto looks up at Kakashi with wide eyes. Kakashi feels almost like laughing. He'd feared that the ANBU was here for him, but that's not the case. He's here for the Nine-Tails.

The chakra-concealing seals they'd put up in the apartment must've been too weak to stop the Nine-Tails' chakra – the people he'd sensed on the street before must've sensed the Fox' chakra and must've followed the protocol of evacuating immediately and reporting to the Hokage. More ANBU will be sent to investigate the possible threat, if Kakashi remembers the last appearance of the Nine-Tails correctly. If Kakashi and Naruto don't get out of here quickly, they'll be discovered in the middle of the crime scene that is Naruto's apartment by dozens of ANBU on top of this one. Their disguises wouldn't get them out of a predicament like that. They should hurry.

Kakashi doubts that Naruto has exactly the same train of thought as he had, but the kid does take action. "I don't know where the Nine-Tailed Fox is," he says, in that little innocent voice he'd been perfecting. "We heard a lot of noise in here and we came to see what was going on, but…" He lets his voice trail off and gestures at Noboru's dead body on the floor.

The ANBU looks over at the body, still blinking the dust from his eyes, and Naruto hurls the nearest heavy object – the kettle – at the ANBU's head. It's not enough to knock him out immediately, but Naruto next launches himself at the stunned ANBU and slams his head against the doorframe. The ANBU slides limply to the floor.

"He didn't even see it coming!" Naruto crows triumphantly, scrambling up from where he'd landed on the floor. "That guy was distracted."

"The fear of the Nine-Tails will do that to people," Kakashi replies, trying and failing to haul himself out of the kitchen chair with a grunt of pain. It's not just his side that's hurting; the pain spreads all the way through his abdomen. He would've probably been fine if he could've stayed put, but he can't. This is going to suck. "Let's go, kid. Help me get up, would you?"


Naruto had had certain expectations of what it would be like to get out of Konoha. In a way, he'd expected that he'd have to fight his way out of the village; that every shinobi in the village would've somehow sensed his intentions of leaving, despite the stealth skills Kakashi had drilled into him, and that they would come to stop him all at once. He'd mentally prepared himself for a very difficult endeavor.

And, oh, it's difficult all right, but not in the way he'd expected. He hadn't foreseen that the most difficult part of this endeavor would be to get down the stairs of the apartment building.

Kakashi is leaning almost his entire weight on Naruto, his chest heaving and his eyes screwed tightly shut from the pain. And he's heavy. Even like this, even transformed into a frail little old man. He can't weigh very much more than Naruto himself in this form, but he's more than heavy enough to make it a struggle to keep him upright.

They've almost made it down the first flight of stairs – the first of three, they're not even halfway downstairs – when Kakashi's knees buckle, weak from the blood loss, and Naruto only barely manages to keep him from smacking face-first into the wall like that one shinobi did earlier. That shinobi is gone, by the way, Naruto absently notices. He probably somehow managed to untie himself and got the Hell out of here when he sensed the Nine-Tails' chakra.

"Couldn't you have transformed into a lighter form?" Naruto grumbles, hauling Kakashi's arm properly around his shoulders again.

Kakashi muffles a groan behind his teeth, his other arm wrapped around his stomach. "Would've cost more chakra," he grits out, and Naruto is sure he'd wanted to say more but the rest of his explanation dissolves into a hiss. "Agh-"

Naruto pauses to let him catch his breath, impatiently bouncing in place. He's not sure whether it's the Nine-Tails' influence or something else, but he's anxious. He's used to feeling jittery, but this is something else. It feels like his senses are more sensitive.

They're so sensitive that he can hear quiet footsteps on the stairs a floor below them. Naruto turns to Kakashi, startled. "Hey, someone's coming-"

Someone turns out to be a whole squad of ANBU, running very quietly up the stairs. Naruto sees them coming and has the startled thought that maybe this is it, maybe he'll have to fight his way out of the village after all, but the ANBU just rush past them.

One of the ANBU separates himself from the group and approaches Naruto and Kakashi hurriedly. "Why are you still inside?" he asks. "Didn't you sense the Nine-Tailed Fox' chakra? Everyone else in the building has already fled."

Naruto looks between him and Kakashi, expecting Kakashi to speak, but he seems to be too busy trying not to pass out. Apparently it's Naruto's responsibility to talk their way out of this. He's forgotten the cover story he'd used before, so he crosses his fingers and hopes this new batch of bullshit will be enough to convince the ANBU to leave them alone.

"Mister," he huffs, "I'd love to stand here and chat about it, but I had to drag my grandpa here off the crapper for this and he wasn't actually done on the crapper, so if you'll excuse us, we're in a bit of a hurry-"

Wordlessly, the ANBU ducks underneath Kakashi's arm to take his weight and scoops Naruto underneath his other arm – by the time Naruto's able to open his mouth to protest, they're already standing outside on the street and the ANBU has rushed back to the rest of his squad. He's carried Naruto and Kakashi all the way to the front door of the library with a Body-Flicker; probably the first public bathroom he could think of. The street is empty.

Kakashi leans against the wall with an exasperated wheeze that Naruto deduces was probably meant to be a laugh. "That was- more crude than I would've liked, but it worked," he sighs, shaking his head. "Thanks very much for shattering what was left of my dignity."

"You're very welcome," Naruto replies, grabbing his arm again to drag him upright. "Let's go, grandpa."

The streets get busier the farther away they get from the apartment building; chuunin are guiding hordes of civilians, old people and kids towards the shelter in the Hokage Rock. Naruto and Kakashi would've fit right in, but they don't try to blend in with the crowds – they need to go in exactly the opposite direction, after all, towards the village's gates.

They make their way through backstreets and alleys, avoiding the people. Naruto catches glimpses of the fleeing groups, though. He hears their nervous murmuring, sees the haunted looks on the adults' faces. He observes it with a sort of morbid fascination, not sure how to feel about it.

"Are all of these people really that afraid of the Nine-Tails?" Naruto asks Kakashi, figuring that it's an inconspicuous enough thing to ask. "They're evacuating and they didn't even see him."

Kakashi gives a thoughtful hum, his gaze focused in front of him. "Yeah," he only says. "Yeah, they are that afraid."

"Oh," Naruto says. "Are you?"

"I think so." He glances towards Naruto. "But not in the same way I used to be."

Whatever the heck that means. Kakashi doesn't seem intent on elaborating, and he still seems pretty out of it, so Naruto doesn't push him.

They continue on their way in silence, undetected and undisturbed. They need to cut across a group of people a couple of times, which is shockingly easy; their disguises serve them well. They don't stand out in the slightest, and Kakashi's grandpa-with-a-stomachache disguise is especially convincing, hunched over himself and shambling as he is. The glances they get from passersby are concerned, not suspicious, and people get out of the way when Naruto asks.

They pause for a moment near the gates, hidden around a corner so that they can observe the gates before they make a run for it. Their worry is unfounded; in the chaos, the guards have left their post, probably helping out with the evacuation efforts or reporting to the Hokage. There's nobody around the gates.

It's still nerve-wracking to cross the distance to the woods, though, especially since Kakashi can't move very fast at all. Naruto walks a bit faster than he probably should, dragging Kakashi along. Kakashi's breath comes in sharp, quick gasps, his jaw clenched and his hand tight around his stomach, but he doesn't say anything and he tries his best to keep up. He seems like he's getting more tired, more shaky, though he seems determined to keep it together.

They stumble a couple of times, but they make it through the gates. The autumny orange color of the forest greets them, pale in the fog, along with the smell of fallen leaves and mud. Naruto had missed it.

From there, Kakashi points Naruto in the direction of the nearest civilian village; he's planning on hiding out in an inn there until he's recovered some of his strength. Naruto remembers that he'd explained that plan to him before, though Naruto himself hadn't been part of the plan back then yet. He feels like it's a good thing that Kakashi isn't out here by himself. He's increasingly unsteady on his feet, and he can't keep his eyes open for longer than a few seconds at a time because he keeps squeezing them shut in pain. It appears that he's counting on Naruto to steer them in the right direction, and Naruto does his best.

It goes fairly okay. Naruto accidentally loses their path a couple of times in the fog, and he sometimes leads them through patches of nettles or slippery mud, and once he almost drops Kakashi right into a thorny bush, but it could've been a lot worse. He's almost starting to believe that this – their navigational issues, the mud, the thorny bushes – is as bad as it's going to get, that they've actually made it outside Konoha without any real trouble at all.

They've made it a decent distance away from Konoha when Kakashi suddenly utters an urgent whine, his heels digging into the ground. "Stop," he grits out – it startles Naruto, because he hadn't heard Kakashi speak in a pretty long time. Must be really important.

"Enemies?" Naruto hisses, his head whipping around and his free hand already reaching for his pocket, for the kunai he left at his apartment.

Kakashi shakes his head, clasping his hand across his mouth. His henge is already fading when he clumsily falls to his knees on the forest floor; Naruto isn't sure he dropped the jutsu on purpose. He yanks down his mask, and Naruto quickly turns his back to him to avoid seeing his face.

"Gonna hurl?" he asks. He tries to keep his tone casual to hide his anxiety. He's not sure if it's working.

"Think so." Kakashi's voice is breathy. "Stomach hurts- really bad-"

His words are interrupted by the sound of him throwing up, and Naruto bounces nervously on his feet. He's trying to stand guard, to keep an eye on his surroundings until Kakashi feels okay enough to move again, but he really can't seem to focus.

Kakashi has never said anything about his stomach hurting before, has he? It was always his side, and the pain in his side made him nauseous, but he never mentioned that his stomach hurt. Maybe that shinobi did something to him; Naruto hasn't really had the opportunity to ask. He really hopes that's not the case. The open wound in his side is bad enough. If Kakashi got even more hurt than that, that would really suck-

"Well," Kakashi croaks out, interrupting Naruto's thoughts. "That's… not good."

Naruto whirls around, because surely this time Kakashi did spot enemies, and Naruto is ready to fight – but there are no enemies in sight. It takes him a moment to realize that Kakashi isn't reacting to their surroundings, but rather to the dark puddle on the ground in front of him. He wipes at his mouth with his sleeve and, hand impossibly steady, pulls up his mask again. His face is grayish. There's a dark smear on his sleeve.

"Uhm," Naruto hears himself say, his voice far away to his own ears and yet ringing out in the quiet, "Kakashi-san, did you just puke blood?"