Chapter Text
Pain, acrid in its familiarity, lanced down his nerves, originating from his eyes. An unbidden groan clawed its way up his scratchy throat and through his gummy mouth, parting his lips like great heavy oak doors, the sort that guarded the hidden chambers in the Daimyo’s estate and were barred with thick logs.
Kakashi wasn’t supposed to know about those. But there was a great deal in life that Kakashi knew when he wasn’t supposed to, and things that happened to Kakashi that weren’t supposed to.
Fearing the riot his body would put up in protest, he kept his sharingan closed while he cracked open his normal eye, only for it to stab his brain in the exact manner he was so used to from his sharingan.
“Whatever,” he huffed near inaudibly, testing his speech and finding his words scraping at his ears and his lips cracking around the syllables. Fresh blood wept from his bottom lip in a languid teardrop and, when he wiped it away, his torn gloved hands got caught on the friction of matte dried blood upon skin.
His hands slid from his bare chin and tangled in the remains of his mask, the black fabric dry and crusted and in no fit shape to be used. At least his headband was still in place, he mused as he pulled it down over both of his eyes.
He should be alert. He’d say panicked but that wasn’t his style. Those in the throes of panic were subject to impaired decision-making skills and flighty behaviour, the former Kakashi was admittedly guilty of on occasion and the latter a completely foreign feeling.
But as he catalogued how he was too exhausted to move, how his weapon pouch was almost empty, and how he had very little idea of where he was, he couldn’t find it within himself to quicken his thinking or heighten his senses. A crushing weight sat heavily on his chest and prevented him from doing so.
He thought Obito had come around, that Kakashi had gotten through to him. Foolish.
Kakashi may have spent a lifetime stood in front of that facade of a grave, sending words out to oblivion and building this terrific idea of Obito in his mind, an idol, a saint, but, to Obito, Kakashi was that same asshole who’d relentlessly bullied him in his youth and then went on to kill his comrades, purposefully or not.
As Obito was dying, lay in an alien tundra with a death bed of unforgiving ice beneath his spine, cold fingers, somehow colder than the frigid air, grasped onto Kakashi’s wrist. Obito smiled, so softly, so sweetly, a honeyed lie crystallised in blood-red sugar, as he sent Kakashi far away to a place where he had no hope of aiding his students and the rest of the shinobi world.
He couldn’t pinpoint how exactly he knew he wasn’t in the Elemental Nations, never mind Fire Country, but it was a piece of knowledge intrinsic to his very being, along with the feeling that his existence was fundamentally different now. Several somethings had shifted, and he wasn’t so sure of the composition of the world and himself within it.
With a ragged sigh, he took his freshly bloodied hand and formed the familiar sign ingrained in him from when Sakumo first showed him the Hatake ninken contract (his final gift, perhaps) and summoned Pakkun.
“Boss,” said a comforting voice tinged with worry after an uncharacteristic dark almost wet sound in place of the usual soft puff that accompanied summoning, “you don’t look good.”
“It’s the mask, isn’t it?” Kakashi croaked, a flickering smile weak as an oil lamp running on its last dregs struggling to light his lips, “I always knew I’d look terrible without it.”
“I can’t even see your face with all that blood, Boss,” Pakkun said with no semblance of humour, close to his right ear. “I’d clean it but I don’t like the taste of iron. Summon Bull and maybe a couple of the others so we can get you out of here. Hell, summon the whole pack, I think we need all the help we can get.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Kakashi said, adverse to his fingers which were already poised to summon. He’d never really been one for self-preservation, but he at least had to pretend at making an effort. “My chakra feels like… athletic sludge, and I can’t open my eyes.”
“Athletic sludge, Boss? Did you borrow that from your books?”
“No, but it sounds like I could’ve, hmm? Maybe I should try writing since… my favourite author... retired. I may be lacking in experience but I have a wild imagination to make up for it.”
“Gross. Just summon the pack, Boss.”
“You make it sound like I’m the one who should be calling you boss...” Kakashi mumbled, words slurring and tone bland but light. His bloodied fingers touched down onto concrete and that same dark sound signalled the summoning of his pack as a different darkness took hold of his consciousness.
There was an inkling in the back of his head that perhaps he might be dying, but his thoughts were so syrupy and slow that he didn’t think on his regrets, although he had many.
“O-Obito?”
A vast expanse of nothing stretched out limitlessly, the only break in the endless void being the brutalist square platforms, the bases of which were lost to the darkness below. However brief his stay had been while marred by the adrenalin of a fight that decided upon everything he believed in, Kakashi knew the Kamui dimension, it was not a place easily forgotten.
There was no echo to his voice but there was a feeling that somebody miles away would be able to hear it as though they were next to him.
There was no response.
Obito wasn’t here and perhaps he never would be. As Kakashi jumped from pillar to pillar, he found evidence of Obito’s past existence in his belongings, but they were stale and held no traces of him. A collection of eerie spiral masks, a closet of clothes mostly consisting of dark tones and long robes, various weapon stashes, sweets which were dusty yet somehow untouched by rot, and other such miscellaneous items a shinobi of Obito’s calibre could be expected to own.
Kakashi felt light in this world unlike how he had before, like nothing could touch him and nothing would fall out of his favour. Yet this feeling came along with the cloying sense of being trapped and closed off from a door sealed by powers beyond his reach.
There would be no returning to his students through here. He just knew.
Ice thrust through his veins and forced the air from his lungs as he gasped involuntarily and water found entrance in his parted lips and sought to make its home inside his lungs.
Reflexively he shot up and thrashed, choking the water from his body as someone said something vaguely soothing but stern, a rhythmic thumping on his back aiding his recovery.
“-wimp, Boss, it’s for your own good, although you could have been a little less rough Bull,” Pakkun’s reprimanding voice faded in and, with the return of his other senses, he recognised the weight on his back as Bisuke’s front paws.
Chilling water flowed up to his hips where he sat upright in a pebbled riverbed, the texture of the rocks beneath his curious but still weak fingers and the tinkling of a current betraying the brook for what it was. A couple of his dogs were happily splashing along and he could hear two of them chasing each other in the distance with gleeful yips.
Sight being the only sense that hadn’t returned to him, he slipped off his headband with numbing hands and viewed the world in breathtaking clarity.
Clear aqua drew a winding line from the setting sun to his figure, xanthous hues transforming the brook into a mirage of colour and dappling the verdant trees, casting speckled shadows along the forest floor and catching in the metal of his dog’s headbands.
He observed every detail with startling precision, each individual leaf on the horizon cut out from the gradient sky, the clouds so crisp it was as though he could touch them. Mist wound its way between thin tree trunks and settled atop the water like a blanket, though it didn’t hamper his vision in the slightest.
The combined might of two sharingan eyes.
“That’s not good,” Pakkun said from where he sat on the river bank closest to Kakashi, overseeing the rest of the pack as they had their fun. Bull lay on Kakashi’s other side, chastised from the earlier remark.
“No, it isn’t,” Kakashi agreed and pulled down his damp headband. He could already feel the drain on his newly icky feeling chakra. “I don’t suppose you fancy a change in career? Guide dog, maybe? Civilians love guide dogs, you’ll get lots of scritches from strangers cooing over you.”
“I can be ninken and a guide dog, you know,” Pakkun replied, “the pack already talked about it when you couldn’t open your normal eye. Bisuke and Guruku were quite excited.”
“Aw, aren’t my pack just the cutest? Including you, Pakkun, grumpy old men can be cute too, sometimes,” Kakashi smiled and looked vaguely in the direction of Pakkun’s chakra signature, also sludgy yet quick and all-around weird.
“I’m plenty cute,” Pakkun agreed, “what’s not cute is you freezing to death now.”
“And who’s idea was it to dunk me naked in a freezing brook, hm? Speaking of which, where are my clothes?”
He couldn’t begrudge Pakkun or Bull for his rude awakening, not when dried blood washed from his skin like a thick film of dust swiped from a half-forgotten photo frame. His skin could breathe and he was reminded that there were still some people out there who knew and cared for him in this foreign place, who could help him return home.
“Akino’s washing them behind you,” Pakkun said and Kakashi took a small peak with one eye and found that Akino was indeed washing his tattered clothes by aggressively shaking them in the water like he would with a stick he didn’t want to give back yet.
“I might need a new outfit,” Kakashi said a little despairingly while scratching lightly at his cheek with the finger he’d used to prop up his headband.
“Just be happy you’re not caked in blood, Boss,” Pakkun said, quietly.
Later, when the sun slipped beneath the covers of the land and the moon took its place, he and his pack lounged by a moderately sized fire pit dug into the ground by dutiful paws and lined with stones by matching snouts while Kakashi dipped in and out of awareness.
The flames came close to licking at his bare chest but he could barely feel the warmth, the only thing stopping his tired brain from pushing himself into the tinder being the bandages his pack had painstakingly wound around his wounds. He had enough sense about him to know that cloth was flammable.
Bull’s hulking figure emerged from the darkness that surrounded their little clearing, the flickering light twisting shadows and making him seem larger than he was, and came to a stop in front of the fire. His maw yawned open and tumbling out came a veritable heap of slobbery fish that almost put the fire out.
Bisuke and Guruko yipped in delight while Akino tsked and went about stoking the fire some more before it puttered out underneath the onslaught of slippery fish and saliva. Distantly, Kakashi knew this wasn’t how they were supposed to go about cooking fish, but the small fire jutsu he’d used to get to the fire going had taken a lot out of him. Not to mention that it hadn’t felt right.
Pakkun slapped away Shiba’s sneaky paws, preventing him from taking a raw fish for himself. They could eat raw fish, hell, Kakashi could eat raw fish, but his pack seemed to be putting in a little extra effort and Kakashi was loath to stop them, if only to save himself the ordeal.
“How long are you guys planning on sticking around?” Kakashi asked as he slipped the headband over his eyes once more. Periodically, he tested the drain but he instinctively knew his limits. Regardless, he wanted to see.
“Don’t dismiss us,” Urushi said, characteristically abrupt but surprising nonetheless.
“... okay, I won’t if you don’t want to. But why?”
“We weren’t home,” Bisuke pitched in. “This isn’t Fire Country and that place wasn’t home.” Although Kakashi couldn’t see, he could hear the shiver in Bisuke’s voice.
“We’ve changed, Boss,” Pakkun added, “so have you.”
They all knew it, huh. But what had changed, and where were they?
With that thought as an anchor, he drifted in and out as he had been doing since the sun had set, until he was finally lulled to sleep by the ambience of his pack and the different yet all the same whisperings of the woods.
“-oss, Boss, wake up,” quiet harsh words dragged Kakashi from the grip of his deep slumber and he raised himself with a tactical cautiousness in the face of Pakkun’s alert tone.
“What’s wrong?” He asked, ears pricking to the sound of two of his ninken hurriedly putting the fire out. A crispy fish was pushed into his hands by a large paw and he bit into the burnt flesh without protest. He hadn’t eaten for what he estimated was a day, he needed his energy.
“There’s something thick and dark in the woods, around twenty-two metres north from us, it’s strong and it’s not human,” Pakkun explained and another fish was nudged into Kakashi’s hand by a smaller paw, this one nearly raw. Again, he swallowed it down without complaint.
“Let’s not engage with unknowns, head south,” Kakashi instructed as he got up on shaking legs, Bull’s large form coming to support him at his side. He patted his head in thanks and worked through his lethargy stealthily moving ahead and transitioning to a light jog.
He was about to remove his headband when Pakkun jumped onto his shoulder and placed a paw over his raised hand. “Don’t. If that thing catches up to us, which it might because it’s headed our way, you’ll need that. I don’t know what that thing is, but I know it’s bad.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I’m still not thinking straight. I’ll follow your lead.”
They travelled as quiet as can be for several minutes, that thing a steady presence in the back of Kakashi’s mind as it drew gradually closer, Pakkun a tense talisman on his shoulder.
Until the presence spiked and Pakkun barked, “run!”
A small stampede ensued as several sets of paws picked up in speed, smashing against the undergrowth of the forest. Kakashi’s lungs burned as he instinctively corrected himself when almost falling over stray roots and his feet pounded against the dirt. There were more efficient methods of escape, but none were available to him as he relied on the sharp tang of adrenaline pumping through his veins to shove him forwards.
“Shit,” Akino swore, the word almost taken away by the wind, and his small body flew through the air a moment later, the air pressure cutting past Kakashi’s face as his flailing paws tried and failed to grip his flak jacket as he shot past him.
Kakashi didn’t hesitate to thrust his headband from his eyes and locate Akino as Bull picked him up by the scruff of his neck and continued running. Bull growled and his big body came to a skidding halt and something crashed in the shadows just ahead of them.
The pack came to a united standstill. Trees groaned as they parted for a towering figure cloaked in darkness, its looming shadow blacker than the night and swallowing everything it touched whole.
“Fire style: candlelight jutsu,” Kakashi said under his breath, forming a quick sign, and a small bright light burst to life on the tip of his index finger.
Flushed in yellow, a grotesque figure leant forwards, its bulbous lips stretching into an unnatural smile that cut its face diagonally. Two bulging eyes followed the trajectory of its slope, pupils turned upwards in untold hysteria. Its head alone was the length of Kakashi’s body, the rest of it in a deceptive slump behind it.
Looking at it with the sharingan by the light of fire, it shouldn’t have been able to move that fast. But it had. And it would.
Rearing back, it sucked air into its lungs with such strength that Kakashi had to grab a hold of Uhei and Bull used his bulk as a blockade to prevent Urushi from rolling into its jaws.
Cheeks puffed out like that of an over large misshapen hamster, the monster hummed a giggle and Kakashi predicted what would follow.
“Earth style: rock wall jutsu!” Kakashi yelled as he brought up a barrier just in time for a gust of wind that rivalled the likes of Temari’s most unforgiving wind release. Rock crumbled and the shockwave of the impact sent half his pack to the floor, but the wall held.
Squealing, the monster fell back in the backlash of its own rebounded attack, and smacked the ground with its six-fingered fists as if staging a tantrum. Taking advantage of its strange temperament, Kakashi jumped atop the wall, formed the tiger hand seal and his stomach became molten.
Without announcement, a torrent of flames burst from his lips and engulfed the monster, transforming its petulant cries into true screams of agony.
As the flames died down into embers dusting a pile of ash, echoes of its tormented final moments reverberated through the forest, or perhaps just in Kakashi’s skull. Nobody moved, all eyes glued to the horrifying scene until Pakkun patted his cheek.
“It wasn’t human,” Pakkun said.
“It wasn’t,” Kakashi agreed, followed by a couple of woofs of agreement in various pitches. “This forest isn’t safe. Somebody check on Akino, I’m just gonna close my eyes for a minute.”
He slumped against the tree to his right, uncaring for how the bark bit into his temple, and sighed. He was so very far from top form, his body hurt.
“Boss? Boss, come on, you were the one who said it wasn’t safe, we need to move,” Pakkun’s strained voice broke through the fuzzy cotton cloaking his brain and he weakly batted away his prodding paws.
“Gimme… minute.”
“Right, right. Come on Bull, let’s get him on your back and go somewhere el…”
Everything faded away.
Drip, Drip, Drip.
Kakashi sighed as he realised he was waking up on his own terms and without the chill of fresh brook water sluicing down his neck. Or perhaps not, he frowned consideringly, a distinctive wet snout was nuzzling at his left wrist's pulse point. He shifted his fingers over the snout, gently calming it, before smoothing his hand over soft fur and scratching behind floppy ears.
“Hello, Guruku,” Kakashi grunted and lifted himself up, his hands finding purchase on concrete and his back resting against a wall of the same composition.
Lifting his headband over one eye, he surveyed his surroundings and a firmer smile fixed itself upon his lips.
Staring intently at each other, Urushi and Shiba lay crouched beneath a yellowed window, bathed in the dim stained light, playing a game of Red Tomato.
To the left of them, Bisuke stretched out lazily across a battered wooden stool fidgeting with a couple of fish bones. He was interrupted as Uhei scampered over and deposited an old tennis ball of unknown origins onto the stool and the two were instantly scrabbling over it in an uncoordinated game of pass.
Pakkun, ever the keen-eyed leader, lay deceptively relaxed by the entrance to the dark hallway on Kakashi’s right while he oversaw everything. With Guruku basking in Kakashi’s affection, that only left two dogs unaccounted for.
“Where’s Bull and Akino?” Kakashi called over to Pakkun, who lifted his head at his address.
“Akino wanted to scout out the area but his ankles are still sprained so I sent Bull with him,” he replied.
The area. Kakashi turned his attention back to the stained window and sought what was beyond the cracked glass panes, identifying murky branches swaying to a light breeze. Second floor at least, he surmised, maybe third floor but the trees he’d encountered so far were practically saplings when compared to the thick towering forests of Fire Country.
“Still? How long have I been out?” He observed the dancing leaves for a few moments more before returning his gaze to Pakkun. He did appear more tired than usual, perhaps his sluggish demeanour was not a complete ruse.
“About a day. We’ve had food before you ask. Bull carried you and we went back to where we began since the forest is dangerous. It’s the same abandoned building except we’re a floor below since we didn’t stop to clean up before we left last time.”
Yeah. Kakashi hadn’t laid eyes on the undoubtedly gruesome scene that lay above them, but his mind’s eye had many first-hand sources to pull from.
“What’s the situation?” He asked, falling back into routine. With his surroundings accounted for, he pulled down his headband, secure in the safety of his pack.
“We’re on the outskirts of a large settlement without walls, the buildings get taller the further in you get. This building is four storeys high and mostly hidden by the trees, and it’s strange. The place is completely gutted like it wasn’t even furnished before whoever built it up and left. No monsters though, and no people.”
As Pakkun spoke, Shiba squeaked and there was the sound of a disgruntled retreat as padding paws jumped down from the windowsill and settled down elsewhere. It appeared Urushi had won.
“So there are people, that’s… good.” Kakashi rubbed his chin in mock thought, a gesture that had its roots in pretend but had since become a genuine mannerism, and then paused at the reminder of his ruined mask. “But also bad. I don’t have any money and I probably look like I’ve gone through hell and back. Or rather, I went through hell and popped out on the other side. Feels like I have.”
“You have,” Pakkun huffed.
“Right. We could easily live in the forest but the forest is unsafe. We can’t live in an established village just yet. This building is a good compromise. It’s also the best place to figure out what the hell happened to me since I started here. There’s got to be something that points to an explanation and a way back.”
It made sense, logically. There had to be some sort of lead. He had to believe there was. He had to believe he could return.
Guruku sneezed and jolted out of Kakashi’s reach. After he recovered from his surprise, he whined, “I’m hungry.”
Kakashi’s stomach agreed on his behalf with a rumble.
“We can hunt in the forest, let’s just make sure we don’t stray too far or go at night,” Pakkun shifted, presumably standing up.
“No need,” Akino’s serious voice broke through the shadows of the hallway as he entered the muted light of the room, Kakashi raising his headband upon hearing his voice so he could visibly ascertain he was okay. Bull followed closely behind with… several glossy bags in his mouth?
Everyone stopped what they were doing and formed a circle in the centre of the sparse concrete room where Bull dropped the bags, saliva dripping from their handles. With a small thud, he sat back down, and Akino took centre stage.
“The village out there is very different from our ideas of what a village looks like. The clothes are weird, there’s a lot of glass, the buildings are tall, there’s a lot of shops, and there are these metal... things that speed down the road with people in them like a carriage would, but I didn't see any horses,” he explained and then kicked over one of the bags with his non-sprained front paw, a shiny pink one.
A varied selection of wrapped meat poured out of the bag to the ear curling orchestra of crinkling plastic, a sound that held all of his ninken’s attention as the association of treats no doubt pinged along their synapses.
“I hope you paid for that like an upstanding citizen,” Kakashi commented lightly and picked up a raw chicken. Blood escaped from a tiny hole in the plastic, easy enough to spot with the sharingan. He put the chicken down before the rivulets snaking down his arm could grow in number and wiped his hand across his trousers. Uhei, who sat closest to Kakashi, shook his head at the mess.
“Talking dogs are even more of a rarity here than in Konoha, didn’t get the chance to. Not that I would anyway since I don’t have any money. I didn’t come across a single shinobi in the four hours I’ve been gone, not even anyone with the weird chakra we have. All civilians.”
“There’s no shinobi, then,” Kakashi mused and shifted to inspect another piece of packaged meat but aborted the movement as a wound on his abdomen pinched his nerves. Forgetting his disapproval of the inappropriate use of trousers in the place of a handkerchief, Uhei shuffled closer and rested his head on Kakashi’s lap. Thankful for the silent display of comfort, Kakashi idly patted Uhei’s head as he listened to Akino.
“That’s our working theory,” Akino nodded and knocked over another bag, a blue one with the apparent word ‘BURBERRY’ written across the front, and revealed several bundles of cloth. “Got you some clothes that aren’t hanging by threads, masks in there too.”
Mindful of his injury bound limits, Kakashi bent over Uhei and picked up a bright yellow tee-shirt with the tips of his fingers, reminiscent of how he would hold the full green bag from the little food recycling bin on his apartment’s kitchen counter when the plastic lid refused to close. Fresh dead bodies, he could deal with just fine. Anything on the cusp or in the process of rotting? Disgusting, like that eyesore of a t-shirt.
“I just took whatever they had in the back.” Akino shrugged as if he hadn’t handed Kakashi a bright neon tee that practically screamed ‘LOOK AT ME’ with its eye-searing colour. “You’ll blend in, the people aren’t trying to hide out there.”
At least there were masks. Medical masks, but masks nonetheless. The white bands were a small line of discomfort behind his ears but the familiarity of fabric pressed against his face overruled any minor inconveniences.
The final bag toppled over and all the ninken collectively groaned. Collars.
“I don’t like it either, but we’ll blend in.”
Yeah, blend into the new society they’ve found themselves in. Figure out the customs, traditions, adapt. Invent a convincing backstory accordingly, borrowing from little tidbits he learnt from the people he spoke to. Treat it like a deep undercover mission.
Ignore the encroaching dark presences mere metres deep into the forest, trailing along the perimeter of the building. Seal the whole building with the most advanced teachings Minato-sensei never meant to bestow upon him, but he learnt anyway when he went through his belongings after his death. Traps, everywhere. Don't think about Naruto, don't think about any of his students. Make everything completely safe.
Everything was going to be fine. It was just a mission. Objective: Return Home.