Chapter Text
Kakashi wasn't sure there even were words to describe how relieved he'd been when Raiden slapped him and gotten upset at him for trying to make a shadow clone when he'd been called for a pre-mission brief and decided a clone could do it as well as he could.
Well, not immediately. Right then, he'd been worried because she was crying. But after...
Raiden didn't like him using a lot of chakra because she knew that using chakra up could be bad. His cub was so incredibly smart! She had worked it out for herself! And she was trying to protect him! Him!
It was really difficult to bring himself to actually leave for that mission afterward.
But... The mission was also so very convenient.
He had spent the last couple of weeks plotting and gathering intel. It was time to actually make his move. And an iron-clad Alibi like 'I was on a mission on the other side of the Land of Fire'...
Kakashi chuckled as he made two shadow clones before heading out to the Village gates. If everything went well, he would come back home to such glorious chaos!
Being a clone was a strange feeling. Of course, as a clone, it tended to be the normal state of things. But shadow clones had their maker's memories and goals in them when created. It was what made them so useful. And that was also what provided a reference frame for how weird it was to be a clone.
Though philosophical musings on the meaning of being wasn't a priority. The first order of business for him and the other clone was henge. They only worked as an alibi if no one saw an extra Kakashi strolling around once the original was gone.
There was a thing about the combination of shadow clone and henge that no one really thought about. Another point in their advantage for succeeding in their operation undiscovered.
The Henge normally only spread a thin coat of chakra over top of a person, and manipulated that chakra to take on a new appearance. Flesh, after all, was tricky to manipulate.
Shadow clones, though, had absolutely no flesh. Only chakra. It meant that with the correct manipulation, with the right merging in, the henge could be made to change the actual structure of the clone rather than just it's appearance. It took a lot of concentration, so it wasn't useful in combat situations. But for what they were planning... The possibility of changing their own forms to a point where even a Hyuuga wouldn't be able to tell their true identity was critical.
The question of what form and tenketsu networks to adopt for their little operation had taken boss some deep thinking. They didn't want to implicate any innocents. But neither did they want to get caught right-away.
In the end, they had decided to split the difference. The outward appearance and the tenketsu network didn't have to match. Only Hyuugas saw tenketsu networks, after all. Plus, Kakashi didn't see tenketsu networks. The only way for them to know one was to use one that had been registered to serve as advanced identity proof. And there was one tenketsu network identification form Kakashi had been able to get his hands on easily enough. Side effect to the person it was on being dead.
It took them a while accurately mimic Minato-sensei's chakra network. Once that was done, the physical change was only a formality
One of them turned into the form of a civilian woman. Not any particular civilian woman, just a middle-aged woman with no particular characteristics. The other compressed it's chakra into a ten years old's body that looked like the woman.
There. They had made themselves all but invisible. That was a security breach on the part of the village, how they didn't pay much attention to civilian mothers, but in this case, it was being useful.
The hardest part of the mission was to not get distracted by the proximity of their cub and heading right to the Inuzuka Compound.
But they had revenge on their mind, and that was enough to push the parental need back. And the Inuzuka could, at least, be trusted with Raiden's wellbeing. Even if Kakashi was still sore about the custody thing. The Clan cared. Deeply. And his cub already having picked a ninken partner for herself only made them treasure her more. It was proof, as far as they were concerned, that she was theirs. (She was, but she was also his. Theirs. Kakashi's.)
Normally, they would either inconspicuously loiter around their target, or get into position and wait, immobile and hidden until the time to strike came. But... Hyuugas. It only took one looking in the right direction for long enough for their cover to get busted. They could only get into position once it was already time to act. No suspicious activity until then.
They went to a child park and the clone that looked like an adult started reading a book on how to raise a precocious child while the child one went to try and play with the ankle-bitters. Hopefully it would give them some Intel on how to best interact with Raiden. Children were so weird, and their original hadn't bothered to try and understand them when he was still a pipsqueak himself.
When they sky darkened, they left the play area (child-clone hadn't managed to make any 'friends' quite the contrary, actually) and strolled, hand in hand , across Konoha.
They 'passed by' the Hyuuga compound on their way. That was when they disappeared under heavy genjutsu and ANBU-level stealth.
Time to strike.
The two clones unsealed their brushes and fuuinjutsu ink and carefully skirted the guards.
The Kumo 'peace' delegation was in Konoha, which made the guard heavier than usual. It was, in a way, riskier to implement their plan at the moment. But it also meant that the Hyuuga wouldn't be able to make too big of a stink if (when) they succeeded. Best pretend it was their own idea, after all.
It had taken a lot of sneaking and spying to prepare this mission. And more thinking deeply about the intricacies of fuuijutsu than Kakashi ever liked to do. But they had managed to watch the Caged Bird seal be applied on a child (the Clan Head's own nephew) and copy it with their sharingan.
Some studying later, they had determined that it took specific command and seed seal to activate the torture component of any marked Hyuuga's seal. But, interestingly enough, the Caged Bird seal itself made it's bearer unable to trigger the torture component on any other seals, no matter if they used to have the seed seal to activate it before being marked. A sensible precaution. Probably implemented to allow the Clan Head and Council to punish someone who was overusing the seal for their own benefit.
In any case, it was very useful for their purpose.
The two clones split up and started hunting.
It was late enough for all the Main Branch Hyuugas to be at home, but not for all of them to be asleep. As planned, they started with the early sleepers. Lower danger target. They converged every thirty minutes to update each-other on their progress, so if one dispelled, the other would know what was left to do.
Two hours in, and all the easy targets had been sealed. It left the Main Branch Members who weren't isolated that late at night to deal with.
In a way, even with how horrible it was to think so, it really helped that there were so very few Hyuugas in the unsealed Main Branch. It meant they had fewer target.
The Kakashi-clone came together and went to find the last few targets. The ones who weren't alone, the ones who knew how to fight. Good thing most of these were way past their prime.
Hyuuga Hiashi gave them a hard time, but they managed to subdue him and knock him out without raising alarm, and one of them knelt over his prone form to draw the slavery seal on his bared brow.
The last stop was one they weren't the most happy with. But... If they left the little princess the only one of the 'legitimate' Main branch unsealed, it was way too likely that she would immediately get pressured into torturing her Clan Members at the entitled old assholes' behest. Three years olds weren't built to resist brainwashing.
It was kinder to her to remove the possibility.
With no one to 'hold the leash', the Hyuugas would re-regulate themselves.
Or the Main Branch would commission a way to remove the seal from themselves. And Kakashi would then happily steal the counter-seal and spread it to all corners of the disgusting slavery-based Clan's compound.
They were carefully activating the seal on the young Hinata when a breeze blew into her bedroom, alerting them to the opening window.
The clone on guard immediately sprung into action.
Even with the assailant (kidnapper?) taken off guard, the first clone got dispelled in the scuffle. But he had managed to disable one leg on the infiltrator (assassin?), and bought enough time for the other one to finish applying the Caged Bird to the young child.
The remaining Kakashi-clone jumped into the fight.
It was Kumo's Head Ninja! The leader of the 'peace talks'. Came to steal a Doujutsu.
But...
Killing him outright was dangerous, even if he was blatantly deserving of it. Kumo would absolutely lie their ass off and pretend Konoha had killed him without reason if he died. Who knew what Kumo's Plan-B was?
Though. No Body No Proof.
Kakashi-Clone surged around the man's guard and severed his throat.
Then he grabbed the closest bit of paper in the little girl's room and drew a corpse-storage seal on it, and sealed the body in it. He then stowed the bit of paper and carefully gathered the still sleeping princess.
Once Hinata was safely nested next to her insensate father, Kakashi-clone went back to the small bedroom and called up his most powerful Katon Jutsu. If the room went up in flame, the blood would disappear.
It took some fancy maneuvering to get back out of the Compound, as the burning section of the Clan Head's house had woken it up.
A good thing that the henge was still in place. And that the Hyuugas had other priorities than chasing him down.
Once well away from the Clan Compound and Konoha, the clone selected a deserted clearing, set the corpse not-scroll down and used the last of his chakra to thoroughly incinerate the remains of Kumo's head-ninja.
The destroyed seal belching out it's content in several chunks as it's dimensional workings got disrupted helped speed up the burning process.
It took a lot of control to direct every last dredge of the clone's chakra into the burning jutsu, but Kakashi wasn't called a genius for nothing.
When the construct finally failed and the Clone stopped being, the only thing special about his chosen clearing was a circle of charred earth.